If you could delete one thing from the world, which one would you choose? (choose from options)

The question sort of creeps me out, because the doing away with people would accomplish every one of those goals. It leads me to speculate on methods of efficiently achieving mass murder.

Poverty

I’d add “cruelty to animals and people.” That would be my choice.

Good points.

Myself

Poverty as the world would be a safer place if all were secure and fed etc

Eliminating Poverty would either eliminate or greatly improve some of the others as well — so, poverty.

Climate change because that will and already is exacerbating most of the others.

Except for 3 and 5, all others would be solved by eliminating poverty.

Climate Change, because it threatens the entire planet, and as @janbb just wrote, will make the others worse, and/or irrelevant by destroying civilization, humanity, and/or all mammals.

People. I know it wasn’t on the list, but what the hey…

Climate change. It’s just depressing. I don’t want the temperate climates of the world to become deserts and the deserts and tropics to become uninhabitable. It’s the most apocalyptic of the choices. Human caused or not doesn’t matter to me—I’d just like to see it not be a thing.

8. I would hope that truly giving educational opportunities for all would empower people and marginalized groups to solve their own problems.

Here’s what I mean by that. We have a lot of problems in the world that we have not yet been able to solve. Perhaps this is linked to the same kinds of people having the same kind of access to education.

If a community is dealing with lack of access to water, healthcare, infant mortality, genital mutilation, poverty, bigotry, etc… isn’t the best hope for that community, itself, to rise up in education and skill and provide their own solution to their problem?

I think, for example, of how Americans donate their used clothes to organizations that donate them to poor villages in Africa (I don’t know the ins and outs of how/where that works). This may seem helpful, at face value. However, a major unintended consequence is that local tailors, seamstresses, weavers and other artisans lose business. Ultimately, this hurts their local economy and they may even lose the local skill of sewing clothes if the need for that service gets eliminated.

This happens over and over in so many different ways. We try to swoop in and provide assistance instead of providing education and resources and empowering individuals and communities to create solutions.

In my opinion, education would solve the other issues.

8

Better education should improve all other issues.

I agree with 8. Education can solve the other 7 problems with time.

I think there may be an assumption that educated people will make good decisions but how do you explain the fact that many educated people support Trump?

@janbb Of course there are people claiming to be educated who voted for Trump. But aside from the fact that such a vote negates any claim to an adequate education, it is dazzlingly obvious that the support of educated voters was in no way crucial to the Trump election. With some work, I can probably find 1 or 2 Uncle Toms who voted for the fool as well. In fact I believe he appointed them both to his cabinet.