[Plantagenet]

Are you feeling bummed out by the global economic recession. Here's something to cheer you up!

This BBC4 video shows how all the countries in the world have progressed during the last 200 years by making large improvements in life expectancy and wealth. First the countries of Europe and America, and then Asia and the rest of world can be seen making progress towards our current wealthy and healthy condition.
200 countries make 200 years of progress in 4 minutes

[Fiddlerdave]

Averages are so cool!

I am so happy that the top 1.5% of the USA wealthholders have made enough gains to overcome the losses of the bottom 70% in the last 30 years.

And for those who think colonization was so wonderful for the primitive masses, note that it is when the colonies got their freedom they even started moving up from a feudal existence. So much of the growth of the top countries we see in this chart was paid for by the labor and resources of the occupied countries.

[Pretorian]

People are generally dumb, and even when they arent, they still want to do jackshit. They cant help it. Throw in some entertainment and free stuff, then may be.

[eastbay]

The future will be much like running the video in reverse, except with a lot more bodies lying around.

[Ludi]

I am so happy that the top 1.5% of the USA wealthholders have made enough gains to overcome the losses of the bottom 70% in the last 30 years.

Hooray! Go rich guys!

<<<< not convincing as a Neo-feudalist.

[Sixstrings]

Are you feeling bummed out by the global economic recession. Here's something to cheer you up!

This BBC4 video shows how all the countries in the world have progressed during the last 200 years by making large improvements in life expectancy and wealth. First the countries of Europe and America, and then Asia and the rest of world can be seen making progress towards our current wealthy and healthy condition.
200 countries make 200 years of progress in 4 minutes

Good video, good data, you can't argue with it on the facts -- what has HISTORICALLY happened over the last two hundred years. But then the presenter draws the conclusion that the trend will continue for the next two centuries, and that "it's fully possible for all the world's people to be wealthy and healthy."

So is that your view too Plant and your reason for posting this? Is this your cornucopian manifesto? I have to admit, as much as I dislike globalism after seeing the data presented like this I can't deny that globalism has been good for most people on the planet.

Though if you take cheap energy and available resources and food abundance away all those multicolored balls crash right back down to 1810 -- actually worse, since the world of 1810 couldn't support the billions alive today and there'd have to be a die-off.

Maybe the lesson here is stop worrying, just be happy to that you're lucky enough to live in humanity's golden age and enjoy what's left of it before everything crashes back down to the norm.

The future will be much like running the video in reverse, except with a lot more bodies lying around.

The speed of the ascent suggests the speed of decline back down would be about the same -- so we're looking at 200 years. I know peak oil calls for fast crash at some point, but in that video there are no fast crashes over the last two hundred years, even during the world wars. I'm thinking slow crash is more likely -- so if it's going to take centuries to get to down to Kunstler's "world made by hand" then why are we all worrying? And as for preps, none of us alive today need to bother with it if the crash is going to take two hundred years.

Think I'm feeling doom conflicted after watching that.

[Plantagenet]

The future will be much like running the video in reverse, except with a lot more bodies lying around.

That was exactly my thought too.

The "200 years of progress" pretty much matches the timing of the industrial revolution and especially the global adoption first of coal and steam engines and then oil for transportation use. While James Watt invented steam engines in the 1760s, initially they did the same kinds of things that water wheels could do.

It wasn't until 1800 that ...."Richard Trevithick introduced engines using high-pressure steam. These were much more powerful than previous engines and could be made small enough for transport applications. Thereafter, technological developments and improvements in manufacturing techniques (partly brought about by the adoption of the steam engine as a power source) resulted in the design of more efficient engines that could be smaller, faster, or more powerful, depending on the intended application." ---Wikipedia.

The years 1810 to 2010 are the period from the beginning of steam trains and boats to jet planes...i.e. the growing use of fossil fuels for transportation.