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He does sort of skip the enormous communist revolutions in Russia and China, though. Most people don't know HOW BAD IT WAS in those countries before the revolutions. Really, REALLY bad. The communist governments made enormous advances in health care and education. They failed as industrial models--and certainly at liberating people politically and socially (though the Russians did advance women's rights), and the periods of repression were awful (especially under Stalin's rule) but the difference in the lives of ordinary people before and after the revolutions, as to life expectancy and living conditions, was immense.
I also wonder at his enthusiastic acceptance of the industrial revolution. Its gains as to life expectancy and living conditions may well be very short-lived, indeed, and canceled out by the impacts of industrialization as to pollution and destruction of Mother Earth, our only home. And we have not yet emerged from the threat of nuclear armageddon, whereby that product of science and industry may finish us off for good.
Still, I enjoyed his presentation--and the very interesting curve upward that he shows us--basically a doubling of life expectancy and income for a great portion of humanity in only 200 years time, with presumed associated advances in education and human rights. Sometimes we lose perspective on how much progress the human species has made. When I was young, it was still almost impossible, and barely thinkable, that a woman could be president--or an astronaut or bank a president or a sheriff or a truck driver or a doctor, etc., and black Americans were still confined to "colored" drinking fountains and other humiliations and oppressions in many states. The notion of a black president seemed centuries away--almost inconceivable. We really have made enormous social advances in a very short time. Poverty is now the great crippler--induced by predatory capitalism (i.e., unfettered greed). I think we have to change, and find some compromise between capitalism and communism--preserve the marketplace but even out the wealth--if that dramatic future progress that this professor projects is going to come true. Even privileged Americans are suffering serious declines in income, inability to pay for health care and education, and in too many cases, catastrophes of joblessness and homelessness, pointing to a downward trend that could get very steep, all while the richest are getting richer.
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