5 ms·

The system seems broken only because our brains and society are wired to think negatively. Life has gotten tremendously better for just about the entire world o

by beat 8y ago

The system seems broken only because our brains and society are wired to think negatively. Life has gotten tremendously better for just about the entire world over the past two centuries. Here's a fun data point for you. From 1997 to 2017, the global extreme poverty rate (people living on less than $2/day) dropped from 29% to 9%. Two thirds of the people at the bottom got out of that bottom, in the past twenty years alone. That's amazing.

quickben 8y ago
It's is, but it still doesn't change the fact that venezuella sucks right now, not because of tremendous amazing progress, but math and movement of numbers people agreed on. So, while all is amazing, all can be very non amazing on the receiving end of the liquidity removal.
- omegaworks 8y ago
  Venezuela "sucks right now" due to geopolitical egotism. We've turned them into a pariah on the global market, penalizing nations that dare trade with them with our own sanctions. Of course the Bolivar tanked. You can use a dollar to buy anything in the world. You can't use the bolivar to buy diddly squat.
  - lr4444lr 8y ago
    Oh, and it had nothing to do with Chavez nationalizing industrious sectors and covering for his failures with the unsustainable crude oil prices?
    - omegaworks 8y ago
      Was it the act of nationalizing the sectors that made them unproductive or the refusal of the US to trade with said sectors post-nationalization? We have a long, colorful history of punishing latin american nations for embracing redistributive social policies and decolonisation. Never forget: https://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/10/40_years_after_chiles_9_11 https://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/10/40_years_after_chiles...
      - repsilat 8y ago
        > the refusal of the US to trade Venezuela is refusing international aid. There are sanctions on their government bonds, but the lack of private sector trade is basically caused by - the lack of private sector industry, - a lack of hard cash now, and - trade barriers implemented by the Venezuelan government not punitive American trade barriers or them somehow being turned into a "pairah".
        omegaworks 8y ago
        >Venezuela is refusing international aid. All aid from the IMF comes with punitive strings attached. Enforced austerity from abroad. A painful, unwarranted contraction of the economy primarily felt by the people most at risk. >There are sanctions on their government bonds You sanction a government bond and guess what happens? Debt becomes expensive, development becomes impossible. You are unable to cushion economic shocks like the threat of sanctions by a major economic superpower. The threats become liable to throw the entire economy into chaos, sending investors, domestic and international, fleeing for less risk. We're keeping their oil cheap for a reason.
      - lr4444lr 8y ago
        Refusal to trade? Since when did we have a broad trade embargo on Venezuela? We floated the idea of specifically an oil embargo only this year, with damn good reason given their human rights issues. You're reading too much Noah Chomsky.
        omegaworks 8y ago
        Human rights issues? We trade freely and openly with Saudi Arabia. "Human rights issues" is trumpeted ad nauseum to cover for our self-serving international vendettas. Like many former colonies, they suffer from a resource curse. Nationalizing their primary, non-renewable, extractive industry is the only way to ensure that their economy didn't centralize and stagnate, to ensure they didn't remain a vassal state[1]. Norway did it and they're a thriving, economically diversified, socialist state with an enormous sovereign wealth fund[2]. Libya did it to pursue the same societal goals and we exterminated their ruler and destroyed their state to such an extent that slavery reemerged[3]. I wonder what the difference was. 1. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/resource-curse.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/resource-curse.asp 2. https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0 https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feab... 3. http://time.com/5042560/libya-slave-trade/ http://time.com/5042560/libya-slave-trade/
- pm90 8y ago
  Venezuela is such an outlier that I don't even know where to start. But the essential problem there is political, not monetary. If the U.S were to systematically purge their most productive industries (think Finance, Tech etc.), the US economy wouldn't last very long either.
  - mttrys 8y ago
    A political problem can happen anywhere including the United States, I wouldn't call that an outlier.
    - stretchwithme 8y ago
      That it happened is the outlier, not the possibility that it could happen.
patientplatypus 8y ago
Uhhhh....I remember reading the other day about how researchers worry that men could become infertile in a generation because plastic is an epigenetic endocrine disruptor. (https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero). And that's only the latest way in which the world could end in my lifetime outside of nuclear war, climate change (Cape Town came close to running out of water this year ffs), etc etc. How you think we're all better off just because we're enjoying eating our seed corn I do not understand. Next year we will simply starve.
- beat 8y ago
  We're not eating our seed corn, though - at least, not to the point where we won't survive. When you start looking for conspiracies like "plastic in the water will make us all sterile", you're really bending over backwards to find reasons to believe we're doomed. Think about that! Food productivity globally has skyrocketed, to the point where we are supporting the largest population in history, with the cheapest food prices and lowest rates of malnutrition and famine in history. Climate change is a serious problem, but it's unlikely to end civilization, and even more unlikely to end the human race. At this point, I'm pretty sure the world would recover well even from a full-scale nuclear war between the US and Russia (which hasn't happened in 70 years anyway). That's because it wouldn't affect everyone directly, and massive, vital infrastructures are in place - the paved roads, power lines, working vehicles, communications systems, and most importantly, the documentation and literacy to read it. We could rebuild. We would rebuild. Population growth has stabilized at the beginning of the process, where it matters. Right now, there are two billion children in the world. In a hundred years, there will also be two billion children in the world. The growth in global population right now is coming from the drastically increased lifespan of previous generations - adults that were once children who, contrary to human history, weren't struck down by disease or famine or war. The biggest "seed corn" is fossil fuel, but we're moving toward a clean alternative energy future at a fine pace. By the end of the 21st century, clean wind and solar power will dominate, and fossil fuel will be a thing of the past. With a tremendous supply of clean energy, free information, and health... a lot changes.

