[jmnicolas]

> By almost every and any measure, we are all better off than 30, 40 or 50 years ago - Chinese, Americans, Indians, Europeans, almost everyone.

I bet Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans and countless others beg to differ.

IMO the west got better at the expense of the rest of the world.

[smcmurtry]

Those are certainly examples of countries that have gone backwards in income and life expectancy over some of the recent years. However, the vast majority of countries have seen huge increases in average income and life expectancy over the last 100 years, 50 years, etc.

Source: https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#_chart-type=bubbles

[matthewbauer]

All 3 of those countries have experienced civil wars. I don't think that disproves GP's point.

Also, how does the west benefit from instability? This kind of thing is said by conspiracy theorists a lot but it's never made sense to me. Less oil, natural gas and other exports.

[ZeroGravitas]

I think the basic point of the article is that "the west" is not benefiting from the choices it makes.

It's like asking how the prisoner's benefit in the prisoner's dilemma. They each try to maximise their own utility and in doing so, because of the way the system is set up, they do worse than if they had co-operated.

[hnnsj]

I'm pretty sure the point made wasn't that the west benefits from the instability in that region, but that western policies have caused, or at least made worse, that instability. Which one may or may not agree with, but I think one should address the actual argument being made.

[repsilat]

It's hard to link American foreign policy to American economic policy, though. Iraq wasn't about oil (this time at least, I don't know anything about the Gulf War) and neither were Libya or Syria. Perhaps the argument is that rich countries can afford to go on overseas adventures, though? That perhaps if America were poorer she'd spend more time cleaning her house and less time making a mess of other people's?

I don't buy it. American intervention is down from it's glory days :/ of the '60s and '70s, violent deaths are down worldwide, and other countries are getting rich along with the US.

(Now that I reread the above comments, I guess it's more likely the point was just that "We should also mention a negative thing about America for balance," in which case this is all just argument for argument's sake.)

[AnAfrican]

THe quote is :

>the west got better at the expense of the rest of the world

"At the expense" means that there's a link.

[supercon]

According to Wikipedia[1], the biggest U.S. arms companies employ ~700.000 people, so I don't think you need to be a conspiracy theorist when you deduct from this that, if world peace were to settle to the globe it would mean less jobs for the people, less tax income for the government and less profit for the industry. Although most of the sales for these companies come from the U.S. government, according to TIME the export business isn't exactly pocket-change either[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry [2] http://time.com/4161613/us-arms-sales-exports-weapons/

[dingaling]

> the biggest U.S. arms companies employ ~700.000 people

Which is about one-half of Walmart's employee base, but the USA doesn't base its foreign policy on the whims of the Walton family.

What's more persuasive about the military-industrial-government complex is that most of its leaders emerged from the same universities and think-tanks. Essentially they share the same viewpoints and philosophies and can pull the appropriate levers in the domains that the control and they freely move from one domain to another.

[supercon]

> Which is about one-half of Walmart's employee base,

This doesn't take away the fact that there is interest in having these companies operating in the future.

> but the USA doesn't base its foreign policy on the whims of the Walton family.

If by "the USA" you mean the government, yes you are right, because it doesn't have to. Companies as big as Walmart, Lockheed Martin, McDonald's are fully capable of influencing the 'outside world' by their own means.

[zem]

and within the west the upper decile got better at the expense of the rest of the population