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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

#71

Post by benj111 »

huffmsa wrote: post #60
huffmsa wrote: post #49

England, what's with the clown show you've got going on at your unis? First the naked Brexit lady now this guy. 1) subsistence agrarian lifestyles were not better than our industrialized world. If Mr Hickel disagrees, he should lay down the pen and pick up the plow. 2) decreased child mortality and increased lifespans (thanks industrialized medicine!) means more people alive but not necessarily economically useful =>…

It appears that his keyboard warrior friends have found this comment. Down votes should really require an explanation.

Agreed, but maybe people were put off by your opening racist? Insult, and needless reference to Brexit.

I've responded to your first point, I don't agree with any of your other points either.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#72

Post by myspy »

haberman wrote: post #58
colechristensen wrote: post #2

Can anyone summarize what is going on here? It seems like a flamewar with graphs, and not interesting enough to invest the time in reading.

This is a story of competing narratives. Pinker says the world is improving by most measures, and this is a credit to our global system (though of course there is always room for improvement). Many people, including Jason Hickel, strongly object to Pinker's characterization. They think the global system is fundamentally broken and flawed and we should be ashamed for letting it happen. Ultimately it's a capitalism vs.…

I wonder why no one includes other metrics like being happy with life and having a dignified job.

Metrics that are important and overlooked. Well, I have a job, but I have to slaughter animals for it, is something I would consider here too.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#73

Post by marcus_holmes »

I'm a bit confused about the global poverty amount. What is that $7.50 exactly?

I've recently lived in Cambodia, and I'm now in Australia. $7.50 in Cambodia is enough to get three good meals and a couple of beers (for a local). $7.50 in Australia is not enough to get a single meal.

How do they calculate it so they take into account disparate purchasing power?

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#74

Post by bko »

lazyjones wrote: post #57
bko wrote: post #26

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 luxuri…

> 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. The same people always seem to forget about this when they complain about not being able to afford proper housing or to sustain a family on a single income though.

Home ownership rates in America are historically very high. It dipped since the peak in the pre 2008 when they were nearly 70% and is now around 65%. Pre-WW2 it was around 45%.

The idea that home ownership is rare and out of reach for Americans is not true.

[0] https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/housing-market-persp...

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#75

Post by tmpfs »

I think the focus on money is misplaced, forget about GDP and start measuring GNH (Gross National Happiness); it is about time the rest of the world looked to Bhutan and realized there is much more to a pleasurable human existence than simply quantifying in terms of income/money/wealth. It is an over-simplification that degrades humanity and our potential.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#76

Post by harrumph »

barrkel wrote: post #7
colechristensen wrote: post #2

Can anyone summarize what is going on here? It seems like a flamewar with graphs, and not interesting enough to invest the time in reading.

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…

> IMO globalist capitalism has increased living standards for the poorest people in countries that were well-run enough to take advantage of it, China in particular.

But China is not a market economy and as such can't be described simply as an outpost of global capitalism. It has an aggressive, state-led industrial policy, it regulates the shit out of what it does, and it exercises enormous amounts of trade protections. It is a state that admits and fosters economic liberalism in areas, but is in no way a market economy otherwise.

Pinker and Gates are here to tell us that neoliberal markets are what eradicate poverty when a) historically the reverse is true -- poverty has been exacerbated by colonialism wrought by neoliberals b) the example they keep harping on -- China -- isn't even an example of a market economy.

IMO this world is in fact getting worse for most persons living here, and there is no doubt that mouthpieces for the status quo are invested to deny this in the language Pinker et. al, use. These denials are ahistorical horseshit and will be viewed on par with trepanation and eugenics, all the more with every inch of sea level rise.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#77

Post by benj111 »

ljcn wrote: post #53
benj111 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The reason is climate change." The reason isn't climate change. The Central African Republic has just come out of a civil war. Of course things are going to improve rapidly, because that farmer that was in a refugee camp can now go home and grow enough to barely feed his family. You can't extrapolate that out to the CAR overtaking first world countries in a generation simply because that farmer hasn't been educated…

You misunderstood - the user wrote that the improvement probably won't continue due to climate change (which is expected to negatively impact developing countries more than developed).

I reread and don't think I have.

The parents contention is that climate change will prevent these countries becoming first world/that it will interrupt their growth. I'm saying even without climate change they won't become first world. Certainly not on the timescale suggested. Now I agree, climate change won't help. But the reason CAR isn't (now or in 50 years) a first world country is not down to climate change, its because they don't have any of the myriad things needed to support that type of economy.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#78

Post by huffmsa »

benj111 wrote: post #65
huffmsa wrote: post #49

England, what's with the clown show you've got going on at your unis? First the naked Brexit lady now this guy. 1) subsistence agrarian lifestyles were not better than our industrialized world. If Mr Hickel disagrees, he should lay down the pen and pick up the plow. 2) decreased child mortality and increased lifespans (thanks industrialized medicine!) means more people alive but not necessarily economically useful =>…

What's England got to do with this, and who's the naked Brexit lady? He isn't saying agrarian is better than industrialised. He's saying industrialisation was forced on them by colonialisation. Read about the Congo free state for example [1]. Also. The early stages of industrialisation aren't particularly good for a nations poorest, Britain's industrial revolution was not a land of plenty for the poor, they just went…

> They had little if any money, but then they didn’t need it in order to live well – so it makes little sense to claim that they were poor.

His argument is that you can't be poor if you don't have a concept of money, like in an agrarian society. You overlooked it because your brain knows it's not true.

Quality of life is not a dollar amount. It's all of those graphs Gates shared. Not just the first one.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#79

Post by crefflar »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #73

I'm a bit confused about the global poverty amount. What is that $7.50 exactly? I've recently lived in Cambodia, and I'm now in Australia. $7.50 in Cambodia is enough to get three good meals and a couple of beers (for a local). $7.50 in Australia is not enough to get a single meal. How do they calculate it so they take into account disparate purchasing power?

The dollars quoted are in terms of purchasing power in the United States as of 2011.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#80

Post by huffmsa »

benj111 wrote: post #71
huffmsa wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears that his keyboard warrior friends have found this comment. Down votes should really require an explanation.

Agreed, but maybe people were put off by your opening racist? Insult, and needless reference to Brexit. I've responded to your first point, I don't agree with any of your other points either.

I'm used to a hot opener making people engage the rest of the points. Real life (debates in pubs) doesn't have an "I find this disagreeable" button.
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