I don't think overpopulation is the core problem in the developed world. Some developed countries have had to take on immigrants lest their populations decrease. We have great systems to generate wealth, but they come at the price of a massively skewed distribution.

Root cause? In the U.S.: bad values. Culturally speaking, the South has won the Civil War. That's why we remember Northern generals negatively and Southern ones as noble. That's also why we don't have universal healthcare (Truman proposed it in '48, and was shot down because Dixiecrats didn't want to desegregate the hospitals.) Now, the geographical distinction is not very meaningful (there are foaming-at-the-mouth racists in New England and enlightened, liberal people in Alabama) but the last bastion of the true North (the progressive, positive-sum mentality) is Silicon Valley and even that has its entrenched in-crowds. Getting access to VCs is still about connections and that's not very Northern.

I'm going to anger people by saying this, but New York (although it's still one of the best places to live in the US) is essentially a Southern city at this point. What's the first thing you do every month? Pay an enormous rent check to someone who's had real estate in the family for over 100 years. What's the first thing you are asked in "casual" conversation? "What do you do?" Or, "What is your position in society?" And "those who matter" still go to cotillions and keep to themselves and shoot quail in the Hamptons.

What do I mean by the South winning, culturally speaking? I mean that this is a society run according to position, authority, and entrenchment rather than the talent and courage to have and share the right ideas. The country is run by private-sector bureaucrats who've discovered ways to capture value generated from the labor of others.

We're not a "really fucked up species". Humans are not naturally good or evil. They're naturally unskilled-- ignorant, deluded, and often incompetent, but not evil. The purpose of civilization is to maintain the knowledge that helps people do the right thing. Unfortunately, societies become corrupt rapidly and develop elites that have defined themselves by doing the wrong thing, and then those wrong things begin to define the social tone and corruption sets in. Civilization is a storehouse of knowledge that helps people figure out what the right thing to do is, but societies are incentive systems that usually encourage doing the wrong thing.