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It really isn’t. I’m kind of fed up with people, who live at a time of unprecedented wealth freedom and opportunity, complaining how bad things are while the st

by simonh 4y ago

It really isn’t. I’m kind of fed up with people, who live at a time of unprecedented wealth freedom and opportunity, complaining how bad things are while the state of the world around them improves dramatically. I was reading about poverty in the UK recently, the numbers are poor, but then I noticed that poverty is defined by a proportion of average wages. That means as wages go up, so does the poverty threshold. It turns out people in poverty in the UK now have double the spending power of those in the 1980s. I’m not saying poverty doesn’t exist, or that these people don’t need help. There are real issues of health, nutrition, opportunities and fairness. No question, but when someone compares poverty statistics over time, they’re not comparing the same things at all. My wife is Chinese so I’ve seen the transformation there, where hundreds of millions of people have been elevated not just out of poverty, but into the urban middle class. Africa is undergoing a huge transformation. I’ve been lucky enough to do a lot of travelling going back to the 90s, so I’ve seen how much places have changed over the decades. It turns out individual economic and social freedoms, of property, labour, travel and association work. Give people opportunities and they build vibrant productive societies. I’ve watched them do it.

llanowarelves 4y ago
America and Europe are much lower trust than they used to be. Can you leave a laptop unattended in busy Starbucks downtown in major cities? How much does "the honor system" still work everywhere in society? Japan is now the benchmark for high trust societies, and they copied a lot from Germany (educational system, civil codes, uniforms, many loan words for things still a reminder) nearer its social peak to get there. The results are manners, cleanliness, very safe, and almost no homeless. So we know what could be in US and Europe is way more: at least at the level of Japan. I argue even above (if Japan copies the very-foreign Germans it means something was good about Germans).
- simonh 4y ago
  People think things are getting worse, and that their friends and neighbours with different political views are their enemies, or outright traitors. They think these things because that’s what they are constantly being told in the media, on the left and right. Fear sells. My mother is a good example, she’s a comfortably retired ex teacher who owns her own house, has a cottage in France and lives in an idyllic country village in rural Britain. Yet she lives in fear of immigrants and refugees coming to rape and steal, and socialists destroying everything good and right, because the Daily Mail is keeping her in a state of constant terror.
  - useruser1234 4y ago
    Same with mine in the US. I have yet to see these terrifying murderous people.
paganel 4y ago
> It turns out people in poverty in the UK now have double the spending power of those in the 1980s. Do they have double the access to affordable housing? Or to good-enough and cheap healthcare? (I know about the NHS, I also know that their waiting list has exceeded 7 million recently). Can they send their kids to schools good enough for those kids to be able to have a real chance in life later on? Because, at the end, poverty is defined by the answers to those questions, it doesn't matter that lots of "poor" people can now purchase smartphones and flat TVs while Queen Victoria 150 years ago couldn't.
- simonh 4y ago
  Most of those NHS waiting lists didn’t even exist back in the 80s. That’s another case where a “worse” statistic hides a massive underlying improvement. Were spending twice as much on health care now as a proportion of GDP, and our GDP has doubled in real terms. I use the 80s as my reference because those are the days of my youth, when I became politically aware so it’s the benchmark I look back to. I’ve looked for studies on access to education and outcomes for those in poverty over time and not come up with anything. Lots of studies how poverty affects education, but none so far on how that has changed. Anyone know?
agumonkey 4y ago
I find these numbers a bit weak. Your life is not a flat basket of goods, it's more of a graph (pyramid would say maslow) and today it's hard to get a flat but easy to get Gbps link on your flagship smartphone, but it doesn't make your life great in the end.
- eunos 4y ago
  >but it doesn't make your life great in the end. Are you willing to exchange that? That is have much cheaped rents relative to your income but your internet speed go down to sub Mbps.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    Not joking: I'd do it right now. I find high bandwidth internet detrimental to my health.
dotxlem 4y ago
The world does not improve uniformly or get worse uniformly. What’s good for most is bad for some and vice versa.
- simonh 4y ago
  That's certainly true, and as a result there are always things getting worse somewhere, and that's always more newsworthy than things getting better anywhere.
skinnymuch 4y ago
This is a common rhetoric by [neo]liberals like Bill Gates, Pinker (both friends with Epstein too…), Peterson, Bari Weiss. Pinker has at least one book wholly focused on this rhetoric. The problem is, this stuff could have been said 20, 50, or 150 years ago. Always can say “look at all the progress, why are people complaining about stuff”. And this is what has happened historically. People want to keep the status quo. Not rock anything. If we all thought this way, then gay people will never get to the point of being treated like any other person instead of having more difficult lives in many places still. Can substitute gay people for all sorts like trans people or black people/minorities in some circumstances.
- simonh 4y ago
  Dissatisfaction is the spur toward progress, but the point is there is progress. It's complaining that things are always getting worse, or even that progress isn't possible and things are always getting worse that winds me up. Maybe being in my 50s gives me a different view of it than those much younger.
  - skinnymuch 4y ago
    I still don’t understand how what you wrote is different than what some people said 50 or 150 years ago. We now know from hindsight, the people who were doing your rhetoric in the past in enough circumstances where they wanted the status quo to remain as their life is going well enough. IE civil rights, suffrage, slavery, and so on. The person who you responded to didn’t say things are always getting worse. They implied progress isn’t possible, but it was specifically about money. It’s not even about progress in general. Which were your issues. I do agree the commenter was far too negative and being black and white. Especially for something as general as making money. I wonder if age is the main reason. I know people more radical than me who are past 50. My principles personally have only been more reinforced since I was in HS. Which is 15+ years ago. World and politic views makes sense to me as the biggest reason for how both of us see this. Just my hunch, not saying you’re wrong.
phatfish 4y ago
I'm fed up with people saying, "it was much worse $x years ago, so stop moaning". I'll bet you aren't struggling to feed your family, heat your home or pay your rent in this period of "unprecedented wealth freedom and opportunity" for the UK.
- simonh 4y ago
  That's right I'm not. Not anymore an I know some people are. You've already read my comment where I say there are real problems in our society. There's more to do. But progress is possible and is happening, things aren't constantly getting worse, it is possible to address a lot of these issues. Now is't the best time to be saying this, we're in for a tough winter, but modern western liberal society is the most powerful engine for making the world better humanity has ever had.

