Evidence on Poverty Traps from Rural Bangladesh [pdf] • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by postingpals » Tue, Dec 29, 2020, 1:11 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #70

postingpals wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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policy wasn't all that successful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women_of_China Population control is a very outdated idea, we have enough resources for the population, we just don't know how to distribute them using free market models.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

Liveable necessities like water, food, and housing, that are either wasted on inefficient food production methods or given to rent-seekers (by the economic definition of the term). No one is claiming we are post-scarcity and that everyone can have the standard of living of a millionaire, though I would argue that one having a standard of living like this could take away from other people's standard of living.

Basically my argument, since this thread is quite far down now, is that over-population is not robbing the globe of resources in any amount worth worrying about and therefore population control is not going to solve inequality since it's a distribution problem.

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

#92

Post by tremon » Tue, Dec 29, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #52

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,…

It is natural to pass resources onto your children. You can’t expect people to just see their children as individuals who must go fend for themselves. A stranger might just regard your children as mere “people”, but a parent see’s their children as extensions of themselves, and have a vested interest in ensuring their happiness and well-being.

You can’t expect people to just see their children as individuals who must go fend for themselves

Why not? There's plenty of people arguing for exactly that mechanism when it's not about their own children. A 100% inheritance tax (with no loopholes through business or legal constructs) might force a lot of people to rethink how they vote -- because then, they can't use their wealth to shield their children from how society functions any more.

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

#93

Post by viraptor » Tue, Dec 29, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

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…

> "we hire only according to merit"

There doesn't have to be anything contradictory here. Diversity efforts can work to offset biases and enable getting closer to meritocracy. For example hiring the best in your network coming from a high-class university doesn't mean you're hiring the best overall. The diversity effort may be for example to make sure that the job offer is visible to the brilliant person who wouldn't even find it otherwise. Or it may be an effort to ensure a less biased review (masking names?) Or it's making sure that people do behave well internally, so the company isn't avoided by the best people for hiring racist assholes for example.

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

#94

Post by PragmaticPulp » Tue, Dec 29, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

Please note that this study is in the context of extreme poverty in populations such as rural villages in Bangladesh.

It’s an interesting study and worth reading if you’re interested in what it takes to lift these populations out of poverty. The authors propose that their extreme poverty is a meta-stable state that prevents them from accessing wealth-building opportunities. The authors show that time-limited wealth transfers of sufficiently large size can help these people escape the meta-stable poverty state and transition into a wealth-accumulating state.

However, the comments here rushing to project the conclusions on to the relatively wealthy (on a global scale) citizens of countries like the US and Europe are abusing the study’s conclusions. Similar wealth traps may exist in these countries, but the relative thresholds would be akin to a homeless person living on the streets trying to secure a job. Attempts to project these study results on to things like hiring practices at big tech companies, where anyone able to apply at all is already orders of magnitude more wealthy and privileged than the subjects of this study, are missing the point entirely.

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

#95

Post by afuchs » Tue, Dec 29, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #55

Dirlewanger wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is "being smart" a genetic lottery? Are you serious? That brings up all sorts of implications with race and whatnot. "Being smart" is often a proxy for the things the GP mentions: strong stable family, access to good schooling, and a sprinkle of luck.

Heritability of IQ is >50%, and IQ is a good measure of smartness.

The previous comment's argument appears to be that heritability of "being smart" is not strictly limited to genetic factors, that measures of "smartness" such as an IQ score also measure other factors that are not strictly related to genetics

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

#96

Post by AsyncAwait » Tue, Dec 29, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

esc_colon_q wrote: post #61

AsyncAwait wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I personally just think everything works better when the best people are in charge and rewarded for being the best.

The problem is that they're not necessarily the best i.e. some poor person if given the same resources, education, access etc. might in fact do a lot better with what they have, we'll just never know.

I mean if you look at the state of today's world, handling of COVID, shams like Nikola etc. are these really the 'best' people humanity has to offer?

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

#97

Post by drhagen » Tue, Dec 29, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

> A first indication of this is seen in Figure 1a which shows a kernel density estimate of the distribution of productive assets pooling all wealth classes. The distribution is bimodal, with a mass of households around 0.25 and 6.5, and hardly anyone in between.

This is an important result in understanding how to get people out of poverty in undeveloped countries, but I suspect it won't translate well to industrialized countries like many in the comments are suggesting. The key result seems to be dependent on the bimodal wealth distribution. (Giving a cow to someone in the lower bucket was enough to push her into the next bucket.) Income distributions from industrialized countries look like the cleanest log normal distributions you've ever seen, so there just isn't evidence of a great repulser in higher income countries that you could push poor people over like they do in this study.

Caveat: They imply that income and consumption are bimodal, but never plot them, only wealth. Wealth is notoriously hard to measure, and I can only find good histograms of income for the USA. Income and wealth should track each other, at least over a log scale, but I am not comparing exactly the same thing.

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

#98

Post by sdfin » Tue, Dec 29, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

tremon wrote: post #87

sdfin wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? I believe that rather than notions of status the main factor that determines salaries is supply and demand of workers.

How many nurses have seen their salary increase due to the shortage of nursing staff due to Covid?

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/24/health/covid-nurses-big-m...

https://work.chron.com/salaries-changed-nurses-23316.html

I don't understand your skepticism.

edit: corrected wrong second link

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

#99

Post by enriquec » Tue, Dec 29, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

anemoiac wrote: post #85

orange_tee wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Hierarchy is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon. We can reduce levels of inequality without producing the negative outcomes you fear. I’m not sure whether this applies to you (I’m not implying that it does), but I continually find it interesting to hear Americans expressing the fear that acting to reduce inequality will somehow limit social mobility, as if they don’t realize that much of the developed world has greater…

In every instance I've seen, redistribution does limit mobility - as well as introduces a middleman (the redistributors that steal/war/lie/oppress), corruption, politics, and extreme inefficiencies. You keep harping on the US, but it is one of - if not the most - upwardly mobile societies in history. One of my favorite anecdotes is how the 'unclassy american tourist' is a product of us being the first society to afford sending our middle/lower-class abroad for fun. And I'm proud of that.

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

#100

Post by slfnflctd » Tue, Dec 29, 2020, 1:17 PM UTC

sul_tasto wrote: post #14

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…

“ Above all we need to focus on delivering opportunity via improved circumstances and empowerment, irrespective of merit or success: that is the only path to actual equality.” Please consider that you are advocating for communism. I hope you will consider reviewing the histories of China and the USSR, et al. after World War 2. The critique and solution you offer do not lead to “actual equality.”

It's difficult for me to believe this observation is being trashed so hard.

No, meritocracy likely is not the best system. It just happens to be better than the others we've tried at scale so far-- including attempting to give everyone the same opportunities regardless of ability. What else is being described there, if not communism? What am I missing?

The real underlying problem is that we are strongly predisposed to naturally arrange into hierarchies. That's not something you're going to take out of people. When you try, they spontaneously form their own. In a system where you say you're giving everyone equal opportunity, people will still pursue acquiring power over others, and will try to hold on to it when they get it. We aren't likely to stop this behavior, and if we do, at that point I'd argue we would essentially be a different species.