4 ms·

Indeed. Couple of optimistic talks at TED that shows that on an 'average' it IS getting better. http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.

by hsshah 15y ago

Indeed. Couple of optimistic talks at TED that shows that on an 'average' it IS getting better. http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen... http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_o... However, the 24/7 news cycle drums up everything that is negative and hence most of "feel" that it is getting worse.

tfb 15y ago
As much as I despise all of the negativity in the news, the optimistic part of me sees it as a way to shine light on the many things wrong with the world at present. While the news may be a bit of a downer, I believe the lasting effects of it are for the best. When I learn of something terrible or even of a minor crime or injustice, the first thing that comes to my mind is along these lines: "There is obviously some ideal we're working towards, but the current system is inherently flawed; so what can I do to hack this system and make it better?" Maybe someday we'll have the kinks worked out and will have managed to minimize the "bad" things happening throughout the world. And I believe the news will have ultimately played some role such improvements. The day we see more good news than bad will be a great day.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  The problem is that a skewed sense of what's going on in the world can give you a skewed sense of how to improve the world. Case in point: many people imagine that the developed world buying cheap goods and labor from the developing world is a kind of exploitation rather than a form of enrichment. It also tends to focus on exceptional events rather than on broad trends (positive or negative).
  - huxley 15y ago
    I think one would most reasonably hold that it is both a form of exploitation and a form of enrichment. The interesting part of the article is that the biggest benefit has been to those in abject poverty: "Most of the progress has been concentrated among the poorest of the poor—those who make less than $1.25 a day. The bank’s figures show only a small drop in the number of those who make less than $2 a day." One interesting bit buried in the lede was that the article also highlights the benefits of counter-cyclical fiscal expansions among governments. Those that expanded government programmes held down the damage caused by the recession. I would be interested in seeing if those that tried austerity measures suffered more. Update: changed last sentences to better reflect the point I wanted to make.
    - randallsquared 15y ago
      I think one would most reasonably hold that it is both a form of exploitation and a form of enrichment. Enrichment would leave them -- well, enriched, and exploitation would leave them poorer. These possibilities are diametrically opposed, unless you change the referent of "them" midargument.
      - _delirium 15y ago
        It can depend on what you count as riches, in part. For example, several African countries are being enriched by oil and mineral sales, if you count wealth in currency. But several of the countries have cut very bad deals (often due to corrupt governments) over their commodity exports, so that they're exporting considerably more valuable commodities than what they're getting paid for them in currency. So if you include commodities as a form of value, net value is flowing away from the country, enriching the government's short-term budget figures at the expense of draining their long-term commodities reserves.
      - huxley 15y ago
        Not at all. A country can be simultaneously enriched and exploited if the people in the country are not equally enriched and exploited, which is usually the case. It doesn't have to sum out. Also you need to consider that you can be enriched by one factor and exploited in another. Say I pay you $10,000 for your kidney and you agree because your family is destitute. I have both enriched and exploited you.
      - Lazare 15y ago
