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The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

nytimes.com

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Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#201

Post by webXL »

danharaj wrote: post #192
webXL wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without private ownership, resources cannot be traded to their highest utility. Politicians ultimately are left to figure that out (when they get around to it, of course).

> Without private ownership, resources cannot be traded to their highest utility. The language of economics is designed so that this is tautologically true and all empirical evidence that this is false is euphemized away with the term 'externality' or 'market failure'.

Externalities can only exist with public goods, such as the commons or air pollution. The more public goods, the more chances of externalities.

Market failure is a subjective term that assumes a problem can be always be solved fairly (no one is made worse off). That euphemism tends to be used by those who believe "free market" (no such thing) solutions are inferior to state-imposed solutions, which often involve force and/or benefit the ruling class. There's plenty of empirical evidence to support that.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#202

Post by danharaj »

webXL wrote: post #201
danharaj wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without private ownership, resources cannot be traded to their highest utility. The language of economics is designed so that this is tautologically true and all empirical evidence that this is false is euphemized away with the term 'externality' or 'market failure'.

Externalities can only exist with public goods, such as the commons or air pollution. The more public goods, the more chances of externalities. Market failure is a subjective term that assumes a problem can be always be solved fairly (no one is made worse off). That euphemism tends to be used by those who believe "free market" (no such thing) solutions are inferior to state-imposed solutions, which often involve forc…

> Market failure is a subjective term that assumes a problem can be always be solved fairly (no one is made worse off). That euphemism tends to be used by those who believe "free market" (no such thing) solutions are inferior to state-imposed solutions, which often involve force and/or benefit the ruling class. There's plenty of empirical evidence to support that.

Market failure is defined as a situation in which markets fail to achieve pareto efficiency; pareto inefficiency is definitionally the condition where someone's situation can be improved fairly, as you call it. A few heterodox schools simply choose a different definition of efficiency to wave away the problem of market failure, but this is circular logic: They define markets as the best system of allocating resources and therefore it is impossible for markets to fail.

If that's the position you want to take, please be forthright about your assumptions. I no longer think we're using the same basic definitions and I am fairly certain I am talking about well established mainstream concepts in economics.

P.S.

> state-imposed solutions, which often involve force

Private property as it exists is definitionally a state-imposed by force concept. I don't think your moral claim about people who use the term market failure is as biting an indictment as you think.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#203

Post by manachar »

andyfleming wrote: post #111
manachar wrote: post #4

It's really weird to me how commonplace the attitude of "It is what it is" and "Government can't do anything". The air and water quality in the US is vastly better since the passage of laws that created and empowered the EPA (Created by the Republican President Nixon). The endangered species act has had many similar successes. I live on Maui. The waters are now filled with Green Sea Turtles and Humpback whales that w…

What about the sea turtles with tumors in Hawaii? There is some concern that humans are to blame, right?

Yes, and I actually just had dinner with some humans working on figuring it out. One possibility is that an invasive species of seaweed is throwing their diet out of whack.

Humans can keep helping by gaining greater understandings of the impact our actions have on everything around us (negative externalities if you want economic-speak).

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#204

Post by dredmorbius »

x5n1 wrote: post #153
ekianjo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And finally: the foundations of modern economic wealth, vast quantities of nonrenewable resources, tapped at uttelry unsustainable rates, are quite simply not sustainable. Without looking to this basis, effectively the fuel in the tank, observations of altitude or velocity tell little. the fuel in the tank has been increasing a lot actually in the past 20 years. Did you notice that the US became the first producer…

> we have uranium for the next 10 000 of years at least. No we don't. If you keep up with energy demand it's more like 300-1000 years.

Given current rates of nuclear electricity generation, and conventional reserves, about 75-80 years.

At full energy supplied by nucelar, closer to 6.

If suggestions that 2ppm concentrations of uranium can be recovered from seawater, possibly a few thousand years, though that strikes me as a systemically risky proposition.

