Which is rather inexplicable since I conceded your primary proposition for the sake of arguing whether it made any difference, then conceded a second based on the first for the same reason. Remember, the only reason I started talking about multinational corporate greed was the reminder you're convinced we have the tech to turn deserts into Clarkian utopias, and I even let the issue of multinational greed slide because it's so incompatible with YOUR world view and because, more importantly, even that's only a symptom of man succumbing to his baser instincts, which was my primary point and is the real problem. Telling me "people are people" does little to refute my having said just that multiple times already. If you're finally willing to grant THAT, then it ought to be a settled issue that human nature will no more usher in a future where quadrillions of humans live in decent comfort without fossil fuels than it's brought a present where even MOST of six billion humans do so with fossil fuels (or did you think Parkinsons Law only applies to the Rwandan part of the Solar system?)

Lest you think I'm ignoring your particular points though, I'll respond to them as well:

I didn't say it was racist, but it did leave a thick aftertaste of smug superiority and/or condescension; not racist, but no source of pride.

Wait, lemme see if I understood that: I'm inserting my pro-socialist worldview instead of realizing that Third World work ethics are destroyed because "Pull in a harvest that's twice as big as everyone else's and they either decide you had good luck or must have cheated someone and thus aren't really entitled to your gains, or they don't care how you did it and simply figure your bounty means you have extra food and an extra son you don't really need, so they take the extra and your kid for the army". Your ENTIRE "alternate" explanation is just a more detailed explanation that their "worldview demands that success can only come at someone else's expense". You managed to make the standard conservative attack on socialism, make it the cause of Third World poverty, disease and oppression AND accuse me of pushing my personal political agenda all at once. Truly impressive, and perhaps a SMALL part of why I responded to the textbook conservative catechism as what it was. Let's just agree to disagree on who's looking at this through partisan blinders; again, whether socialism is good, bad or indifferent is immaterial to the deeper reason human technology won't produce a happy heavily populated future: Human NATURE (which, IIRC, is the most popular reason socialism and communism are dismissed even by people who recognize their goals as desirable but unrealistic).

Sorry, I didn't realize you meant "functionally equal" as wholly literal; I thought you just meant "practically equal" since it goes without saying consumers will always buy a less expensive product that meets their needs in all the same ways as more expensive ones. Even in conspicuous consumption there's the allure of more expensive products intangible "higher status" value; if a Mercedes had the cachet of a Rolls no one would ever buy the latter. In that case I'd rather old ladies got mugged with $5 hammers than $50 ones because muggers won't be as busily cash starved but, once again, neither the hammer nor its price are the problem. The REAL problem is human nature, that while hammers allow constructive people to build more and better homes and spice racks, they also allow destructive people to mug more old ladies. Inventing a self pounding hammer won't create a world where everyone lives in a three story house and muggings are non-existent.

It was an analogy, not an equation: Our own countrys unprecedented and unrepresentative comfort don't demonstrate increasing GLOBAL comfort any more than reduced terrestrial entropy demonstrates reduced universal entropy. Believing either is missing the forest for the trees. I'll skip the part where the last decade putting a cell phone in his pocket gives no more "decent comfort" to an Indian living in Medieval conditions or an American losing his home because he hasn't worked in a year has no more; I don't have hard numbers or actual cases there, and you either dismiss as anecdotal or outright ignore the hard numbers and actual cases I HAVE cited.

This would be an example of dismissing documented cases as anecdotal rather than just ignoring them completely, which is only slightly better. You're telling me that no matter how many examples I give, no matter what kind of pattern I demonstrate, it doesn't matter because they're all exceptional anomalies. I'm not sure what I can say if any evidence I present is irrelevant; that pretty much tells me you've made your decision and won't be confused with facts. The important thing is that no one lets their preferred world views distort their perception.

Meanwhile, when 51% of the world is using cheap and already available technology to live in the decent comfort you predict will one day be the norm for three times as many people who don't have the dubious benefit of fossil fuels, I'll believe human nature doesn't make that as much a pipe dream as a utopian dictatorship of the proletariat where everyone does the most and best work solely because out of civic duty, with no profit motive. Corporate greed is neither here nor there to that, and while it is a longstanding pet peeve of mind (the recent change is that I let Obama sucker me into believing Democrats offered a legitimate alternative) it's only the symptom of the much longer problems inherent in human nature. We have an almost unlimited capacity for good AND evil--yet NONE of us is predestined to accomplish either and ALL of us are fallen, so we'll never be more than a mixed bag, at best. The best way to make it more likely is with Ms. Rands horrible collectives relying on enlightened self interest to make sure each of us denies the others the "freedom" to exploit others, but even that fails when each member of the collective benefits from the exploitation of non-members and lacks the moral fiber to object. Of the many examples of that, multinationals are arguably the most potent and definitely the most visible because very few people have the means to purchase enough shares to hold them accountable through the ballot box, but that's still just one effect of a deeper cause. Fully democratic nations can and do operate the same way when the people exploited are safely out of sight and impotent on the other side of the globe. The real problem, as it has been and will always be for every utopia, is still human nature, not technology or corporations.