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A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

jasonhickel.org

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Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#31

Post by baragiola »

>Remember, this is the period of the Belgian labour system in the Congo, which so upended local economies that 10 million people died – half the population. This is the period of the Natives Land Act in South Africa, which dispossessed the country’s black population of 90% of the country. This is the period of the famines in India, where 30 million died needlessly as a result of policies the British imposed on Indian agriculture. This is the period of the Opium Wars in China and the unequal treaties that immiserated the population. And don’t forget: all of this was conducted in the name of the “free market”.

Free market doesn't just mean low or no taxes. People will do all sort of evil things and hide behind some nice ideal.

The important thing is that none of those countries are doing it anymore and those who do, are quite the opposite of free market capitalist countries (ie, North Korea)

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#32

Post by heyjudy »

Must reads about what was done to South America:

- Various works by Smedley Butler, c. 20th c.

- A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (Español: Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias), c. 1542

- The well-researched videos of TheHistoryGuy on YT. Bunga! Bunga!

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#33

Post by padobson »

The process of forcibly integrating colonized peoples into the capitalist labour system caused widespread dislocation (a history I cover in The Divide). Remember, this is the period of the Belgian labour system in the Congo, which so upended local economies that 10 million people died – half the population. This is the period of the Natives Land Act in South Africa, which dispossessed the country’s black population of 90% of the country. This is the period of the famines in India, where 30 million died needlessly as a result of policies the British imposed on Indian agriculture. This is the period of the Opium Wars in China and the unequal treaties that immiserated the population. And don’t forget: all of this was conducted in the name of the “free market”.

This paragraph basically backs up all of Pinker's criticisms. No one advocating for neoliberal capitalism would suggest that any of the evils of colonialization are the policies that most quickly brought prosperity to developing nations. Pinker is advocating that as economies become more free, they become more prosperous. There's nothing free about forced labor or death marches.

The bit on "absolute povery numbers" is insane:

The poverty rate has worsened dramatically since 1981, from 3.2 billion to 4.2 billion, according to World Bank data.

This willfully ignores the fact that the world population has gone from 4.5 billion to 7.5 billion, because of plummeting mortality rates and access to healthcare and infrastructure. 3 billion extra people survived in 30 years. That's CRAZY! We should be having parades about that everyday.

And the main problem with his poverty metric is that he's changing the numbers to obfuscate the progress. It doesn't matter if you use $1.90/day, $3.20/day, $5.50/day or $7.40/day. What matters is that fewer people live on the wrong side of the line today than they did yesterday, and fewer people did yesterday than the day before, and that has happened every single day for the past 30 years.

Almost every example he uses of capitalism being bad are really colonialism enforced by state power. He rightly points out that some countries enjoyed increased prosperity when they freed themselves from their colonial powers, but that only enforces Pinker's arguments.

Hickel spends most of this piece turning Pinker's arguments into strawmen. It's a marxist rant with cherry-icked stats that don't actually support his position. He should rightfully be dismissed as a bad faith actor in the conversation.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#34

Post by goatlover »

smolder wrote: post #12
derriz wrote: post #9

Hickels rebuttal in the letter is that GDP cannot be used to gauge poverty which he claims has only been measured directly by the UN since 1981. But if you look around the world today, GDP/head is a remarkaby strong indicator of the level of poverty in a country. Nevermind that all the other quality of life stats: life expectency, child morality, average working hours, literacy, education levels, food affordability s…

Things are always getting worse in some way or another, at the same time they get better in other ways. Lowering poverty doesn't change that we're doing irreversible damage to major ecosystems.

> we're doing irreversible damage to major ecosystems.

A potential rebuttal is to think of ecosystems as dynamics systems made up of species always adapting to changes, instead of something pristinely in balance that we've wrecked.

Then the question becomes whether current changes to ecosystems can continue supporting us as their balance shifts, instead of thinking solely in apocalyptic terms. Life as a whole is more resilient than we give it credit for.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#35

Post by heyjudy »

grecy wrote: post #13

One of the most amazing things I learned reading the excellent "Factfullness" by Hans Rosling [1] is that the poorest countries in the world are currently improving faster than any country ever did, at any point in history. That's correct - countries like Lesotho and Central African Republic are improving faster than his home country of Sweden ever did, at any time. In only his lifetime Sweden went from having an inf…

Yet you fail to mention the thousands of deaths every month from Al Shabab and the genocides and famines that have happened repeatedly throught the continent. Putting lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig.

China and India can pour all the money they want into various countries' infrastructure, it can all come tumbling down with the next disputed election or sectarian genocide.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#36

Post by sonnyblarney »

barry-cotter wrote: post #11
barrkel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I followed this a little bit when it popped up on Twitter last week. The fight appears to be about whether rising global prosperity is helping poor people or mostly just poor people in China; and around the edges, about whether your definition of poor is simply GDP, or includes other harder to quantify things like commons, or if you want to measure it against the US poverty line at purchasing power parity dollars. It…

GDP per capita has increased everywhere but Africa and that appears to be improving now in Africa. Living standards as measured by deaths in childbirth, infant mortality, lifespan, healthy lifespan, education and literacy have improved almost everywhere, even in places with no economy of more dependent on aid like Afghanistan, Niger or Chad. The absolute number of people in poverty may not be declining much outside C…

"Neoliberalism has brought more people out of poverty"

How about just Economic Liberalism, and good governance, and not 'Neoliberalism'?

