Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over

Phones and lights haven't exactly been going up in price with GDP. Stoves in the valleys I saw in Nepal were mainly affected by distance travelled by dzos.

Throwing your hands up in the air, pronouncing the problem too complex sounds like a really convenient excuse to do nothing.

Shaka Zulu? Mali Empire? The Aztecs? The Inca? ? Not really much like the Amish.

"And all the foundations that we took for granted in the western world have been either destroyed or not developed in the past in those countries."

I agree with this. But "try teaching people about WESTERN style education and western work ethic / values, etc." Yes, cultural relativism only goes so far. But one could try teaching them japanese values as well, it would be good.

A society can only progress with certain values and rules, and what we call "western civilization" is pretty much that, otherwise, we would be maybe talking about tribes in Europe being conquered by who knows (not that tribes in Europe didn't exist).

But of course, as you said, it needs a foundation, and this took a long time even in the case of Europe.

"So a tribe in Africa that lived perfectly fine in a relative balance... and they are left to adapt to this new context or die."

This has happened how many times in world history again? Oh and "relative balance" may be an exaggeration. Old "innocent" tribes could and have destroyed their habitat. Example: Easter Island. That also happens in South American tribes.

"We adapted to the modern world by choice and by developing it (and over centuries at that). They are FORCED to "adapt to it or die, pronto". It's not at all the same."

I agree. But see, several countries are already adapting. Angola for example.

Stop right there. Before colonization those lands were dominated by the ottoman empire, which exported "black gold" from there. By which I mean that they'd ride into the villages on horseback, kidnap the young into slavery, to be exported into North Africa, the Middle East or Asia. Similar things happened in India. They left the old or infirm to die of hunger and thirst, wounded and alone.

Coming out of ottoman domination, the indigenous population was literally worse off than in the stone age.

Colonization, which of course was not free of exploitation, was a massive improvement of these people's situation. Yes it was not perfect, far from it. That is a bit like criticizing George Washington for being a slaver. In the 6 cities in Congo that I visited that were colonized after WWI, the older generation says that the current situation is worse than colonization. In places where the old wars have resumed, like near the Sudan border, it is much worse.

Unless, of course, you count the muslim conquest of Africa/Middle East/Asia as the vast bulk of colonization. Then, maybe, you have a point.

Before that, during Roman times, Africa (esp. North Africa) was a lot better off than Europe and massively better of than North America. Africa was called the bread basket of Europe in Roman times, although that did not include anything south of the Sahara where we don't seem to really have historical records for.

>So a tribe in Africa that lived perfectly fine in a relative balance, Amish style,

There is a huge difference between tribal life in a hostile environment and Amish life in contemporary America. In every Amish village you easily find people aged 70 and over, thanks to modern medicine. In regions of Africa were tribal life still exists, you won't find a single soul over 35.

In an African village there's lots and lots of easy ways to die, and it's just a part of life there. They are trying to fix this, but it'll be decades or centuries before it's done. If you go outside of villages without backup, nature will kill you. It may be hunger, germs, it may be poison plants (who kill people who think hunger is easily solved), it may be poison snakes, it may be other snakes (you best pray if you die from snake attack, it's poison that kills you), it may be large animals (although they've been hunted to near-extinction in many places, they remainder still kills lots of people), it may be people from other villages (they are not friendly towards one another, though during peace time they'll generally let people who wander off go with a beating or a wound). And if you stay inside of the village, you may still get killed by hunger, thirst, germs or snakes, and there are regular fights for tribal leadership that "usually not everybody survives". Most kids do not live to see their fifth birthday (most are never recorded, and thus not in anyone's statistics).

And that's ignoring the larger wars, that are usually between ethnicities, like the Hutu-Tutsi conflict. These wars are uncoordinated, it's just one ethnicity expanding by moving it's outer villages in a particular direction, and they know full well there's exactly one way they can get access to other's hunting/farming grounds. These wars are slow-moving, taking decades to move a few dozen kilometers (because even a village at war, without supplies, still has to farm and hunt while also killing any neighbour they come across). But slow-moving enemies doesn't help you if you don't have intelligence going further than the next village.

Overly dramatic sensationalism - ripped straight from a first year college pamphlet on how to be angry at the man - at its best.

And all it warrants is a simple: prove it. Such an extraordinary claim, you should do it the justice of demonstrating it as fact.