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Hickels rebuttal in the letter is that GDP cannot be used to gauge poverty which he claims has only been measured directly by the UN since 1981. But if you loo

by derriz 8y ago

Hickels rebuttal in the letter is that GDP cannot be used to gauge poverty which he claims has only been measured directly by the UN since 1981. But if you look around the world today, GDP/head is a remarkaby strong indicator of the level of poverty in a country. Nevermind that all the other quality of life stats: life expectency, child morality, average working hours, literacy, education levels, food affordability support Pinker's argument. Actually here is a fairly convincing (in my opinion) response which covers this and more: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is-the-world-really-getting-poorer-a-response-to-that-claim-by-steve-pinker/ https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is-the-w... Slightly off-topic: as I get older I get more and more suspisious of promoters of apocalyse narratives. Both hard left and hard right both require people to believe the "world getting worse and worse" in order to promote their opposition to the liberal democratic multilateral global world order. Apocalypse stories are one of the oldest "hacks" against human judgment and have been exploited by the religious, cults and political extremists for millennia.

roenxi 8y ago
> promoters of apocalyse narratives ... [b]oth hard left and hard right both require people to believe the "world getting worse and worse" There are still veterans of WWII alive today, and that was pretty much an apocalypse for the people involved. Just because the last 50 years have been peaceful doesn't mean good times are guaranteed, we should remain cautious of threats. Change is extremely rapid. Many of the issues raised by both sides are concerns worth taking seriously, even if the people raising them are wholly unqualified by temperament to do anything about it.
- arethuza 8y ago
  And there are even more people (myself included) who lived through part of the Cold War and realise that we just got through that period by sheer luck and the good judgement of a handful of people on both sides.
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  > There are still veterans of WWII alive today There are still veterans of WWII alive today that were born at a point in time where the idea of fighting a new world war was unthinkable. FTFY
notahacker 8y ago
Well that's half his argument on the stats: the other half suggests that even assuming modern figures are accurate it's tendentious to claim that people are no longer in poverty simply because their estimated incomes have reached the heady heights of ~$2 in US purchasing power per day, and implies the low level of poverty line has been deliberately selected to paint a rosy picture. There's little doubt that many other indicators are moving in positive directions but it's rather less clear that education and healthcare improvements are the product of the benefits of increased local market competition and global capital mobility (the author attributes them to state spending and [slow] adoption of technological advances the developed world saw a long time ago). That becomes important when one notes that the proportion of the world earning less than $10 per day is actually rising (due in part to population growth being boosted by increased survival rates) despite developing and middle income countries being better educated and more productive than ever before. Again, there are tenable arguments that due to the weaknesses of PPP calculations, many living on $10 per day live lifestyles that certainly don't resemble poverty, but others do and the unavoidable shortcoming of methods comparing people with vastly different living conditions, expectations and means of earning them is part of the problem with pure Pinker optimism. I'm also suspicious of apocalypse narratives and suspect I'd disagree with the blog author on many things, but I'm also suspicious of unqualified feelgood narratives in order to promote support for a particular world order
smolder 8y ago
Things are always getting worse in some way or another, at the same time they get better in other ways. Lowering poverty doesn't change that we're doing irreversible damage to major ecosystems.
- goatlover 8y ago
  > we're doing irreversible damage to major ecosystems. A potential rebuttal is to think of ecosystems as dynamics systems made up of species always adapting to changes, instead of something pristinely in balance that we've wrecked. Then the question becomes whether current changes to ecosystems can continue supporting us as their balance shifts, instead of thinking solely in apocalyptic terms. Life as a whole is more resilient than we give it credit for.
  - smolder 8y ago
    You're right, nothings static and nothings forever. However we do have a lot of control, as a species. I think the safest thing to do would be to adapt ourselves willfully to new knowledge.
andrewwharton 8y ago
To be fair, that's only a very small part of his rebuttal, dealing specifically with the period prior to 1970, as well as the fact that GDP estimates for this period "take little if any account of the goods and resources that people may have acquired from their land, from trees, from forests, from rivers and the sea, and in the form of gifts from relatives." From 1981 onward, I would summarize his argument as being that: - While some measures have improved, the picture is no where near as good as it is represented. - Using $1.90 as the baseline to beat is too low for what we would consider as being out of poverty. - Most economic successes have not been due to neoliberal markets but rather state-led industrial policy, protectionism and regulation. - Most quality of life improvements have not been due to neoliberal globalization but simple public interventions including free healthcare and education. - Progress is slowing relative to the resources available to tackle the problem.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  > - While some measures have improved, the picture is no where near as good as it is represented. Name a measure of human suffering that has not improved. Healthy lifespan, deaths in childbirth, infant mortality, they’ve all gotten better. > - Using $1.90 as the baseline to beat is too low for what we would consider as being out of poverty. The trend is the same regardless of which poverty line you pick. Poverty is decreasing, education, literacy and health are rising. > - Most economic successes have not been due to neoliberal markets but rather state-led industrial policy, protectionism and regulation. Indeed, in every state where they’ve followed an industrial policy of “Let’s do capitalism.” poverty has decreased, whether with heavy handed government economic intervention like Japan or Korea or just leaving business alone like Hong Kong. If protectionism worked Argentina would have a car industry. They tried for 30 years. It doesn’t. > - Most quality of life improvements have not been due to neoliberal globalization but simple public interventions including free healthcare and education. The UN’s human development index is 70% explained by GDP per capita. Poor countries can’t afford good policy and capitalism is the proven way to escape poverty. > - Progress is slowing relative to the resources available to tackle the problem. As far as absolute poverty goes, maybe, kind of. The countries that have shown no real improvement are the ones with no real government or state capacity. Everywhere else is in the process of escaping absolute poverty or has done so. These are the countries that do not work, mostly in Africa. We just have to work towards integrating them into the global economy so they can grow. One hopes the nearby example of Ethiopia, Ghana, South Africa or Nigeria will help, as they grow their way out of poverty.
andrewla 8y ago
> Actually here is a fairly convincing (in my opinion) response which covers this and more: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is-the-world-really-getting-poorer-a-response-to-that-claim-by-steve-pinker/ https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is-the-w... This is exactly the post that the posted article is responding to, which they link to literally in the opening sentence.
inscionent 8y ago
When is an apocalypse not an apocalypse? "...in India, where 30 million died..." "...in the Congo, which so upended local economies that 10 million people died – half the population." We look at those with wealth, shrug and assume they earned it and continue to let them freely wield the wealth of our entire species; all the while the other eye is trained on those who have been ground into the dust and applaud that things are getting better, faster. Clutching our pearls we hope we don't become them.

