Quote:
Originally posted by 4thTimeLucky
The fact of the matter is that mankind is not "living in better conditions" than they ever were. For most of man's history people lived quite adequate subsistence lives. The environment ticked along quite nicely and people produced for themselves. There weren't cars or cinemas or jeans, but day to day life for almost everyone was quite adequate - and most of the world still doesn't have cars, cinemas or jeans. We now live in a world where the environmental degredation is throwing increasing challenges at the developing world. More important, however, is the economic system we live in. There is plenty of food to go round and almost every country on earth has enough resources to feed itself. However agricultural produce is "cheap" in land where people live on a $1 a day, and so this produce is sold to the first world, which pushes up the price and places it out of reach of the local population. And don't think that the revenues from the sale of food goes into raising that $1 a day lifestyle. It doesn't.
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Actually, I think you're mistaken. For most of man's history, people lived by the grace of nature (/god). If there was some extreme weather, people could die, just like that. That was the case for pretty much anyone on this planet. People didn't grow very old, because of the hardships they faced every day. Now, some countries and peoples managed to grow more prosperous; mainly because of the good environment they lived in. Some peoples didn't fare as well, because they were situated in "bad" areas, with poor soil, bad environments, inadequate water supply, etc. That is a fact.
Now, most of the countries that were "bad" in the olde days, are still bad today, and most of the countries that were "good" then are still good today. If you are fortunate enough to live in a good area, you are more likely to have enough to eat, and are more likely to grow old. If you live in a bad area, you're more likely to suffer. Also a fact.
If one were to add together the total food produced in the world, it becomes obvious that there is indeed enough to feed everyone; yet, people still die from lack of food! Why is that? Mostly because of logistical problems, really. Because of the good transportation system, it is very easy to move food from, say, the US to land-locked Switzerland; but it's infinitely more difficult to move that same shipment of food from the US to Ethiopia! In many third-world countries the infrastructure is simply not good enough to facilitate mass shipments of food, even if they were to be able to *buy* the food in the first place. (Note: the high price of food in those countries is at least partly caused by those logistical problems.)
You state that almost every country has enough resources to feed itself. That may be the case, but is usually NOT true for many of the countries in the third world; precisely those you point at for your suffering and sorrow. These countries usually have poor soil, and hardly any natural resources; that's the reason they're so damn poor in the first place! Of course, it doesn't help that modern medicine, combined with a cultural aversion to birth control (Christianity?), leads to a population explosion, precisely in those countries that are least able to feed all those people.
Then you talk about the "surviving on 1$ a day" thing. Nice, but not quite accurate. A dollar in the US isn't worth anything, but in many third-world countries, it's worth quite a bit. The same dollar will get you much more food in Ghana than it will get you in Germany. Also, your statement about food production is not quite complete either: there is still the high price of distribution, of course. They're also not forced to sell us anything - they can say no if they want to; but apparently they don't want to say no...
I'll refine my statement: <b>most of the people on this planet are better off than they ever were</b>. Most countries on the face of this planet have seen their average income go UP, not down. The problem is that the Western world has grown much faster than the rest of the world, partly because of our luck with the environment, partly because of our culture that encourages free enterprise and innovation.
Now, after saying all of this, and recognizing that there are people that suffer a lot... I'm still optimistic. The number of people suffering food shortages on a daily basis is not as high as you seem to think; the number of people suffering from wars and violence is also quite low, when compared to the total number of humans. The average life expectancy has gone up dramatically in the last century, for almost every human on this planet. It is only the emergence of new diseases like AIDS that are threatening this trend, and only really (again) in those countries that are poor already. Nature's a bitch, what can I say... Having said that, I believe we *will* find a cure for AIDS, and it will go the way of the black plague: confined to history books and far-away places.
As a final note (yes, I'm going to shut up after this): When it's a beautiful day, sunny, no cloud to be seen, and I step outside my door, I always get happy - no matter how depressing the world news might have been, the beauty of the world I live in is enough to lift my spirits again. You can keep insisting the world is depressing or whatever, but I still have that feeling of happiness all the time: happy to be alive! And I don't think I'm the only one; I bet even a farmer in Mozambique, one of the poorest countries on this planet, feels that on occasion. I bet he also celebrates and parties on occasion. So why can't you? Why always focus on the negative things, instead of the positive? Just be happy you're alive, cause it sure beats being dead...