Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over • Hacker News Board

Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over

#71

Post by 3825 » Sun, Jan 20, 2013, 6:11 PM UTC

danielharan wrote: post #67

gus_massa wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much more complex, but if everyone has 18% more money, probably the phones, lights and stoves will be 18% more expensive.

I know it's complex. Phones and lights haven't exactly been going up in price with GDP. Stoves in the valleys I saw in Nepal were mainly affected by distance travelled by dzos. Throwing your hands up in the air, pronouncing the problem too complex sounds like a really convenient excuse to do nothing.

The smokeless stoves are a really good example of a little money going a long way to help people's quality of life.

Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over

#72

Post by tokenadult » Sun, Jan 20, 2013, 8:19 PM UTC

newbie12 wrote: post #12

Dire poverty is self-inflicted. Corrupt, heavy-handed governments, pursuing illogical economic policies or deliberate starvation of opposition tribes. You could write that check tomorrow and the day after, Zimbabwe or North Korea or Somalia or even India would be the same. There are places in the world where the locals are killing people for offering the polio vaccine to children. Further, global poverty is actually…

Corrupt, heavy-handed governments

Corrupt, heavy-handed governments inflict wealth on themselves, but necessarily inflict poverty on most of the common people in the territory they control. Unlike most Americans, I actually lived in a third-world dictatorship when it was still a dictatorship, and I know that the process of the coming people gaining freedom from dictatorial rule is not an easy process. Yes, people who seek freedom and fair administration of justice eventually find that they gain prosperity too, but in the short term it can be frightening to seek freedom when the secret police can suddenly assassinate or imprison regime opponents. I am glad that the dictatorship I used to live under (that of Taiwan) had fallen by the second time I lived there, and I hope the dictatorship of (for example) North Korea falls soon, but the condition of many common people around the world is not aptly described as "self-inflicted."

Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over

#73

Post by abrown28 » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 2:27 AM UTC

Give a man a fish...

Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over

#74

Post by pretoriusB » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 1:22 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #43

pretoriusB wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of these "100 richest people" probably give away more than 100x what you earn in a year already. Are you honestly going to call them selfish? Yes. Charity is a feel-good hypocrisy (or worse, just a tax saving measure). Nobody made huge tons of money without other people's blood under it. And especially not the top 1%. Even a record artist that makes money from his songs (so he doesn't hurt anyone personally) is…

"Nobody made huge tons of money without other people's blood under it. And especially not the top 1%." Overly dramatic sensationalism - ripped straight from a first year college pamphlet on how to be angry at the man - at its best. And all it warrants is a simple: prove it. Such an extraordinary claim, you should do it the justice of demonstrating it as fact.

>Overly dramatic sensationalism - ripped straight from a first year college pamphlet on how to be angry at the man - at its best.

No, actually pretty much pragmatic and casual. That's how the work works (at least as it is).

Unlike your ad-hominen attack, which was childish ("oh, a stereotypical fake college revolutionary", etc).

>And all it warrants is a simple: prove it. Such an extraordinary claim, you should do it the justice of demonstrating it as fact.

Nothing extraordinary about it.

And you even missed the example I gave. Here are a few other examples, barely scratching the most obvious facts:

(1) Large part of the Southern US GDP was for centuries based on slave labour. Today's fortunes, nicely paved streets, etc.

(2) The wealth of European societies has been subsidized from 1500 to 1950 from colonies and occupated land all over the third world.

(3) If you have a home anywhere in the US, is because some people back in the day took the land of previous inhabitants.

(4) Cheap oil in the West depends on military and political pressure (instead of open market exchange) from toppling Iran's elected government back in the day to invading Iraq et al.

Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over

#75

Post by pretoriusB » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 1:27 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #34

pretoriusB wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dire poverty is self-inflicted. Self-inflicted? That is a bullshit western justification. Those poor peoples have been milked to extinction by colonial overlords and left do die. Not to mention that their very countries were designed and drawn on the map by colonial powers, like dividing loot, with no respect to local populations and tensions (or with full intent to exploit them, in a "divide and conquer" move). Or…

"Those poor peoples have been milked to extinction by colonial overlords and left do die." That's bullshit anti-Western propaganda. Those "poor peoples" as you call them are responsible for their own fates, just as all of us are, no matter the situation we're born into. Pity won't save them, and neither will trillions in charity as has been demonstrated for decades. There has been no improvement from the trillions in…

>That's bullshit anti-Western propaganda.

You don't get to have colonies all other the world, exploit people, invade their countries, have millions of black slaves, and then dimiss the effects of this as "anti-Western propaganda".

>Those "poor peoples" as you call them are responsible for their own fates, just as all of us are, no matter the situation we're born into. They have to take control of their own destiny.

Easy for the 200-pound armed-to-the-gills bully that keeps them down to say that. But yes, it would be nice if they managed to get control of their own destiny and pay back some justice. Like take 20-30 million white western people to use as slaves in their fields.

Re: Annual income of richest 100 people enough to end global poverty four times over

#76

Post by pretoriusB » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 1:39 PM UTC

waps wrote: post #64

pretoriusB wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Religion and ignorance go a long way. You can't throw money to the problem Those places have been far more tolerant before they had colonial overlords and post-colonial interventions. Islam in particular was nowhere as strict and even more progressive that the feudal European populations of the time (and developed math, poetry, etc). (And it's not like the Bible Belt for example is a paradigm in the case of "religi…

>Those places have been far more tolerant before they had colonial Stop right there. Before colonization those lands were dominated by the ottoman empire, which exported "black gold" from there. By which I mean that they'd ride into the villages on horseback, kidnap the young into slavery, to be exported into North Africa, the Middle East or Asia. Similar things happened in India. They left the old or infirm to die o…

>Stop right there. Before colonization those lands were dominated by the ottoman empire, which exported "black gold" from there. By which I mean that they'd ride into the villages on horseback, kidnap the young into slavery, to be exported into North Africa, the Middle East or Asia. Similar things happened in India. They left the old or infirm to die of hunger and thirst, wounded and alone. Coming out of ottoman domination, the indigenous population was literally worse off than in the stone age.

My country was a subject of Ottoman domination. The Islamic world was far more progressive a lot before the Ottoman rule you mention. And even the ottoman domination, cruel as it was, was nothing like the colonial situation. Only white people, and far away from there, would ever think it was any better.

>In the 6 cities in Congo that I visited that were colonized after WWI, the older generation says that the current situation is worse than colonization. In places where the old wars have resumed, like near the Sudan border, it is much worse.

The current situation is not the old situation. It's the post-colonial situation, and colonialism (and subsequent interventions) is what shaped the current mess.

Like the bloody divisions the British Empire ensured they left behind wherever they left (Israel/Palestine, Ethiopia/Erithraia, Cyprus/Nothern Cyprus, India/Pakistan, etc).

Congo, for one, was no actual country, with history, sovereignity etc. It was a claimed property by Europeans in Africa, that was made into a country. They drew their plot on the map and took over, not caring about what tribes it contained, what the local tensions were, etc. Of course the resulting country would have a problem after they leave.

It would be like an invader coming and making a "country" out of Texas and part of southern Mexico. He rules with iron fist (and guns and tons of blood) and keeps things stable. What will happen when he leaves? Are the Texans and the Mexicans going to enjoy peace in that BS "country" he designed, or fight for control?

(And colonials don't just leave: they appoint their own guys long after they are gone. Here's an example: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/inside-france... )