Half Full or Half Empty?

As promised, it seems our HDW is itching for (and deserves) a good argument.  I’m happy to oblige him, but must say, that it appears he (and John Stossel – see below) has “taken the blue pill”.  Well, good for them, I’ll stick to the red pill.

To begin, from Wikipedia:  Meliorism is an idea in metaphysical thinking holding that progress is a real concept leading to an improvement of the world. It holds that humans can, through their interference with processes that would otherwise be natural, produce an outcome which is an improvement over the aforementioned natural one.

So, we’re going to get metaphysical, are we?