Common Wealth: Attainable or Impeded by Selfishness?

Jeffrey Sachs’ book felt like a coded message to solve the world’s problems with one missing component: the correct key. Not that I mind his book, I actually believe that he summarized the world’s problems up in a more succinct and clear way than I have ever experienced. Mr. Sachs has done an excellent job in researching and identifying all that is amiss with our world, but I find his solutions very unsatisfactory.
Mr. Sachs focuses a great deal of attention on the government’s role in kick-starting the eradication of poverty, the leveling off of world population, and conservation of natural resources. While this is all well and good, to which governments is he referring? There are few countries in the world (especially in today’s current economic slump) that either have the ability or the desire to spread that kind of wealth around.
I agree that most people don’t mean to be selfish or uninvolved with those suffering in other regions, but it is also true that we spend very little of our time researching the socioeconomic and political climates of our neighbors near and far. I know that I am guilty of not being well enough informed and don’t help out those in bloody coups or civil wars as I ought. I am simply wondering what it will take for upper class people to give up their daily coffee, or doughnut, or their yearly vacations in order to give that money to others. I wonder what it will take for the leading, non third world governments to stop trying to give their citizens everything they want, to stop worrying about reelections and instead concentrate on policies that will radically change not only their nation, but the world.
It’s going to take a lot more than a few activists that really believe in change, it’s going to take a lot more than everyone thinking that it’s a good idea. Some of the best and wisest are known for their ideas, but those ideas didn’t accomplish anything by just being in the minds of scholars. Those ideas only led to change when they became burning, living & breathing convictions in the hearts and souls of the people. As of yet, I don’t see that happening. I see a lot of people going about life not thinking about anything outside of their tiny microcosm. That may be cynical, but that’s what I see (for the most part). I believe it’s going to take something big to happen before people are ready and willing to change and improve upon the points Mr. Sachs mentioned in his book. But when people are willing to lay self aside to change (if that’s even completely possible in a suffering, sinful world), they will make the change happen and the government will follow suit, not the other way around.