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Poverty-Fighting Startups

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Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#61

Post by sologoub »

masonic wrote: post #51
aaron-lebo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were successful by the late 30s (after lots of misery), but the Russian economy had been growing for a long time. I'm not sure the imperials or republicans couldn't have pulled it off, Russia had lots of natural advantages, especially after winning WW2. GNP: Country 1890 1900 1913 1925 1938 Russia/USSR 21 180 32 000 52 420 32 600 75 964 Germany 26 454 35 800 49 760 45 002 77 178 Britain 29 441 36 273 44 074 43 7…

The economy crashed after the revolution The loss of the war with Japan didn't help, either.

Source?

I can’t find any evidence that there was any economic significance to that war aside from loss of the fleet and human life. Bruised imperial egos for sure and likely contributing to an image of a week government, but I’m hard pressed to see how it could have had any impact on the industrial output of the country.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#62

Post by PhasmaFelis »

Top19 wrote: post #4

>“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. This app has some short-term benefits, but it’s hard to see long-term benefits. What if every government aid program was super easy to sign-up for and instantly check whatever you need. What would change? Less taxes from all the gov workers we’d no longer need?

> This app has some short-term benefits, but it’s hard to see long-term benefits. What if every government aid program was super easy to sign-up for and instantly check whatever you need. What would change?

More of the people who need those services would be able to get them?

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#63

Post by vixen99 »

throwaway1202 wrote: post #53
BurningFrog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

I believe America had it's own similar human liquidation program leading up to industrialization as well.

its own

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#64

Post by greenleafjacob »

lsc wrote: post #42
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…

>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 sinc…

In 2016, 4.9 percent of U.S. households (6.1 million households) had very low food security, essentially unchanged from 5.0 percent in 2015. In this more severe range of food insecurity, the food intake of some household members was reduced and normal eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year due to limited resources. [1]

[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/84973/err-237....

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#65

Post by ptaipale »

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…

I don't understand why you say "it's unlikely the Menshevik republicans would have pulled that off". It's what "Menshevik republicans" i.e. social democrats were doing in much of Western Europe (together with other democratic parties), and look at the results and compare them to what USSR ended up by 1991.

Of course, starting from 1917, it was not that hard to achieve progress, because the starting point was so low. NEP (the New Economic Policy of 1920's) was very efficient - but it was unorthodox in Stalin's theories, so a lot of people ended up dead or in the camps.

It puzzles me why socialists all over the world last year celebrated the October revolution (start of a new tyranny) but not the February revolution (end of old tyranny). I suppose it is because of romantic sentiments, and not knowing what actually happened.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#66

Post by abledon »

Banthum wrote: post #45
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

https://mobile.twitter.com/larrykim/status/94927974231379558...

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#67

Post by dang »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #60
mc32 wrote: post #6

At first blush it would seem that coordinating or collaborating with cooperative government agencies might be of benefit as many of these apps seem to streamline and make processes more effective for the ultimate beneficiary of the programs. Obviously this is a benefit for both the recipient and the government organization which wants to serve its pop as well as possible. As someone mentioned in the thread, efficienc…

Wait til you hear about the manufacturing industry using machinery!

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#68

Post by Parcissons »

masonic wrote: post #49
gumby wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

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

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#69

Post by Parcissons »

cmurf wrote: post #48
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…

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.

Capitalism is the private companys becoming little states of nepotism. So capitalism always leads to distributed socialism.

Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups

#70

Post by jacobush »

john_moscow wrote: post #46
gumby wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ris…

If you make the argument the USSR removed that overhead, it might be good to keep in mind, the tsars and the kosacks where busy removing it long before.
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