Today, humanity has become all, richer than ever.However, there is a widespread feeling, that things are not going well, including the short -term challenges that we are experiencing due to the epidemic, and the existential threat of global warming.The beginning of the new year gives new hopes, but is pessimism the most appropriate assumption?
To answer this question, we should look at our current situation in a wider context.During the first ten thousand years after the invention of agriculture, mankind had no opportunity to achieve a society similar to a "virtuous city", regardless of how one defines this term.After that, during the era of our fathers and grandparents, something appeared approaching that idealism.However, we failed again and again to absorb it.Just as my late friend Max Sengger says, the "human world" will be really far -reaching, until we discover the policies of wealth distribution.
Even a few generations have passed, mankind followed the researcher's approach (Maltos).With slow technological progress and very high deaths, the size of the population was everything.In a world that does not have a third of its elderly women, sons or grandchildren, and therefore, the lack of social power, there was tremendous pressure to have more children during the childbearing years.The resulting population growth (without growing growth in the size of farms), canceling the gains made in production, income from advanced technology, and kept the typical living standards low and stagnant.
The best opportunity for Maltosi society, to achieve relative happiness, was to enhance marriage delay, and then, reduce the birth rate.In front of the problem of non -sustainable population growth, this practice was a social, not biological solution (which took the form of malnutrition).At the same time, the best opportunity for the elite to achieve happiness is to create a smooth process to extract wealth from farmers and craftsmen.
We are now in the third decade of the twenty -first century, and humanity has passed almost what sociologists call the demographic transformation, that is, the transformation from the rates of births and high deaths to low death rates, thanks to economic development and technological progress.The theory of population pressure for Maltos is no longer a poor.Our productivity exceeds the productivity of all previous generations, and it is also in constant growth.During the next two generations, we will achieve relative growth in our technological strength, as much as our ancestors achieved in 1870, since the major migration of Africa 50,000 years ago.
In many countries of the world, there is already enough wealth, to ensure that no person feels hungry, denying him a shelter, or exposing him to many health risks that were in the past shrinking the life of most people.There is enough information and entertainment, so that no one feels bored.There is also enough resources, allowing everyone to create goals whatever, and seeking to achieve them.It is true that there will be no enough of a decent life to please everyone, but if we are ready to accept the basic dignity worldwide, there is no longer any material reason that makes us possess a society in which people feel disrespect.
Why do things seem to get worse?First, the world failed to build governance institutions, which can manage global problems, such as climate change.This challenge could have been dealt with at a very low cost, since a generation.Now, disaster avoiding programs, adapting to the already existing change, will arise much larger.What is the purpose?Only to continue the wealth of barons that steal fossil fuels for another for a few years?
Second, the world's wealth, unparalleled, is distributed in an unreasonable, terrible and criminal way. The billion people who live in the bottom may have smartphones, and some opportunities to reach health care, but, in many ways, they are not better than our ancestors before the era of industry during the era of (Maltos). 75 years have passed since US President Harry Truman has added global economic development to the global northern agenda wisely. Although he would have been happy, if he discovered that the global south has now become richer than it was in 1945, he would have had great disappointment, if he had discovered that the relative gap between rich countries and developing countries was great, as it was always.
Apparently, even developed countries, such as the United States, are unable to distribute the enormous wealth created by post -industrial economies.The past four decades have deny the neoliberal allegation that the unequal society would launch enormous pioneering energies, which achieve the gains for everyone.However, policies that give well -being, benefit, and dignity are exposed to a continuous ban.
One of the main obstacles to these policies is the idea that some people who are not rich in society are not more worthy, but less.This idea has long been applied to those of Spanish and American origins of African descent in the United States, Muslims in India, the Turks in Britain, and all those who have suffered from blood and soil.It seems that many now believe that the vision of the enlightenment of human equality was wrong, and it should be replaced by the Aristotelian principle, which is unjust to treat unequal on an equal footing.
The other obstacle is economic.As it is assumed that technology, capital, and employment are always ultimately used as supplements, because each of the automatic tasks and tasks of processing information will still need human supervision.But the technologies that we use to process information are superior to our educational system, and the hope of harmonious integration has become a far -fetch dream.
Climate and national change and challenges related to new technologies are only some major problems that humanity will face in post -epidemic contracts.In the first editorial speech delivered by Franklin de Roosevelt, the latter referred to proverbs 29:18, which says: “When there is no vision, people die ...”, and unless this vision appears about our time, and until that happens, people will not seeOnly depression in the future.
*Former Deputy Assistant to the US Treasury Secretary, Professor of Economics at the University of California, in Berkeley, and a participant researcher in the National Office for Economic Research
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