What the world is most short of, in most places right now, is not wealth, but meaning. In our own nation, for example, our POOR live better than kings of old. If you have ever been in a true castle, you will see this easily. That king had no access to spices on shelves in every market now. He had no access to sugar. He had no access to porcelain. He had no access to coffee or tea.
I can see a world where all of us live much more poorly, much more modestly, than we do today; but in which we are HAPPIER. My principle gripe with socialism is not that it impoverishes people, or encourages equality, but that it DESTROYS culture, which is the very thing which no government can provide in a way which matches the needs of the people it supposedly is helping. It is the MEANS, and in particular the involuntary nature of those means, coupled with attacks on all notions of qualitative difference between people–which is necessarily an attack on the idea of personal moral growth–that I most object to.
Would be humanitarians would do well to ask themselves what is ACTUALLY necessary for human felicity, and above providing the basics, it is community, love, and purpose.