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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

#141

Post by mAEStro-paNDa »

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…

Why does criticizing capitalism not fly for you, assuming that is Hickel's position?

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#142

Post by JanSt »

allworknoplay wrote: post #93

Most people here seem to be missing the point: it’s not that poverty hasn’t been moderately improved over the past 30 years, but rather that Pinker’s work has had an incredibly outsized impact on policy and influence on media narratives. Simply put, Pinker and Gates have tricked much of the world into thinking neoliberalism is the best thing ever, even though the data actually shows that the majority of the improveme…

"even though the data actually shows that the majority of the improvement comes from other brands of economic policy"

Can you expand on this? Genuinely interested.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#143

Post by kiba »

blub wrote: post #140
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…

Why is "affording to be able to buy a home" should be our definition of living standard.

It seemed to me that we have chosen to increase the cost of living by spreading ourselves out and requiring cars and making homes investments.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#144

Post by igravious »

blub wrote: post #138
igravious wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you make of this?

“Are You Ready To Consider That Capitalism Is The Real Problem?” https://www.fastcompany.com/40439316/are-you-ready-to-consid...

“Don’t Be Scared About The End Of Capitalism—Be Excited To Build What Comes Next” https://www.fastcompany.com/40454254/dont-be-scared-about-th...

---

I have no time for ideologues (from whichever side of the aisle they come) who present capitalism and socialism as mutually exclusive alternatives to all sorts of problems real and imagined.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#145

Post by blub »

kiba wrote: post #143
blub wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why is "affording to be able to buy a home" should be our definition of living standard. It seemed to me that we have chosen to increase the cost of living by spreading ourselves out and requiring cars and making homes investments.

Home and land ownership has been one of the main ways that the working class can accumulate wealth.

It's the average man's tried and true method of investing.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#146

Post by yboris »

eoinmurray92 wrote: post #70

Just to note - Branko Milanovic (cited by Roser) backed up Hickel on many of the main poinst: https://glineq.blogspot.com/2019/02/global-poverty-over-long...

I strongly recommend Branko Milanovic's book The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality as an overview of poverty across millennia.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#147

Post by Symmetry »

blub wrote: post #145
kiba wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is "affording to be able to buy a home" should be our definition of living standard. It seemed to me that we have chosen to increase the cost of living by spreading ourselves out and requiring cars and making homes investments.

Home and land ownership has been one of the main ways that the working class can accumulate wealth. It's the average man's tried and true method of investing.

Is that actually true? I mean, it was true in the US in the middle of the 20th century but it seems at odds with what I know of conditions elsewhere, though I'm not an expert.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#148

Post by zeroname »

ar0 wrote: post #127
zeroname wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say anyone is doctoring data. The data may well be true, but it may not fit your narrative. If your narrative is "people are getting poorer" you need to set the bar high, if your narrative is "people are getting richer", you need to set the bar low. In that sense it goes both ways. However, the difference between outright starving to death, being extremely poor and simply "being poor" is staggering. You woul…

To be fair, Hickel is discussing the different poverty lines because he is refuting an explicit argument from Pinker in his letter: > "2. The level at which one sets an arbitrary cutoff like “the poverty line” is irrelevant — the entire distribution has shifted, so the trend is the same wherever you set it." Hickel argues (using data) that this statement is at least not qualitatively true, as the trend is quite diffe…

Even the data that Hickel picked (excluding China) shows is that the trend is down. I'm not sure Pinker is right in that the it's true for every single social stratum everywhere across the world, I would think that certain middle-class earners are poorer today in relative terms.

However, for anyone considered poor by any reasonable standard, my guess is that the global trend is down, otherwise Hickel could've come up with that data. So in that sense the cutoff is irrelevant.

Note that Pinker in his letter talks exclusively about extreme poverty. In a free market, of course it's easier to lift people out of extreme poverty than ordinary poverty, so it should come as no surprise that the trend is even steeper there.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#149

Post by readittwice »

LaGrange wrote: post #108
readittwice wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair Pinker wrote that in a private mail. When you criticize this, then also let's not forget what on the other hand Hinkel wrote in his article published in the Guardian newspaper: > It is madness – and no amount of mansplaining from billionaires will be adequate to justify it. We can certainly discuss about the data and how to interpret it, but using such phrases in a newspaper-article isn't really helpful ei…

> wrote in his article published in the Guardian newspaper: [mansplaining] ...I mean, Hinkel's a dude too and should perhaps avoid the term, but these are men spouting nonsense and telling off more expertised people, so it's not too far off.

Hinkel shouldn't have used this term, simply because Pinker was NOT mansplaining. And AFAIK Pinker isn't a billionaire either.

Calling them mansplaining billionairs is IMHO a cheap shot. Pinker and Hinkel have different opinions - which is perfectly fine, experts disagree a lot after all. But accusing someone of mansplaining just because of having a different opinion is not correct. An expert in this area should argue differently.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#150

Post by flippin-burgers »

huffmsa wrote: post #80
benj111 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This isn't a pub, and if you're "used to a hot opener" then surely you're used to people seeing you as a jerk for persistently making provocative and racist remarks.
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