A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty • Hacker News Board

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#131

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

pizza234 wrote: post #67

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…

> Those poor countries are improving faster than Sweden ever did... so in just one more lifetime they'll be where the world leaders are today. This is a very simplistic extrapolation. There are significant factors, primarily social/cultural ones, that will halt the relative development of those countries, sooner or later.

There was a recent report on a long-term study of people’s attitudes regarding certain civilisational values, such as equality and acceptance of homosexuality.

The takeaway was that the Middle East today is about where the west was in the 60s.

That would seem to go quite well with OPs point that they are about “one lifetime” behind the west, specifically on the social/cultural values you mention.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#132

Post by yboris » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

A fantastic overview of poverty across the history of humanity comes in a short book: The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality Paperback by economist Branko Milanovic, in which he compares wealth and poverty across millennia.

And for a serious philosophical treatment about poverty, informed by numerous statistics comes in a long treatise World Poverty and Human Rights by philosopher Thomas W. Pogge who among other things points out the fudging of numbers by the international community. For example creating seeming amelioration of extreme world poverty by redefining malnutrition (how long it needs to persist for it to count), caloric deficit (for sedentary lifestyle rather than a hardworking farmer), redefining success (proportion of humanity rather than absolute numbers), etc. Link to relevant time in a talk by Dr. Pogge about this subject: https://youtu.be/Dsl9cyaIn-g?t=382

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#133

Post by blub » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #124

blub wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protectionism does work, every rich country protected its domestic production until it was able to compete on a global level. Doing otherwise would just result in the internal industry being bought out for pennies or being obliterated by advanced competitors. Protectionism doesn't guarantee that a country will be successful at building cars, but they should at least bloody try to before giving up. And yes, capitalism…

Not Hong Kong. It started from a good port, good government and lots of poor people and now it’s rich. Free trade all the way.

Hong Kong is not even a country, not to mention its very unusual circumstances and benefits for businesses that are located there.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#134

Post by sonnyblarney » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

sooheon wrote: post #128

sonnyblarney wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

> Hickel accuses Gates/Pinker et. al. of promoting 'hard neoliberal' (i.e. strong free market) ideals. I don't believe this characterization is fair. Gates/Pinker are selling exactly the antidote to potential guilt for "kicking away the ladder". History makes clear that "free market" ideals never apply to ourselves, only to those colonies and developing nations the IMF and World Bank can coerce into line. Argentina h…

There was effectively a uprising, a revolutionary coup and a dictatorship in Argentina during that time, causing enormous political turmoil.

And your blaming this in the 'World Bank' and 'Capitalists'?

No. Neoliberals had little to do with it.

My comment stands: Pinker is not a neoliberal, and he's not even supporting neoliberalism. Frankly neither is Bill Gates.

A 'neoliberal' would not support things like socialized medicine, or major investments in aid - which is exactly what Gates is trying to get the US to do.

Is Gates calling for lower taxes? Austerity? No?

Is Pinker calling for an end to socialized medicine? For 'Statoil' to be privatized? No.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#135

Post by 5trokerac3 » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

LaGrange wrote: post #43

So I went and read the Pinker's "rebuttal." He just casually avoided the claim about the entire base of their infographic being bogus, then went on to calling mild centre-left socialdemocrats "far leftists". Why is _anyone_ treating that guy seriously?

> If people had willingly opted into the capitalist labour system, while retaining rights to their commons and while gaining a fair share of the yields they produced, we would have a very different story on our hands.

That's straight out of Marx/Engels. I don't think far left is an unfair statement.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#136

Post by ar0 » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #62

andrewwharton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, that's only a very small part of his rebuttal, dealing specifically with the period prior to 1970, as well as the fact that GDP estimates for this period "take little if any account of the goods and resources that people may have acquired from their land, from trees, from forests, from rivers and the sea, and in the form of gifts from relatives." From 1981 onward, I would summarize his argument as being t…

> - Using $1.90 as the baseline to beat is too low for what we would consider as being out of poverty. It's called absolute poverty for a reason. Just because you're above the absolute poverty threshold doesn't mean you're not poor anymore. It just means that you can minimally survive. Whether you're poor or not depends on the society around you, because poverty determines how well you can participate in society. He…

> Yeah, it was just a coincidence that when China stated opening up their markets that their quality of life improved immensely and hundreds of millions are lifted out of extreme poverty. When you're talking about economic success in general then you can't forget the ex-Soviet states either. The ones that embraced free markets the most recovered the most.

China is interesting because you can really use it both ways: Free market enthusiasts will argue that China took off after it embraced free market reforms. State intervention enthusiasts will argue that China has been so successful because it is still very far away from the "free market policies" which e.g. the IMF is pushing on poor countries. In particular it has totally not opened up its capital markets or many of its import markets.

And the same holds for the ex-Soviet economies, too: The ex-Soviet economies that have done best are those that have joined the European Union, which most people especially on the American right would not exactly call a free market paradise.

For me, the answer to this apparent contradiction is actually quite simple: as so often, the answer lies in the middle. Total deregulation and extremely opening up your markets probably is not a good strategy to quickly pull your country out of poverty. But too much state intervention is at least as big a recipe for disaster.

Also, I would add that the optimal level of state intervention probably also depends a lot on how corruption-free your government is: with a very well functioning, corrution-free bureaucracy, you can operate effectively at a higher level of state interventionism (e.g. Scandinavia, Singapore) than if you hand that power to corrupt and/or inept officials.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#137

Post by andrewla » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

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…

> Actually here is a fairly convincing (in my opinion) response which covers this and more: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is-the-w...

This is exactly the post that the posted article is responding to, which they link to literally in the opening sentence.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#138

Post by blub » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

igravious wrote: post #114

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…

Enlightenment Now was easily Pinker's worst book. It took the counter-intuitive theme ("hey, things are not so bad when you look at the data") of Better Angels of Our Nature – which is a great book – and ran with it. Enlightenment Now is really two books: the first part deals with (chapter by chapter) a successive list of indicators of human progress. It's second part deals with the philosophical reasons behind human…

It would be more appropriate for you to point out why you think Jason Hickel is anti-capitalist. Especially because the first half of your comment discussing the hallowing of the middle class seemed pertinent to me and I would have guessed you would agree with the author.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#139

Post by igravious » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #96

pizza234 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those poor countries are improving faster than Sweden ever did... so in just one more lifetime they'll be where the world leaders are today. This is a very simplistic extrapolation. There are significant factors, primarily social/cultural ones, that will halt the relative development of those countries, sooner or later.

> primarily social/cultural ones, that will halt the relative development of those countries, sooner or later. Hans addresses this in the book, actually. What you said has no basis in fact, and makes no sense. Do you think people said exactly the same thing about Sweden a generation ago? Why / why not? We in the West have this completely-made-up assumption that "they" can't develop like "we" did, with absolutely no g…

You know what it is? I think that people flat out don't want to believe that the world can become measurably better in whole or in part. They've been told all their lives and they've believed that "things" are getting worse. When someone turns around and writes a whole book saying, "the data shows that country X is where Sweden was Y years ago; at the current rate country X will be where Sweden is now Z years from now." Their gut instinct is to not believe.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#140

Post by blub » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

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…

Rosling, Gates etc are right that things are overall getting better.

The rich are getting richer and the very poor are also doing better, but this is coming at the cost of the middle class in Western Europe and the US, where the average couple of working adults can no longer afford to buy a home and have to live with the fact that their jobs are significantly less stable compared to the past. Many are forced to work part time or take on gigs to make ends meet.

I could go on, but something's clearly rotten in the west.