If the problem is uneven distribution, then the solution is a more even distribution.

For a smaller wealth gap to be achieved, wealth ultimately has to move from dense concentrations to where it is under-concentrated. Greater equality would mean that people all around the world experience their personal net worth moving closer to the average net worth.

And there’s the trick: individual people rarely adjust their net worth downward voluntarily.

We become accustomed to our income, and most of us — whether we make $10,000 or $100,000 per year — probably feel as though we could not survive if our income were cut in half.

Yet, half of all humans live on approximately $3,000 USD per year or less. That’s the median global income (estimated in 2013), adjusted for how much purchasing power you would have living in the USA.

Try to envision how you would make ends meet with $250/month. You’d almost certainly not be able to afford the life you live now. With this number in mind, it makes sense why you see families of five traveling on one moped in poorer countries; why many live in shelters built from found materials, and suffer from malnutrition and lack of healthcare.

These are people just like us, trying to survive. Their subjective experiences are worth the same as ours.

If we were aware of what life is like around the world, we’d realize that the average American is extravagantly wealthy by comparison. The cutoff for being in the top 1% of global earners is somewhere between $30,000-$50,000 per year, depending on who you ask. Maybe you’re in that 1%? We’re blind to our own monetary privilege because it’s all we’ve ever known.

Does being born in a first world country mean that we are more deserving of health, wealth, and happiness than anyone else? Why is it fair or rational for us to have extravagant luxuries when so many thousands die in poverty every day?

It’s easy to forget about the needs of people who are far away. That part isn’t surprising. We evolved to share resources with our immediate tribal groups, not to care about the fate of distant nations. Selfishness and competition played a big role in how we got to where we are today.

The difference is that now, thanks to the internet, we are far more interconnected than ever before. We don’t have an excuse to forget about what’s happening around the world because all of the information is readily available to us. We’re all neighbors now. We need to shift gears from competition to cooperation.

Given the fact that we as individuals choose to retain excessive wealth, despite the availability of websites such as GiveDirectly.org which allow us to redistribute that wealth at any time; are we not complicit in the suffering of many innocent people? There may not be any law requiring that we share what is “rightfully ours”, but on a moral level, how do we justify this lack of empathy?

Solving global poverty would mean that those with excess give up some of their excess. They’d have to loosen their grasp on wealth and become poorer, themselves, in order to enrich others. It would mean accepting new inconveniences and losing certain luxuries, relinquishing power and control. Shrinking.