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Progress is real. https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_14_2017_02_AL2017GFO_GF-GFO_&WT.tsrc=GFGFO https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-L

Progress is real. https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_14_2017_02_AL2017GFO_GF-GFO_&WT.tsrc=GFGFO https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_14... > the number of childhood deaths per year has been cut in half since 1990. > Extreme poverty has been cut in half over the last 25 years. > In 1988, when the global campaign was launched to end polio, there were 350,000 new cases each year. > Last year, there were 37.

EliRivers 8y ago
Progress is real. Who is driving that progress? Is it the global elite in general, is it a handful of rich people who do actually make a difference, or are their efforts just noise and something else is driving the progress? I genuinely don't know; hoping someone has the data.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  I'm thinking it's a mix of government action, organizations like the UN / UNESCO and the Red Cross, and both governments and donators that donate to said organizations so that they can do their work without needing to scrounge for money.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    Many of these large governmental or bureaucratic organizations suffer from extreme inefficiency and ineptitude. The Red Cross's complete failings in Haiti have been widely reported. NPR ran a particularly scathing report [1] on it that includes nothing short of quite forward allegations of fraud. The Red Cross, for their part, make claims about what they did and provide extremely high level claimed expenditures, but then refuse to provide specific details of programs and costs. As the article mentions when you donate to the Red Cross first they immediately take a cut of that money for themselves. Then its distributed to other charities which then take an administrative cut. And then in carrying out the program there are more 'administrative' cuts. In one program NPR reviewed, administrative costs alone ate up 1/3rd of all donations. Later in the article the Red Cross, upon discovering NPR is investigating their efforts, sends an email to NPR suggesting that, 'NPR and ProPublica were "creating ill will in the community, which may give rise to a security incident.. We will hold you and your news organizations fully responsible." When the Red Cross says things like it "provided homes" for more than 130,000 Haitians - they include among those 130,000 "people who went to a seminar on how to fix their own homes, people who received temporary rental assistance, and thousands of people who received temporary shelters — which start to disintegrate after three to five years." In total the Red Cross's half a billion dollars in Haiti ended up creating 6 permanent homes. And this sort of inaction is not an isolated incident. [1] - https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-red-cross-500-million-in-haiti-relief https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-re...
    - fjsolwmv 8y ago
      Large corporations are inefficient also. People work all day sewing clothes but all the profits are siphoned off by foreign capitalists.
  - Retric 8y ago
    In 1990, more than 60% of people in East Asia were in extreme poverty. The dramatic shift had little to do with the UN/UNESCO or Red Cross and a lot to do with local governments not failing as hard as they did 50 years ago.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    You must be kidding. These elements are minor contributors. By far and large the opening of the world to free markets is what has solved many of these issues. If what you claim was true, then we would have solved poverty 40 years ago already. Just look at China and South-East Asia in general. They are coming out of poverty by becoming rich, not because someone is parachuting goods every day.
    - goatlover 8y ago
      > not because someone is parachuting goods every day. Charity of that sort arguably undermines local economies and makes people dependent on future charity. That's why poverty is better addressed by supporting free markets.
      - ekianjo 8y ago
        Yes, we totally agree on that. Free markets give an incentive for individuals to work for themselves.
- hkmurakami 8y ago
  Wrt polio, that's a Rotary International led effort, which is a very dispersed organization with 1.2 million members around the world contributing time and money to various causes. "Rotary, along with our partners, has reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent worldwide since our first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979. We are close to eradicating polio, but we need your help. Whether you have a few minutes or a few hours, here are some ways to make a global impact and protect children against polio forever." https://my.rotary.org/en/take-action/end-polio https://my.rotary.org/en/take-action/end-polio
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  I don't think there is any one-size-fits-all answer, but one major contributor is rarely given credit -- nuclear weapons. Bear with me, I'm serious. When you look back at our history war is nearly always the cause for the greatest suffering. It causes starvation, 'involuntary migration', and so many other things. Whatever has been built up in an area, it does a wonderful job of tearing down. Look at Libya for one of the most stark contemporary examples. Libya was steadily developing and seeing increased prosperity as a model of what Africa could become. Now, it's been reduced to neglected, unstable, and impoverished rubble since we 'freed' them. And this didn't used to just be a story of Mideastern nations. This was the story of the world. The one thing that changed this was nukes. Mutually assured destruction is why the Cold War is now called the Cold War, and not World War 3. And it's why direct unrestrained confrontation between developed nations has really become a thing of the past. Countries like China would never have been able to develop if not for the peace and stability that nuclear weapons have enabled. We can even look to nations like India. It's surreal to imagine that until 1947 that entire nation was just a property of the British Empire. Even the notion of a British Empire is surreal! But now that they have gained their independence and are a nuclear nation, they are also gradually increasing in prosperity as Indian decisions are being made to put Indians first. And as a nuclear power their decisions, independence, and developments are all effectively guaranteed, at least until we develop technology that can effectively render nukes harmless. Like so many things in life, some of the greatest progress comes not from directed efforts, but from paradoxical places you would never even imagine to look in the pursuit of your goal.
