The problems of the world are due to imcompetence, corruption and stupidity. Every year we waste about 1.4 billion tonnes of food (tonnes not dollars), world-wide, due to incompetence, fussy buyers who are mainly concerned about the cosmetic appearance of the food, gluttonous buyers who buy too much food then throw it away when it's passed its use-by date, inadequate storage facilities and inadequate transport facilities, particularly in undeveloped countries.
In addition to the uneaten food that is wasted, there is an excess of food that is eaten, resulting not only in an unnecessary expenditure, but an obesity epidemic which results in yet further expenditure on medical services to fix the self-induced health problems.
World-wide we waste many trillions of dollars annually on armed forces because we are too stupid to live together harmoniously. We also waste billions of dollars on silly litigation procedures because people don't have the intelligence to come to an amicable agreement without making huge donations to lawyers.
There is also a long list of unnecessary but expensive items that simply appeal to people's vanity and ego, such as designer clothes, fancy cars and so on.
Adding up all this unnecessary expenditure, one might conclude that 3/4ths of the entire world production and expenditure is effectively thrown down the drain, serving no useful purpose at all.
The few areas of intelligent activity would include theoretical scientific research on projects such as LIGO, and practical research into more efficient rockets. The spin-off from theoretical research sometimes takes a while, but without it there would be no progress.
If our telescopes detect a large meteorite heading towards planet Earth some time in the future, we should be able to deflect it or destroy it due to our rocket technology, thus avoiding the extinction of the human race and other life forms. Expenditure on fancy clothes and tasty food will not achieve that result.
That's my rant for today.