[zeveb]

I imagine that getting better food options to millions of people and enabling tens of thousands to start businesses does impact the poorer half of mankind positively.

We've seen for decades that the typical Western approach of throwing money at the elites of a poor country really doesn't help improve life for the impoverished; it's when we create opportunities for them that their lives become measurably better.

Contra the racists, there's no inherent reason for an African, Indian or Chinese peasant to be worse off than a German. They're not genetically inferior: they just had the bad luck to be born in a developing country. But if we can give those countries the same uptick in prosperity that Europe had from about 1812 to 1914, then approximately a billion people will be raised from poverty to something approximating a decent standard of living.

That'd be amazingly impactful.

[bogomipz]

>"I imagine that getting better food options to millions of people and enabling tens of thousands to start businesses does impact the poorer half of mankind positively."

Better food options? Is there a better food option than something locally grown with sustainable agriculture?

How exactly does VC-funded motorcycle and car taxis burning fossil fuels "impact poorer half of mankind positively"?

>"We've seen for decades that the typical Western approach of throwing money at the elites of a poor country really doesn't help improve life for the impoverished;"

Which has given rise to alternatives in the form of NGOs, PVOs and micro-finance initiatives. Do you really believe that some VC firms on Sand Hill Road is going to help lift the world out of poverty?

[gamblor956]

It will be extremely difficult to replicate European prosperity without replicating the colonial system that made it possible and is largely responsible for the state of the developing world today.

[crispinb]

If true, just as well. Given we're already so far beyond the living planet's carrying capacity (nearly every ecosystem is already in rapid decline) replicating European 'prosperity' (actually future-theft) would be cataclysmic. Extend-and-pretend 'economics' (ie. 18thC superstition) just pushes all the decisions out to a future that never arrives.