Why does it always go wrong?

Sand

The continent of Africa suffers a v high infant mortality rate by things such as measles, TB and of course AIDS. But look at the first two examples. TB & measles are two diseases virtually wiped out in the 1st world.

I think the point made was development - not done and dusted. Those two diseases and others have been virtually wiped out in the first world, not in Africa. That doesnt imply that things havent improved from the 14th century when the Black Death swept Europe wiping out millions of people in a time when the continents population could be measued in tens of millions. The western world is a relatively small realm of sheer banal nonsense where people give a **** about who Cameron Diaz is dating as opposed to worrying about where theyre going to sleep tonight, what theyre going to eat, will they be abducted and murdered, if the mine shaft collapses will their boss even call the emergency services? Thats progress. A small bubble of progress, but progress all the same.

There seems to be some odd fascination with agrarian/subsistence living in some people and some dodgy political idealogies that reject modern living as corrupt or oppressive. Back to nature, tribalism and stoning the foreigners to death or something. Dont think the Cambodians found it was all it was cracked up to be.

Zombrex

Kell wrote:

The continent of Africa suffers a v high infant mortality rate by things such as measles, TB and of course AIDS.

The infant mortality rate in Africa has been dropping in the last 50 years.

http://www.uneca.org/eca_programmes/food_security_and_sustainability/programme_overview/population/Mortality/mortality_central.htm
http://www.uneca.org/eca_programmes/food_security_and_sustainability/programme_overview/population/Mortality/mortality_southern.htm

You can argue that the rate should be much lower, and I would agree with you of course. But that doesn't change the fact that it has fallen. Being a new born in African now you have a better chance of surviving infancy than 50 years ago. I call that development.

Kell wrote:

YOU dont stand much of a risk of watching a few of your kids die. YOU dont stand much of a chance of being murdered because your belief is different to mine. YOU will have a lifespan of about 85 years. YOU dont stand a very real risk of civil war.

That is kinda the original point. The OP was complaining about the first world, not the third world. He is complaining about his life, not the life of a poor African.

Kell wrote:

The majority of the population of the planet do not have access to medical aid, clean water and all the things we take for granted.

The majority of the population of the planet never had access to medical aid. More do now than ever did (see above for infant mortality rates). Again I call that development

Kell wrote:

Dont women in 3rd world countries have the same poor deal as they did in the middle ages?

Some of them do. But less of them do.

Kell wrote:

The central point to my argument is that as a species we could, working together and without thought for cost and profit, eliminate all these problems.

As I said we don't operated "as a species", so arguing about what we could do if we did is rather pointless.

You have to deal with how humanity is, not how you wish it was.

Kell wrote:

How the fúck can you stand on your soap boxes, safe in a cotton wool world with the tinternet and a whole host of comfort gadgets extending from your fingertips and tell me that an "evolved, developed" species that we are could allow this level of bollíx to go on?

Again we as a species don't allow or disallow anything to go on since we do not operate as a species in any form of unified decision making block.