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The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

nytimes.com

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Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#91

Post by tsotha »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #56
tsotha wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's right, that terribly communist government suppressing its people and free speech, is actually responsible for lifting 500 million people out of poverty over the last 30 years. There isn't anything recognizably communist about the Chinese system aside from the name. And the big spurt of growth didn't start until Deng's market-based reforms of the '70s. So a better way to put it would be "After its Marxist fant…

That unrecognisably non-communist system still has huge elements of central planning, government control, censorship, and price fixing. It's hardly a free market paradise. If you want a free market paradise with minimal government, try Somalia. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4017147.stm

Socialists seem to reliably confuse free markets and anarchy. Somalia isn't in any way a free market economy.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#92

Post by InclinedPlane »

clarkmoody wrote: post #73
mninm wrote: post #35

"We cover planes that crash, not planes that take off." It always fascinates me how much my world view and the world view of those around me is based on the exceptional and not the mundane. The news outlets report the news assuming that the audience knows what's normal. When the news is used to become informed about the world many people come away with a skewed impression of reality. I am of the opinion that people w…

Context is dangerous to news & politics. Numbers are even more dangerous. So the likelihood of your wish coming true is almost nothing, at least in the mainstream news outlets. You'll get tons of context in long-format blogs and podcasts, where the purpose of the content is to educate. The primary purpose of media news is to make money, hence the bent toward entertainment more than anything. Data from the FBI[1] list…

There are generational changes happening that are pretty profound. Younger generations don't trust the traditional media the same way older generations did, and are increasingly skeptical of the narratives being peddled by the media.

There's nothing inherently wrong with being profit driven (although it's not without its problems), the bigger problem is, I think, being advertising driven. Which sets up an incentive of maximizing viewership with the least costly content, irrespective of quality.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#93

Post by notNow »

oldmanjay wrote: post #7

This journalistic impulse to sell the world as worse than it is will not end because a single journalist caught a quick (and likely fleeting) guilty conscience. It will continue until the profession recognizes that their addiction to narrative harms the entire population.

Mean world syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_world_syndrome

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#94

Post by orangecat »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #56
tsotha wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's right, that terribly communist government suppressing its people and free speech, is actually responsible for lifting 500 million people out of poverty over the last 30 years. There isn't anything recognizably communist about the Chinese system aside from the name. And the big spurt of growth didn't start until Deng's market-based reforms of the '70s. So a better way to put it would be "After its Marxist fant…

That unrecognisably non-communist system still has huge elements of central planning, government control, censorship, and price fixing. It's hardly a free market paradise. If you want a free market paradise with minimal government, try Somalia. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4017147.stm

Somalia is to free markets as North Korea is to government regulation.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#95

Post by mazerackham »

tsotha wrote: post #53
mazerackham wrote: post #21

Another big secret, is that the source of a lot of poverty being lifted is because of China. That's right, that terribly communist government suppressing its people and free speech, is actually responsible for lifting 500 million people out of poverty over the last 30 years. That is definitely a big secret of american media, and something that it neglects to report on, in favor of free speech violations, naval exerci…

>That's right, that terribly communist government suppressing its people and free speech, is actually responsible for lifting 500 million people out of poverty over the last 30 years. There isn't anything recognizably communist about the Chinese system aside from the name. And the big spurt of growth didn't start until Deng's market-based reforms of the '70s. So a better way to put it would be "After its Marxist fant…

You're right, China is only communist in name, not in practice for some time now. I emphasized the word only to point out how we treat anything associated with communism as something to be burned at the stake.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#96

Post by mazerackham »

xrange wrote: post #77
mazerackham wrote: post #21

Another big secret, is that the source of a lot of poverty being lifted is because of China. That's right, that terribly communist government suppressing its people and free speech, is actually responsible for lifting 500 million people out of poverty over the last 30 years. That is definitely a big secret of american media, and something that it neglects to report on, in favor of free speech violations, naval exerci…

Here's another "secret": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

Not a secret to me. A great tragedy, and definitely a huge error on their record. However, what I said still stands: they lifted 500 million people out of poverty.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#97

Post by chris_va »

guelo wrote: post #60
manachar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American progressives can be just as guilty, if less organized. They tend to view big business with suspicion and incorrectly think that the American government is hopelessly corrupt and in the pocket of "Big Business and/or Wall Street".

The environmental laws you mention happened more than 30 years ago. It sure seems like bigcos have gained the upperhand in the last generation.

Not really, it is mostly just more media coverage and observation bias.

As an example, it used to be that you could just dump whatever you wanted into the local water table. Now everything is picked over with a fine comb.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#98

Post by mazerackham »

sharetea wrote: post #47
mazerackham wrote: post #21

Another big secret, is that the source of a lot of poverty being lifted is because of China. That's right, that terribly communist government suppressing its people and free speech, is actually responsible for lifting 500 million people out of poverty over the last 30 years. That is definitely a big secret of american media, and something that it neglects to report on, in favor of free speech violations, naval exerci…

And most of them are sadly going to go right back into extreme poverty since factories are leaving China, capital is are outflowing, rich people are escaping. Then they realize the farm they left has been commandeered to build empty apartments, their environment polluted to where they will fall victim to diseases. There is no secret to the communist China's playbook. They opened to the world a vast amount of workers,…

Do you have any sources to back up what you're saying, or is that your hypothesis?

Also, from your tone it sounds like that is what you hope will happen. I hope that not to be the case.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#99

Post by mazerackham »

mikekchar wrote: post #61
mazerackham wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right in your edit, the Community Party has only been in power for decades. Prior to that, China was in turmoil due to colonization and imperialism by the U.S., France, Britain, and other European states, as well as Japan. I believe it's more accurate to say that the American sentiment is derived from China being a rising world power ideologically backed by Communism, and an actual threat to America's…

We have always been at war with EastAsia. When I was in junior high school, I had to do a project on propaganda. This was during the time of the USSR and I had the great idea to listen to Radio Moscow and compare it to western media. My project was to find examples of different kinds of proganda and I dutifully did so. Eventually I had to find an example of "the big lie". I singled out a story of a big military victo…

Very interesting that you've actually experienced this first hand while doing research for a class. I find that the difference in reporting on the same subject matter can be so wildly different, and I find that so confusing. It's so easy to twist stories for your own purpose. I wish there was a better solution.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#100

Post by webXL »

beatpanda wrote: post #50
beatpanda wrote: post #48

Meanwhile, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/19/humans-cr...

Kristof also conveniently doesn't mention that poverty in the United States is actually increasing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States

That article is a textbook example of cherry picking. If you pick the height of a boom as your baseline, of course poverty will increase during a major recession.
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