There are poor people in villages around the world that now have access to information they never would have been able to get had it not been for the development of smartphones, web browsers, the internet, and mobile networking technology.

That is prosperity. It might not be perfect, yet, but it is in the right direction.

Yes, I’m sure the poor people in villages watching the world becoming ever more desperate, unequal, and fundamentally unstable on their smartphones share in your notion of prosperity. That’s why they’re drowning en masse in the Mediterranean, dying of exposure on the US border, or being imprisoned and tortured in any number of migrant detention facilities around the world. Because they’re so “prosperous” now.

Poverty rates worldwide have been going downward at a decent pace since the late 1800s, and really started plummeting faster between the mid-1990s and today. Here are some cheery graphs:

https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief

That doesn't mean that everyone is rich, but it is actually a really big deal. Next time you're tempted to write a phrase like "watching the world becoming ever more desperate" when talking about poverty, please take a moment first to remember that the opposite is true.

My point is exactly this misguided view of the world, that the global north can live lives of insane decadence, built on its history and continued plundering of the global south, while expecting them to find a reduction in extreme poverty as ameliorative. Your comment only reminds me that liberals are people who believe that luxury can exist without the suffering of others.

There is no path in the current Capitalist world order that will allow for a rise in the global south to current, western levels of development. The resulting increase in labor and resource costs would face immediate armed confrontation from the global north, as already happened with the myriad US-backed military coups during the past century.

Just like how no policy has killed more people then Communism&Socialism nothing has saved more lives and increased the standard of living for more people then Capitalism.

*Offer not valid in Indonesia, Latin America, or other countries that elect left-wing leaders. See your local CIA-trained death squads for details.

You can also refer to “they” as the ones who now have access to more accurate information about their health, or weather, sex education, math, science, etc. There are 8 billion people in this world, surely there are a wide spectrum of experiences being lived.

I think your worldview has been poisoned too much by news and social media, which demonstrates exactly why I avoid it.

Prosperity gives access to more people. "Betterment of humanity" sounds like "human growth but by my own standards".

Prosperity is what's made it possible for anyone to survive and have varying levels of access to thriving. Humanity is moving forward and we're figuring things out.

Pointing at a big category of businesses to demonize them is not "betterment of humanity".