On a bigger problem with Myth 1, not only are the pictures distortion, so is the main set of economic claims supporting the myth thesis they are meant to illustrate. Gates makes claims about "per person income", but the statistic he uses and treats as if it meant that is actually GDP per capita. Because much of the value of goods produced in developing countries is captured by foreign capital holders owning the firms doing the production, and because all that value extracted from the country's economy still shows up as part of the GDP of the country it is extracted from, GDP per capita, particularly in the developed world, is often very different than income per person.
2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
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Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#12"Creating societies where people enjoy basic health, relative prosperity, fundamental equality, and access to contraceptives is the only way to secure a sustainable world." I suppose I'm one of the 0% (rounded) who disagree with putting contraception in this list. When this gets thrown around, it makes me feel like an outsider in a programming community where I otherwise agree with probably everything else.
Do you mind explaining why? Providing contraception (especially condoms) can prevent STDs in addition to preventing unwanted child birth.
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#13I think myth number 3, that saving children’s lives leads to overpopulation, misses the central concern. People are concerned about world resource depletion, not overpopulation. And while it is 100% true that bringing countries out of poverty reduces population growth, it does not reduce consumption. In fact, it does the opposite.
So given a poor country and two choices, here's what happens: if it stays poor, the population continues to increase and consumption likewise continues to increase. If it becomes wealthy, the population stabilize and consumption, after increasing to feed that increased wealth, also stabilizes.
There's an easy solution to the problem of resource depletion. You simply take the Benderist approach of killing all humans. Problem solved! The trick is doing it in a way that isn't horrible, and while that's completely unsolved, it doesn't look like keeping people poor helps at all.
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#14I'm not sure the point he's trying to make. To stop people from stopping people from saving people's lives? I think he's trying to suggest that the planet has too many people on it but that shouldn't stop us from saving people's lives. I know a lot of people who consider the planet overpopulated and I've never heard of anyone suggesting letting babies die would help, let alone consider it remotely human.
He seems to conclude educating women and making birth control available helps most. Why not just make that point? I feel like he's trying to imply those who disagree with him or agree with Malthus are tantamount to baby-killers.
On another (lighter) note, since dromedaries are camels too, calling the "camel world" a "bactrian world" would be more clear. The fun mnemonic for camel names is that the Dromedary has one hump and the Bactrian has two, like the first letters of their names, 'D' and 'B', turned sideways.
EDIT: Moreover, these statements are at odds, or at least need more explanation to connect them.
"It may be counterintuitive, but the countries with the most deaths have among the fastest-growing populations in the world. This is because the women in these countries tend to have the most births, too."
and
"Human beings are not machines. We don’t reproduce mindlessly. We make decisions based on the circumstances we face."
The first point suggests people have extra babies in anticipation of some of them dying before adulthood. The second implies they would target a certain number to reach adulthood, which would not itself lead to overpopulation. What would lead to overpopulation on a broad scale would be individuals benefiting from more children than the planet would, which is more like a tragedy of the commons.
If people decide based on circumstances, then they wouldn't have too many children for whatever their values decide, independent of child mortality. They'd have the right number. If they are having the right number for themselves, then food and medicine wouldn't affect their target number of children.
Bringing up food and medicine is a red herring. There may be a myth (which they don't establish), but it's irrelevant to the point made in that section: increase education and birth control. It confuses unrelated issues and paints people concerned with population as ignorant and cruel.
It's not clear to me where their logic suggests I should contribute resources. Should I favor food causes over education causes, the other way around, a mix, or neither?
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#15Not one word about the exploitation of labor and natural resources in "poor nations" by rich nations (&corporations). Not one word about economic sanctions imposed on several poor nations by the US and its allies.
Gates sounds like the optimist against a world of cynics, but he ignores major reasons why these nations are poor in the first place.
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#16I think myth number 3, that saving children’s lives leads to overpopulation, misses the central concern. People are concerned about world resource depletion, not overpopulation. And while it is 100% true that bringing countries out of poverty reduces population growth, it does not reduce consumption. In fact, it does the opposite.
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#17"Creating societies where people enjoy basic health, relative prosperity, fundamental equality, and access to contraceptives is the only way to secure a sustainable world." I suppose I'm one of the 0% (rounded) who disagree with putting contraception in this list. When this gets thrown around, it makes me feel like an outsider in a programming community where I otherwise agree with probably everything else.
No access to contraceptives means that people who do not intend to have children, but engage in sex, will have children. These children will be unintended or unwanted and may not be cared for either through disinterest or lack of ability to provide for them.
A child who grows up in that sort of circumstance is not kept safe, may succumb to disease, may spread disease, will not be educated, and will have difficulty providing for themselves.
A common rebuttal is that people should just not engage in sex if they are not intending to have children. This is maybe ideal in some moral frameworks, but whether it's ideal or not, it's not the reality. The reality is that some people will engage in sex anyways, and some people will be forced to engage in sex against their will. While it might be a goal to prevent these things from occurring, the reality is that they occur, and methods to mitigate the negative impacts of their occurrences are better than just finger-wagging.
That said, if your argument is more along the lines of "The Pope says that it is wrong, and the Pope espouses God's will." then I can't really refute it. I can just disagree.
In any case, if people can choose whether they want to have a child or not, then contraception just helps them make that choice. If they shouldn't engage in sex for non-childbearing reasons, then they can struggle with that decision as well. However, when succumbing to that results in an unwanted childbirth, it does more than just punish the parent, it now involves the child and the whole community.
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#18His third point, "Saving lives leads to overpopulation," is a weird straw man. I've never heard of anyone ever suggesting letting suffering children die as some way to keep the population low. He brings up Malthus as another straw man. I'm not sure the point he's trying to make. To stop people from stopping people from saving people's lives? I think he's trying to suggest that the planet has too many people on it but…
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#19"Creating societies where people enjoy basic health, relative prosperity, fundamental equality, and access to contraceptives is the only way to secure a sustainable world." I suppose I'm one of the 0% (rounded) who disagree with putting contraception in this list. When this gets thrown around, it makes me feel like an outsider in a programming community where I otherwise agree with probably everything else.
Sustainability means keeping the population at a consistent level. Otherwise, exponential growth means that the planet is eventually covered in humans to a depth of 50ft, and nobody wants that. There are only two ways to accomplish this: having fewer children, or killing more people. The latter is what has historically dominated, but we've become so much better at keeping people alive in the last couple of centuries…
But the third myth section covers your proposed malthusean explosion, and declares that it's not a valid concern.
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#20It's not ironic. Some people value government charity spending less than they value private nonprofit spending. Gates implicitly acknowledges that government aid has weak points (poor focus on outcomes, inefficiency, and lack of good measurement). Aside from that, there are also principled concerns about using tax dollars for aid projects.