CPLX 8y ago
Meanwhile suicides and death by opiates have skyrocketed across the actual country Gates lives in, exacerbated by the incredible increase in inequality that Gates actively helped create. Things don’t happen in a vacuum. Some things are much better, some are much worse. But Gates doesn’t have stats on the concentration of ownership of global resources in that post because it’s not a KPI for him.
- JacobJans 8y ago
  You may want to read this year's letter: https://www.gatesnotes.com/2018-Annual-Letter#ALChapter1 https://www.gatesnotes.com/2018-Annual-Letter#ALChapter1
- mkirklions 8y ago
  Starvation and disease is not chosen. Suicides and opiates are. (and if you are a maslow hierarchy fan, you will notice that life has gotten extremely good for these problems to exist) Things are much much better, equating these is irresponsible. EDIT: Lets not overthink the very obvious intention and meaning behind my comment.
  - ada1981 8y ago
    Starvation and disease is chosen in the sense that the developed world chooses to ignore it. I’d consider suicide and addiction more of a context than a “choice”.
  - monktastic1 8y ago
    > Starvation and disease is not chosen. Suicides and opiates are. This confuses proximate and root causes. Someone may "choose" to pull the trigger and end their life, or choose to swallow one more blissful pill to avoid confronting their miserable existence, but they probably would not have knowingly chosen the circumstances that now leave them with that horrible choice.
  - Retric 8y ago
    It's not that simple. Oopiates where prescribed in huge numbers knowing that many people would become addicted to them. Disease vectors are often under peoples control. Do you hike in the woods and risk lime disease? Poverty is often a little of everything. It's far easier to become poor than stop being poor, but it's not some inescapable prison.
monktastic1 8y ago
There is real progress, but it also matters what we measure. A good example[1] is India building hydroelectric dams, which often submerge fragile ecosystems and displace their agrarian societies of sometimes hundreds of thousands. The villagers go from earning "nothing" to earning $1/day according to our money system. They have been "lifted out of poverty," despite now living in disgusting slums in a city as foreign to them as it would be to us. Their culture (and perhaps knowledge of regenerative agriculture) are lost forever. We don't measure the carbon sequestration capacity lost by the now-inundated land, or the huge amounts of methane that the swamped vegetation releases. We just know we created "green energy." The villagers' risk of dying in those slums from many awful diseases has thankfully plummeted, but their profound communal loss will likely manifest in the form of depression or anxiety -- which are on the rise globally. Could that rise be a symptom of our realizing that while the "numbers" get better and better, it's occurring at the cost of obliterating the planet in possibly irreparable ways? Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of good, too. But there's a lot that gets missed in choosing what and how we measure. [1] This example is lifted largely from a favorite author, Charles Eisenstein, from his new book "Climate: A New Story." You can read up on the Tehri dam. If it breaks (and some seismologists think it's a real possibility), it will cause untold more devastation.
jstewartmobile 8y ago
Sometimes, dead is better. Have you seen some of the industrial cities in India and China? I think I'd rather check out at 30 in a world where I could actually breathe.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  There are cities in the west that used to be that bad too, but... you do you, I guess.
  - jstewartmobile 8y ago
    As an event, yes. As an everyday thing, no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_New_York_City_smog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_New_York_City_smog And I have never seen this in the USA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmryr65iTwM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmryr65iTwM It is all so unnecessary. Meanwhile, our elites will not abide a blow to their quarterly earnings for anyone, so the formula is: make money polluting China, go live in Canada; make money polluting India, go live in the USA.
kingraoul3 8y ago
Thanks to the PRC!
pron 8y ago
Of course progress is real (even if sometimes exaggerated). But one of the things that annoy me most is that some people, ahemstevenpinkerahem, use it to shut up those who very often make it happen. Change is real, but it happens in large part due to whiners and their political action (who are then often rebutted with, yeah, that change we had a generation ago was necessary and important, but now you're going too far/just whining/we've "given" you enough).
_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
Cherry-picking can generate support for any argument.
- ada1981 8y ago
  As well as tasty pies and jams.
  - PeanutNore 8y ago
    I prefer the peach pickin' jams of the Allman Brothers Band
andrepd 8y ago
Let me fix that. >Some progress is real. Let me similarly point three cherry-picked stats that show the world is getting worse, to point out how flawed that reasoning is. * The percentage of the population living under democracies has gone down since 2000. * Wealth concentration and income inequality have risen since the 1970s. * Suicides have gone up. If there is one thing I realise is that only technological progress marches on. The rest of "progress" (social, political) almost never goes unequivocally "forwards", and is subject to setbacks and upturns and reversals of previously achieved progress.