by derriz 8y ago

roenxi 8y ago

> promoters of apocalyse narratives ... [b]oth hard left and hard right both require people to believe the "world getting worse and worse" There are still veterans of WWII alive today, and that was pretty much an apocalypse for the people involved. Just because the last 50 years have been peaceful doesn't mean good times are guaranteed, we should remain cautious of threats. Change is extremely rapid. Many of the issues raised by both sides are concerns worth taking seriously, even if the people raising them are wholly unqualified by temperament to do anything about it.

arethuza 8y ago
And there are even more people (myself included) who lived through part of the Cold War and realise that we just got through that period by sheer luck and the good judgement of a handful of people on both sides.
ddebernardy 8y ago
> There are still veterans of WWII alive today There are still veterans of WWII alive today that were born at a point in time where the idea of fighting a new world war was unthinkable. FTFY

notahacker 8y ago

Well that's half his argument on the stats: the other half suggests that even assuming modern figures are accurate it's tendentious to claim that people are no longer in poverty simply because their estimated incomes have reached the heady heights of ~$2 in US purchasing power per day, and implies the low level of poverty line has been deliberately selected to paint a rosy picture. There's little doubt that many other indicators are moving in positive directions but it's rather less clear that education and healthcare improvements are the product of the benefits of increased local market competition and global capital mobility (the author attributes them to state spending and [slow] adoption of technological advances the developed world saw a long time ago). That becomes important when one notes that the proportion of the world earning less than $10 per day is actually rising (due in part to population growth being boosted by increased survival rates) despite developing and middle income countries being better educated and more productive than ever before. Again, there are tenable arguments that due to the weaknesses of PPP calculations, many living on $10 per day live lifestyles that certainly don't resemble poverty, but others do and the unavoidable shortcoming of methods comparing people with vastly different living conditions, expectations and means of earning them is part of the problem with pure Pinker optimism. I'm also suspicious of apocalypse narratives and suspect I'd disagree with the blog author on many things, but I'm also suspicious of unqualified feelgood narratives in order to promote support for a particular world order

