this thread is devoted to constructive thinking and theorycrafting about how to make the world a better place to live in.
Before we start to make suggestions on how to improve, we must first sum up the problems in modern society, so we know what to change.
In my opinion, the largest concern today is the growing egoism and materialism. Empathy, love and understanding is getting less and less important while the size of your car, your money and how many girls you have slept with in the last month is getting more and more important.
People are no longer respected for who they are, in todays society you have to perform to gain respect, and people see each others as competitors rather than brothers and sisters.
This is, in my opinion, the cause of capitalism, and in the long run it leads to the return to the jungles law.

Capitalism is not viable in the long run. The human civilization is built on empathy and affinity, and divided we cannot survive.
People need to realize that we are one people, and that we should love and take care of each others rather than trying to outperform each others.
Driving an expensive car doesnt make you a better person and it doesnt make you happier.
As written in the bible, sins like vanity and greed is what brought down the babylon system.
Im an atheist myself, but i think that jesus was right about this part. A Society that is built on greed and vanity will never survive, sooner or later it is gonna terminate itself.

Im not a communist. i dont think socialism works, simply because you cannot force solidarity on people without giving them something in return. And the history proves that Socialism fails because it is so easy for people to abuse to gain power.
In the end, communism is pretty much a religion without a god. While it is built on the same altrustic values as most religions, it does not speak to peoples heart in the same way.
Marx said: Share with others and show people respect, because its good.
Jesus said: Share with others and show people love and you will go to heaven, if not you go to hell.

it is no surprise that jesus was more succesfull. Im not saying religions doesnt have flaws, but i think they can make the world a better place to live in as long as it is not abused by selfish people, and THIS is the big flaw with religion.
Since religions arent built around logics and rational thinking, literary anyone can change it and abuse it to gain power and use it as a tool in warfare.

now, i leave it to you to discuss and bring constructive ideas. lets make the world a better place!

I agree that egoism and materialism are a causes of the problems in modern society, and i agree that egoism and materialism are the driving force behind capitalism-as-we-know-it-today.

This may not be the best moment to get into a discussion about how support or opposition of capitalism and socialism depend on which definitions of capitalism and socialism one uses, though i think that's an important topic that does have a place in discussing solutions to the problems.

I think first and foremost we should actually "sum up the problems" - the actual concrete problems, and not so much the (presumed) causes of those problems. I think the causes can be found only when the actual problems are known. And only when we know the problems and the causes, we can find solutions.

As far as i can see the list of problems is long, there are specific problems and more general problems. I don't really know here to start but ill give it a try.

poverty
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp

Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day.

This figure is based on purchasing power parity (PPP), which basically suggests that prices of goods in countries tend to equate under floating exchange rates and therefore people would be able to purchase the same quantity of goods in any country for a given sum of money. That is, the notion that a dollar should buy the same amount in all countries. Hence if a poor person in a poor country living on a dollar a day moved to the U.S. with no changes to their income, they would still be living on a dollar a day. ...

To clarify: this means that's it is NOT true that with these 2 dollars (PPP) one can buy more in a poor country than in a wealthy country. In other words: $2 PPP in a poor country may equate to as little as a few dollar cents in "real" dollars in that country.

Now i think that before we move on to listing other problems, and before we try and find causes and solutions to the problem of poverty, we should first establish whether or not we think poverty IS in fact a problem that should be solved.

Of course poverty should be solved. Surely the reasons are obvious.

Did you mean could be solved? I also think it could be solved, although it's a very complex problem.

I did mean should. I'm just trying to be rigorous here. Taking it step by step, 'scientifically' so to speak.

To you and me the causes of poverty may be obvious, but i think to many it's not so obvious. I think many people are not even aware of how severe and widespread the problem of poverty is.

But that doesn't have to stop us from discussing the causes.

For one i know there are essentially two schools of thought when it comes to the causes of poverty: one says it is due to (what i call) predatory capitalism, the other says the cause of poverty is over-population.

I used to belong strictly to the former and dismissed the latter. Recently i've come to the conclusion that at least in principal over-population is also a factor in poverty.
But i think that those who point to over-population as the primary or even the only cause of poverty are overlooking the importance of inequality of wealth distribution.