I've seen estimates for thorium all over the map, as well as other breeder-type fuels. Between refining, proliferation, reprocessing, and waste, many risks. We're also talking about nuclear power plant commissioning and decommissioning rates on the order of one per day, until doomsday, with 15,000+ plants required worldwide.

And nuclear still doesn't, on its own, address the liquid fuels problem. Or other resource issues: fresh water, topsoil, phosphate, copper, tin, lithium, etc. We're facing sharp limits on these and many other mineral resources.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#205

Post by mazerackham »

blumkvist wrote: post #197
mazerackham wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This weak justification for imperialism is dangerous for our future generations. The subjugation and exploitation of technologically weaker peoples for PROFIT, usually under the guise of some self-righteous religion, mandated by god, is something that I hope humanity is done with. In this case, it was a war fought to force a drug trade. Pathetic.

Yeah, it's a little more complicated than that. The Chinese demanded silver and nothing else whatsoever for their goods, creating MASSIVE trade deficit with all of Europe, sucking practically all of the silver there and then some (from Mexico and Brazil). The traders found a way to get silver from the Chinese (in exchange for opium). Trade loomed even more. Then the Chinese decided to forcefully stop the Opium trade,…

it sounds like you're trying to blame China for the Opium War. Fact is, if there was a war right now, fought to force trade of a highly addictive drug on another country, people wouldn't describe it as an opportunity for that country.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#206

Post by blumkvist »

mazerackham wrote: post #205
blumkvist wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's a little more complicated than that. The Chinese demanded silver and nothing else whatsoever for their goods, creating MASSIVE trade deficit with all of Europe, sucking practically all of the silver there and then some (from Mexico and Brazil). The traders found a way to get silver from the Chinese (in exchange for opium). Trade loomed even more. Then the Chinese decided to forcefully stop the Opium trade,…

it sounds like you're trying to blame China for the Opium War. Fact is, if there was a war right now, fought to force trade of a highly addictive drug on another country, people wouldn't describe it as an opportunity for that country.

The traded goods don't matter. The Chinese government was being unreasonable in their policy. When you are unreasonable you face the consequences. Such is life, there are practicalities we need to consider. We don't live in a utopia.

What do you think will happen if the US suddenly decides to accept nothing else but gold for its dollar?

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#207

Post by cbd1984 »

danharaj wrote: post #192
webXL wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without private ownership, resources cannot be traded to their highest utility. Politicians ultimately are left to figure that out (when they get around to it, of course).

> Without private ownership, resources cannot be traded to their highest utility. The language of economics is designed so that this is tautologically true and all empirical evidence that this is false is euphemized away with the term 'externality' or 'market failure'.

This post alone shows enough misunderstanding of economics to discredit you on the subject.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#208

Post by dredmorbius »

ekianjo wrote: post #68
dredmorbius wrote: post #30

Yes, a vast number of the world's poorest population have been raised out of nominal abject poverty, this is true. What Kristof doesn't state, however, are these facts: 1. Those people live almost entirely in China and India. 2. The rise in nominal wealth has come from a tremendous increase in energy consumption. 3. Both nations have extreme environmental problems, including the worst air pollution situations in the…

> And finally: the foundations of modern economic wealth, vast quantities of nonrenewable resources, tapped at uttelry unsustainable rates, are quite simply not sustainable. Without looking to this basis, effectively the fuel in the tank, observations of altitude or velocity tell little. the fuel in the tank has been increasing a lot actually in the past 20 years. Did you notice that the US became the first producer…

The "fuel in the tank" (resource discoveries) has _not_ been increasing. Coal discoveries peaked early in the 20th century if not before, and if you follow BP's annual energy review, the actual coal reserves have declined markedly since the 1990s (decadal estimates are given).

Globally, oil discoveries peaked in the 1960s. Estimates of recoverable reserves have increased with both rising costs and (relatively modest) technological improvements, but that's a matter of increasing the ability to suck from the tank, not increasing its size or refilling it. Natural gas follows a similar trajectory.

