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You may not know this but you live in the richest, healthiest, freest period of human history. Economic growth is a moral imperative even so because there are s
by barry-cotter 5y ago
You may not know this but you live in the richest, healthiest, freest period of human history. Economic growth is a moral imperative even so because there are still over a billion people living in desperate poverty. If we didn’t care about people outside the OECD, sure we could go to lotus eating but there’s still widespread malnutrition in much of South Asia and they’re doing better than large parts of Africa. Things have been getting better on every continent but Africa in terms of standard of living and health span since WW2 but things can still get better again. Even Africa is a success by any historic standards. There’s a lot less war and starvation than you’d expect from a continent with ~0 GDP per capita growth.
Growth is a moral imperative. Every human deserves a decent standard of living.
- mytailorisrich 5y agoGrowth per capita is what matters for your point, not overall growth of an ever increasing number of people.
- midasuni 5y agoOP was arguing against continuous growth in already wealthy areas (often by exploiting those not wealthy), not against growth in Africa.
- barry-cotter 5y agoThe only parts of the world that qualify as wealthy are Europe, North America, Australasia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. There’s a lot more of the world than Africa that’s far from rich, if not so poor that lack of calories probably isn’t a worry. A per capita income like China or Thailand is an improvement over the natural condition but is still not good enough.
- inglor_cz 5y agoRichest, yes. Healthiest, it depends. Obesity and metabolic diseases are at their record highs. That's not health. You can medicate those patients to survive, but that's not health. Go to any street and count all the people who would lose their breath after walking three flights of stairs. This is a major civilizational regression and we don't seem to be attacking it at all. Freest, really? How do you measure this? Certainly there is more rules to comply with than ever before, you are unlikely to be aware of all of them [0]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229 https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...