That’s a false dichotomy. The percentage of people with bad quality of life is about the same in both places (for westernized Europe) and much worse for eastern Europe.
Officially the poverty rate is actually somewhat lower in the US than most countries in Europe. But it seems unlikely it's measured the same way, or that it necessarily translates to more people being unable to access basic services (health, housing, power etc.).
Yeah I’m in the camp where I want to see rapid progress above a decent quality of life for everyone. I feel like we’re rapidly approaching a point where technology can realistically solve all of our basic problems and want to get there as quickly as possible even if it means pain in the short term (probably our lifetimes). Obviously not everyone will agree with me but in the US even a grinding life isn’t all that bad relatively. You won’t go hungry, if you’re not drug addled you’ll rarely be on the streets for very long, if you have a mental condition or disability you get money from the government, minimum wage jobs are very, very easy to get, we have a problem with cops but on the whole our justice system actually lets anyone get justice etc.
I am really confused. Could you provide some data to back up your position that basically nothing is a big problem unless you are “drug addled”? How does one become “drug addled” if nothing is a problem?
I would be more convinced if you could also link to studies showing how early family life and local history have no impact on developmental brain processes and don’t create culture traps.
We would also need studies showing how additional government intervention in the family helps prevent the culture trap. What can the government do to make people value education and delayed gratification, which are perhaps the two traits best shown to enhance individual outcomes?
Most of the work on delayed gratification has been shown to not be measuring capacity for that but instead trust in potential future gains and personal security.
What the government could do to enable what you’ve called out is help ensure more people meet the necessary lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy so that when kids show up to stuff marshmallows in their mouths they can feel secure enough in the probable truth of the statements and even simply the return of the researcher to assign any probability to the appearance of a second marshmallow.
Step one is something like don’t let babies be raised in abandoned projects where everything they have gets stolen regularly from before they can remember.
Just be upfront that’s the trade off for “innovation.” The economic environment that allows for such enormous wealth aggregation comes at a cost.