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Evidence on Poverty Traps from Rural Bangladesh [pdf]

lse.ac.uk

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Re: Evidence on Poverty Traps from Rural Bangladesh [pdf]

#61

Post by esc_colon_q »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #16
padolsey wrote: post #2

These conclusions seem to spit in the face of "meritocracy". It's always puzzled me that this idea of meritocracy, especially in tech (notably USA), is so pervasive, bleeding into our corporate performance reviews and our pro-diversity efforts ("we hire only according to merit" ). But it is so internally irrational. I'm reminded of this argument: > The case against meritocracy can be put psychologically: (a) The abol…

I suspect many who believe in meritocracy are already successful people who like to tell themselves they got there by merely being so much smarter than everyone else around them, dismissing the access, luck, (i.e. quality of schools they were born near), family wealth etc. almost entirely as a factor.

I personally just think everything works better when the best people are in charge and rewarded for being the best. Yes, there's tons of luck, and it's not fair in any "everyone deserves a shot" sense. Still a better strategy, because most people are bad at most things. We should take care of them, but we should not pretend they're competent if they're not.

Re: Evidence on Poverty Traps from Rural Bangladesh [pdf]

#62

Post by absolutelyrad »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #38
solatic wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unequal distribution of rewards (i.e. according to merit) is fine and desirable (as a motivating force). The problem's roots are when the distribution of rewards becomes hereditary , that the children of the wealthy have near-guaranteed access to the best educational and social institutions, have near-guaranteed access to startup capital (i.e. from their parents), are usually provided with necessities (food, housing,…

Practically the only reason I accumulate any resources or am productive at all is for the benefit of my child. I wouldn't think twice about committing violence against anyone who tried to stop me.

Exactly. And people who want wealth inequalities to fade away, can they explain people who have better looks due to better genetics. Then they carry for their next generations. Maybe also force attractive people to mate with less attractive ones so these inequalities also go away? Sounds insane doesn't it? This is equally insane idea.

This is just unfair to everyone. It is wrong, immoral, unethical to tax the wealth of people, if you don't account for other inequalities in life. The inequalities will persist, just that when assets, money isn't that medium of storage, people will only value looks and other things even more, because that's how you'd effectively store your wealth, untaxable. The genes of the people become the platform for storing wealth in that kind of world. The only place where breaking or taxing people' wealth is agreeable is when they become too powerful and above governments. No other excuse.

This is something seriously overlooked.

Why do some guys get all the girls and some don't. Isn't it unfair to those guys that they have their needs emotionally met just like any other successful humans? If you are so fair, fix these problems. Everyone has feelings, and it's not their fault that they're bitter about it.

Is it those men's mistake that they were born in this world? And they couldn't even do anything to rectify that problem when the baseline is so high to reach?

Everyday I read about these people and it makes me sad. Thankfully I don't have any of those problems, but I can't overlook those who do have them. Atleast they'd have a chance in todays world had they pushed themselves and become wealthier.

This isn't only about men, but women too.

When you save money and forgo pleasures, you aren't supposed to be penalized.

Re: Evidence on Poverty Traps from Rural Bangladesh [pdf]

#63

Post by [deleted] »

abhinav22 wrote: post #3

For those who want a TL;DR, below is an extract of the summary. I think they did a good job, the article was well written. Poverty traps are one of the most fundamental concepts in development economics. The contri- bution of this paper has been to provide evidence for their existence using the combination of a randomized asset transfer and an 11 year follow up in rural Bangladesh. Our key finding is that people stay…

[deleted]

Re: Evidence on Poverty Traps from Rural Bangladesh [pdf]

#64

Post by thundergolfer »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #38
solatic wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unequal distribution of rewards (i.e. according to merit) is fine and desirable (as a motivating force). The problem's roots are when the distribution of rewards becomes hereditary , that the children of the wealthy have near-guaranteed access to the best educational and social institutions, have near-guaranteed access to startup capital (i.e. from their parents), are usually provided with necessities (food, housing,…

Practically the only reason I accumulate any resources or am productive at all is for the benefit of my child. I wouldn't think twice about committing violence against anyone who tried to stop me.

With the words you’ve used, you sound threatening and extreme. What do you mean by someone trying to stop you “accumulating resources” for your child?

Re: Evidence on Poverty Traps from Rural Bangladesh [pdf]

#65

Post by stuaxo »

orange_tee wrote: post #24
padolsey wrote: post #2

These conclusions seem to spit in the face of "meritocracy". It's always puzzled me that this idea of meritocracy, especially in tech (notably USA), is so pervasive, bleeding into our corporate performance reviews and our pro-diversity efforts ("we hire only according to merit" ). But it is so internally irrational. I'm reminded of this argument: > The case against meritocracy can be put psychologically: (a) The abol…

You are so focused on economic inequality that you ignore the greater picture: there will still be a hierarchy. There will still be humans dominating other humans and asserting themselves above them. Maybe in the far future humans will create a social technology to live in true equality but in the immediate future this is clearly not happening. As long as there is a hierarchy, you cannot really have equality, sorry.…

> As long as there is a hierarchy, you cannot really have equality, sorry. You make humans more economically equal and you create an even worse situation where human hierarchy is based on family name, connections, genetics or just plain violence and social mobility would be even worse than it is now, where it is dictated by income and wealth.