EliRivers 8y ago

Progress is real. Who is driving that progress? Is it the global elite in general, is it a handful of rich people who do actually make a difference, or are their efforts just noise and something else is driving the progress? I genuinely don't know; hoping someone has the data.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
I'm thinking it's a mix of government action, organizations like the UN / UNESCO and the Red Cross, and both governments and donators that donate to said organizations so that they can do their work without needing to scrounge for money.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  Many of these large governmental or bureaucratic organizations suffer from extreme inefficiency and ineptitude. The Red Cross's complete failings in Haiti have been widely reported. NPR ran a particularly scathing report [1] on it that includes nothing short of quite forward allegations of fraud. The Red Cross, for their part, make claims about what they did and provide extremely high level claimed expenditures, but then refuse to provide specific details of programs and costs. As the article mentions when you donate to the Red Cross first they immediately take a cut of that money for themselves. Then its distributed to other charities which then take an administrative cut. And then in carrying out the program there are more 'administrative' cuts. In one program NPR reviewed, administrative costs alone ate up 1/3rd of all donations. Later in the article the Red Cross, upon discovering NPR is investigating their efforts, sends an email to NPR suggesting that, 'NPR and ProPublica were "creating ill will in the community, which may give rise to a security incident.. We will hold you and your news organizations fully responsible." When the Red Cross says things like it "provided homes" for more than 130,000 Haitians - they include among those 130,000 "people who went to a seminar on how to fix their own homes, people who received temporary rental assistance, and thousands of people who received temporary shelters — which start to disintegrate after three to five years." In total the Red Cross's half a billion dollars in Haiti ended up creating 6 permanent homes. And this sort of inaction is not an isolated incident. [1] - https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-red-cross-500-million-in-haiti-relief https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-re...
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    Large corporations are inefficient also. People work all day sewing clothes but all the profits are siphoned off by foreign capitalists.
- Retric 8y ago
  In 1990, more than 60% of people in East Asia were in extreme poverty. The dramatic shift had little to do with the UN/UNESCO or Red Cross and a lot to do with local governments not failing as hard as they did 50 years ago.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  You must be kidding. These elements are minor contributors. By far and large the opening of the world to free markets is what has solved many of these issues. If what you claim was true, then we would have solved poverty 40 years ago already. Just look at China and South-East Asia in general. They are coming out of poverty by becoming rich, not because someone is parachuting goods every day.
  - goatlover 8y ago
    > not because someone is parachuting goods every day. Charity of that sort arguably undermines local economies and makes people dependent on future charity. That's why poverty is better addressed by supporting free markets.
    - ekianjo 8y ago
      Yes, we totally agree on that. Free markets give an incentive for individuals to work for themselves.
hkmurakami 8y ago
Wrt polio, that's a Rotary International led effort, which is a very dispersed organization with 1.2 million members around the world contributing time and money to various causes. "Rotary, along with our partners, has reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent worldwide since our first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979. We are close to eradicating polio, but we need your help. Whether you have a few minutes or a few hours, here are some ways to make a global impact and protect children against polio forever." https://my.rotary.org/en/take-action/end-polio https://my.rotary.org/en/take-action/end-polio
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
I don't think there is any one-size-fits-all answer, but one major contributor is rarely given credit -- nuclear weapons. Bear with me, I'm serious. When you look back at our history war is nearly always the cause for the greatest suffering. It causes starvation, 'involuntary migration', and so many other things. Whatever has been built up in an area, it does a wonderful job of tearing down. Look at Libya for one of the most stark contemporary examples. Libya was steadily developing and seeing increased prosperity as a model of what Africa could become. Now, it's been reduced to neglected, unstable, and impoverished rubble since we 'freed' them. And this didn't used to just be a story of Mideastern nations. This was the story of the world. The one thing that changed this was nukes. Mutually assured destruction is why the Cold War is now called the Cold War, and not World War 3. And it's why direct unrestrained confrontation between developed nations has really become a thing of the past. Countries like China would never have been able to develop if not for the peace and stability that nuclear weapons have enabled. We can even look to nations like India. It's surreal to imagine that until 1947 that entire nation was just a property of the British Empire. Even the notion of a British Empire is surreal! But now that they have gained their independence and are a nuclear nation, they are also gradually increasing in prosperity as Indian decisions are being made to put Indians first. And as a nuclear power their decisions, independence, and developments are all effectively guaranteed, at least until we develop technology that can effectively render nukes harmless. Like so many things in life, some of the greatest progress comes not from directed efforts, but from paradoxical places you would never even imagine to look in the pursuit of your goal.

