Too bad Gates doesn't think the Internet helps progress in countries, because technology and the Internet are huge factors in the progress and conditions of living in a country.
2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
211–220 of 317 posts
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#212It's an excellent piece. I'll admit to being a bit confused by the assertion, however: > "letting children die now so they don’t starve later—doesn’t actually work, thank goodness. 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." I spent five months in Kenya, and…
I think the idea is that food aid isn't just being given out on its own but as part of a development strategy. I agree that just giving food isn't enough, and it's wrong to pretend that the drought is the problem and not the practices that resulted in a population dependent on favorable weather to live.
Hopefully, we feed the people now so that starving to death isn't their top worry, and societies with food security are more stable societies that can make improvements in other ways (on their own, or with help) which eventually lead to prosperity and independence.
Manhattan has more population than the land can support--the Manhattanites are entirely dependent on delivered food to survive, and have been for many generations. It's hopefully a permanent situation. Nobody worries about it because they've reached a place of development where they can just buy the food shipments instead of getting charity.
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Overpopulation can also result from simple trade. NYC and generally the entire US eastern seaboard are overpopulated by your definition.
Or virtually all of the Persian Gulf. Some of the fastest-growing populations, in what's empty desert without even sufficient water for cities let alone agriculture. The economist's answer is that these regions have economic outputs (financial wizardry, advanced manufacturing, tourism, oil) which the rest of the world wants, and the rest of the world (which in the case of the Atlantic seaboard is largely the US's own…
Worrying about ecological self-sufficiency and sustainability at a smaller than planetwide scale is essentially throwing away the entire advantage of how much our massive global logistics network has shrunk the world in recent decades.
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have been married for about 20 years now (with a little hiatus between marriages). Had we not used any contraceptive methods, I'd have about 20 children. While it could be argued that propagating my genes would be in the best interest of mankind, I think that 20 kids would be way too much. Of the various contraceptive methods we used, every one of them prevented fecundation and, therefore, not a single life was los…
"People are entitled their own religious ideas, but nobody has the right to impose those values on someone else." Actually we do in most democracies, just in the form of a vote. The reason behind our votes are almost always "religious", even if they aren't explicitly so. For example, the statement: "If giving access to contraceptives to someone who wants them will make lives better, I'm in favor." That's based on a b…
Why would that be wrong outside a specific set of religious values? It's not atheists (or the defenders of a secular state) that should prove a religion wrong. It's the participants in that religion that should prove their deity exists and its moral code should be applied to everyone regardless of their opinion.
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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 person's life is far more than just how they start out. Many people have started in situations like this and have gone on to have wonderful lives. Many have even changed the world. This alone isn't enough to convince me that we sho…
>> This alone isn't enough to convince me that we should give in to short-sightedness by allowing people to prevent or destroy future human lives. Is it not destroying the life of the parent(s) by giving them a child they do not want and cannot reasonably care for?
Preventing the creation of a life is not the same as destroying it. Many Christian groups conflate contraceptives with abortion in order to further their cause. Pay attention to this.
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
"People are entitled their own religious ideas, but nobody has the right to impose those values on someone else." Actually we do in most democracies, just in the form of a vote. The reason behind our votes are almost always "religious", even if they aren't explicitly so. For example, the statement: "If giving access to contraceptives to someone who wants them will make lives better, I'm in favor." That's based on a b…
Why would that be wrong outside a specific set of religious values? It's not atheists (or the defenders of a secular state) that should prove a religion wrong. It's the participants in that religion that should prove their deity exists and its moral code should be applied to everyone regardless of their opinion.
I'm not saying anything like that. I'm just saying that in a democracy, individuals vote based on their world-views. Sometimes that world-view is informed by a religion, sometimes it's informed by "spirituality", or sometimes by something else. But whatever it may be, a person's world-view is always informed by ideals that can't be proven one way or another.
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
All I have is anecdotal evidence and logic based on that. So I'm afraid I can't give what you're asking for. But my anecdotal evidence is that, growing up, nobody wanted kids and everyone wanted sex. Having kids was feared as something that would ruin your life. Even if in some sense that's technically true (it could ruin your ability to get a good education and make a living), the attitude lasts longer than the fact…
Well, I'll add this then to your experiences: Having my sons was the best thing that ever happened in my life, and I can think of no event in the future that could ever compare to the joy and pride that I feel every day that is a direct result of their existence. Children are life changing, that much is true; in every way. I wouldn't change a thing though. They are a net benefit to the world already based on the feel…
"It is highly likely this opinion will change sooner rather than later"
Which opinion are you referring to? I can't answer your question until I understand that part.
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#218Yesterday I read the Oxfam report that 85 people own half of the world's wealth. http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2014-01-20/ri... Now this is amazing and simple fact. This shows we have completely failed at distribution of wealth. If we could fix this many many problem will vanish. Now instead of what Gates has written this extreme inequality is blocking the progress of poor.
That's not what that article says. It says that those 85 people own as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people. The article and accompanying paper say that the world's richest one percent own 46% of the world's wealth - the 71M people who make more than $35K or so.
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is defined as being a personal choice, not one you get to force onto others. Which is what they advocate - using their position of privilege to deny the choice to others.
Which force are you talking about? I'm talking about the one that mandates that people pay for contraception with tax dollars.
That (combined with your comment right above it) is completely and utterly surprising to hear from someone on HN.
Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
#220There are multiple problems with Gates's predition, but two of the biggest are these: 1. Growth in real economic wealth is very strongly tied to growth in real resource consumption. The master resource is energy, but numerous other resources are in tight supply, with a critical set being "bauxite whose production peaked in 1943), copper (1998), iron ore (1951), magnesium (1966), phosphate rock (1980), potash (1967),…
There's two big missing facts that I've never noticed Murphy in particular acknowledge: the 1980s peak in global births -- population growth is now driven entirely by decreasing mortality -- and the late 20th century decoupling of energy consumption from economic growth.
Both point to an obvious counter-theory: That industrialization was a centuries-long process, involving exploding populations and energy consumption, that in much of the world has come to an end. The nice little exponential lines are overfit to a particular span of human history and stopped being predictive somewhere in the 20th century.
Also, most of those peaked resources are not even vaguely scarce. I'm not even sure what it would mean to run out of iron ore or bauxite -- a large fraction of the Earth's crust is iron- and aluminum-bearing rock, and the definition of "ore" is "the particular chunks of rock and dirt that are economically viable to extract metal from". Production peaked because of limited demand and lowered shipping costs that made foreign supplies cheaper.