by beat 8y ago

quickben 8y ago

It's is, but it still doesn't change the fact that venezuella sucks right now, not because of tremendous amazing progress, but math and movement of numbers people agreed on. So, while all is amazing, all can be very non amazing on the receiving end of the liquidity removal.

omegaworks 8y ago
Venezuela "sucks right now" due to geopolitical egotism. We've turned them into a pariah on the global market, penalizing nations that dare trade with them with our own sanctions. Of course the Bolivar tanked. You can use a dollar to buy anything in the world. You can't use the bolivar to buy diddly squat.
- lr4444lr 8y ago
  Oh, and it had nothing to do with Chavez nationalizing industrious sectors and covering for his failures with the unsustainable crude oil prices?
  - omegaworks 8y ago
    Was it the act of nationalizing the sectors that made them unproductive or the refusal of the US to trade with said sectors post-nationalization? We have a long, colorful history of punishing latin american nations for embracing redistributive social policies and decolonisation. Never forget: https://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/10/40_years_after_chiles_9_11 https://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/10/40_years_after_chiles...
    - repsilat 8y ago
      > the refusal of the US to trade Venezuela is refusing international aid. There are sanctions on their government bonds, but the lack of private sector trade is basically caused by - the lack of private sector industry, - a lack of hard cash now, and - trade barriers implemented by the Venezuelan government not punitive American trade barriers or them somehow being turned into a "pairah".
      - omegaworks 8y ago
        >Venezuela is refusing international aid. All aid from the IMF comes with punitive strings attached. Enforced austerity from abroad. A painful, unwarranted contraction of the economy primarily felt by the people most at risk. >There are sanctions on their government bonds You sanction a government bond and guess what happens? Debt becomes expensive, development becomes impossible. You are unable to cushion economic shocks like the threat of sanctions by a major economic superpower. The threats become liable to throw the entire economy into chaos, sending investors, domestic and international, fleeing for less risk. We're keeping their oil cheap for a reason.
    - lr4444lr 8y ago
      Refusal to trade? Since when did we have a broad trade embargo on Venezuela? We floated the idea of specifically an oil embargo only this year, with damn good reason given their human rights issues. You're reading too much Noah Chomsky.
      - omegaworks 8y ago
        Human rights issues? We trade freely and openly with Saudi Arabia. "Human rights issues" is trumpeted ad nauseum to cover for our self-serving international vendettas. Like many former colonies, they suffer from a resource curse. Nationalizing their primary, non-renewable, extractive industry is the only way to ensure that their economy didn't centralize and stagnate, to ensure they didn't remain a vassal state[1]. Norway did it and they're a thriving, economically diversified, socialist state with an enormous sovereign wealth fund[2]. Libya did it to pursue the same societal goals and we exterminated their ruler and destroyed their state to such an extent that slavery reemerged[3]. I wonder what the difference was. 1. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/resource-curse.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/resource-curse.asp 2. https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0 https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feab... 3. http://time.com/5042560/libya-slave-trade/ http://time.com/5042560/libya-slave-trade/
pm90 8y ago
Venezuela is such an outlier that I don't even know where to start. But the essential problem there is political, not monetary. If the U.S were to systematically purge their most productive industries (think Finance, Tech etc.), the US economy wouldn't last very long either.
- mttrys 8y ago
  A political problem can happen anywhere including the United States, I wouldn't call that an outlier.
  - stretchwithme 8y ago
    That it happened is the outlier, not the possibility that it could happen.

patientplatypus 8y ago

Uhhhh....I remember reading the other day about how researchers worry that men could become infertile in a generation because plastic is an epigenetic endocrine disruptor. (https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero). And that's only the latest way in which the world could end in my lifetime outside of nuclear war, climate change (Cape Town came close to running out of water this year ffs), etc etc. How you think we're all better off just because we're enjoying eating our seed corn I do not understand. Next year we will simply starve.

beat 8y ago
We're not eating our seed corn, though - at least, not to the point where we won't survive. When you start looking for conspiracies like "plastic in the water will make us all sterile", you're really bending over backwards to find reasons to believe we're doomed. Think about that! Food productivity globally has skyrocketed, to the point where we are supporting the largest population in history, with the cheapest food prices and lowest rates of malnutrition and famine in history. Climate change is a serious problem, but it's unlikely to end civilization, and even more unlikely to end the human race. At this point, I'm pretty sure the world would recover well even from a full-scale nuclear war between the US and Russia (which hasn't happened in 70 years anyway). That's because it wouldn't affect everyone directly, and massive, vital infrastructures are in place - the paved roads, power lines, working vehicles, communications systems, and most importantly, the documentation and literacy to read it. We could rebuild. We would rebuild. Population growth has stabilized at the beginning of the process, where it matters. Right now, there are two billion children in the world. In a hundred years, there will also be two billion children in the world. The growth in global population right now is coming from the drastically increased lifespan of previous generations - adults that were once children who, contrary to human history, weren't struck down by disease or famine or war. The biggest "seed corn" is fossil fuel, but we're moving toward a clean alternative energy future at a fine pace. By the end of the 21st century, clean wind and solar power will dominate, and fossil fuel will be a thing of the past. With a tremendous supply of clean energy, free information, and health... a lot changes.