> Perhaps you've heard of this country called China. A country that was as poor as the places in West Africa that you've written off. In 4 decades, they pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty.

China's poverty rate has decreased massively in the last 40 years, and at about a rate of 3.2% between 2017-2019. In 2019, China's poverty rate was 15.8%. There are 1.412B people in China, which means that in 2019 over 223M people in China lived below the poverty line. There are 209,128,094 adults in the US over 18yo, which means about 14M more people in China live in poverty than there are adults in the US.

A new report from one of China's top universities found that wealth and income inequality in the country is getting steadily worse. According to the report, one-third of the country's wealth is owned by the top 1 percent of households, while the bottom 25 percent account for only 1 percent of wealth.[1]

The Chinese political system is authoritarian. There are no freely elected national leaders, political opposition is suppressed, all religious activity is controlled by the CCP, dissent is not permitted and civil rights are curtailed. Elections in China occur under a single-party authoritarian political system.[2]

General Secretary Xi reaffirms China's close ties with Russia, saying “China is willing to work with Russia to continue supporting each other on their respective core interests concerning sovereignty and security.”[3]

The head of Taiwan's National Security Bureau recently told lawmakers that even if China invaded, they wouldn't be able to continue TSMC's operation. So, there's no need for crazy contingencies like blowing up TSMC factories.[4]

If China is your Gold Standard other societies should aspire to, I would only direct you to look at the facts and encourage you to abandon your rose colored glasses. China supports Russia which is by many accounts a Mafia State. China has been on the verge of invading Taiwan for decades, which will certainly be devastating to computer technology, but could very well start World War III and cripple all functioning societies.

> You misunderstand my position as being wildly optimistic. You simply don't understand contemporary human societies, so your assumptions about their trajectories miss the mark completely.

False. Your position is absurdly optimistic on its face. What I understand or don't understand and whatever assumptions you imagine I have made is entirely irrelevant to the argument I have presented. What you have done is ignored my argument and employed fallacious argument, including ad hominem and straw man arguments, as well as hand-waving and non-response. Optimism is good. But your position is ignoring the reality of the current global environmental situation, all practicality, and glazes over the massive amount of change that must occur within decades if the Earth is to be stopped from a cascading self-sustaining man-made global catastrophe.

We must change, and that requires individual and societal sacrifice on a scale so mind-boggling it has never before been seen or conceived. We need optimism, but we also need to be realistic, practical and yet extremely vigilant to reduce our energy appetites, commercial indulgences, and tremendous wastefulness. Individuals can't do it alone. We need all of Earth's governments to cooperate.

And yet at the eleventh hour, one sociopathic government is holding the world hostage, and a couple other like-minded governments, one of them critically important, is supporting that sociopathic government's criminal and unethical actions, and I mean the war in Ukraine.

Meanwhile at home in the US a conservative minority is holding the country hostage while bamboozling nearly all of its political members into propping up the richest of the rich at their own personal economic expense and economic stagnation. We have so much to do, yet we have this thorn in our side that is anti-education, anti-environment, anti-government, narcissistic, misogynistic, anti-equality, anti-facts, pro-conspiracy, pro-pollution and pro-energy consumption.

The situation is dire and the future is bleak unless we can wake people up to reality. I've begun with you. Please, please wake up, and wake up others that have been living in a fantasy world. We need you and them here to help, beginning by going without, but also exclusively voting towards personal economic interests and ignoring all other distractions such as gun rights and abortion, i.e. what will help the voter economically right now, which is an atmosphere of opportunity, which requires abandoning voting for the fantasy of someday when wealth may or may not arrive. Because if the rich continue to be propped up, economic advancement will never occur for the average voter and the vast majority of voters. Don't worry about the rich. They always land on top. Worry about ourselves.

[1] https://thediplomat.com/2016/01/report-chinas-1-percent-owns...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_China

[3] https://www.uscc.gov/research/chinas-position-russias-invasi...

[4] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/340215-taiwan-tsmc-wou...