Continuing to be rigorous, i invite you to explain what the in your view obvious causes of poverty are. I think this is one of those occasions where it can be useful to state the obvious.

I don't know how obvious these causes of poverty are, but here's what I think causes poverty:

capitalism itself

exploitation by government/corporations/etc

particular international organisations (WB,IMF,WTO)

underdevelopment of regions

protectionism of agriculture by rich countries

lack of financial education

legal system in most countries

debt

inflation

I can elaborate a bit on each of those causes if anyone wants.

just a quick response:



"capitalism" can be taken as a catch-all phrase that covers most if not all your other points:



Exploitation of workers, particularly those in 3rd world nations, allows corporations and the individuals who run them to acuire more capital than they would if they would not exploit.
This is a major aspect of capitalism-as-we-know-it.



Created by governments and corporations to create (de)regulations that allow the above mentioned exploitation. Among other ills these organizations have created supra-national tribunals where a corporation can sue a government over loss of profit due to that government's regulations. In practice, the 'right' of a corporation to make a profit already superceedes the right of a sovereign State to protect its citizens from environmental pollution (see the case "Metalclad v Mexico").



Necessary to continue the exploitation, and therefor kept underdeveloped. This is of the utmost importance to the capitalist global market system.



Useful to keep underdeveloped nations underdeveloped; ie allows US farmers to undercut the Mexican corn market (NAFTA), driving Mexican farmers into poverty - and driving them across the border into the US to serve as illegal and therefor cheap labor for corporations inside the US, allowing those to make more profit.
Makes perfect sense from a current-day capitalist point of view.

[/quote]legal system in most countries[quote]

More broadly: governments (who do make the laws and of which the legal system is a part) can make or break the success of capitalism in a particular nation, in that laws and regulations are a decisive factor in how much profit corporations can make.
Ie the less power workers unions have, the less opposition there will be to lower wages, the weaker the environmental regulations the less a corporation needs to spend on preventing pollution.

Yep you basically said it all.


The reason why I listed capitalism separately is because wealth inequality is at the heart of the idea of capitalism. I would associate the people at the poor end of the wealth spectrum with poverty. It is a bit of a catch-all however.




I think we should create a separate thread for world poverty, if there isn't one already.

These have always been "problems" throughout all of human history. I don't think they're societal problems; I think it's a problem of human nature.



I'd argue that, as a species, we have way more love, empathy, and understanding than we did in the past. People today are much more aware of others emotional needs, etc. In the middle ages, they didn't have therapists; life was just a day to day struggle, with no time to worry about love and happiness.
Fast forward to Puritan America, love and happiness still come second to survival, religion, etc.
Yes, many people are getting more materialistic. But I'd say, as human beings, we've gotten much more in tune with the ideas of love and empathy, as well as our emotional understanding



I see no problem with people having to earn respect; nobody should be respected simply for existing. And also, not everybody can be respected, because if everyone has respect, then it ceases to have value.
Even though I believe in earning respect, I don't see any of my fellow man as a competitor. I compete only with myself.



History disagrees



While this sounds pleasant and nice, it's not really accurate. Human beings are animals and, like all animals, we have to compete (in some sense of the word) for resources and other things. We cannot help this; it is an evolutionary drive. Most people individually don't feel very pressured, but if you look at humanity as a whole, evolutionary pressures become blatantly obvious.

========================

From your post, as well as the rest of the posts, it became apparent that everybody thought "poverty" was a major issue as well.

The problem with trying to solve poverty is just one small thing; it's impossible. A person's ability to generate wealth is based on their ability to create capital. For my purposes, I'll define capital as "a good or service that is in demand and of value." Theoretically, everybody should be able to generate sufficient capital to survive. The problem is that there are only a certain number of things a person can do, and a certain number of people that are needed doing that specific thing.

For example, let's say you have a town and, after all other decent jobs are accounted for, all that's left is working as a blacksmith. Say the town needs 3 blacksmiths, but 5 people need a job. Guess what? The best 3 blacksmiths out of the 5 will get the job, and the other 2 are just shit out of luck.