CPLX 8y ago

Meanwhile suicides and death by opiates have skyrocketed across the actual country Gates lives in, exacerbated by the incredible increase in inequality that Gates actively helped create. Things don’t happen in a vacuum. Some things are much better, some are much worse. But Gates doesn’t have stats on the concentration of ownership of global resources in that post because it’s not a KPI for him.

JacobJans 8y ago
You may want to read this year's letter: https://www.gatesnotes.com/2018-Annual-Letter#ALChapter1 https://www.gatesnotes.com/2018-Annual-Letter#ALChapter1
mkirklions 8y ago
Starvation and disease is not chosen. Suicides and opiates are. (and if you are a maslow hierarchy fan, you will notice that life has gotten extremely good for these problems to exist) Things are much much better, equating these is irresponsible. EDIT: Lets not overthink the very obvious intention and meaning behind my comment.
- ada1981 8y ago
  Starvation and disease is chosen in the sense that the developed world chooses to ignore it. I’d consider suicide and addiction more of a context than a “choice”.
- monktastic1 8y ago
  > Starvation and disease is not chosen. Suicides and opiates are. This confuses proximate and root causes. Someone may "choose" to pull the trigger and end their life, or choose to swallow one more blissful pill to avoid confronting their miserable existence, but they probably would not have knowingly chosen the circumstances that now leave them with that horrible choice.
- Retric 8y ago
  It's not that simple. Oopiates where prescribed in huge numbers knowing that many people would become addicted to them. Disease vectors are often under peoples control. Do you hike in the woods and risk lime disease? Poverty is often a little of everything. It's far easier to become poor than stop being poor, but it's not some inescapable prison.

monktastic1 8y ago

There is real progress, but it also matters what we measure. A good example[1] is India building hydroelectric dams, which often submerge fragile ecosystems and displace their agrarian societies of sometimes hundreds of thousands. The villagers go from earning "nothing" to earning $1/day according to our money system. They have been "lifted out of poverty," despite now living in disgusting slums in a city as foreign to them as it would be to us. Their culture (and perhaps knowledge of regenerative agriculture) are lost forever. We don't measure the carbon sequestration capacity lost by the now-inundated land, or the huge amounts of methane that the swamped vegetation releases. We just know we created "green energy." The villagers' risk of dying in those slums from many awful diseases has thankfully plummeted, but their profound communal loss will likely manifest in the form of depression or anxiety -- which are on the rise globally. Could that rise be a symptom of our realizing that while the "numbers" get better and better, it's occurring at the cost of obliterating the planet in possibly irreparable ways? Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of good, too. But there's a lot that gets missed in choosing what and how we measure. [1] This example is lifted largely from a favorite author, Charles Eisenstein, from his new book "Climate: A New Story." You can read up on the Tehri dam. If it breaks (and some seismologists think it's a real possibility), it will cause untold more devastation.

jstewartmobile 8y ago

Sometimes, dead is better. Have you seen some of the industrial cities in India and China? I think I'd rather check out at 30 in a world where I could actually breathe.

amanaplanacanal 8y ago
There are cities in the west that used to be that bad too, but... you do you, I guess.
- jstewartmobile 8y ago
  As an event, yes. As an everyday thing, no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_New_York_City_smog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_New_York_City_smog And I have never seen this in the USA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmryr65iTwM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmryr65iTwM It is all so unnecessary. Meanwhile, our elites will not abide a blow to their quarterly earnings for anyone, so the formula is: make money polluting China, go live in Canada; make money polluting India, go live in the USA.

kingraoul3 8y ago

Thanks to the PRC!

pron 8y ago

Of course progress is real (even if sometimes exaggerated). But one of the things that annoy me most is that some people, ahemstevenpinkerahem, use it to shut up those who very often make it happen. Change is real, but it happens in large part due to whiners and their political action (who are then often rebutted with, yeah, that change we had a generation ago was necessary and important, but now you're going too far/just whining/we've "given" you enough).

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago

Cherry-picking can generate support for any argument.

ada1981 8y ago
As well as tasty pies and jams.
- PeanutNore 8y ago
  I prefer the peach pickin' jams of the Allman Brothers Band

andrepd 8y ago

Let me fix that. >Some progress is real. Let me similarly point three cherry-picked stats that show the world is getting worse, to point out how flawed that reasoning is. * The percentage of the population living under democracies has gone down since 2000. * Wealth concentration and income inequality have risen since the 1970s. * Suicides have gone up. If there is one thing I realise is that only technological progress marches on. The rest of "progress" (social, political) almost never goes unequivocally "forwards", and is subject to setbacks and upturns and reversals of previously achieved progress.