Before my four bullet points, I wrote "we could". Time is a resource that can be used in various ways. I merely thought about some pressing problem we have right now.

Most people don't have the cognitive horsepower or personality type to do any of this.

I agree. Can be partly solved with education. But anyway, I didn't mean everyone to do science.

In any case doing science seems like a great candidate for automation.

I'm only talking about before Intelligence Explosion (any prediction I make about after that will probably be bogus). Which also means a world where science is not yet automated. (When it is, Intelligence Explosion will probably follow shortly after.) Beyond that point, we may chose to do science manually because it's more Fun. Or we may do something else.

"Western exploitation" seems to simply amount to investing money into third world countries and providing them with opportunities that are a vast improvement over what they would otherwise have. Arguably it has done them far more good than any international aid program attempted to date.

I hear that in some places (especially in Africa), the resources (oil, gold, cotton…) are sold really really cheap to western countries, when foreign companies do not extract them directly. In other places, the main activity seems to be the haphazard recycling of some of our more polluting garbage (most notably computer parts, where they burn the plastic to get to the metal, inhaling the fumes in the process). In other places still, they use their soil to sell cotton, or coffee, or soya, or palm oil… instead of growing food, so they must buy such food dearly, from elsewhere. On top of this, there's debt, which is rather crushing in the South (here in Europe it is merely worrying —though quite deeply so).

"Investing money" only means giving something to somebody in exchange for more, later. That interest rate mean you can basically lie down while others do the work for you. The only work you actually did was a bit of organization. It does have value, just probably far less than the interest rates. That difference I call "exploitation" (also applies when one contracts a mortgage to buy a house in the good-old Western Europe).

On average I would agree we are vastly better off compared 50 years ago. I'd also agree that this trend will continue for a while. However some places are definitely far worse of than they were before, precisely because of our use of recent technology.

As you suggest, international aid programs look like they don't work. Let's try something else.

we (as in our technological civilization) have literally nothing to do with the vast masses of third world peoples

I basically agree. The only thing it has to do with is, if technology gives us additional means of actions (like, free time), we can use those means to do whatever end we wish. Including easing up the pressure on the South. Or go to Mars. Or free Willy. Again, I only listed 4 possibilities out of many.