In an overpopulated world, too many people vying for the same spot causes three things to happen; the pay for that job goes down (because of the surplus of labor), the value of the person doing the job is diminished (again because of the surplus of labor), and the extra people are just thrown out on the street.

In a theoretical world, this problem could be alleviated by:
A)not having too many people
and
B)Not having overlap in skills

Unfortunately, neither of these options is possible in the real world. In a Capitalist country, the basis for the economic system is supply and demand. In a Socialist country, as several have demonstrated, the government's ability to manage workers on an individual or local basis is about none.

All we can do is keep donating food, clothing, etc. to poorer countries. Sitting around discussing the "vices" of modern man does nothing but draw attention away from an actual solution.

Yep. I agree 100% with the OP. And besides, if you get too... dunno how to say it, concentrated on the cars and amount of sex and money and clothes and what ever... You'll get depressed. And you'll only think about all that stuff and it'll become your life!!!

I hate people who are too materialistic. The most important things in life are like abstract... Love, philosophy(REALLY important!), Health(sorta abstract), Enjoying life... And of course, acchieving something in your life!
There is some chinese saying that says "a man who has planted a tree, hasnt lived in vein" or something, and i think its really wisely said.

Free the people, beginning with the Children, through education.

While I get what you're saying, there are some causes of world poverty that can be fixed.

One is protectionism of agriculture by rich countries like the USA. Most poor third-world countries are mostly agricultural. The USA subsidises its farmers, which basically means it pays those farmers money, which allows those farmers to export their produce at a lower price, thereby undercutting the third-world farmers. As a result, the third-world farmers sell less. These third-world countries can't even subsidise their own farmers, even if the government was able to afford it, because they would be restricted from doing that by the WB, IMF and WTO.

Foreign aid often gets lost along the way to the poor people, and more often than not ends up in the hands of creepy crazy dictators.

All that would do is displace the poverty, not eliminate it. While the U.S. is a rich country, I doubt that all it's farmers are. If we eliminate farming subsidies, all the small time farmers would go under. What would be left? Large, commercial farms where all those poor farmers would go. They would get lousy pay and a lousy job, and become impoverished.

Meanwhile, what has changed in the third world country? Nothing. Why? The large, commercial farm can export crops just as cheaply without the subsidies. Also, concentrating the production in the hands of fewer people only gives them more power to muscle out the competition.

If we wanted to give third world countries an equal footing in agriculture, we would have to convince our government to simply give them modern equipment (which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per machine) out of the goodness of their heart. Doing so would, in a sense, be screwing over their own agricultural production, thus harming the country giving the aid. There is no way the US, or pretty much anyone for that matter, would stick their neck out that far for farmers half the world away.


Sadly, this is all too true. But I'd rather donate food to a poor country and have a fraction of it get to the people than to donate nothing at all.

At least it should make people wonder whether or not it is the intention of the wealthy nations to help reduce poverty in those 3rd world nations with which we enter Free Trade Agreements. After all, undercutting 3rd world farmers is a predictable consequence of those subsidies.

Neither the subsidies, nor reduction of "trade barriers" such as labor unions and environmental protection, nor the fact that IMF loans mostly leave the country as profits for foreign (US) corporations, are very helpful - except to big corporations of the wealthy nations.

Moreover it should make one wonder how these subsidies fit with the much lauded principals of Free Market Capitalism that the wealthy nations pay lip-service to.

How is it that societal problems are independent from human nature?

Is it not humans that make up society and thus human nature that dictates the nature of society, including its problems?




Then how can it be that human nature is such a problem?



Right, just look at the Great Depression, and look at the state the economy is in now. And look at the destruction of the environment.



According to that definition of capital even labor is capital. Yet i think there is a vast difference between having billions in the bank on the one hand, and on the other hand having only one's labor as 'capital'.



Don't you agree that at the very least inequality of wealth distribution is *also* a factor in causing poverty?

But so many countries have been forced to remove trade barriers like tariffs, by the WTO. What about the US? How is it fair that the US has trade barriers while most of the rest of the world doesn't?