For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere • Hacker News Board

Re: For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere

#141

Post by roel_v » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 4:10 PM UTC

antihero wrote: post #138

tomkin wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of me wants to accept this information, but I am worried that some kind of Freakonomics will come into play and we'll find that the reason why there appears to be less poor is because X is no longer being considered as Y.

I wonder - is the amount adjusted base on cost of living and inflation? IE if $2 a day now gets the poor the same as $1.50 in the 90s, they haven't really gained anything.

Yes, see this excellent reply by Lazare below: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3756021 .

Re: For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere

#142

Post by gruseom » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 4:43 PM UTC

hsshah wrote: post #5

Indeed. Couple of optimistic talks at TED that shows that on an 'average' it IS getting better. http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen... http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_o... However, the 24/7 news cycle drums up everything that is negative and hence most of "feel" that it is getting worse.

the 24/7 news cycle drums up everything that is negative and hence most of "feel" that it is getting worse

Lewis Lapham said something brilliant and hilarious about this in a Google talk: people who wonder why the news is always so negative haven't noticed what the positive news is: it's the commercials! Crime, war, and terror, but Tide washes the dirt right out of your clothes!

Re: For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere

#143

Post by lwhi » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 4:44 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #139

lwhi wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you conclude that a good with unlimited supply (which is I suppose what you mean by 'no limit to scarcity') would lead to bubbles or economic breakdown? If I can take an item of IP (a music download) and sell it indefinitely at fixed rate, and distribution costs are very low; what is the basis for pricing that item when it isn't linked to anything concrete in the physical world? Could the attribution of mone…

"what is the basis for pricing that item when it isn't linked to anything concrete in the physical world?" The same basis that is used to price physical goods: demand, or rather, the maximum a consumer is willing to pay. Supply and demand are not a pricing strategy, they are macro concepts that gravitate towards equilibrium. If I am Apple and I sell iPods, how do I set its price? Not by looking at how many I can prod…

Lot of 'a-ha' moments. Thanks very much.

> No, although I'm not quite sure how to argue because I don't understand the assumptions leading to this question. An economic 'bubble' is, generalized, a sociological phenomenon where people ascribe an unrealistic value (as in, real value) to a good (the 'irrational exuberance'), leading to a bidding war fueled by the prospect that this value will continue to rise. Then at some point, it becomes clear that the good is overvalued, and the people who at that point own the goods are left hanging, much like musical chairs. If they borrowed to pay for the goods, they're double screwed because now they can't pay on their debts, the effects of which can then ripple through the economy. Bubbles don't come from too much wealth being concentrated in one hand.

So if the maximum price a consumer is willing to pay for a virtual good increased through un-realistic lending over a period, that could create a bubble.

I suppose the part of the equation that's open to 'interpretation' is the amount of money people are prepared to pay when there is no physical counterpart or cost associated with a sale. It does seem (at least to me) that DRM tries to introduce artificial scarcity specifically to maximise that amount.

You're right - I was assuming that limited supply was the basis for pricing and, that not having a limited supply could upset the balance of economics.

Re: For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere

#144

Post by weavejester » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 5:09 PM UTC

hythloday wrote: post #136

weavejester wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of GDP, the United Kingdom is still the 6th or 7th richest in the world. That's still pretty rich. There are also a lot of wealthy European countries that had a minimal presence abroad in the 19th century. There doesn't appear to any correlation between the modern wealth of western countries and their past colonialist ambitions.

The UK is ~20th on GDP per capita, which is probably a better proxy for "standard of living" than GDP per nation.

Agreed, but the original poster didn't mention standard of living, only how "rich" the country was. That sounded more like overall GDP than GDP per capita to me (saying "Luxembourg is richer than the USA" sounds a little wrong, right?), though it admittedly it was just a guess as to what he or she meant.

Re: For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere

#145

Post by huxley » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 5:48 PM UTC

randallsquared wrote: post #101

huxley wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one would most reasonably hold that it is both a form of exploitation and a form of enrichment. The interesting part of the article is that the biggest benefit has been to those in abject poverty: "Most of the progress has been concentrated among the poorest of the poor—those who make less than $1.25 a day. The bank’s figures show only a small drop in the number of those who make less than $2 a day." One inte…

I think one would most reasonably hold that it is both a form of exploitation and a form of enrichment. Enrichment would leave them -- well, enriched, and exploitation would leave them poorer. These possibilities are diametrically opposed, unless you change the referent of "them" midargument.

Not at all.

A country can be simultaneously enriched and exploited if the people in the country are not equally enriched and exploited, which is usually the case. It doesn't have to sum out.

Also you need to consider that you can be enriched by one factor and exploited in another. Say I pay you $10,000 for your kidney and you agree because your family is destitute. I have both enriched and exploited you.

