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Can you name something that was only for the elites fifty years ago that isn't available to pretty much everyone today? This is what progress always looks like.


Clean water. Basic health care. Not dying from diseases we've already been able to cheaply cure or prevent for decades.

Oh, I'm sorry, you don't consider yourself part of the elite?


Those things are available to the vast majority of the planet. Clean water, for example, is available to seven of every eight humans[1]. In the places those things aren't available, you'll usually find a corrupt government getting in the way. As you said, these aren't expensive problems to solve, so there's no intrinsic reason they should be limited to the elite.

[1] http://thewaterproject.org/water_stats.php


Some more context:

61% lack Internet access [1]

35% lack basic sanitation (e.g., toilets) [4]

26% don't have plumbing (e.g., water they can get from pipes in their house or yard) [2]

23% don't have electricity [2]

14% lack access to clean water [2]

14% lack access to health care [2]

13% suffer from chronic undernourishment [5]

11% can't read [3]

14% is about one billion people. Maybe you look at that and think, hey, 86%, doing pretty good! But if this many people can't even get access to even the most basic of technologies today, what makes you think most people, even people in the developed world, will have access to whatever mythical mortality-defying technology people are speculating about here? It's all such speculation as to what they are doing, the question is practically not worth answering. But if extreme life-lengthening technologies are truly on the table, the potential for an Elysium-like scenario should be taken seriously.

(Also, point of clarification: what do you mean by "intrinsic reason"? Can you give an example of an intrinsic reason something would be limited to the elite?)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage

[2] http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-sta...

[3] http://www.statisticbrain.com/number-of-american-adults-who-...

[4] http://www.unwater.org/statistics_san.html

[5] http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20f...


Keep in mind when discussing internet access that effectively for the general public, the internet has only been with us for 20 years. And that was just the birth of its public mindshare - significant penetration would still take quite a few years yet in developed countries.

It also doesn't really fit in with the rest of the stats you're presenting - people can and do live quite luxurious lives without using the internet, but not so for the other items.


Yes, I wasn't trying to imply Internet access is essential, although it is such a powerful technology that lacking access to it generally sets you back a lot in the global rat race. Rather, I was trying to give a sense of how distribution of technologies progresses. It would have been helpful to have a few more data points but I couldn't think of good examples. (Especially in the higher ends -- what powerful technology do the rich have now that the rest don't? Maybe travel via airplane?)


Not to mention, with smartphones getting cheaper and cheaper, a lot of people in developing nations are getting access to the internet for the first time.


"Can you give an example of an intrinsic reason something would be limited to the elite?"

Scarcity.

Sanitation and plumbing are cheap and easy if a government isn't corrupt. We're not waiting on advances in technology to make those things easy to provide to the world, so it seems tangential to anything Google could do.


What were the numbers ten years ago? Twenty?

I look at the 86% and thing we're doing pretty well because we've improved enormously during my lifetime and are continuing to do so.


Clean water. Physical safety. Electricity. Maybe when you thought "pretty much everyone," you had the bay area in mind or something, but actually it includes a pretty large group of very poor people.


Two things: Money. Power.




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