Because the neoliberals want government out of almost everything, so they can sell all those Africans Nike shoes for 50x the cost to be made.

In between the two arguments there's a fair point: China's growth can't be characterized as 'neoliberal' or else they would be a total open market! But there are strong capital controls, a politicized currency etc. etc. so it can't be called 'neoliberal'.

I think 'basic economic freedom' with 'intelligent governance' and possibly 'national strategies' in key areas like natural resources where it makes sense (i.e. Statoil in Norway) or education and healthcare where there is a dramatic need. And yes - even economic protectionism in certain areas.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#37

Post by notahacker »

derriz wrote: post #9

Hickels rebuttal in the letter is that GDP cannot be used to gauge poverty which he claims has only been measured directly by the UN since 1981. But if you look around the world today, GDP/head is a remarkaby strong indicator of the level of poverty in a country. Nevermind that all the other quality of life stats: life expectency, child morality, average working hours, literacy, education levels, food affordability s…

Well that's half his argument on the stats: the other half suggests that even assuming modern figures are accurate it's tendentious to claim that people are no longer in poverty simply because their estimated incomes have reached the heady heights of ~$2 in US purchasing power per day, and implies the low level of poverty line has been deliberately selected to paint a rosy picture. There's little doubt that many other indicators are moving in positive directions but it's rather less clear that education and healthcare improvements are the product of the benefits of increased local market competition and global capital mobility (the author attributes them to state spending and [slow] adoption of technological advances the developed world saw a long time ago). That becomes important when one notes that the proportion of the world earning less than $10 per day is actually rising (due in part to population growth being boosted by increased survival rates) despite developing and middle income countries being better educated and more productive than ever before. Again, there are tenable arguments that due to the weaknesses of PPP calculations, many living on $10 per day live lifestyles that certainly don't resemble poverty, but others do and the unavoidable shortcoming of methods comparing people with vastly different living conditions, expectations and means of earning them is part of the problem with pure Pinker optimism.

I'm also suspicious of apocalypse narratives and suspect I'd disagree with the blog author on many things, but I'm also suspicious of unqualified feelgood narratives in order to promote support for a particular world order

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#38

Post by Aeolun »

goatlover wrote: post #21
hannob wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so in just one more lifetime they'll be where the world leaders are today. This is where you are probably wrong and which so often is used in the narrative of "things are getting better". You make an implicit assumption that this development will go on. It probably won't. The reason is climate change.

> It probably won't. The reason is climate change. But as is the case with automation predictions and massive net job destruction, it hasn't happened yet. So it's possible we're wrong about such predictions. We've been wrong in the past about environmental doom and job loss. Or maybe not this time, but we should keep that in mind and be a little bit skeptical about our current state of knowledge when predicting the f…

Anecdotally, I’ve seen more climate related disasters in the past year than in the previous 5 before that.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#39

Post by thiagoharry »

goatlover wrote: post #21
hannob wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so in just one more lifetime they'll be where the world leaders are today. This is where you are probably wrong and which so often is used in the narrative of "things are getting better". You make an implicit assumption that this development will go on. It probably won't. The reason is climate change.

> It probably won't. The reason is climate change. But as is the case with automation predictions and massive net job destruction, it hasn't happened yet. So it's possible we're wrong about such predictions. We've been wrong in the past about environmental doom and job loss. Or maybe not this time, but we should keep that in mind and be a little bit skeptical about our current state of knowledge when predicting the f…

We also have been wrong in the past about the end of poverty and the gap between countries. These predictions usually focus just in technology improvements, ignoring politics, both internal as international.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#40

Post by arethuza »

roenxi wrote: post #23
derriz wrote: post #9

Hickels rebuttal in the letter is that GDP cannot be used to gauge poverty which he claims has only been measured directly by the UN since 1981. But if you look around the world today, GDP/head is a remarkaby strong indicator of the level of poverty in a country. Nevermind that all the other quality of life stats: life expectency, child morality, average working hours, literacy, education levels, food affordability s…

> promoters of apocalyse narratives ... [b]oth hard left and hard right both require people to believe the "world getting worse and worse" There are still veterans of WWII alive today, and that was pretty much an apocalypse for the people involved. Just because the last 50 years have been peaceful doesn't mean good times are guaranteed, we should remain cautious of threats. Change is extremely rapid. Many of the issu…

And there are even more people (myself included) who lived through part of the Cold War and realise that we just got through that period by sheer luck and the good judgement of a handful of people on both sides.
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