Re: For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere

#146

Post by roel_v » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 6:39 PM UTC

lwhi wrote: post #143

roel_v wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"what is the basis for pricing that item when it isn't linked to anything concrete in the physical world?" The same basis that is used to price physical goods: demand, or rather, the maximum a consumer is willing to pay. Supply and demand are not a pricing strategy, they are macro concepts that gravitate towards equilibrium. If I am Apple and I sell iPods, how do I set its price? Not by looking at how many I can prod…

Lot of 'a-ha' moments. Thanks very much. > No, although I'm not quite sure how to argue because I don't understand the assumptions leading to this question. An economic 'bubble' is, generalized, a sociological phenomenon where people ascribe an unrealistic value (as in, real value) to a good (the 'irrational exuberance'), leading to a bidding war fueled by the prospect that this value will continue to rise. Then at s…

DRM doesn't create artificial scarcity; DRM is an attempt at enforcing ownership rights, or contracts, depending on how you look at it. Producers want to maximize profit (just like producers of, say, bricks, or cars). To maximize that, they need to balance the highest price people with pay with lower prices that will entice more people to buy. For physical goods, a sale is a sale - somebody can't copy a car. But when somebody buys a song, and then copies it for his friends, that's a (potential) lost sale for the creator.

Artificial scarcity is when monopolies control the supply of a good to maximize prices (this is an example where pricing is influenced by supply). For example, the De Beers company for years controlled the supply of diamonds to keep prices high. Similarly, OPEC controls oil prices by throttling oil production. As you see, artificial scarcity is not connected to whether a good is physical or not. Even stronger, artificial scarcity is meaningless for digital goods, precisely because the marginal cost of production (how much does it cost to produce one extra item) approaches zero.

Re: For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere

#147

Post by lwhi » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 6:59 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #146

lwhi wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lot of 'a-ha' moments. Thanks very much. > No, although I'm not quite sure how to argue because I don't understand the assumptions leading to this question. An economic 'bubble' is, generalized, a sociological phenomenon where people ascribe an unrealistic value (as in, real value) to a good (the 'irrational exuberance'), leading to a bidding war fueled by the prospect that this value will continue to rise. Then at s…

DRM doesn't create artificial scarcity; DRM is an attempt at enforcing ownership rights, or contracts, depending on how you look at it. Producers want to maximize profit (just like producers of, say, bricks, or cars). To maximize that, they need to balance the highest price people with pay with lower prices that will entice more people to buy. For physical goods, a sale is a sale - somebody can't copy a car. But when…

DRM controls the amount of IP that is available in the market, because without it - information can be copied freely. I would call this artificial scarcity - simply because it artificially makes a resource more scarce .. but perhaps here we have monopolies controlling the supply of a product simply to be able to price an item.

I would argue that that some consumers are at loggerheads with the prospect of paying for IP simply because the cost of production is so marginal (due to the fact that a copy can be made for no cost).

Re: For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere

#148

Post by davidw » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 8:43 PM UTC

lwhi wrote: post #113

roel_v wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your question? No, wealth isn't always relative (it's debatable but not so interesting if it's ever relative) - an 'average' farmer in the 1800's (in Europe) had a vastly worse lifestyle than an 'average' farmer today. Today, he is more wealthy in absolute terms. If you and I can each grow 100kg of wheat and 2 pigs per year when we work solitary, but if you can grow 400 kg and I can grow 4 pigs if…

I mean the wealth of one person in 1800, is relative to the wealth of another person in 1800. Likewise for today. So perhaps comparing the wealth of people in 1800 to today isn't actually that productive, because the baseline has increased? I think maybe my view of economics is flawed. My basic premise was that traditionally cost has traditionally been defined by scarcity of an item / service and consumer demand. In…

> I think I need to read a bit about economics in general.

Be careful: a lot of purveyors of "economics knowledge" on the web are trying to sell you an ideology along with it.

This is fairly neutral: http://www.introecon.com/

A good author is Tim Harford, who has some "popularized" economics books that are, once again, reasonably neutral.

In particular "The Undercover Economist" and "The Logic of Life".

Re: For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere

#149

Post by davidw » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 9:05 PM UTC

lwhi wrote: post #147

roel_v wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DRM doesn't create artificial scarcity; DRM is an attempt at enforcing ownership rights, or contracts, depending on how you look at it. Producers want to maximize profit (just like producers of, say, bricks, or cars). To maximize that, they need to balance the highest price people with pay with lower prices that will entice more people to buy. For physical goods, a sale is a sale - somebody can't copy a car. But when…

DRM controls the amount of IP that is available in the market, because without it - information can be copied freely. I would call this artificial scarcity - simply because it artificially makes a resource more scarce .. but perhaps here we have monopolies controlling the supply of a product simply to be able to price an item. I would argue that that some consumers are at loggerheads with the prospect of paying for I…

> due to the fact that a copy can be made for no cost

The second or later copies can be made for virtually nothing. The first copy is often very expensive to make. Think about Toy Story or the SMiLE album or Stephenson's books.

Re: For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere

#150

Post by ilaksh » Mon, Mar 26, 2012, 10:44 PM UTC

nickik wrote: post #75

ilaksh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of ideas but to start, just the basic thing you are suggesting: 'pouring' 'tons' of money into poor countries.. this is just not the reality. We won't be able to fix the problem if we can't see it. Most people are living in a false reality, a matrix reality created by the propaganda machine. The truth is that the first world exploits the second and third world and hogs the resources. These 'tons' of mone…

First, we are spending alot of money on development, not just countries but NGOs too. Mostly in a bad way (somethimes with very good intentions sometimes with with not so got intentions). "Its very simple: the distribution of things is just quite unfair, deliberately so. Many countries are actively repressed. The World Bank provides loans as a mechanism of economic warfare or modern-day colonization. Again, a major p…

Blame the victim much? Its a lot more malicious than you think. The countries aren't doing anything that makes them deserving of being exploited. http://www.johnperkins.org/