I think what we are seeing is world wide there is improvement, but our economic system has a non-uniform performance depending on the state of the region. In a relatively undeveloped area, expansion into basically non-serviced markets is efficient and an improvement.
In a relatively developed area (e.g. the US and many first world nations), it is failing. In the US for example, life expectancy has dropped three years running. More and more people fall to a median income that doesn't even let them have kids and send them to college, and seems to be falling to where they can't even pay for minor emergencies. That's not improvement.
Climate change is an interesting example, because we are obviously making things worse for climate overall for centuries. However, our rate of improvement is dramatically increasing.
The other examples you provide are local. I don't think that everything is improving everywhere obviously, that would be ludicrous. But if you broaden your metrics a bit more fairly - gdp per capita globally, child mortality and life expectancy - our improvement is significant.
It's a global vs local problem. Globally, there's no question that the general state of things is improving. Of course, this is in general -- there are things that are getting worse globally as well.
However, in some parts of the world (such as, in my opinion, the US), things are going a bit backwards. If you live in such an area, it can be hard to see (and appreciate) the bigger picture.
The point is that developed world has stalled. Which is probably true on some measures but we do not know why. There should be slower but incremental improvement as there is room for that still. A plenty of room in fact.
Life expectancy is still gaining though and flattening. That is the main variable encompassing almost everything. Including normalized per income is flattening.
Income per capita has flattened somewhat, but it might be a natural sigmoid the China, Russia and such have yet to reach. So that's about it.
Net improvement doesn't require universal improvement. I'm not convinced that the world is better off now than it was a decade ago, but citing things like wage stagnation as proof that things have gotten worse is about as compelling as citing GDP as proof that things have gotten better. We will never see the day when all conceivable metrics have improved for all people.
Topsoil exhaustion and poisoning is global. Freshwater scarcity is much worse in China and the Subcontinent than in the USA. Antibiotic resistance is world-wide. Destruction of rainforests: likewise. Female literacy is declining in developing countries, despite more time spent in "school".
The problem is the assumption of linearity. Things are good now but it seems to me things are getting better at a decelerating rate, and some trends have even started to reverse in the most westernized countries. Most of what’s getting better in the world is in places like Africa or Brazil, emerging economies. Things aren’t getting better for a lot of people in a lot of cities in America. People are fleeing la, sf, etc... Empires rise and fall, predictably.
Every country has its own problems and no one is perfect. Yes, its getting improved as people are getting educated and development of rural areas is happening
At a global level things are undoubtedly getting much better, in terms of human quality of life. Hundreds of millions of people are rising out of poverty, violence is on the way down, women’s and minority rights are expanding in most of the world, and most of this is happening in developing nations that need it the most.
I worth though that we are doing thus by passing the costs down to future generations. Fur a techie analogy, it’s like looking at the balance sheet if Blackberry in 2008. Profits were on the way up, at a raw financial level they were doing better than ever, but there core business was rotting away.
Fair enough, and I appreciate the extra perspective.
I wouldn't deny that many of these things have improved. Very little actually gets worse in a literal sense (environmental issues and other negative externalities aside, though they are very relevant as well). The concern is that they tend to get marginally better when they should by all means be getting significantly better, because the lion's share of the benefits feed the ever-widening wealth gap.
Globally quality of life is improving, locally the US is regressing to third world status among larger and larger areas. Financial measures somewhat cover up the increase in instability in people’s lives.
Overall, things are getting better for sure, but it's going in a trajectory that will settle into a shitty local minimum where poor people survive but are stuck with low quality of life. Getting people out of extreme poverty in the world is high priority, and we've been doing a pretty good job at that, as your graph shows. But there's a big rut after that that we need to work on removing too.
The world is dramatically better, but it already was dramatically better 10 years ago, and in the developed countries a lot of those improvements stagnated or are slowly rolling back due to stagnant wages, insane costs of living etc.
I strongly disagree about a "qualitative improvement". facebook may be fun, but not that fun if you can't put a dollar value on it or the surrounding ecosystem.
The great stagnation is a real issue.
There is a visible disconnect in the growth rate of OECD countries. It's not just reaching Solow long term equilibrium - it happened too fast. It's just weird and troubling.
Hopefully the "rest of the world" will keep growing and improving the human lot. Too bad for OECD countries.
Rosling, Gates etc are right that things are overall getting better.
The rich are getting richer and the very poor are also doing better, but this is coming at the cost of the middle class in Western Europe and the US, where the average couple of working adults can no longer afford to buy a home and have to live with the fact that their jobs are significantly less stable compared to the past. Many are forced to work part time or take on gigs to make ends meet.
I could go on, but something's clearly rotten in the west.
I am not listening to media and I am not saying it can't get better (post-scarcity is not something I believe is impossible for instance) but you have to be very precise when you make these kind of statements as they are ignoring the reality for many people. Just a simple fact that children today are less likely to live a better life than their parents in the west is worth thinking about.
It might be an indication that yes life is improving globally but that does not mean it improving in a way that is proving this trend to continue.
Things are undeniably better than they ever were before, especially for those outside the US and Western Europe. We need to work to continue to improve them, but we are in no way going the wrong direction outside of a few small areas such as housing access as you point out.
Even over the past ten years things have been improving. Even if you ignore the developing economies (where things get better faster) and the rest of the world, the US is still improving. Poverty in the US for example has been trending downwards for decades, including over the last 10 years. I can see how attached you are to this “everything is bad” narrative, but it’s not reflected in reality.
Here's the problem: a lot of people in the 1st world thinks things are getting worse, when in reality the world is improving for the less well off. Think extreme poverty, child mortality, health care, etc. Some details here:
Indeed. We've been told that the current economic system is providing better access for all, but when we point out specific cases when that is not the case we're then told it's providing better quality to fewer people as if that's what we were originally promised.
In a relatively developed area (e.g. the US and many first world nations), it is failing. In the US for example, life expectancy has dropped three years running. More and more people fall to a median income that doesn't even let them have kids and send them to college, and seems to be falling to where they can't even pay for minor emergencies. That's not improvement.
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