this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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I'm really worried about the state of the US despite being a white male who was I'll coast right through it. I'll also accept "I don't" and "very poorly" as answers

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[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

Some might say that "your perspective is distorted." things are incredible for the top 10% of the socio-economic scale and getting better by most metrics (do not look at the numbers for maternal and infant mortality).

  • The average person in a G7 state today lives better than kings of old.
  • We in G7 countries have abundant water, food, and sanitation. In America, food is so subsidized that it is ridiculously cheap by historical standards.
  • Your odds of dying to violence or disease have never been lower in all of human history unless you are one of the world's 100 million refugees, live in Africa (pop. 1400 m) or Central America (pop. 52.7 m), or in one of the world's 27 [1] current conflict zones (approx pop. 2800 m)... that's over 4 billion people or half of humanity
  • You have all human knowledge at your fingertips, and technology is expected to keep improving our lives in novel ways as long as you can afford it.
  • You can visit any place on Earth in a matter of hours if your passport permits you to do so and as long as there is jet fuel and have access to cheap exotic foreign goods which are unreliable, break easily, produce garbage, and are slowly killing the planet and its peoplr.
  • Civil rights are protected a lot more today than they were in many/most civilizations of the past unless you're trans-, or black, or a woman, or a black trans-woman.
  • Entertainment is abundant and cheap, and takes forms that people of the past could only dream about.

While we certainly have our incredibly massive, systemic challenges to overcome, like climate change (ha!), wealth inequality (ha ha!), and social problems (hahaha!), let's not forget how good we (when you say we, you certainly mean your ingroup) could have it if we tore down this corrupt edifice and built an efficient, sustainable, just world.