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Originally Posted by 9th Engineer
Woah woah woah, hold on there. That is a serious misconception. There is no great 'pie' out there that everyone gets a slice of and once its gone, that's it. I won't use the term 'creating wealth' because it's slightly misleading, wealth is not the same as money. A better term is buying power, new technologies create the illusion of everyone having more money by allowing what used to cost them $1 to be produced and sold for only $0.75. No new money minted, but people are now 25% richer. Very often, when a person gets very rich it's because they've done something like this, and personally pocketed 15 cents of the reduced cost. Do it on a large scale, and POOF!! 100 million dollars seems to spring from nowhere. But as you can see, no one is any poorer.
This isn't everything, I'm just trying to prove the point that people getting richer is not a sign that other people must be getting poorer.
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Agreed. I accept that I over simplified my point, however, the fact still remains that this planet does not have the resources to keep every soul on it at the same level of comfort which we in western nations enjoy.
By trying to 'democratise/westernise' the whole world a whole new set of long term issues are being created as anyone with any environmental intelligence will tell you.