2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor • Hacker News Board

Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor

#231

Post by brc » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 2:15 AM UTC

chime wrote: post #82

spodek wrote: post #14

His 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…

I'll bite. I believed it. Not only did I believe it until I read this letter, I thought Gates Foundation was doing an unintentional long-term disservice to the world by saving so many lives that overpopulation in the remote parts of the world will lead to more suffering due to starvation/hunger, poverty, and depression. If X% of children in villages in Ghana are currently starving, how will raising that to 2X% starvi…

The point is well made - if raise the survival rate it quickly lowers the birth rate, because parents are no longer gambling against unknown but seemingly low odds of children making it past the age of 5. But it has to be backed up by enlightenment of the type mentioned in the article. The work also has to tackle patriarchial societies, child brides and superstitious beliefs. There are a lot of women still suffering under the classification of being a chattel in this world. Perhaps it is a generational thing, and solving child mortality is the first step in bequeathing a generation with better education and thus a rollback of barbaric practices.

Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor

#232

Post by chrisgd » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 2:26 AM UTC

prawn wrote: post #227

chrisgd wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I extrapolated too much, but the line "There are still slums and pockets of poverty, but by and large when I visit there now I think, Wow, most people who live here are middle-class. What a miracle." just because this particular area had less poverty, doesn't mean there are less people living in poverty, it just means they may be more hidden. Actual stats would have been helpful.

Why do you (an armchair critic?) assume that the Gates, with direct data and experience, are wrong and overlooking reality with their statement? I'm pretty sure they have available decent data showing them overall progress and are not visiting one development and making a blanket extrapolation based on that.

My comment was that he makes a statement that says "I can't see poor people, which means they must not be here". I tried to clarify my comment and have an armchair critic in you disputing me, when you could have googled it to prove me wrong. But here you go, http://data.worldbank.org/country/mexico

Poverty as a % of population in mexico has increased from 47% to 52% according to the world bank.

Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor

#233

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 2:29 AM UTC

brc wrote: post #230

ekm2 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

: we can't just let people die. But it means we have to send food aid all the time now, unlike decades ago, because the population is simply larger than the land can support, except in its best years, and it makes the people essentially permanently dependent on outside aid. It is worth noting that the Samburu tribe is one of the smallest and live in the least sparsely populated area with the worst rainfall conditions…

People need food aid not because they are in a drought, but because they can't trade with the people who have the food. Solve that problem, and you solve the food problem. Lots of people live in inhospitable, drought stricken countries at a population level that the land itself could never support. The key is in trade. The people have to develop something they can trade for food to escape from food aid.

[deleted]

Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor

#234

Post by squeed » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 2:34 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #7

This is a fascinating letter that helps combat some of the "doom and gloom" that's so prevalent in... well, everything. I kept coming back to one thought while reading this: why are people so mistaken about Africa in particular? The article covers misconceptions all over the place, but it keeps coming back to Africa, and it seems that the disparity between what people think and what's actually the case is far larger…

An enlightening example is to consider people's perceptions of New York City. The popular perception / comedian's perspective I remember of the 2000s was that NYC was also a shithole, where you would be mugged at the drop of a hat and everyone was murdered.

Of course, things were bad for a long time between early 80s and early 90s, but that wasn't the case by the time I moved there in 2003. I lived there for 4 years and never saw anything exciting, despite doing some dumb things. However, I had cousins, living in in New Jersey, who refused to take the subway or bus "'cause bad stuff happens there."

Actual anthropologists must surely have better ways of quantifying this, but it sure seems like negative popular perceptions of places lag at least 10 years behind reality.

Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor

#235

Post by pravda » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 2:38 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #149

It'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…

The (late) great Sam Kinison gave the solution to world hunger over 20 years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0q4o58pKwA#t=64

Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor

#236

Post by ori_b » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 2:54 AM UTC

chrisgd wrote: post #232

prawn wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you (an armchair critic?) assume that the Gates, with direct data and experience, are wrong and overlooking reality with their statement? I'm pretty sure they have available decent data showing them overall progress and are not visiting one development and making a blanket extrapolation based on that.