        I think the problem here is that "exploitation" is very poorly defined. It's widely used concept, and most people have an intuitive sense of what the word means, but these definitions conflict. Let's step back a moment: Let's say person A has a widget, which he values at $5. Person has $20, and would like a widget, which he values at $10. In a free market we would expect these people to negotiate and reach an agreement where A swaps the widget with B in exchange for between $5.01 and $9.99 of cash. The aggregate benefit of the transaction is $5 (that is, as a society, we are $5 better off after this transaction is made), and A and B are each somewhere between $0.01 and $4.99 better off. In this simple model, clearly both sides are benefiting, or if you prefer, are being enriched. Question: Is anyone being exploited? Does it depend on the price? Or do we need to know more details about the transaction, and if so, what? I think most people intuitively have one of two reactions: 1) "Unless fraud or force is being used, of course nobody is being exploited. Both sides enter into the transaction with open eyes, and both sides benefit. They can negotiate however they want to divy up the $5 in benefit - but as long as fraud or force aren't used, this can't be exploitation." 2) "Well, we need to know more. If one side has a lot more power than the other, they might drive the price unfairly far to one side or the other. If A is a large factory churning out widgets, a price of $5.10 might be a perfectly reasonable wholesale price; if A is peasant hand-crafting widgets and B is a multi-national widget trader, maybe anything less than $6 may represent the unfair exploitation of A. Conversely, a price of $9.90 might be fine if B is a collector of rare widgets, but even $8 might be exploitive if B is desperately trying to find a widget to repair his generator after an earthquake. We just can't know." I don't think either response is inherently more correct - both definitions are valid. But, obviously, they conflict. :) Also, in my experience people rarely, if ever, will change their initial intuition. Either you think exploitation is only the result of fraud or force (ie, using slave labour to produce widgets), or you think exploitation is involved in any transaction with a price that seems "unfair" (to you, based on fuzzy and usually undefined metrics). As a result, I'm not sure discussions of exploitation really make a lot of sense. Given the same objective and universally agreed facts about, e.g., Foxconn, a certain chunk of the population will say "that's obviously not exploitation" and a certain chunk will say "that's clearly exploitation", despite there being no real disagreement about what's actually taking place on the ground.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    To be fair, sometimes there is exploitation involved. (http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94721/AFRICA-High-cost-of-child-trafficking http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94721/AFRICA-High-cost-of-chi...) (http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94939/ZIMBABWE-Child-labour-on-the-rise http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94939/ZIMBABWE-Child-labour-o...) (http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94822/KENYA-Gold-mining-beats-school-any-day http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94822/KENYA-Gold-mining-beats...)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- nickik 15y ago
  Yes, if they talk about avrage but it will say that one of the two eat eat 100% of the food too. Dont piss on statistics piss on specific a statistic. Critisims like your are a reason its so hard to talk about this subject.
tomkin 15y ago
Part of me wants to accept this information, but I am worried that some kind of Freakonomics will come into play and we'll find that the reason why there appears to be less poor is because X is no longer being considered as Y.
- antihero 15y ago
  I wonder - is the amount adjusted base on cost of living and inflation? IE if $2 a day now gets the poor the same as $1.50 in the 90s, they haven't really gained anything.
  - roel_v 15y ago
    Yes, see this excellent reply by Lazare below: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3756021 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3756021 .
gruseom 15y ago
the 24/7 news cycle drums up everything that is negative and hence most of "feel" that it is getting worse Lewis Lapham said something brilliant and hilarious about this in a Google talk: people who wonder why the news is always so negative haven't noticed what the positive news is: it's the commercials! Crime, war, and terror, but Tide washes the dirt right out of your clothes!

