The truth about the world before 1946

If you lived in a place with more than 10 million people, and most of them could live within 40 miles of the sea, and you hadn't been colonised- then most of your people were now advancing way beyond subsistence- a growth dynamic of up to 200 times more wealth and health (eg more than doubling of working life expectancies) made possible with the dawn of the industrial revolution.

Before the 19th century, kings and their armies lived well. More or less everyone else at subsistence level. There may have be a few local civilisation exceptions -some by the sea, the other with very deep cultural designs no longer widely understood

Arguably the USA beacme a lasding exception as the 20th C dawned- while most people did live within reach of the sea (or big rivers) it wasnt a colonial power in the traditional sense, it built highways across the country faster and more abundantly than anywhere else. Oddly this big market inside meant that a nation that had been built on imigrants had relatively small interest in global trades until world wars chnaned everything

Notwithstanding colonial issues, the problem caused by huge inland continents was that the industrial revolution had no economical answer to reaching them with electricity grids or running water or communications. And remembering that televisual news did not reach masses of people anywhere until after 1946, unless you were a missionary you (and your social network) probably didnt know much about rural peoples abroad, and in some large continents not so much about your own rural peoples.
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Thus it was that spnending on wordlwide communications made possible what the industrial revolution had not. Ending about half the world living in susbsistence (or what we in 21st C the extreme poverty of less than $1.5 dollars a day)

It seems to me that what we needed to design into worldwide communications as these blossomed from 1946 was every opportunity to celebrate ending of poverty -wherever this came from it could have been a collaboaratuve joy. After all peoples getting linked into electricity, water , health, communications including education does not take away from your advanced lifestyle. Or if some would say that it introduces ecological conflicts. I would counter that the planet's solar and water systems are abundant enough by a long way provided only we transform beyond carbon based energy systems.

This passage isnt supposed to be absolutely precise, bur rather a rough guide to post-indsutrial revolution . To the future of being human that anyone coming of age after 1946 could have wanted to link into - the more so as doubling of worldwide communications spends every 7 years  became an unstoppable movement from 1946 to 2030