Introduction
This article examines the problem of global inequality through the lens of Angus Deaton’s concept of The Great Escape—humanity’s unprecedented process of breaking free from poverty and premature death. While this progress is a reality, it paradoxically generates new forms of stratification. Readers will learn why GDP growth alone is insufficient for improving quality of life, how flawed institutions hinder development, and whether artificial intelligence will become a new escape tunnel or an insurmountable barrier. The key to understanding the modern world is realizing that deprivation is not just a lack of money, but a complex interplay of health and political constraints.
The Great Escape: Material Progress and Structural Deprivation
The Great Escape is humanity’s 250-year journey toward better health and wealth. However, every breakthrough from scarcity creates new lines of division. Material and health progress generate inequality because new knowledge initially serves the privileged. Structural deprivation is more than just a lack of cash; it is a combination of scarcity, lack of healthcare, and limited political agency, which directly and drastically reduces the probability of survival.
This relationship is described by the Preston curve: while income growth spectacularly extends life in poor countries, additional funds have marginal significance in wealthy ones. The USA serves as a laboratory of paradoxes—despite having the highest health expenditures, life expectancy there is lower than in Chile. This stems from the erosion of mechanisms for sharing the fruits of growth and the state’s abdication in favor of the market. In contrast, the British NICE institute rationalizes spending by publicly questioning the ethical and market valuation of an additional year of life, allowing for the transparent management of community resources.
Bauer’s Dilemma and New Models of Global Support
Traditional official development assistance (ODA) often fails, as described by Bauer’s dilemma: aid is redundant where institutions function and ineffective (or even harmful) where they fail, perpetuating pathologies and corruption. Deaton suggests that instead of budget transfers, wealthy countries should apply the "do no harm" principle. This means revising harmful agricultural subsidies, limiting arms exports, and reforming the global patent regime.
Effective alternatives include AMC (Advance Market Commitments for future vaccines) and TRIPS reform, which would lower drug prices in poor countries. Such an approach shifts the burden from charity to investing in knowledge that cannot be monopolized. Maintaining health deprivation in an era of available technology becomes a normative fact—an ethical failure of a world that can prevent millions of deaths but cannot organize the fair distribution of solutions.
Civilizational Models in the Face of the Algorithmic Revolution
Different regions of the world have developed distinct responses to deprivation. Arab countries rely on a rentier model, the USA on private philanthropy, and Europe on regulation and social solidarity. Into this framework enters artificial intelligence, which could increase the incomes of wealthy countries twice as fast as those of poor ones, deepening global divergence. AI will either become a tool for the precise eradication of poverty or a new layer of complexity masking inequalities.
Global business views AI as an opportunity for a productivity leap, but there is a growing fear of "social hell"—the mass degradation of the middle class and the concentration of power among algorithm owners. Deaton’s perspective teaches us that technology without fair redistributive institutions will only accelerate the polarization of escape opportunities. The future depends on whether AI supports health technology assessment systems and identifies the needs of the poorest, or if it serves to further segment markets and evade social responsibility.
Summary
In a world of constant escapes from deprivation, where technological progress outpaces social adaptability, are we doomed to eternally chase the mirage of equality? Perhaps the true great escape lies not in accelerating the pace, but in slowing down and reflecting on who we are leaving behind. Can we create a world where everyone has the chance to write their own parable, rather than being merely a statistic in someone else’s success story?
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