Hans addresses this in the book, actually.
What you said has no basis in fact, and makes no sense. Do you think people said exactly the same thing about Sweden a generation ago? Why / why not?
We in the West have this completely-made-up assumption that "they" can't develop like "we" did, with absolutely no grounding in fact.
Some people do, that's true. It also seems to be true that some people have an assumption, not at all completely grounded in fact, that "all" people can and will develop "like we did". Two problems I see with this belief are that it is inherently speculative (a prediction of the future), and it assumes that other cultures Necessarily* _want_ to develop like we have. Personally, I believe there are significant imperfections in Western culture, the way we've developed and the way we operate today, I'd be extremely surprised if all cultures view our way as the best way to organize societies. You can see evidence of this all over the place, but Westerners have a habit of classifying dissenting opinions as "just wrong" and dismissing/ignoring them.
Fully agreed. This is also extremely prevalent in any economic discussions here in HN where most of the first-world dwellers are cozying up their minds with the generic statement "it is all getting better on average" which I think is utter BS.
As a guy who has been to pretty poor parts of the world and lives in a country that touts any small bill that will benefit zero common folk -- but is always advertised as such for 30 years now -- I have to say, most first-world population is tragically misinformed on how are the average people around the world living.
They can. But "we" developed in a very turbulent and deadly ways. Just handful of decades ago, during WWI and WWII, "we" were killing millions of people, helping spread massive disease outbreaks that killed other millions in just a few years, created economy destroying monetary and isolationist policies, impoverished millions, destroyed advanced industrialized countries in the middle of Europe with communism, were colonizing, destabilizing and exploiting natural resources of other countries, etc.
We're still humans, and all this is still possible to repeat. And developing "like we did", is not necessarily something great or positive. It can mean pretty much anything, unless you cherry-pick baselessly.