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

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#161

Post by aglavine » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 2:57 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…

I am from Argentina, and the "sold out to the World Bank" narrative is really harmful to my country. Stop spreading it, you're totally clueless about it.

What really made us poorer is chronic budget deficit supported by debt and inflation, and systemic corruption that weak institutions can't fight.

As an example, we have two ex-presidents-now-senators that are condemned by Justice System but protected by special legal status for senators and congress men.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#162

Post by igravious » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #147

blub wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes it's actually true.

It's more that the counter-position broadly applied over the long run is untenable.

If you don't own the home you live in and/or the land it stands on then you are by definition renting that property. A portion of your labour is going straight to someone who owns at least one home and some land thus depending on how long this goes on for drives inequality.

It's not called “Rentier Capitalism” for nothing you know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentier_capitalism

If people have a decent chance to own their own home and land it gives them an avenue to a better life, if they don't it doesn't.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#163

Post by PixyMisa » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:01 PM UTC

tmpfs wrote: post #75

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.

Bhutan?

Great, unless you're LGBT, in which case they lock you up. Or you're a journalist and write something critical of the government, in which case they lock you up. Or you practice a religion other than Buddhism or Hinduism, in which case they lock you up. Or you want to wear Nepalese clothing, in which case they skip right past locking you up and simply revoke your citizenship and kick you out of the country.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#164

Post by _fol8 » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

So this report came out yesterday: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeti....

"The 2.5% rate of annual loss (of insect biomass) over the last 25-30 years is “shocking”, Sánchez-Bayo told the Guardian: “It is very rapid. In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none.”

So, in 100 years all insects will die. All of them. And therefore us, long beforehand.

So this "reduction of poverty" through capitalist economic expansion has been achieved by the use of pesticides for cheap food, plastic, global warming etc. How can anyone claim that reduction of poverty is a good thing when it comes at the cost of the survival of the entire world ecosystem?

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#165

Post by nabla9 » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

pas wrote: post #91

nabla9 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rosner, Pinker and Co fell into the same trap they critiqued others - belief in destiny. They try to counter pessimistic destiny narratives with positive destiny narratives and selecting data that fits the narrative. You can't extrapolation the future from current trends. There are discontinuities and challenges that can change the dynamics.

Aren't they simply trying to explain and persuade people current institutions are responsible for the positive changes, and that therefore they are good, and thus we should be supporting them? Also, they seem to counter misconceptions, not advocate for blind faith in a never ending progression. Pinker actually addressed this, but unfortunately I can't remember in which book/lecture/talk/article. Largely paraphrasing…

> people current institutions are responsible for the positive changes, and that therefore they are good, and thus we should be supporting them?

Current institutions as a vague continuity or the same?

Because if Pinker and other try to argue that current institutions have been historically enough, we just continue growth, they are very much wrong.

Benefits from innovations and growth have been accompanied with massive institutional changes in every 30 years or so. The current era is becoming an exception where institutions are becoming stale after 40-50 years of the same. That threatens continuity because institutions have to change in response to the change in the environment or they collapse.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#166

Post by dahart » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

zeroname wrote: post #148

ar0 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Even the data that Hickel picked (excluding China) shows is that the trend is down.

In the infographic Gates tweeted, it claims to show a 75% reduction in global poverty between 1980 and today. In Hickels chart, it goes up 5% from 1980-2000 and down maybe 7% from 2000 to today. You’re claiming they both show a downward trend today so therefore they’re basically the same? That’s not just misleading, but also misses Hickels point. What I got out of his main point isn’t whether the trend is up or down so much as that poverty is not a solved problem. Gates’ infographic makes it look like a solved problem, like we don’t have to do anything because it’s going away on it’s own.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#167

Post by danharaj » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #97

Maro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the Factfullness book, and I thought it's really poorly argued. I remember my BP was through the roof on the plane when I was reading that. HR is not believable imo. (I work in data, I'm a physicist.)

> I thought it's really poorly argued That's interesting, because the book does not contain any arguments. It contains facts. Hard numbers gathered over generations. It's not a discussion or an argument, it's simply facts about the state of the world.

The facts that you choose to include in a book and which to not include is implicitly an argument. I doubt the book goes over how the sky is blue, grass is green, and water is wet. What facts it considers relevant to mention is the entire argument itself.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#168

Post by graedus » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

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…

I just happened to listen to that episode yesterday, it's a good one. I didn't know Hickel before, but he's one of the best guests they've had.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#169

Post by spandrew » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

It's a bit frustrating to read his follow-up letter because it largely ignores the root counterpoints Pinker made in favour of pushing the data integrity angle.

Hans spends an awful lot of time poking holes in the historical accuracy of income data. But Pinker states in very basic, understandable terms that the benchmark isn't the point — setting the benchmark at $7 or 100k doesn't stop the fact that wealthy has trended positively. Starting from 1981 or 1810 doesn't matter because it's relative: Do people have access to more wealth (things they desire) than before? The answer is yes. The other benchmarks of education and literacy round out the picture — wealth and money isn't the only thing being measured.

As much as Hans paints a utopia of open fields and shared communal livestock we know people historically chose to pillage each other's resources. Without incentive to look beyond differences we went to war and took from each other's cultures to accumulate wealth.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#170

Post by neetdeth » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

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…

“Doctor Pinker, you’re killing the patient!”

“Well that’s a fairly narrow and bigoted way of looking at it. Look at how many people are benefiting from her blood and organs.”