A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty • Hacker News Board

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#171

Post by whatshisface » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:17 PM UTC

igravious wrote: post #139

grecy wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> primarily social/cultural ones, that will halt the relative development of those countries, sooner or later. Hans addresses this in the book, actually. What you said has no basis in fact, and makes no sense. Do you think people said exactly the same thing about Sweden a generation ago? Why / why not? We in the West have this completely-made-up assumption that "they" can't develop like "we" did, with absolutely no g…

You know what it is? I think that people flat out don't want to believe that the world can become measurably better in whole or in part. They've been told all their lives and they've believed that "things" are getting worse. When someone turns around and writes a whole book saying, "the data shows that country X is where Sweden was Y years ago; at the current rate country X will be where Sweden is now Z years from no…

If you live in country X, you will believe that things are getting better. If you live in Sweden, you might think things are getting worse. If you live in the rust belt in the US, you would think that things were better in the past, and you'd be right.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#172

Post by Symmetry » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:19 PM UTC

igravious wrote: post #162

Symmetry wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that actually true? I mean, it was true in the US in the middle of the 20th century but it seems at odds with what I know of conditions elsewhere, though I'm not an expert.

Yes it's actually true. It's more that the counter-position broadly applied over the long run is untenable. If you don't own the home you live in and/or the land it stands on then you are by definition renting that property. A portion of your labour is going straight to someone who owns at least one home and some land thus depending on how long this goes on for drives inequality. It's not called “Rentier Capitalism”…

Sorry, I meant to ask if you had any evidence that it was true, rather than if you just had some reasoning that it was true. As far as I can tell social mobility in Europe is about as good as it is in the US despite the much higher home ownership rate in the US.

Yes, home ownership provides a way for people to accumulate wealth that is tax advantaged by US government policy. But does it provide the same benefit in countries without that tax advantage? And is that advantage enough to offset the reduced labor mobility that home ownership brings[1].

[1]https://www.citylab.com/life/2013/05/link-betweeen-high-leve...

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#173

Post by blub » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

igravious wrote: post #144

blub wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be more appropriate for you to point out why you think Jason Hickel is anti-capitalist. Especially because the first half of your comment discussing the hallowing of the middle class seemed pertinent to me and I would have guessed you would agree with the author.

What do you make of this? “Are You Ready To Consider That Capitalism Is The Real Problem?” https://www.fastcompany.com/40439316/are-you-ready-to-consid... “Don’t Be Scared About The End Of Capitalism—Be Excited To Build What Comes Next” https://www.fastcompany.com/40454254/dont-be-scared-about-th... --- I have no time for ideologues (from whichever side of the aisle they come) who present capitalism and socialism as…

I only read the first article, since I can't invest so much time in articles today :)

I think the man has correctly identified the flaws of capitalism and is rightfully asking why we can't fix some of those by changing capitalism.

Any political system can become harmful to individuals and society when pushed to its extremes, as it's happening now in western societies, but especially in the US.

PS: maybe whoever is downvoting all these comments can take a break and get some fresh air.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#174

Post by nilskidoo » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #143

blub wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rosling, Gates etc are right that things are overall getting better. The rich are getting richer and the very poor are also doing better, but this is coming at the cost of the middle class in Western Europe and the US, where the average couple of working adults can no longer afford to buy a home and have to live with the fact that their jobs are significantly less stable compared to the past. Many are forced to work…

Why is "affording to be able to buy a home" should be our definition of living standard. It seemed to me that we have chosen to increase the cost of living by spreading ourselves out and requiring cars and making homes investments.

Tom Waits joked between songs on one of his live records, how in his travels he realized there is no over-population, just that everyone wants to live by each other.

Which got me to thinking, there is a lot of space, but it's privately owned. Heck, the first police groups north of the Mason-Dixon line were established explicitly to collect taxes for landowners. One of Trump's first big scary acts was to sell off thousands of acres of public lands to wealthy business partners. Yet in all the current talk of wealth redistribution, nobody includes land ownership, even though it has been the main measurement of wealth for as long as we've entertained civilization.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#175

Post by sedor123 » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:35 PM UTC

JanSt wrote: post #142

allworknoplay wrote: post #93

Most people here seem to be missing the point: it’s not that poverty hasn’t been moderately improved over the past 30 years, but rather that Pinker’s work has had an incredibly outsized impact on policy and influence on media narratives. Simply put, Pinker and Gates have tricked much of the world into thinking neoliberalism is the best thing ever, even though the data actually shows that the majority of the improveme…

"even though the data actually shows that the majority of the improvement comes from other brands of economic policy" Can you expand on this? Genuinely interested.

They are referring to Chinese and other Southeast Asian policies, as Hickels said in his post.

What they won't say is that those policies are fundamentally capitalist in nature. China's economy is capitalist at its core, with a super powerful state (that happens to be remarkably repressive to its citizens, an inconvenient fact Hickels simply ignores) that engages in protectionism for specific national industries.

