Material and Cultural Poverty

There is much suffering in the world. There are many people living lives of ridiculous poverty. Somehow this continues even those we in the developed world have developed all of the technologies necessary to pull those people out of their primitive situations. Yes, many in the developed world have tried to improve the situation of the poorest of the World's inhabitants, but grand-scale success has remained illusive. Now I don't want to get into the technicalities of why this is the case. There are many scholars that have already dealt with this (ex. Jeffrey Sachs, William Easterly). Instead what I want to focus on is OUR society. Even with all of our technological innovation we still have immense problems of our own. There is much stress, frustration, dissolution, and acquiescence in our society. Thus, this leads me to the thesis that we ought not try to improve the lives of other societies until we achieve a much more perfect state within our own borders.

We must ask ourselves: "How is it that with such advanced technology we are still so far from perfection?" One major problem is that we focus too much on the products side and not enough on the production side. It really is just another example of the Prisoner's Dilemma: We all want the best products, yet also want the best work environments. However, instead of collectively agreeing to help each other support humanistic work environments we follow the "best response" and end up perpetuating our own miserable work situations. So I now proclaim that it's time to face up to this deep seated problem and begin to start taking serious steps toward solving this grand coordination problem.