This sounds like a bit of a stretch. Let's try and make people a bit more equal first.

Re: Evidence on Poverty Traps from Rural Bangladesh [pdf]

#66

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

Dumbdo wrote: post #31
sul_tasto wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that we separate children from their parents?

Interesting strawman. There are a lot of other ways to control inheritance than separating children from their parents.

Not really, because as mentioned the mere fact that the children have access to their parent's wealth while they are growing up already confers significant advantage.

Re: Evidence on Poverty Traps from Rural Bangladesh [pdf]

#67

Post by PragmaticPulp »

padolsey wrote: post #2

These conclusions seem to spit in the face of "meritocracy". It's always puzzled me that this idea of meritocracy, especially in tech (notably USA), is so pervasive, bleeding into our corporate performance reviews and our pro-diversity efforts ("we hire only according to merit" ). But it is so internally irrational. I'm reminded of this argument: > The case against meritocracy can be put psychologically: (a) The abol…

> It's always puzzled me that this idea of meritocracy, especially in tech (notably USA), is so pervasive,

This study looks at some of the poorest villages in Bangladesh with some additional data from other very poor countries.

Anyone who even has a shot at applying to a USA tech company is already wildly more wealthy than the type of poverty discussed in this study. In fact, they’d be firmly past the threshold the study identified as the minimum wealth necessary to engage with wealth-building jobs.

The conclusions don’t really apply at all to situations like a US tech company, unless you’re trying to understand why homeless people living on the streets aren’t able to get jobs at an Amazon warehouse or other entry-level jobs. Trying to project this on to hiring practices of educated candidates into high paying tech jobs is ignoring the core focus of the study.

Re: Evidence on Poverty Traps from Rural Bangladesh [pdf]

#68

Post by donatj »

theelous3 wrote: post #20
padolsey wrote: post #2

These conclusions seem to spit in the face of "meritocracy". It's always puzzled me that this idea of meritocracy, especially in tech (notably USA), is so pervasive, bleeding into our corporate performance reviews and our pro-diversity efforts ("we hire only according to merit" ). But it is so internally irrational. I'm reminded of this argument: > The case against meritocracy can be put psychologically: (a) The abol…

This is all well and good to argue around a very literal meritocracy, but I don't think anyone actually argues for this. It's not just "lol, 1 - 1 = 0, meritocracy is impossible". The underlying principal, as I understand it, is that it's unreasonable to think for example, that mark zuck literally does millions of time more work than say, a senior software dev at a middle size company, or a farmer. Yet zuck is compen…

> it's unreasonable to think for example, that mark zuck literally does millions of time more work than say, a senior software dev at a middle size company

Careful not to confuse work and value. Sheer labor is worth minimum wage, the value of someone is far more than their hourly labor.

A well connected person can bring many many times the value to a company of someone without connections.

The right strong personality can be a performance amplifier for the rest of the company, Steve Jobs can be argued to be an example of that.

The long and short of it though is a person who makes the people beneath themselves work more valuable is worth that added value, and arguably deserves a proportional portion of said added value.

Re: Evidence on Poverty Traps from Rural Bangladesh [pdf]

#69

Post by tremon »

padolsey wrote: post #2

These conclusions seem to spit in the face of "meritocracy". It's always puzzled me that this idea of meritocracy, especially in tech (notably USA), is so pervasive, bleeding into our corporate performance reviews and our pro-diversity efforts ("we hire only according to merit" ). But it is so internally irrational. I'm reminded of this argument: > The case against meritocracy can be put psychologically: (a) The abol…

(a) Allocating rewards irrespective of merit is a prerequisite for meritocracy, otherwise environments cannot be equalized; (b) allocating rewards according to merit is a prerequisite for meritocracy, otherwise people cannot be stratified by wealth and status; (c) therefore, a class-stratified meritocracy is impossible.

This is a disingenuous argument. (a) and (b) are not talking about the same kind of rewards:

(a) : when talking about the equalization of environments, the "rewards" are allocated to areas and groups of people, not to individuals.

(b) : the stratification of wealth is talking about "rewards" to individual people.

These two concepts are not the same, the mechanisms are not the same, and the justification for them is not the same. They're only grouped together as "rewards" so they lead to the false conclusion (c).

Re: Evidence on Poverty Traps from Rural Bangladesh [pdf]

#70

Post by lotsofpulp »

postingpals wrote: post #18
iridium_core wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of this is due to over-population? If the population of Bangladesh was 80 million instead of 160 million - giving each person access to theoretically double the amount of resources and land - would the net improvement be greater than 2x? What about 40 million - would the improvement be 4x? The solution may ultimately be a one-child policy, as demonstrated successfully by China.

China's policy wasn't all that successful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women_of_China Population control is a very outdated idea, we have enough resources for the population, we just don't know how to distribute them using free market models.

> we have enough resources for the population,

How is this calculated? Are there enough resources for 8B people go to Tahiti or equivalent destinations for their honeymoon?

Because that’s where the conflict comes in. There might be enough resources to feed everyone some basic meals everyday, but is there enough for everyone to have their own single family detached house with a yard and a couple personal vehicles? Is there enough to ensure everyone can fly around the world to see their relatives or vacation? Is there enough desirable land for people to move to from their currently undesirable land (due to weather/accessibility/availability of fruits and good food)?

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