Progress & Poverty

Is this what oppression looks like?

Pedro Jacob
Sep 8, 2018 · 3 min read

The West isn’t perfect, and neither is the rest of the world.

When unchecked by democracy or perverted by demagogues, our hierarchies are perfectly capable of oppressing those at the bottom.

Violent crime is an undeniable reality, and we’re faced with a persistent terrorist threat which we continually fail to address. The same could be said about climate change, where our endless politicization of the discussion stands in the way of a clear solution.

The 24-hour news cycle pumps these dangers directly into millions of households. A Bond villain with a plan to infect an entire nation with mass hysteria could have hardly come up with a more elegant solution.

But in the absence of a cat-stroking and chair-swiveling criminal mastermind, who are the appointed architects of our demise?

One side says capitalism’s unquenchable greed is to blame while the other points to the woes of globalization. In their minds, one thing is certain: Western civilisation will perish unless we drop everything to pray at their altars.

Which side should we trust? As the victim of a severe allergy to bovine excrement, I prefer to look at data and the trends its analysis reveals.

If you’re reading this before you go to bed after a long hard day at work where you might as well have been invisible to your boss, I hope I can lighten your mood with a simple news item which mainstream idea will have failed to deliver to you.

Since your head hit the pillow last night, 138,000 people have escaped poverty around the globe.

Based on information that has been adjusted to reflect purchasing power parity, in 1990 34.8% of the world population was living in abject poverty or less than $1.90 a day. By 2015, that percentage had dropped to 9.6%, in spite of the addition of an extra two billion mouths to feed during that period.

Violent crime in the U.S. has dropped by two-thirds since the early 1990s, reflecting a worldwide trend.

The boundless human ingenuity is on the verge of saving us from ourselves, as our brightest minds figure out ways to convert CO2 from the atmosphere into gasoline or halve the Great Pacific Garbage patch in five years.

Yes, our society isn’t perfect. But if we can’t trust the tenets who have brought us prosperity previously unwitnessed in the history of humanity, then what can we trust?

Dismantling the existing system isn’t the answer. Neither is dusting off murderous totalitarian ideologies of yesteryears and giving the class struggle narrative a new spin.

Let’s start every discussion about what plagues us by placing ourselves in the shoes of those who sit from across the table, without demonising them.

Let’s be proud of how far we’ve come and focus on how we can preserve what’s been handed down to us by the previous generations.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It’s not perfect, but duct-tape will do.


The Bigger Picture

Pedro Jacob

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The Bigger Picture

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