It is not a value judgment, any more than it is a value judgment to distinguish between health and disease, knowledge and ignorance, rationality and irrationality, or lucidity and delusion. Most of these countries have terrible economies, corrupt and inefficient civil administrations, with most of their citizens living in squalor and ignorance. These are not the hallmarks of a successful society.
People band together in society for mutual advantage, and therefore those societies which raise the general standard of living are more successful than others. People require a sufficiency of food, adequate shelter, decent medical attention, and decent sanitation to rise above squalor, and many of these society cannot even meet those criteria for most citizens. Additionally, human society is meant to fulfill human needs, that is, needs that arise out of our nature as rational animals, such as providing a certain amount of leisure, of education, and of money to live in a dignified manner, able to act autonomously and to participate in "culture". Thus, we are objectively superior, in fact. |
