beeftime

That's very true, but you're talking about a totally different thing here. There's a big difference between an (ostensibly) self-reliant adult looking for work/adventure/cheap booze and a kid fresh out of high school tossed into a totally different world and expected to "become successful" with little to no guidance.

Before I got into software development I worked for a South Korean company that helped high-level students get into American and Canadian universities. The single biggest source of stress for myself and the other westerners working there is that the administration's (and the parents'!) only goal was to get these kids into a school, and absolutely no thought was given to acclimating them to a different culture or teaching them the skills they would need to thrive in a very different educational system and social climate. We (the foreign teachers) would try to sneak cultural lessons in and hold extra classes about how to join campus organizations and social clubs, and we'd always get in trouble with the management because "it wasn't important". There's a very real sense in East Asia that once you get into an American university that you'll become successful, but some of the brightest kids are coming back to their home countries with a 2.7GPA, a memory of crushing loneliness, and many tens of thousands of dollars wasted. It's a solvable problem that no one is really interested in even examining.

If you're an avid newsreader you could be forgiven in thinking that the world is diving headfirst into becoming a burnt-out hellscape, but that's really not the case -- its just that our personal access to information is a lot better now.

I mean don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of horrible shit in the world (hold on to this for a second). In the last hundred years infant mortality and absolute poverty cratered, literacy is skyrocketing, the impact of war has gone into freefall. In most places things like slavery and the more horrific diseases have been all but wiped out, and far (far!) more people than ever actually have at least a modicum of control over their lives.

Which is not to say things are perfect. There's still so much work to be done. If you want to start feeling better about it, start volunteering. Put in time at a homeless shelter, or food bank, or if you have a skill find a way to use it in helping the needy in your community. If a program you think will help doesn't exist where you are, start one.

having lived and worked in China for a few years, I can confirm you're dead on the money.

"People need a lot of things. You’ll die without food long before you’ll die without health care, and yet few people say we need to “take the profit motive out of farming”."

I'll say this too when I get a $65,000 bill at the grocery store.