A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

Gates and Pinker are promoting the idea that the world is getting better overall, economically, and that poverty reduction is a real thing. They point to advances in economic development as a major driver of this.

The 'rebuttal' is a little tricky. Hickel argues that the data is bad (at least before 1980's). Moreover, he argues that it's really only in China that people have dramatically 'come out of poverty' and that the data without China shows an increase in poverty.

Hickel accuses Gates/Pinker et. al. of promoting 'hard neoliberal' (i.e. strong free market) ideals. I don't believe this characterization is fair.

Hickel argues that neoliberal policies pursued by IMF etc. have led to setbacks and that China i.e. the 'winner' in this area is not capitalist, rather more or less 'statist/nationalist' etc..

Pinker is publicly lamenting this Hinker guy as 'far left' etc. which is an odd twist due to the ad hominem.

Pinker is not arguing that economic neoliberalism is perfect.

Almost nobody is.

The author nit-picks some of the numbers, noting that the poverty numbers prior to some date are unreliable. But this is all meaningless as the numbers aren't Pinker's point. The point is that society is getting richer and both relative and absolute poverty is dropping across the world.

I think most reasonable people would believe this to be true. Those of us old enough remember a time where we didn't have the luxuries we have today. We had a choice of three channels on television, paid exorbitant long distance fees to call our family abroad and rarely traveled by plane. And that changed over the last 100 years or so. Surely on a larger time-scale we would notice even greater change (indoor plumbing, air conditioning, antibiotics, food safety).

But the author doesn't see that:

> As to my actual claims about the past, my argument was straightforward. I simply pointed out that we cannot ignore the fact that the period 1820 to circa 1950 was one of violent dispossession across much of the global South. If you have read any colonial history, you will know colonizers had immense difficulty getting people to work on their mines and plantations. As it turns out, people tended to prefer their subsistence lifestyles, and wages were not high enough to induce them to leave. Colonizers had to coerce people into the labour market: imposing taxes, enclosing commons and constraining access to food, or just outright forcing people off their land.

Yes, people joined the urbanization movement but only did so kicking and screaming. They were perfectly happy living subsistence lifestyles.

This strikes me as not only wrong but somewhat offensive. I don't know anything about the author but I don't think he lives or has lived a subsistence lifestyle, and neither have I. But from everything I read from less ideologically minded researchers, it was a brutal existence. It is a lot easier to live this subsistence lifestyle today. The world is still a large place. You can easily buy a cabin in the woods and avoid taxes. Ironically, the capitalist system the author likes to criticize promotes property rights that allows for living off the grid.

So I welcome the author the chance to grasp his full potential and go off the grid. He and his followers could buy 100 acres in Texas for 75k, and pay only $500 in annual tax [0].

[0] https://www.landwatch.com/Hudspeth-County-Texas-Land-for-sal...

It seems to me that the whole debate would benefit from some Quantum Thinking.

The world can get better and worse at the same time. Poverty can go away in some parts and increase (in absolute or relative terms) in others.

People can be more happy because they don't starve, don't die from trivial diseases and don't get murdered anymore on the street - while at the same time starting to be depressed about lack of meaning or sense of belonging, senseless (but well-paid) jobs, worries about allergies, eating animals, stress, climate change or whatever thing they worry about basic needs are met.

There is just no point to attempt to come to a conclusion from a binary set of options ("things getting better" vs "things getting worse").

In my eyes, this question is too complex, too philosophical and too subjective for anyone to actually come to an absolute, definite and unassailable conclusion which everyone else could stand behind.

"is that the poorest countries in the world are currently improving faster than any country ever did, at any point in history. "

This isn't surprising and the reasoning isn't that hard.

Economic advancement is very hard if you have to 'figure out how to do it' i.e. intensive R&D.

But if you are 'far behind' and there are examples to copy, you can just copy.

Developing nations not only have many examples, but they have access to capital, credit etc.. Many of them have natural resources to get things gong. As long as there is conscientious leadership - they can grow quickly.

There are examples of countries growing 'even more quickly' than such developing nations - and those are post-war nations. Nations that already have functioning institutions, when faced with a cataclysmic shock of war - don't need to build from scratch, rather, they are 'repairing' their economy.

Europe, S. Korea, Japan in the post-war years really boomed.

China, one might argue is not just 'developing' but it's 'snapping back' after a long period of oppression.

But once development reaches a certain level, it tends to slow, and come in line with the development of other advanced nations.

You can see this glowingly with Japan and S. Korea as they rockted forward, but are now in the slog with the rest of us.

When you have 'no roads' - investment decisions are easy.

But when everyone has 'stuff' ... well ... it's a lot harder.