Note that I haven’t properly researched this. Now, all of a sudden, we have another continent as oil-thirsty as we are, on top of one of the biggest amount of reserves. Since now we suddenly have to pay fair prices, we’ll start off with a nice oil crisis. Driving cars will be so expensive that almost everyone resorts to walking or cycling. This in turn results in a great drop in productivity for us, since we relied on oil to get us where we needed to be. However, this is not the only problem. The population of Africa is reported to be approximately a billion at time of writing, and technological advances mean access to the internet for everyone. This would deplete the amount of IP addresses we have immediately. Without immediately moving to the new technology (IPv6, which would incur great costs) the internet would basically slow to a halt.

But, this all is on the subject of wants, things that are great to have but not absolutely necessary. But what about the basic necessities of life? According to the Pareto principle, 80% of the resources are shared amongst 20% of the people. Assuming Africa makes up most of the remaining 80%, we would need 4 times as much food as we use now, globally. This accounts for shelter as well. While population density in Africa is quite low at the moment, as prosperity increases population does as well. If the continent does modernise, we will need another continent at most to house the people.

In conclusion, the inequality on Earth is necessary. For as long as resources are finite, inequality will always exist.

In ancient history, natural selection had made those, who were most fit for survival survive, and therefore pass on their genes. This system had sustained us for centuries, eventually creating the human species we are today. However, somehow, somewhere, we started to civilize. What this meant was that humans gradually started to ‘equalize’, or at least regarded as equal. As medical science advanced, everyone could get the same level of health care, regardless of their capabilities. This is totally contrary to that which had propelled us so much further all those years ago.

An example of this can be found in the episode ‘Critical Care’ of Star Trek Voyager (7×05). Most of this episode played out in an alien hospital in which patients were treated based on their ‘treatment coefficient’, or TC. A TC is a number representing their value to society. For example, a woman leading the power plant which provides energy for half the planet was granted a very high TC. This in turn meant she would receive the utmost care available. However, if your TC was too low, you would hardly receive any proper care, since medicine which could save low TCs their lives, was instead used to prolong the valuable member’s life by a few years as a routine treatment.

I’m not at all implying that this would be a system that would work in our society. But it does already apply. Globalization is a great example of this. In the East, there’s a much bigger drive to compete and make money, which is quite difficult on the competitive market. However, a side-effect of this can also be seen. If we look at the greatest technological advances that have been introduced lately, where do they come from? Yes, it is true that in the West we still have this drive, but it is not as big as in the East, as we do not need to be innovative to earn enough money to provide for ourselves.

This touches on the inequality of the earth itself as well. A lot of people seem like they would love to see that the people in Africa would have equal wealth as we do. But what if this would somehow be realized? You could argue that we use much more resources than we could live with, but the truth is that even if everything was divided equally, there would be such huge amounts more we would need to produce, seeing as the Western world really will not settle for less. At the moment this equality would be established, every natural resource on earth would be depleted within years.

I suppose the whole point I’m making is that while we might think we’re so enlightened in our Western culture, but all we’re heading towards is stagnation due to the lack of true competition, and change..?