The net externalities of rich nations on poor nations is massively, massively positive. It took 200 years for England to develop from pre-industrial to a standard of I living similar to what China was at around the year 2000. It took China 40 years. Contact with a more advanced economy is an enormous massive boost.
The question of whether that's worth all the domestic unrest and permanent resentment towards the larger economy is a legitimate question, but not the one I'm concerned with. The question here is the externalities of all nations on the
Earth. This well is not endless, and the backlash is real. Will those hundreds of years of advancement be fairly balanced when we pay in sea level rise, famine, mass extinction, and everything that results from those? Sounds like a losing deal to me.
We also don't have the right to destroy the world for our own selfishness, but I won't pretend anybody actually gives a shit about that, I know I wouldn't if I was a powerbroker.
Development experts are hopeful that by 2050 widespread poverty as we know it will be gone. Take a moment to realize how utterly wonderful that is. For all of human history poverty of many people was a fact of life. In our lifetimes it will be a rapidly disappearing aberration brought about by local circumstances and soon to be fixed permanently.
Hah, that's about as real as the Kurzwelian AI Jesus bullshit. Our advancements in the QoL numbers aren't free, and I think all the suffering that we manage to find in the margins of even the most developed nations shows just how much good it does. Yeah, yeah, it's better to have an anxiety disorder than to starve every day for your entire life. I don't disagree.
But humanity will still kill for our ideologies, we will still torture children all over the world, and the weak will still be the victims of the strong. Can't wait to see the shit intelligence agencies cook up with 2050-level tech.
Population crises from inability to feed everyone solve themselves, MSH. In a rather horrible manner, perhaps, but they do. And rich countries are unlikely to be the first ones starving.
At least I've got you admitting the golden "do nothing" everybody loves these days doesn't not include mass death. And who's rich can change, don't doubt it.
I figure that a natural decline in population will occur after a while and then we'll hit be stable. Similar scale to climate change, too; literally decades and centuries for it to happen.
I can't find a good gif of Manfreid smashing his head against the courtroom wall, but I want you to imagine it here.