smolder 8y ago

Things are always getting worse in some way or another, at the same time they get better in other ways. Lowering poverty doesn't change that we're doing irreversible damage to major ecosystems.

goatlover 8y ago
> we're doing irreversible damage to major ecosystems. A potential rebuttal is to think of ecosystems as dynamics systems made up of species always adapting to changes, instead of something pristinely in balance that we've wrecked. Then the question becomes whether current changes to ecosystems can continue supporting us as their balance shifts, instead of thinking solely in apocalyptic terms. Life as a whole is more resilient than we give it credit for.
- smolder 8y ago
  You're right, nothings static and nothings forever. However we do have a lot of control, as a species. I think the safest thing to do would be to adapt ourselves willfully to new knowledge.

andrewwharton 8y ago

To be fair, that's only a very small part of his rebuttal, dealing specifically with the period prior to 1970, as well as the fact that GDP estimates for this period "take little if any account of the goods and resources that people may have acquired from their land, from trees, from forests, from rivers and the sea, and in the form of gifts from relatives." From 1981 onward, I would summarize his argument as being that: - While some measures have improved, the picture is no where near as good as it is represented. - Using $1.90 as the baseline to beat is too low for what we would consider as being out of poverty. - Most economic successes have not been due to neoliberal markets but rather state-led industrial policy, protectionism and regulation. - Most quality of life improvements have not been due to neoliberal globalization but simple public interventions including free healthcare and education. - Progress is slowing relative to the resources available to tackle the problem.

barry-cotter 8y ago
> - While some measures have improved, the picture is no where near as good as it is represented. Name a measure of human suffering that has not improved. Healthy lifespan, deaths in childbirth, infant mortality, they’ve all gotten better. > - Using $1.90 as the baseline to beat is too low for what we would consider as being out of poverty. The trend is the same regardless of which poverty line you pick. Poverty is decreasing, education, literacy and health are rising. > - Most economic successes have not been due to neoliberal markets but rather state-led industrial policy, protectionism and regulation. Indeed, in every state where they’ve followed an industrial policy of “Let’s do capitalism.” poverty has decreased, whether with heavy handed government economic intervention like Japan or Korea or just leaving business alone like Hong Kong. If protectionism worked Argentina would have a car industry. They tried for 30 years. It doesn’t. > - Most quality of life improvements have not been due to neoliberal globalization but simple public interventions including free healthcare and education. The UN’s human development index is 70% explained by GDP per capita. Poor countries can’t afford good policy and capitalism is the proven way to escape poverty. > - Progress is slowing relative to the resources available to tackle the problem. As far as absolute poverty goes, maybe, kind of. The countries that have shown no real improvement are the ones with no real government or state capacity. Everywhere else is in the process of escaping absolute poverty or has done so. These are the countries that do not work, mostly in Africa. We just have to work towards integrating them into the global economy so they can grow. One hopes the nearby example of Ethiopia, Ghana, South Africa or Nigeria will help, as they grow their way out of poverty.

andrewla 8y ago

> Actually here is a fairly convincing (in my opinion) response which covers this and more: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is-the-world-really-getting-poorer-a-response-to-that-claim-by-steve-pinker/ https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is-the-w... This is exactly the post that the posted article is responding to, which they link to literally in the opening sentence.

inscionent 8y ago

When is an apocalypse not an apocalypse? "...in India, where 30 million died..." "...in the Congo, which so upended local economies that 10 million people died – half the population." We look at those with wealth, shrug and assume they earned it and continue to let them freely wield the wealth of our entire species; all the while the other eye is trained on those who have been ground into the dust and applaud that things are getting better, faster. Clutching our pearls we hope we don't become them.