11–20 of 34 posts
Rich countries are not going to subject themselves to austerity so poor countries can catch up and surpass them. Life's not fair, the world will never be fair, and no amount of global-equity-fetishism will every make it fair.
equity isn't about everyone having the same things, thinking the same things in an equal sized house; even less being helped to surpass someone...
It’s not possible for everyone to have decent living standards. China and India need to decrease their birth rate so the rest of the world can thrive
From what I've heard and read, Costa Rica has done excellent work in this direction. GDP is low compared to many developed countries. But they have an innovative health care system that provides good outcomes with limited resources, inexpensive but healthy diet featuring rice and beans and fresh fruits and vegetables, a devotion to environmental preservation, and energy production almost entirely from renewables with…
All that said, Blue Zones are fake, driven by cohort effects and poor record keeping. https://www.demographic-research.org/articles/volume/49/27/
There's a striking irony in sharing a degrowth article with an audience of well-paid developers whose daily resource use might match months of consumption for someone below the poverty line. Not implying everyone fits this mold—there are exceptions. Still, it's valuable food for thought. Thanks for posting.
It’s not possible for everyone to have decent living standards. China and India need to decrease their birth rate so the rest of the world can thrive
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/ind/ind... https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/ind/chi...
It’s not possible for everyone to have decent living standards. China and India need to decrease their birth rate so the rest of the world can thrive
It's not self-evident that life is such a zero-sum game that more people necessarily means fewer resources to go around; I'd even venture that the last hundred years of development suggests the opposite.
It's quite possible that more people enables a slew of network effects (such as technology improvements due to more minds attacking a problem, say) that improves everyone's living standards.
> Post-capitalist approaches are therefore needed, The authors refuse to elaborate on this claim with specifics. Instead they provide generic statements such as > We need to actively plan to shift productive capacities away from capital accumulation and > To reclaim productive capacities for national development, governments need to use progressive industrial and fiscal policy, public works programmes... --- The firs…
FWIW, I agree that capitalism has helped drive progress and increase human welfare in the past, but I no longer agree that it's currently raising human welfare, even if it's still helping to drive progress. I also think that what we have in the USA is not pure capitalism anyway and without acknowledging that, a real discussion will never be had. A form of socialism already exists here, and people seem to like it.
There's a striking irony in sharing a degrowth article with an audience of well-paid developers whose daily resource use might match months of consumption for someone below the poverty line. Not implying everyone fits this mold—there are exceptions. Still, it's valuable food for thought. Thanks for posting.
Yea, computer is indeed using a lot of resources more resources than what average non-dev ppl use.
EDIT: To make it more clear, I think resource use almost perfectly correlates with spending. One might argue, "But spending on services like plumbers, waiters or therapists doesn't directly consume resources." Yet, when you pay someone for their time, they use that money to buy food, housing, or services from others. This chain continues recursively, ultimately leading to resource consumption.
I my opinion, a lot of poverty continues because of terrible politics. Many areas could have economic growth, but are restricted by authoritarianism, corruption, and a lack of rule of law that make investments and productivity growth impossible. Without a stable non-corrupt government, there is no way for economic improvement even if you had a lot of money to spend because it won't make it to where it's needed.