by simonh 4y ago

llanowarelves 4y ago

America and Europe are much lower trust than they used to be. Can you leave a laptop unattended in busy Starbucks downtown in major cities? How much does "the honor system" still work everywhere in society? Japan is now the benchmark for high trust societies, and they copied a lot from Germany (educational system, civil codes, uniforms, many loan words for things still a reminder) nearer its social peak to get there. The results are manners, cleanliness, very safe, and almost no homeless. So we know what could be in US and Europe is way more: at least at the level of Japan. I argue even above (if Japan copies the very-foreign Germans it means something was good about Germans).

simonh 4y ago
People think things are getting worse, and that their friends and neighbours with different political views are their enemies, or outright traitors. They think these things because that’s what they are constantly being told in the media, on the left and right. Fear sells. My mother is a good example, she’s a comfortably retired ex teacher who owns her own house, has a cottage in France and lives in an idyllic country village in rural Britain. Yet she lives in fear of immigrants and refugees coming to rape and steal, and socialists destroying everything good and right, because the Daily Mail is keeping her in a state of constant terror.
- useruser1234 4y ago
  Same with mine in the US. I have yet to see these terrifying murderous people.

paganel 4y ago

> It turns out people in poverty in the UK now have double the spending power of those in the 1980s. Do they have double the access to affordable housing? Or to good-enough and cheap healthcare? (I know about the NHS, I also know that their waiting list has exceeded 7 million recently). Can they send their kids to schools good enough for those kids to be able to have a real chance in life later on? Because, at the end, poverty is defined by the answers to those questions, it doesn't matter that lots of "poor" people can now purchase smartphones and flat TVs while Queen Victoria 150 years ago couldn't.

simonh 4y ago
Most of those NHS waiting lists didn’t even exist back in the 80s. That’s another case where a “worse” statistic hides a massive underlying improvement. Were spending twice as much on health care now as a proportion of GDP, and our GDP has doubled in real terms. I use the 80s as my reference because those are the days of my youth, when I became politically aware so it’s the benchmark I look back to. I’ve looked for studies on access to education and outcomes for those in poverty over time and not come up with anything. Lots of studies how poverty affects education, but none so far on how that has changed. Anyone know?

agumonkey 4y ago

I find these numbers a bit weak. Your life is not a flat basket of goods, it's more of a graph (pyramid would say maslow) and today it's hard to get a flat but easy to get Gbps link on your flagship smartphone, but it doesn't make your life great in the end.

eunos 4y ago
>but it doesn't make your life great in the end. Are you willing to exchange that? That is have much cheaped rents relative to your income but your internet speed go down to sub Mbps.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  Not joking: I'd do it right now. I find high bandwidth internet detrimental to my health.

dotxlem 4y ago

The world does not improve uniformly or get worse uniformly. What’s good for most is bad for some and vice versa.

simonh 4y ago
That's certainly true, and as a result there are always things getting worse somewhere, and that's always more newsworthy than things getting better anywhere.

skinnymuch 4y ago

This is a common rhetoric by [neo]liberals like Bill Gates, Pinker (both friends with Epstein too…), Peterson, Bari Weiss. Pinker has at least one book wholly focused on this rhetoric. The problem is, this stuff could have been said 20, 50, or 150 years ago. Always can say “look at all the progress, why are people complaining about stuff”. And this is what has happened historically. People want to keep the status quo. Not rock anything. If we all thought this way, then gay people will never get to the point of being treated like any other person instead of having more difficult lives in many places still. Can substitute gay people for all sorts like trans people or black people/minorities in some circumstances.

simonh 4y ago
Dissatisfaction is the spur toward progress, but the point is there is progress. It's complaining that things are always getting worse, or even that progress isn't possible and things are always getting worse that winds me up. Maybe being in my 50s gives me a different view of it than those much younger.
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  I still don’t understand how what you wrote is different than what some people said 50 or 150 years ago. We now know from hindsight, the people who were doing your rhetoric in the past in enough circumstances where they wanted the status quo to remain as their life is going well enough. IE civil rights, suffrage, slavery, and so on. The person who you responded to didn’t say things are always getting worse. They implied progress isn’t possible, but it was specifically about money. It’s not even about progress in general. Which were your issues. I do agree the commenter was far too negative and being black and white. Especially for something as general as making money. I wonder if age is the main reason. I know people more radical than me who are past 50. My principles personally have only been more reinforced since I was in HS. Which is 15+ years ago. World and politic views makes sense to me as the biggest reason for how both of us see this. Just my hunch, not saying you’re wrong.

phatfish 4y ago

I'm fed up with people saying, "it was much worse $x years ago, so stop moaning". I'll bet you aren't struggling to feed your family, heat your home or pay your rent in this period of "unprecedented wealth freedom and opportunity" for the UK.

simonh 4y ago
That's right I'm not. Not anymore an I know some people are. You've already read my comment where I say there are real problems in our society. There's more to do. But progress is possible and is happening, things aren't constantly getting worse, it is possible to address a lot of these issues. Now is't the best time to be saying this, we're in for a tough winter, but modern western liberal society is the most powerful engine for making the world better humanity has ever had.