Hickels is trying to get us to implicitly assume that Chinese policies are socialist and that non-capitalist policy is responsible for their gains, but he won't say it directly because he knows that would be an outright lie.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#176

Post by harrumph » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

jhbadger wrote: post #92

harrumph wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO globalist capitalism has increased living standards for the poorest people in countries that were well-run enough to take advantage of it, China in particular. But China is not a market economy and as such can't be described simply as an outpost of global capitalism. It has an aggressive, state-led industrial policy, it regulates the shit out of what it does, and it exercises enormous amounts of trade protectio…

Modern China is definitely a "market economy" in every meaningful sense of the term. Unlike in Maoist times, there is no central planning committee deciding what should be manufactured and sold and private businesses make their own decision based on what they think will sell. Is there government intervention in the Chinese market? Of course, but that's true of every country -- even the US. The completely free market…

They build cities...using their army. Your description of the country's general economic characteristics is off-the-charts wrong, and is especially wrong concerning the area where Pinker pretends that liberalized markets are why poverty in China has been in sharp decline.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#177

Post by sedor123 » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 3:39 PM UTC

_fol8 wrote: post #164

So this report came out yesterday: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeti... . "The 2.5% rate of annual loss (of insect biomass) over the last 25-30 years is “shocking”, Sánchez-Bayo told the Guardian: “It is very rapid. In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none.” So, in 100 years all insects will die. All of them. And therefore us,…

Needlessly apocalyptic thinking.

No one knows what will happen as a result of this reduction in insect biomass, that is literally the definition of unprecedented...

Every time some alarmist starts preaching apocalyptic nonsense because of a story like this, nature inevitably plugs the hole. Do you remember the climate alarmists telling us Florida would be underwater up to the panhandle by 2010? Yeah, we are still using those same models, just tweaked around the edges.

Academics are not as smart as they would have you believe.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#178

Post by Mirioron » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

LaGrange wrote: post #109

Mirioron wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Pinker's rebuttal was initially supposed to be an email to somebody else. He recognized that Hickel was likely pushing an ideology and left it at that. Even in the email Pinker is saying that he's citing experts in the field. > then went on to calling mild centre-left socialdemocrats A central point in the criticism Hickel wrote was that markets don't work, but regulation, protectionism and state intervention…

> Because Pinker's rebuttal was initially supposed to be an email to somebody else. ...you can't really be serious? It's published. With his knowledge. He could have edited it, or at least quickly tweeted "omg this was terrible I'm sorry I had a heated gaming moment." > A central point in the criticism Hickel wrote was that markets don't work, but regulation, protectionism and state intervention does. I'm not sure th…

A social democrat, at least when looking at Europe, is somebody who thinks markets work. They simply want a better safety net for people and maybe some additional regulation to keep the market more fair.

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#179

Post by throw2016 » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

We urgently need to jettison naive and simplistic models of the world that ignores centuries of history to deflect accountability, provide a comfort zone for some and perpetuate another fraud on the world. Look at the word fraud of 'aid' when it's loans and 'leverage' that are used to further the creditors interests in the region.

Africa has suffered at the hands of global agendas for centuries now, some of these countries are barely 50-60 years of colonialism and were divided arbitrarily for reasons suited to colonialists. Yet we have narratives that seriously suggest all these invasive actions do not have consequences and these 'made up' countries after centuries of systemic exploitation and plunder will magically emerge developed in mere decades and if they don't its their own fault. That may suit a certain blame shifting worldview but has nothing to do with reality.

Narratives that ignore the kind of effort, century scale timelines, political and religious conflicts, colonialism and context in which we grew and how the current world operates and ignores all that to point to statistics have to go because they are completely lacking depth and connection with reality.

Look at the 'extraction' in pre-colonialism and post colonialism, the methods change but the objective is the same, corrupt the top leadership to benefit yourself and your companies, while 99% of the local country suffers. And if they don't fall in line organize coups, destabilize countries to get new despots who benefit you. This model is replicated efficiently in South America and across Africa and is happening right now. How can you 'develop' and improve the conditions of people across the world when your policies are actively and intentionally sabotaging them?

You don't because that's just cover, conversations about statistics by pinker and his ilk then fall right into place to deflect, deceive and affect fake concern. South Korea and Taiwan have great stats but what those stats don't tell you is South Korea grew under a dictatorship with extreme western political and economic support that grew oligarchic chaebols for political reasons to counter the North and China. Can that context be replicated?

Re: A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty

#180

Post by topkai22 » Tue, Feb 12, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

TorKlingberg wrote: post #153

blub wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home and land ownership has been one of the main ways that the working class can accumulate wealth. It's the average man's tried and true method of investing.

It is an unfortunate conflict that homes cannot be both stay affordable and be a good investment. Houses accumulated wealth in the 20:th century because they increased in value quickly, but that means they are no longer affordable to many people. We should allow building more homes so people can buy them. But then they won't go up as much in value as when the supply is restricted.

Homes can be a good iinvestment even if prices aren’t rising (or at least aren't rising faster than inflation). You have to have shelter, so you have to purchase that some how. If you choose to rent theoretically you need to pay for the raw cost of the real estate you are living, the cost of maintaining and managing that property, and a small profit for the owner. If you own the property you can choose to do much of the maintenance and management yourself, and can keep the profit portion. Sweat equity is a real thing, and there is no other asset type I can think of that allows average people to casually invest thier labor like that.