Any comment on the Georgetown paper I also linked? I mean, you can discredit the one chart but there's plenty of evidence that standards of living have increased globally since the widespread adoption of capitalism. If you want to discount death by infectious disease, access to food and sanitary living conditions, access to literacy and education as simply the monetization of life I'd disagree.
What's the argument you're trying to make?
"We don't want to go back to feudalism or plantation slavery."
"Tyrannical kings with absolute power often abused their population."
"Modern advances in health care are often positive."
Well sure, I'll vouch for all of those.
No one doubts that some good things have happened in the last few centuries. And? If you're going to use that as an argument for unregulated capitalism being a positive force in the world, then you could say the same thing about the globalization of White Supremacy or the wanton destruction of the environment. "Sure, they hurt some people, but look at all the health care advances we've made since White people started taking over the world and destroying every ecosystem!"
The problem with Max Roser, Steven Pinker, Peter Diamandis, and the rest of the "the world is only getting better!!!" crowd is that they are almost universally wealthy white technocrats whose entire experience of global poverty and serious environmental issues is via statistics. They neither know what people's actual experience is like nor do they understand the instability of their current models. They're like the bankers before the economic collapse - as long as things are going well for them they believe that everything will always keep going well and thus use cognitive dissonance to ignore both the people who are getting screwed as well as the unsustainability of the current system.
Where are Roser's numbers showing slum growth? Where are Roser's numbers showing the self-reporting of quality of life? Depression rates? Mental illness? Where are Roser's numbers showing the increasing control of all wealth by the rich? Where are Roser's numbers showing the steady collapse of wildlife populations, from insects to fisheries to large carnivores? Where are Roser's numbers showing the loss of arable land? Where are Roser's numbers showing decreasing soil fertility? Where are Roser's numbers showing the growing pollution of our waterways?
Even those pro-democracy stats - that was the trend for a couple centuries, do you really think it's still true now? From Trump to Sen to Duterte to al-Sisi to Kim to Putin to Bolsonaro to Maduro to Prayut...are we really trending towards more citizen control right now? What about the argument that the same technology these guys loves
appears to favor tyranny, and they don't even need to get rid of "democracy" to do it?
I'm a big advocate of science and statistics, but there are ways to do it blind to reality. People who promote economic growth and technological salvation without real experience of the lives of the poor and the quality of the environment are missing the entire picture.
The well-being argument is a different one, and one that I agree with. For the entirety of human history religion provided that meaning. I don't suspect you see that as a desirable answer, though...so what is?
I'm a deeply faithful Christian. Coming to follow Jesus saved my life.
I believe that a connection to God, a connection to one's local community, and a connection to nature are all essential aspects of well-being. The neoliberal ideal is to destroy all three of those things in favor of secularization, globalization, and technophiliia. I profoundly reject that bullshyt.