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Poverty-Fighting Startups

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Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#41

Post by BurningFrog »

gumby wrote: post #27
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…

> 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 t…

> 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

Depends on in what column you put the ~10% of the population they murdered.

I would think of them as "not raised out of poverty".

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#42

Post by lsc »

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…

>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?

So, I'm talking largely about rich nations like the USA. Here? it has been a long time since the population was restricted by food, so we can neatly sidestep that problem without resorting to Swift.

I do think it's important to design welfare programs to aid people who are leaving poverty. I personally don't think this should be done by cutting off the support if they don't work... But I do think programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit which help smooth the transition from being dependent on welfare to supporting yourself are super important...

(And I think the Earned Income Tax Credit is generally considered a good model of this; the idea is that instead of cutting out benefits as soon as a person gets a job, the government continues to supplement the income until they are doing well.

a basic income that everyone gets addresses a similar problem, and a basic income + a strongly progressive income tax could probably do something similar.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#43

Post by fuck_google »

Fuzzy_Logic wrote: post #20
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…

An additional problem is one of economic calculation. Mises argued one hundred years ago that a planned economy where the state owns the means of production and arbitrarily sets prices without an open market to determine prices by supply and demand would result in economic waste and shortages. He was largely proven right by the disastrous Soviet experience. https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/excursion…

There were however plans to move from 5 year plans to realtime planning with the help of computers, which would have probably worked a bit better as the planning could have been automated, made better use of optimization and react to changes much faster.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#44

Post by godzillabrennus »

Frondo wrote: post #31
eartheaterrr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The leap you're making, that I don't understand, is that if people didn't have to work, they'd start having huge families en masse. Why do you think that would happen? Is there any basis for having that concern?

Sex is fun, it’s free, and procreation is a biologically driven part of being human.

The argument is that if we give people a basic sustainable way to live and the least motivated to improve their condition will likely fall back to the basics.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#45

Post by Banthum »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #29
landryraccoon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Small ideological sects with large families historically don't seem to take over the world.

It only seems that way because pre-1960, the world was entirely dominated by sects (e.g. religions) with large families. All the old religions are very traditionally pro-natalist for a reason. Go forth and multiply!

If the population didn't grow, it was only because there was just no more food to feed more mouths. So it was for all of human history until recently.

It's only now that there is a significant group of people who choose not to have large families, and who have the birth control technology to make it happen. As with past sects who followed this path, they will dwindle as a proportion of the population. We are in nothing like a steady state, and high-fertility groups absolutely will own the future, just as they owned the past.

Topical here is The Most Important Graph In The World:

https://www.unzcloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Populati...

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#46

Post by john_moscow »

gumby wrote: post #27
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…

> 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 t…

>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.

That's the funny part about it. USSR was basically an engineered society with eliminated "overhead" of debating, negotiating, marketing, private risk-taking, etc. It worked extremely well while the goals to achieve were basic and everyone agreed on them. If you're living in a glorified mud hut in the 20th century, it's a no-brainer that the goal #1 is to build industry, powerlines, etc.

Except once the common needs were satisfied, the system ran into stagnation. How this would be resolved in the West is a risk-taking individual starting a company, organically growing it into a bigger business, eventually creating workplaces, and in some cases - entire industries. Planned economy can't have that - the only way to create something new would be through getting state funding, i.e. being in good terms with the inner party circle. It's the same reason why big corporations often can't quickly adapt to changes lose to lean startups despite unimaginable resources available to them. Except when your entire country is one inefficient corporation, you're really fucked.

IMO, Russia is still greatly suffering from the lack of the "overhead" removed by the USSR. The majority of people expect someone else to plan and decide for them, they don't get the concept of watching for your own interests, they alienate and despise hustling and blame others for their misfortune. I really hope that's not the way U.S. is heading, because I'm not sure there is an easy way out of this kind of a trap.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#47

Post by closeparen »

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…

1) Higher income is already associated with lower fertility. Only people who are already pretty rich decide that they’re not rich enough to procreate.

2) If the market honestly has nothing for someone to do (or it’s of such low value that it falls below minimum wage), is it really a tragedy if they don’t work?

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#48

Post by cmurf »

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…

Socialism is state (in some sense the public if it is also a democracy) owning the means of production. Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production. Workers owning the means of production is syndicalism.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#49

Post by masonic »

gumby wrote: post #27
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…

> 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 t…

  they did a pretty good job in raising the very poorest our of poverty
Those who weren't outright killed during or in the wake of the revolution and pogroms, anyway. But many who DID survive did so only because of famine relief from the USA and Europe as farm collectivization went sideways.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia...

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#50

Post by yorwba »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #44
Frondo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The leap you're making, that I don't understand, is that if people didn't have to work, they'd start having huge families en masse. Why do you think that would happen? Is there any basis for having that concern?

Sex is fun, it’s free, and procreation is a biologically driven part of being human. The argument is that if we give people a basic sustainable way to live and the least motivated to improve their condition will likely fall back to the basics.

Children are annoying, though. I doubt most people would start having huge families if they can easily prevent it while still having sex.
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