My comment was that he makes a statement that says "I can't see poor people, which means they must not be here". I tried to clarify my comment and have an armchair critic in you disputing me, when you could have googled it to prove me wrong. But here you go, http://data.worldbank.org/country/mexico Poverty as a % of population in mexico has increased from 47% to 52% according to the world bank.

Beware: Poverty lines are often set as a percentage of the per capita GDP. So, in real terms, if the average buying power increase did not outpace the buying power increase of the richest few, poverty could increase, even as people are able to afford more.

The world bank data that you linked to seems to be using a relative poverty line.

Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor

#237

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 3:12 AM UTC

bcoates wrote: post #213

dredmorbius wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Relying on the massive global logistics network to support massively nonequilibrium populations in highly infertile land is counting on a patently unsustainable level of resource use to create a massive risk.

It's one thing to have local shortfalls of food or water of a few percent which can be satisfied with largely local imports of a few hundred kilometers (say, Germany, which is roughly 90% self-sufficient for food production). It's quite another to require massive imports of food and fresh water.

Economic efficiency is directly opposed to sustainability and risk.

Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor

#238

Post by bane » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 3:24 AM UTC

brc wrote: post #230

ekm2 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

: we can't just let people die. But it means we have to send food aid all the time now, unlike decades ago, because the population is simply larger than the land can support, except in its best years, and it makes the people essentially permanently dependent on outside aid. It is worth noting that the Samburu tribe is one of the smallest and live in the least sparsely populated area with the worst rainfall conditions…

People need food aid not because they are in a drought, but because they can't trade with the people who have the food. Solve that problem, and you solve the food problem. Lots of people live in inhospitable, drought stricken countries at a population level that the land itself could never support. The key is in trade. The people have to develop something they can trade for food to escape from food aid.

If they trade labor for food, they can move out of the drought stricken areas into more food productive ones.

Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor

#239

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 3:40 AM UTC

bcoates wrote: post #220

dredmorbius wrote: post #207

There 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…

the late 20th century decoupling of energy consumption from economic growth.

If you bothered reading my post and links, I've gone into extensive length on how economic decoupling hasn't happened and that the observed increase in efficiency is fully consistent with complex systems / dissipative systems theory.

The problem with technical capital is that it depreciates rapidly. While some Roman infrastructure remains standing to this day, odds are that most of today's electronics won't be functioning in 20 years, let alone 2000.

On peak minerals: Leibig's Law of the Minimum states that it's the least abundant resource that constrains your growth. Pointing out that there's plenty of X when Y is a limiting factor doesn't buy you much. I'd look very closely at ag productivity.

Heinberg and others go into the issues of working from low-yield ores. Most significantly, energy requirements scale inversely with or yield, and the critical problem would be a technological collapse which would lapse beyond the stage of a feasible reboot. While you _can_ extract minerals from dirt or seawater, the energy and capital requirements are immense. Citations on your claims of foreign supplies would be appreciated.

Re: 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor

#240

Post by mikeash » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 3:46 AM UTC

yobb wrote: post #25

pnathan wrote: post #10

Fascinating. This addresses one of my key concerns, that aid often is a bag of cash to high officials, who then go buy 6-10 Lamborghinis and a new apartment rather than actually helping people out.

It is still that, perhaps not in such a distilled fashion, but corruption is rampant throughout the world. Those in power in the "third world" are as susceptible, if not more so, to greed as those here in the "first world." Aid does work to an extent simply because not all of humanity is evil, there are some in positions of power who actually do wish to do good. His report just appears too idyllic and utopian compare…

Are you seriously saying that one of the most significant philanthropists alive today, who has given tens of billions of dollars of his own personal money in aid, who has a large role in overseeing the aid organization he built, and who has seen the results of corruption as applied to that aid, is "too idyllic and utopian compared to reality"?

If Gates says that X is true when it comes to aid, and you say that X is not true, what reason could I possibly have to believe you over him?