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>been a case of artificial scarcity owing to monopolistic control. Well, that sounds like an excuse. 1.6bn people are living in poverty via the Human Poverty

>been a case of artificial scarcity owing to monopolistic control. Well, that sounds like an excuse. 1.6bn people are living in poverty via the Human Poverty Index (HPI) measurement, which is defined as less than earing $1.50 a day. Worse, if we raise the value to $2.50 a day, then we're talking almost half the population of Earth! Half of every living and breathing human right now is poor on a level that I can't comprehend. Oh we can add more and more excuses like bad government, 'lazy' people, people who should 'move to better jobs', etc but it doesn't make a difference. If the political and economic engines of the world can't keep almost 1/3rd of us out of poverty then its time to consider that maybe we know more about the Earth's carrying capacity today than we did 130 years ago and that you can't just wish post-scarcity into existance nor wish away the effects of human economic activity that ultimately hurts us like climate change as a "Chinese hoax." We probably can continue to add people but we'll just be making larger numbers in each category, mostly poverty and the poor. Hey, I'm doing well because poor countries tend to work for my interests but that's an accident of birth. Unfortunately, not everyone gets to be born into the life of an urban westerner.

bufordsharkley 10y ago
> Unfortunately, not everyone gets to be born into the life of an urban westerner. As a Rawlsian, I'm fixated on this very problem, but I'm drawn to solutions that work to tear down the mechanism (in short, open borders) rather than a Malthusian answer (limiting population) that I'm skeptical will do much to end poverty. Open borders, of course, don't help very much if life is unaffordable once you cross that border. And again I advise looking towards Henry George for solutions to this problem.
stale2002 10y ago
And 30 years ago, how was life for these 1.6 billion that were in poverty? Answer: it was much much worse. Yes, things are bad right now. But in the past things were worse. And now they are getting better, very quickly. I see no evidence that this trend won't continue.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  The problem with your reasoning is this: http://i.imgur.com/cRzjXWQ.png http://i.imgur.com/cRzjXWQ.png Sure you can point at some changes but you don't know what is causing them and when they're begin to peter off. We do know that a lot of the poverty fixes of late are almost exclusively linked to the fall of communism in Asia. Now they're all on market economies and we still have 1/3rd poverty and 1/2 living with under $2.50 a day. Now we've eliminated communism, now what? The market approach has itself bottomed out and even wealthy states are struggling with late stage capitalism which is extremely low growth and rising unemployment and taxation unable to keep up with entitlements. On of the dirty little secrets of capitalism is that rich countries need poor countries to stay rich. You can't just raise everyone up. Limited resources will always mean uneven distributions, the same way economies don't naturally have an even distribution of money/resources. Also one of the main reasons things are better today is become of liberalism in regards to abortion and the lowered population in especially hopeless areas in the 70s and 80s that led to starvation and resource warfare, thus these people aren't here anymore to pad poverty stats. They're dead. We shouldn't see that as a win for economic prosperity.
  - stale2002 10y ago
    You don't have to look at just the last couple decades. You can look at the last 200 years. Every decade some smart academic makes the same, Malthusian, population bomb, peak oil, or whatever argument. And every decade that person gets proven wrong, for the last 200 years. Is this decade different? Are the Malthusians going to proven right NOW even though they have been wrong every single other time they make these predictions? Maybe. But I think I am going to wait a little while before giving that argument any weight at all. No arguments, no predictions, only evidence. We are in late stage capitalism once living standards stop going up, and they have yet to do that.
    - WildUtah 10y ago
      The people that said you wouldn't be able to afford an apartment in overcrowded SF were dead-on right. The people who predicted widespread traffic jams were right. The people who said that third world countries needed to cut birthrates before they could get richer turned out to be right everywhere. The people that said Bengala-Desh would get to be like Bengala-Desh were right. As were the people who predicted overcrowding and exodus from the Sahel.

bufordsharkley 10y ago

> Unfortunately, not everyone gets to be born into the life of an urban westerner. As a Rawlsian, I'm fixated on this very problem, but I'm drawn to solutions that work to tear down the mechanism (in short, open borders) rather than a Malthusian answer (limiting population) that I'm skeptical will do much to end poverty. Open borders, of course, don't help very much if life is unaffordable once you cross that border. And again I advise looking towards Henry George for solutions to this problem.

stale2002 10y ago

And 30 years ago, how was life for these 1.6 billion that were in poverty? Answer: it was much much worse. Yes, things are bad right now. But in the past things were worse. And now they are getting better, very quickly. I see no evidence that this trend won't continue.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
The problem with your reasoning is this: http://i.imgur.com/cRzjXWQ.png http://i.imgur.com/cRzjXWQ.png Sure you can point at some changes but you don't know what is causing them and when they're begin to peter off. We do know that a lot of the poverty fixes of late are almost exclusively linked to the fall of communism in Asia. Now they're all on market economies and we still have 1/3rd poverty and 1/2 living with under $2.50 a day. Now we've eliminated communism, now what? The market approach has itself bottomed out and even wealthy states are struggling with late stage capitalism which is extremely low growth and rising unemployment and taxation unable to keep up with entitlements. On of the dirty little secrets of capitalism is that rich countries need poor countries to stay rich. You can't just raise everyone up. Limited resources will always mean uneven distributions, the same way economies don't naturally have an even distribution of money/resources. Also one of the main reasons things are better today is become of liberalism in regards to abortion and the lowered population in especially hopeless areas in the 70s and 80s that led to starvation and resource warfare, thus these people aren't here anymore to pad poverty stats. They're dead. We shouldn't see that as a win for economic prosperity.
- stale2002 10y ago
  You don't have to look at just the last couple decades. You can look at the last 200 years. Every decade some smart academic makes the same, Malthusian, population bomb, peak oil, or whatever argument. And every decade that person gets proven wrong, for the last 200 years. Is this decade different? Are the Malthusians going to proven right NOW even though they have been wrong every single other time they make these predictions? Maybe. But I think I am going to wait a little while before giving that argument any weight at all. No arguments, no predictions, only evidence. We are in late stage capitalism once living standards stop going up, and they have yet to do that.
  - WildUtah 10y ago
    The people that said you wouldn't be able to afford an apartment in overcrowded SF were dead-on right. The people who predicted widespread traffic jams were right. The people who said that third world countries needed to cut birthrates before they could get richer turned out to be right everywhere. The people that said Bengala-Desh would get to be like Bengala-Desh were right. As were the people who predicted overcrowding and exodus from the Sahel.