Its hard to see these patterns if you just rely on news/anecdotal evidence as your barometer for whether the world is becoming a better place, because the news reports whatever will get views, and nothing gets views like bad news.
I've upvoted your comment despite disagreeing with it, because I'm sure many people feel the same way and I understand why.
Over the last 20 years, the real disposable income of Americans and people in the wealthiest Western European countries has decreased or stayed the same, and claims that the world is much better than it was are difficult to swallow if that's your context.
However, the percentage of the world's population that is desperately poor has significantly decreased, famine is much rarer, infant mortality and child morbidity is way down.
You say it must be nice to be a billionaire, I say it must be nice to be a citizen of one of the world's wealthiest countries. To someone starving to death, or someone who has lost 3 out of 7 children in infancy, the lifestyle of a middle class Englishman or American must be scarcely distinguishable from that of Bill Gates.
After all, our children don't routinely die, we always have enough to eat, we have shelter, we're not in a war zone. Yeah, unlike BG, we're not flying anywhere in a private jet but that must seem like a paltry distinction to someone trying to live through a famine.
Thanks. I agree that maybe, if you balance out the total good vs total bad, you could make an argument that world-wide things are, on net, better, depending how sanguine you are about population growth/totals. But the way he makes that blanket statement just pisses me off - he's obviously not looking too hard for other indicators. I don't trust anyone who can't take a more nuanced view: some things good, some things bad.
I agree that developed countries - still a large part of the world - are deteriorating.
- Debt, of all citizens and particularly of young adults
- Waste - I think there's some giant plastic floating garbage dump in the pacific
- Pollution - Most water bodies in the US are polluted (mercury). Haven't been to china, but I hear it's not a fun place to breathe.
- Food quality (cheap carbohydrates == diabetes for a big portion of the population). Also, how much toxicity do you want in your fish? Do we want to all be beta testers for Monsanto, just to stay alive?
- Food sustainability (pesticides - which eventually get resistant weeds, synthetic fertilizers, over fishing, corn-fed cows)
- Food cruelty (factory farming)
- Energy Sustainability - Pretty sure pumping unknown chemicals into your water supply (phracking) is NOT good.
- Population - There's still the fact that perhaps 2 may chinas may come into the world due to population growth, which doesn't seem like an optimistic outlook.
- Traffic - how much time do we sit commuting in mega-sprawls vs previous generations
- Mobility - how many of us have the option to stay close to our family when finding work (helps when raising kids), vs having to relocate for a megacorp
- Child care - how many of us raise our own children, vs have both parents work
So if we're doing a lot of things that are unsustainable, I don't see that as 'good'. I see that as 'bad'/negative. Maybe we will improve technology in the future, but past performance does not guarantee future results, and it most certainly doesn't mean we can all pat ourselves on the back for being so great ("improving the world").
So yes, I'm US-centric admittedly, but un-qualified rosy (or negative) generalizations piss me off, because you're probably not looking very hard[1]
I will probably read all of his letter some time, but it shouldn't have to be so off putting. Hopefully he doesn't try to sell his "fake meat" crap. You know what? If the world was so better, we wouldn't really have to eat that shit, would we? The same with veganism. Carbs are awful for your teeth. I also don't think most humans are designed to eat carbs, and I've lost enough weight myself to never want to eat them again. So if we all have to eat mass cheap carbs, to stay alive, things are not 'better than they have ever been'.
Please read the entire letter. You've got pissed off about a statement without bothering to read the reasons and the data he gives for making that statement.
Let me take just a few of the point you make:
>> "cheap carbohydrates == diabetes for a big portion of the population"
Ok. How about looking at it another way? Cheaper food means less people starving and dying young.
>> "how much toxicity do you want in your fish? Do we want to all be beta testers for Monsanto, just to stay alive?"
If it's a choice between eating toxic fish and living off it for many years or dying or course I want to be beta tester for Monsanto. I despise the company and am all for healthy sustainable food but for a lot of people it's a choice between eating and not eating.
>> "how much time do we sit commuting in mega-sprawls vs previous generations"
You have to sit in traffic in a 'mega-sprawl' and previous generations had to work their ass off on a farm from 6am to 10pm. You drive your nice, air conditioned car to work, or take cheap public transport while people in poorer countries dream of having a job. You have it easy.
You entire position is based on that of a comfortable person living in the US ignorant of the fact that when someone talks about the world they are not only referring to you. His statement was about the world. Here are a few of his points from the letter to save you reading it:
1. the percentage of very poor people has dropped by more than half since 1990
2. Since 1960, the life span for women in sub-Saharan Africa has gone up from 41 to 57 years, despite the HIV epidemic. Without HIV it would be 61 years.
3. The percentage of children in school has gone from the low 40s to over 75 percent since 1970.
4. Today there are only three countries left that have never been polio-free: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria.
5. A baby born in 1960 had an 18 percent chance of dying before her fifth birthday. For a child born today, the odds are less than 5 percent. In 2035, they will be 1.6 percent.
The main reason I posted the link was the following point:
Drops in child mortality have been shown to lead to drops in the number of births. In countries where your child is likely to die at a young age you have many children to 'compensate' for the likely loss. If you can be quite certain your child won't die or measles, polio, malaria etc. then you won't have as many children.
The point is not that you can't outweigh all the 'bad indicators' by 'good indicators' that you, personally, weight more highly. If you want to make that argument, great. He said 'by nearly all indicators', which to me, frankly, is dishonest propaganda.
I'm guessing 'by nearly all indicators' was referring to standard indicators used to measure these things (infant mortality rates, GDP, quality of life, life expectancy). Of course he's not going to take into account some of your 'indicators' (e.g. level of congestion on morning commute). That's a bullshit indicator. It's relevant to a relatively very small number of people. The indicators I've stated above are relevant to everyone.
"Patricia Stonesifer, former chief executive of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which gives more than £2 billion a year to good causes, attended the Rockefeller summit. She said the billionaires met to “discuss how to increase giving” and they intended to “continue the dialogue” over the next few months.
"Another guest said there was “nothing as crude as a vote” but a consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat.
"“This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers,” said the guest. “They need to be independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the disaster we all see looming.”"
It can be hard to believe the world overall is getting better when one's own corner of it is getting worse. It also depends on how you define "better" -- better health, better civil liberties, more widespread access to luxuries, better authoritarian surveillance systems, ...
http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org