Is there more I could read to get educated about this? How can we construct polical systems that are better?
There's less war, life expectancies are generally rising (the opioid epidemic being a temporary, and local, blip), the possibility of achieving one's true potential is less dependent on class/gender/race than it has ever been.
It's not perfect, but it's far away from life as it was even 100 years ago: nasty, brutish, and short.