Really im talking about the general attitude of consumer society and the imbalance of wealth through out the world.
Again i mention ignorance. People believe that they have earned the luxurious lifestyle that they have and of coarse they have, they've put in their time to earn the pay but what bothers me is how we seem to take our right to work in a safe and fair environment for granted. I agree we have such a good system in Australia , that there has been much progress in the world and i know that we are a very fortunate country in many ways.
What makes me sad is the ignorance and apathy that i see in so many people.
It scares me that our current luxurious way of life is unsustainable and that so few people actually know that. Pollution, overpopulation, the clearing of our forests, global warming, the earth which is supposed to be our home is dying and we are killing it, and im trying not to get passionate and emotional as i write this but i cant. i belive that we are all responsible whether we are directly destroying the environment or whether we sit back and let it continue to happen.

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Replying to:

Public housing becomes slums; private housing is looked after, an example of the fact that private ownership is very often better for the environment than public ownership.

When everybody theoretically owns something, no-one has a vested interest in spending their time and money as an individual to look after it.

In intellectual and artistic productions, when an artist has a public patron, such as the NEA in America or the Australia council for the Arts, the resultant product has a considerable tendency to be trash. When there is a private patron, who has to be pleased as an individual, the result can be the sistine chapel, or the works of Leonardo or Michaelangelo.

More and more public money is given to literature and the Arts, or at least to poseurs whose chief ability is to generate grant applications - yet there have never been fewer masterpieces.

But the real problem with your question is that it is not specific and is emotional and impressionistic rather than precise and therefore impossible to answer properly.

In many ways the world is NOT sad, or at least it is greatly improving. For the first time in history most people live under at least partially democratic governments,

A smaller proportion of the world's population live in poverty and illiteracy than ever before;

The threat of nuclear war has greatly receded, thanks largely to Ronnie Reagan;

Real progress is starting to be made in cancer treatments.

People have leisure time, amenities, and opportunities beyond the dreams of their parents and grandparents. When I was a child growing up in Western Australia, in a middle-class milieu, my friend's parents regarded a trip to England as a once-in-a-lifetime treat. I have been five times so far.

In England itself Butlin's Holiday Camps were set up after World War II to provide seaside holidays for the "lower classes" Butlins have gone out of business because those lower classes now holiday in Spain, Turkey, the South of France etc (I admit this is not an unequivocally positive development).

When my mother (a widow) and I moved into our first house, my mother, though an invalid, had to boil clothes in a copper, stirring it with a pole, and wring them through a wringer. We had a wood-stove and a chip-heater for hot water. My wife has a washing-machine, a drier, and we have piped-on gas for hot-water.

When I was a child, visits to the dentist were horrific. Now they are quite painless.

I once, visiting Asia, met a peasant farmer who pulled a plough with water-buffalo. Last time I saw him, he was drivig a tractor and wearing gloves and his children were at university.

If one knew exactly what you are complaining about, some answer or intelligent comment might be possible.

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