“Nevertheless, the majority of people on the planet have not yet achieved the material abundance enjoyed by Americans, Europeans, and the Japanese. Can humanity find, transform, and deploy enough resources to lift”
We have a whole Solar System of material resources to use, a millions times more abundant than the sum total of materials used by mankind to date. And nobody else up there is working to get it — it’s all ours.
We’ll be mining asteroids, the Moon and Mars in the not-too-distant future.
Truthfully, socialists are absolutely dependent on both real and imaginary shortages to get and keep power over others.
The reason is that abundance of anything useful or desirable creates an alternative currency that allows for freedom of choice and undermines government power.
So this being said, *always* look with distrust at those who insist shortage exists. A key acid test for such scoundrels if they say it is essential to “raise public awareness”, which means their sole interest is controlling others.
In any event, Bangladesh is a prime example for both shortage and abundance. It has been kept in grinding poverty by two things: socialism and Islam, both of which go to extremes to keep them in poverty and despair.
I can say this with confidence by just citing a single thing. Bangladesh is a river delta, and has some of the most fertile farmland in the world. And yet, their primary crop is the almost worthless crop, jute fiber.
Were they to convert to conventional agriculture, their standard of living would rival that of the Swiss in two or three generations. But neither socialists, nor Islamists, want that.
And in the process, food prices across southern Asia would plummet, significantly improving nutrition, health and overall prosperity, for hundreds of million of people.
As far as “too many people” goes, Hong Kong has a high population density, but comes across much like other cities, as not particularly overcrowded. But if every person on Earth lived in that high a population density, they could all live in Texas. More than 7 billion people, with the rest of the entire Earth empty.
There is one place were there is a huge ball of plastics floating in the pacific ocean..... that is ? if it’s not nuclear reactive already.
I despise the premise of the question. The dope that asked that question assumes that resources are to be doled out to whoever wants them without the recipient having to work for them. “Hey, you over there...yeah you Mr. Third World pesthole resident...want a Cadillac or a Roll-Royce? Here you go, have one...they’re free.” I’d like to tie the Smil to an a..-kicking machine.