Reality is more horrible than its infinite number of victims can even begin to imagine. Thinking about it is enough to give you PTSD.
In our infinitesimal portion of reality, poverty is a universal law because it's easier to make people than products. Babies produce themselves. Houses, services, and healthcare are produced by pain.
People don't worry about these things because all their ancestors managed to survive before reproducing. Many of these ancestors perished soon thereafter.
Famine is one of the worse ways to die, though very far from the very worst. Because everyone will try to survive when there's enough food for only 60% of the population, 90% will starve. That used to be evolution in action.
In the event of a world collapse, over a billion people would die with the collapse of high-energy/high-yield farming. Most Third World subsistence farmers have already lost their land.
Today's worst problems can't be solved because evolution favors entrenched evil. Politicians know that anger is irrelevant, and rational voters are outnumbered. It helps to belong to a highly organized group with a long memory.

Science is the result of centuries of false starts and failure. The truth turns out to be very strange (Ricardo's theorem of comparative advantage) unlike popular delusions like Islam or Juche.
From free markets to property rights, most human improvements are simple. Complicated schemes like communism and Boston's Big Dig always go corrupt.

Progress is much slower than expected:
After thirty years of post-communism, Russia's economy has yet to recover, if it ever will.
Space shuttles existed in some form for most of the postwar period (1977 to 2011), only to be replaced by a Russian rocket used for the better part of a century (since 1956), ordered by Stalin himself. Until the late 2010s, that Sputnik rocket was the only way US astronauts could reach orbit.

At current rates, nuclear fusion won't be introduced this century. There may never be a Grand Unification Theory in physics.

Progress should be faster. The stagnation is social, though social mores are a function of group IQ. Throughout history, far more effort has been wasted on preventing progress through preserving the status quo. Monopolies, guilds, licenses and taboos empower groups. Diabolical barriers cripple the practice of medicine, the legal profession, and most trades from hairstyling to dog grooming. The reason so many people want to be writers is the illusion that there are no barriers to entry there.

Only outsiders think life should be more like a video game.
In the long run, that may yet happen. If progress continues long enough, even the most stubborn problems must eventually be solved. We probably won't live that long.
For now, wealth can only increase with much wasted effort. Most people's choices are between bad and worse.
Anyone who hopes to invent a better (for themselves) world system (Mohammed, Marx) should realize that the tiniest flaw will cause centuries of added suffering. Here's my solution:

Humans need incentives, the simpler the better.
The simplest Utopia might start as a subsistence economy, with more (but less painful) obstacles than today. A decentralized society with distributed manufacturing, local farming, online training, solar power, and other libertarian notions. Even mass-produced 'factories in a box'.
Someone could start with a plot of land and a tent-sized mobile home, then add modular rooms as their skill increased. A kitchen, walk-in closets, entertainment center, Jacuzzi, etc.
A minority will always prefer to grow their own food, or make artisanal stuff or art. That is why fantasy fiction is more popular than SF.
According to standard economics this is all very inefficient, but it makes life more meaningful.

There are many other options, like mass standardization, better temp agencies, robotics research, AI control, a worldwide common market, economies of scale, even local experiments with communism (perhaps in California). Billions of people could retire if the wealth could be redistributed (it almost certainly won't).
Skill sets could be subdivided more, allowing more people to explore more fields.
Individual diversity is liberating, unlike diversity between tribes. The economy could be a billion small companies, temporary alliances combining and disbanding. Each region needs to remember how to grow its own food and keep the utilities running.

Most current barriers need to fall, but no existing entities should be destroyed. Not even the IRS or any other ministry, regulatory agency, trade group, informal alliance, or common-law precedent. Existing organizations should only be made less powerful.

Almost every political revolution ever has failed. Almost every technological revolution has succeeded. Political revolutionaries find new roles to keep power.
The most profound improvements in the human condition have been unexpected. So far, new wealth generating mechanisms have always created more freedom; at least until they cause more overpopulation.




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