And recall just what it is that "oil prices" (or energy prices generally) means: that's the sacrificed resources necessary to provide a unit of oil, or coal, or gas. And it can be directly compared to the economic benefit of that unit.

For the US, a barrel of oil returns somewhat more than $1,000 in GDP. In most of the EU it's closer to $1500, peaking at $3,000 in Switzerland. For the "emerging growth economies" of India and China, it's closer to $450-500 GDP/bbl.

This means that at $40/bbl, the US sees a 50x economic surplus per barrel of oil, but only a 10x surplus at $100. For China and India, it's 10x at $40/bbl, and 4x at $100/bbl. That means a lot of marginal economic activity is shunted aside as energy costs rise. Demand destruction, as it were.

In light of the fact that much US and EU productivity is really outsourced resource consumption to India and China, this is hugely significant.

Peak petrol absolutely did happen in the United States, in 1972, with the immediate result that once the US no longer had the ability to provide reserve supplies from excess capacity, it was at the mercy of whomever else had their hands on that tap. For over 40 years, the Texas Railroad Commission had controlled US petroleum extraction rates, and hence global petroleum prices. In 1974, OPEC asssumed that role, with drastic effect. It wasn't that "the world ran out of oil", but the US could no longer assure the supply.

Things balanced out somewhat in the 1980s and 1990s (North Sea oil, Alaskan North Slope, offshore Gulf of Mexico, Mexican and Brazilian finds, an "understanding among friends" between the US and Saudi Arabia). But it's not as if another 500 million years of oil were magickally returned to the ground.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#209

Post by interpol_p »

greggman wrote: post #180
interpol_p wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree that the raw numbers are important and they are quantifiable way to assess risk. But I very much dislike that they are directly compared to each other. The social impact of murders seems so different to death by smoking related disease that a comparison of the two numbers could be meaningless in determining which one is more "important" to reducing total death and suffering. They both seem incredib…

Aren't you falling prey to the exact problem being brought up? You seem to be claiming murders have a bigger social impact than deaths by smoking. How can we know that's true? By what measure? If we assume murdered people have on average the same number of social connections then 500000 smoking deaths have exactly 500k/16k more social impact than murders. By focusing on the murders aren't we ignoring the much larger…

Sorry, I didn't meant to get focused on the actual causes of death.

My main point is that the numbers are not directly comparable, and that is misleading. The numbers are not measuring the same thing; all deaths are not equal.

It's quite logical to think murder is vastly more impactful than smoking deaths. For instance: with murder you have the burden of a police investigation, a court case, possibly many appeals, jail time for the convicted. Maybe even the death penalty (which is incredibly costly). You also have families torn apart by sudden and unexpected grief, as well as the families of those who go to prison now having that burden.

Deaths from smoke related disease are signalled a long way off. People have time to prepare, and adapt to the passing of their loved ones. There is definitely social cost, but I don't think it's irrational to expect it to be much lower than the social cost of a murder.

But even if deaths from smoking related disease are more impactful than murder, my point still stands: the two quantities are not directly comparable.

Re: The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease

#210

Post by mazerackham »

blumkvist wrote: post #206
mazerackham wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it sounds like you're trying to blame China for the Opium War. Fact is, if there was a war right now, fought to force trade of a highly addictive drug on another country, people wouldn't describe it as an opportunity for that country.

The traded goods don't matter. The Chinese government was being unreasonable in their policy. When you are unreasonable you face the consequences. Such is life, there are practicalities we need to consider. We don't live in a utopia. What do you think will happen if the US suddenly decides to accept nothing else but gold for its dollar?

There's no point in arguing when you talk about historical matters as simply as a fight between your friends. Opium wars are a great example of Imperialism (which is not a good thing, although you seem to try very hard to twist and defend it)
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