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Poverty-Fighting Startups

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Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#21

Post by hyperion2010 »

aphextron wrote: post #9

Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. >“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. His company makes a mobile app called FreshEBT t…

I would say that in principle we don't do it because at some level we probably do actually believe in the doctrine of self determination at the level of states. This is directly at odds with the notion that rich countries should be trying to provide infrastructure and food for the worlds poorest. Of course this argument doesn't hold up within a single country, so the question of why entrenched poverty remains an issue throughout the United States is indeed a political one where there is no excuse.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#22

Post by landryraccoon »

aphextron wrote: post #9

Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. >“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. His company makes a mobile app called FreshEBT t…

What's your plan for dealing with Orthodox Judaism or Quiverful or other ideological/religious sects that believe that having as many children possible as quickly as possible is God's will?

Exponentially increasing cost is a problem for the most technocratic plans you can imagine. And in a democratic society not only will groups that have tons of children grow rapidly, they will also increase their share of the voting power at the same rate.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#23

Post by eartheaterrr »

lsc wrote: post #15
john_moscow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. Because there is a huge and complex domain of human motivation, appreciation for hard-earned things vs. taking them for granted and so on. USSR tried doing exa…

eh, You can have a very strong welfare state that provides minimal food, shelter, medical care and clothing to everyone who needs it without having a planned economy. They really are different issues. there's a big difference between a welfare state and full out socialism; the difference is largely about power... Socialisim is about giving the workers control over the means of production. The welfare state is merely…

I like your reasoning, and I agree that we need more effort toward social programs that provide basic needs for the population.

One argument against such programs is that they could allow people to have a lifestyle where they choose to never work, yet live a comfortable life and have lots of children. It seems like this could cause extreme population growth, but in a very bad way. Am I missing something, or is there a solution to address that problem?

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#24

Post by anovikov »

aphextron wrote: post #9

Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. >“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. His company makes a mobile app called FreshEBT t…

Why do we do it? We need poor as an example to keep working and middle class motivated.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#25

Post by RyanZAG »

hyperion2010 wrote: post #21
aphextron wrote: post #9

Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. >“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. His company makes a mobile app called FreshEBT t…

I would say that in principle we don't do it because at some level we probably do actually believe in the doctrine of self determination at the level of states. This is directly at odds with the notion that rich countries should be trying to provide infrastructure and food for the worlds poorest. Of course this argument doesn't hold up within a single country, so the question of why entrenched poverty remains an issu…

Why should rich countries be trying to provide infrastructure and food for the world's poorest? Far as I know, the original reason for doing so was to create strong and loyal trading partners. That doesn't seem to have happened though. Is that no longer the end goal?

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#26

Post by zappo2938 »

aphextron wrote: post #9

Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. >“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. His company makes a mobile app called FreshEBT t…

Governments shouldn't take care of people. People should take care of people. (Over course, we should take care of ourselves first but that doesn't always work out.)

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#27

Post by gumby »

john_moscow wrote: post #13
aphextron wrote: post #9

Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. >“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. His company makes a mobile app called FreshEBT t…

>Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. Because there is a huge and complex domain of human motivation, appreciation for hard-earned things vs. taking them for granted and so on. USSR tried doing exa…

> USSR tried doing exactly that with the planned economy and trying to distribute the wealth more or less evenly and failed miserably.

Actually if you look at where they started and where they got, they did a pretty good job in raising the very poorest our of poverty, electrifying the country, and really eliminating a lot of the abject poverty that was most of the country at the time of the revolution. Changes that the former (imperial) regime seemed uninterested in making.

Even into the 1950s and even 1960s quite a lot of people, including a surprisingly large amount of US government officials, thought that there was a chance the USSR could surpass the USA. I think such people were delusional, since the signs were pretty clear at the time (I was a child at that time, but I did study the USSR in the 1980s when it was very obviously not a threat to the west).

Don't get me wrong: the USSR was founded by a bunch of bloodthirsty assholes (Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky et al) and, for various reasons developed into a, yes, evil system. I don't blame it entirely on the people involved -- I think anyone who tries to follow that model, even with good intensions (and it's not clear the Bolsheviks had good intentions) is going to end up with a shitty result.

But dispassionately one thing they did accomplish was the thing you said they failed miserably at. And it's unlikely the Menshevik republicans would have pulled that off.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#28

Post by tonmoy »

eartheaterrr wrote: post #23
lsc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eh, You can have a very strong welfare state that provides minimal food, shelter, medical care and clothing to everyone who needs it without having a planned economy. They really are different issues. there's a big difference between a welfare state and full out socialism; the difference is largely about power... Socialisim is about giving the workers control over the means of production. The welfare state is merely…

I like your reasoning, and I agree that we need more effort toward social programs that provide basic needs for the population. One argument against such programs is that they could allow people to have a lifestyle where they choose to never work, yet live a comfortable life and have lots of children. It seems like this could cause extreme population growth, but in a very bad way. Am I missing something, or is there…

Your logic assumes that most people are so shallow that they would stop working/trying to improve their conditions after they are able to live “comfortably”. There are several wealthy countries that provide this kind of welfare without much population growth or lazy workforce. On the other hand there are counties like Bangladesh that saw rapid growth in population in the 80s even though most people were very very poor - in fact the country’s pouplation growth has demolished now that more people can live comfortably due to increased wealth and access to education.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#29

Post by PhasmaFelis »

landryraccoon wrote: post #22
aphextron wrote: post #9

Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. >“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. His company makes a mobile app called FreshEBT t…

What's your plan for dealing with Orthodox Judaism or Quiverful or other ideological/religious sects that believe that having as many children possible as quickly as possible is God's will? Exponentially increasing cost is a problem for the most technocratic plans you can imagine. And in a democratic society not only will groups that have tons of children grow rapidly, they will also increase their share of the votin…

What's the problem? As long as those kids grow up to be roughly as successful as the national average, they'll be paying back into the system and everything works as intended.

Also, Orthodox Jews have been around for a long, long time and are still a small minority almost everywhere. Small ideological sects with large families historically don't seem to take over the world.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#30

Post by PhasmaFelis »

zappo2938 wrote: post #26
aphextron wrote: post #9

Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. >“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. His company makes a mobile app called FreshEBT t…

Governments shouldn't take care of people. People should take care of people. (Over course, we should take care of ourselves first but that doesn't always work out.)

People taking care of people on an individual basis doesn't scale up very well.
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