by hsshah 15y ago

tfb 15y ago

As much as I despise all of the negativity in the news, the optimistic part of me sees it as a way to shine light on the many things wrong with the world at present. While the news may be a bit of a downer, I believe the lasting effects of it are for the best. When I learn of something terrible or even of a minor crime or injustice, the first thing that comes to my mind is along these lines: "There is obviously some ideal we're working towards, but the current system is inherently flawed; so what can I do to hack this system and make it better?" Maybe someday we'll have the kinks worked out and will have managed to minimize the "bad" things happening throughout the world. And I believe the news will have ultimately played some role such improvements. The day we see more good news than bad will be a great day.

InclinedPlane 15y ago
The problem is that a skewed sense of what's going on in the world can give you a skewed sense of how to improve the world. Case in point: many people imagine that the developed world buying cheap goods and labor from the developing world is a kind of exploitation rather than a form of enrichment. It also tends to focus on exceptional events rather than on broad trends (positive or negative).
- huxley 15y ago
  I think one would most reasonably hold that it is both a form of exploitation and a form of enrichment. The interesting part of the article is that the biggest benefit has been to those in abject poverty: "Most of the progress has been concentrated among the poorest of the poor—those who make less than $1.25 a day. The bank’s figures show only a small drop in the number of those who make less than $2 a day." One interesting bit buried in the lede was that the article also highlights the benefits of counter-cyclical fiscal expansions among governments. Those that expanded government programmes held down the damage caused by the recession. I would be interested in seeing if those that tried austerity measures suffered more. Update: changed last sentences to better reflect the point I wanted to make.
  - randallsquared 15y ago
    I think one would most reasonably hold that it is both a form of exploitation and a form of enrichment. Enrichment would leave them -- well, enriched, and exploitation would leave them poorer. These possibilities are diametrically opposed, unless you change the referent of "them" midargument.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      It can depend on what you count as riches, in part. For example, several African countries are being enriched by oil and mineral sales, if you count wealth in currency. But several of the countries have cut very bad deals (often due to corrupt governments) over their commodity exports, so that they're exporting considerably more valuable commodities than what they're getting paid for them in currency. So if you include commodities as a form of value, net value is flowing away from the country, enriching the government's short-term budget figures at the expense of draining their long-term commodities reserves.
    - huxley 15y ago
      Not at all. A country can be simultaneously enriched and exploited if the people in the country are not equally enriched and exploited, which is usually the case. It doesn't have to sum out. Also you need to consider that you can be enriched by one factor and exploited in another. Say I pay you $10,000 for your kidney and you agree because your family is destitute. I have both enriched and exploited you.
    - Lazare 15y ago
      I think the problem here is that "exploitation" is very poorly defined. It's widely used concept, and most people have an intuitive sense of what the word means, but these definitions conflict. Let's step back a moment: Let's say person A has a widget, which he values at $5. Person has $20, and would like a widget, which he values at $10. In a free market we would expect these people to negotiate and reach an agreement where A swaps the widget with B in exchange for between $5.01 and $9.99 of cash. The aggregate benefit of the transaction is $5 (that is, as a society, we are $5 better off after this transaction is made), and A and B are each somewhere between $0.01 and $4.99 better off. In this simple model, clearly both sides are benefiting, or if you prefer, are being enriched. Question: Is anyone being exploited? Does it depend on the price? Or do we need to know more details about the transaction, and if so, what? I think most people intuitively have one of two reactions: 1) "Unless fraud or force is being used, of course nobody is being exploited. Both sides enter into the transaction with open eyes, and both sides benefit. They can negotiate however they want to divy up the $5 in benefit - but as long as fraud or force aren't used, this can't be exploitation." 2) "Well, we need to know more. If one side has a lot more power than the other, they might drive the price unfairly far to one side or the other. If A is a large factory churning out widgets, a price of $5.10 might be a perfectly reasonable wholesale price; if A is peasant hand-crafting widgets and B is a multi-national widget trader, maybe anything less than $6 may represent the unfair exploitation of A. Conversely, a price of $9.90 might be fine if B is a collector of rare widgets, but even $8 might be exploitive if B is desperately trying to find a widget to repair his generator after an earthquake. We just can't know." I don't think either response is inherently more correct - both definitions are valid. But, obviously, they conflict. :) Also, in my experience people rarely, if ever, will change their initial intuition. Either you think exploitation is only the result of fraud or force (ie, using slave labour to produce widgets), or you think exploitation is involved in any transaction with a price that seems "unfair" (to you, based on fuzzy and usually undefined metrics). As a result, I'm not sure discussions of exploitation really make a lot of sense. Given the same objective and universally agreed facts about, e.g., Foxconn, a certain chunk of the population will say "that's obviously not exploitation" and a certain chunk will say "that's clearly exploitation", despite there being no real disagreement about what's actually taking place on the ground.
- DanBC 15y ago
  To be fair, sometimes there is exploitation involved. (http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94721/AFRICA-High-cost-of-child-trafficking http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94721/AFRICA-High-cost-of-chi...) (http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94939/ZIMBABWE-Child-labour-on-the-rise http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94939/ZIMBABWE-Child-labour-o...) (http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94822/KENYA-Gold-mining-beats-school-any-day http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94822/KENYA-Gold-mining-beats...)

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

nickik 15y ago
Yes, if they talk about avrage but it will say that one of the two eat eat 100% of the food too. Dont piss on statistics piss on specific a statistic. Critisims like your are a reason its so hard to talk about this subject.

tomkin 15y ago

Part of me wants to accept this information, but I am worried that some kind of Freakonomics will come into play and we'll find that the reason why there appears to be less poor is because X is no longer being considered as Y.

antihero 15y ago
I wonder - is the amount adjusted base on cost of living and inflation? IE if $2 a day now gets the poor the same as $1.50 in the 90s, they haven't really gained anything.
- roel_v 15y ago
  Yes, see this excellent reply by Lazare below: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3756021 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3756021 .

gruseom 15y ago

the 24/7 news cycle drums up everything that is negative and hence most of "feel" that it is getting worse Lewis Lapham said something brilliant and hilarious about this in a Google talk: people who wonder why the news is always so negative haven't noticed what the positive news is: it's the commercials! Crime, war, and terror, but Tide washes the dirt right out of your clothes!