Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The history of the end of poverty has just begun

ourworldindata.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 449 posts

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#271

Post by BurningFrog »

boucher wrote: post #207
kryogen1c wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> creates enormous inequality i dont know why everyone keeps getting away with statement like this. the proposition of equality as a meaningful metric is absurd at every level of examination. no one is equal to anyone else except on the most trivial and simplistic terms about anything. do you feel inferior to rich people? do you feel superior to poor people? what hogwash. i reject this axiom that inequality is bad. p…

Inequality has nothing to do with feeling superior or inferior to others (though, our culture absolutely does encourage those beliefs). In a world with limited resources, huge levels of inequality necessarily means that a small group of people are consuming vastly more of the available resources than everyone else. It also tends to concentrate political power in the same small group. Many people would say there is so…

The world has limited resources, but that doesn't mean wealth is limited.

People create wealth by work and trade.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#272

Post by seanmcdirmid »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #268
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tokyo has dirt cheap rent compared to the states You can rent small two and a half tatami sized apartments in Tokyo that wouldn’t even be legal to let in most of the west. Is that what they mean by reducing zoning rules? Also, by basically mandating that all housing be rebuilt every 20-30 years, Tokyo effectively prevents speculation on residential real estate (housing depreciates as it gets older, negating land ap…

I’m talking about comparing 1br’s to 1br’s. Japan tearing down building after 20-30 years is, as far as I’ve seen, greatly exaggerated. You see apartment complexes all over the place obviously older than that.

A two and a half tatami is a one bedroom, just a very small one. Are you comparing square meter to square meter?

Also, https://www.rethinktokyo.com/news/2019/02/12/whats-lifespan-...

47 is the max, rebuilding is possible. Regardless, older structures are cheaper than newer ones. From:

https://thetokyofiles.wordpress.com/2016/02/25/in-japan-home...

> “half of all homes in Japan are demolished within 38 years — compared to 100 years in the U.S. There is virtually no market for pre-owned homes in Japan, and 60 percent of all homes were built after 1980. In Yoshida’s estimation, while land continues to hold value, physical homes become worthless within 30 years. Other studies have shown this to happen in as little as 15 years.”

I’m all for a similar culture in the USA, it would cut down on rampant and pointless residential real estate speculation.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#273

Post by hkt »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #140
hkt wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most crashes are caused by misallocated capital in the markets, and state intervention on a massive scale is usually the answer. The state isn't an amazing tool, but it is the best one we have. It can bring about universal healthcare and education, mass housebuilding programmes, regulation and optimisation of dysfunctional markets.. and even put human beings on the moon. Meanwhile, "investors" pile money into.. um, d…

>Meanwhile, "investors" pile money into.. um, dogecoin? And why are they doing this? The trail leads right back to... government. "Side effects include investors to dumping money into sketchy stuff because nothing else returns worth a crap" is one of the big gripes people have with 2008+ fed policy.

True, bonds should be a safer investmemt. But the fact is, investors are doing stupid things and the markets just aren't rational. They never were.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#274

Post by BurningFrog »

coldtea wrote: post #48

One problem, other comments hint on the same thing, is that poverty is not an absolute, it's relative. We would consider ourselves poor if we lived as a family of five in a tiny early 20th New York immigrant's appartment, even though we'd be much better off than a feudal peasant living in a straw hut with no electricity and a distant water well (the "working class" of its day), which in turn would be must better off…

You can think of poverty both in relative and absolute terms.

The article is explicitly about absolute poverty, so your arguments around relative poverty are irrelevant for it.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#275

Post by BurningFrog »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #53
coldtea wrote: post #48

One problem, other comments hint on the same thing, is that poverty is not an absolute, it's relative. We would consider ourselves poor if we lived as a family of five in a tiny early 20th New York immigrant's appartment, even though we'd be much better off than a feudal peasant living in a straw hut with no electricity and a distant water well (the "working class" of its day), which in turn would be must better off…

In many of the places I have heard of the people who are moving to the sweatshops themselves are rejoicing in the change because the alternatives are subsistence farming or sex work, and staying around with their "tribe".

The people who work at sweatshops do so because it's a better option than any other in their society.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#276

Post by visarga »

DarylZero wrote: post #255
visarga wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with perfect automation you'd still need to provide the raw materials, that means it can't be free. Unless you recycle perfectly.

Extracting the raw materials can also be automated.

Yes, if you have them or can recycle. It would be great to find ways to build everything with materials that are plentiful but sometimes it's not possible. Perfect automation is like biology, it can work and replicate on its own but sill needs to compete for limited resources in the ecosystem.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#277

Post by refurb »

boucher wrote: post #207
kryogen1c wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> creates enormous inequality i dont know why everyone keeps getting away with statement like this. the proposition of equality as a meaningful metric is absurd at every level of examination. no one is equal to anyone else except on the most trivial and simplistic terms about anything. do you feel inferior to rich people? do you feel superior to poor people? what hogwash. i reject this axiom that inequality is bad. p…

Inequality has nothing to do with feeling superior or inferior to others (though, our culture absolutely does encourage those beliefs). In a world with limited resources, huge levels of inequality necessarily means that a small group of people are consuming vastly more of the available resources than everyone else. It also tends to concentrate political power in the same small group. Many people would say there is so…

huge levels of inequality necessarily means that a small group of people are consuming vastly more of the available resources than everyone else.

Are Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk consuming vastly more available resources?

I mean most of their wealth is invested, in companies, that provide a livelihood for tens of thousands of individuals.

Let’s say we stopped Elon and Jeff from accumulating such wealth (i.e. stopped their companies from growing and/or forced them to divest their investments and captured it via taxes).

I think we can all agree that both companies would likely be much smaller. So how many jobs not created? How many consumers paying higher prices? How much was technology advances delayed?

I don’t have answers but they are questions worth asking.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#278

Post by llamataboot »

Until we have a more robust conception of what human wellbeing is and what contributes to it other than ("well not being dirt poor and on the verge of death helps, and at some point there are diminishing returns") data like this just strikes me as barking up the wrong tree.

Humans, so far, have been pretty good at improving shit within the current boundaries of their awareness of improvement, and often at the expense of "other people that don't deserve it". Capitalism has been particularly effective at unleashing energy, productive and destructive - though there's also fossil fuels in there. But it could perhaps be a product of that energy release, not it's cause.

By and far, they've been shit at understanding the meta effects of what they are doing or the long term effects of that. Which is hard. Our brain is not built for long time horizons or non-linear causation or even very much meta.

It's a good thing less humans are super poor. Still some questions about whether this world is the only world in which that would happen.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#279

Post by WalterBright »

mbrodersen wrote: post #260
WalterBright wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can walk into any emergency room and get free care. Kings had zero access.

Only the minimum legally required (for them to not immediately die). After which they are shown the door.

Kings didn't have any. They didn't even have clean water.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#280

Post by WalterBright »

DarylZero wrote: post #242
WalterBright wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still get free treatment, regardless of their debt. The hospitals just write off those debts, it's covered by the high prices they charge the patients who can pay.

Defaulting on a debt isn't the same thing as getting something for free.

That's exactly what it is.
Post reply on HN