Lives have always been expendable due to greed. The New World was a place for Europeans to take raw materials at the expense of colonial oppression. Africa was the fodder for making wealth. Asia had more brown people to exploit and bring under the mercantilist canopy. India was under English rule the first half of the 20th century. We envision ourselves as the promise while too often we are just part of the plague. History is a process of splinter groups freeing themselves from the wrath of empires, only to be the seeds of new empires themselves. Power corrupts, there is no easy path. Democracy is a notion, a curious dream that needs high amounts of inputs of energy in the form of education, moral courage, and public fervor to survive. In reality the world is run on the cheap fuel of competition, fear, and the coveting of resources. In between lives are expendable.
