Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC

This is just personal but anytime I feel similar to the OP, I watch something by Hans Rosling [1] or Anna Rosling [2]. Although 10 and 5 years old respectively, I feel the general sentiment is still true - that human progress is slow, in the background and might be ebbing and flowing in your specific sub-population. And when compared to the present, media narrative driven present its hard to see the improvements happening across the global population. It helps me put stuff in perspective - of course mileage may var (and maybe it's just helping me delude myself into getting out a funk but it works!). [1] Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - [VIDEO] [2] See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income - Anna Rosling Rönnlund [LINK]

It's admittedly a 12 year old YouTube, but I always liked watching this when I was feeling especially cynical about the overall trajectory of the world: [VIDEO]

Spend five minutes and watch this. Amazing presentation my Hans Rausling, economist, on rising global property. [VIDEO]

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes [VIDEO] Concisely sums up everything good about free-market capitalism.

Here's another visualization focusing on the last 200 years. Doesn't focus on population growth as much as life expectancy, but a far cooler visualization in my book! Starts about 30 seconds in: [VIDEO]

I am making a statement about the reasoning that results in current policies. I'm not saying that the policies are well-executed (indeed I think they are not), merely that they have something more than just "reward a well-connected lobby" justifying them. As for African poverty and famine, you're right that measures that protect farmers in rich countries will hurt farmers in poor ones. However the #1 cause of African famine remains corruption and war inside of Africa. And on current economic trends, we'll see economic powerhouses emerging in Africa in near decades. So as sad as our neglect of the interests of over a billion Africans is, it does not seem to be a permanent boot in the face. For perspective, take 5 minutes to watch [VIDEO] . There are - today - African countries that are better off than any country in the world was 70 years ago. If others continue on trends that have happened elsewhere, things are going to improve fairly dramatically. I agree with you that our agricultural policies create problems. But I'm optimistic about what the future holds for people who are impacted.

No, something has changed and PG understands it while you don't. As [LINK] explains, what you are missing is that what people really want is wealth, not money. And wealth is things of value created by people. As productivity improves, we can create more wealth. One form of that wealth is that we can make more efficient use of fundamentally scarce resources. Which admittedly does not increase them, but does decrease pressure on them. The aggregate effect of these trends over time is truly remarkable. See [VIDEO] for a vivid demonstration of how remarkable it is.

It took the west a long time to figure out the stable government structures. I saw one theory that civilisation started around the Med because it was easy to get about by boat and was slow in Africa because it was pretty hard to get about before jet aviation. I figure that now they've got internet they'll catch up. Hans Rosling's thing is interesting showing Africa catching a bit towards the end [VIDEO]