8 ms·

Towards the end of poverty

37 points by denzil_correa 13y ago

FD3SA 13y ago
An excellent sentiment, but it must be noted that this is a very transient time, both technologically and socioeconomically. The current situation in Europe is a canary in the coal mine for the developed world, as technology fiercely marches on and makes plebs of the middle class and rulers of the lucky few who can capitalize on this technological upheaval. I'm far more interested in conversations regarding where we are headed, rather than from whence we've came [1]. 1. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robots/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robo...
- thebear 13y ago
  I'm far more interested in conversations regarding where we are headed, rather than from whence we've came Can you have the former without the latter?
- rdtsc 13y ago
  > I'm far more interested in conversations regarding where we are headed, rather than from whence we've came [1]. Interesting, I can think of a number of issues: 1) Rising inequality in the Western World. And the article you pointed out really shows the end result -- robots replacing people. That has been happening with industrialization for a while now. But now robots can build robots and the ones who will have the power will be the ones who will control the robots that build the robot factories. Kind of like meta robotics (I am sure there is a more defined term or concept that I am just not familiar with here). What happens to all the masses then. Robots make us food, do our work for us, and what do the average number of people do? State sponsored welfare? Just get a check every month enough to buy food and shelter and then play video games. There is thought that it actually wouldn't be that bad to have a direct subsidy like that but it would be a complete anathema according to certain other political and economic principles. Resources will be become the final bottleneck? Maybe even with robots we can't grow enough corn. 2) Related to the above there is some notion of "trickle-down" effect. Not related to wealth necessarily but related to technology, where countries can jump from agrarian or tribal life straight to using cell phones. That's pretty interesting. Idealistic perhaps, as I doubt that in an of itself will make a dramatic difference in their quality of life but it is good to keep an eye on that. What happens if even the most poor eventually have access to smart phones? Does it help them put food on the table in the evening? 3) Related to 2) -- information becomes unchained. The real globalization happens when groups of citizens can communicate with each other directly rather than goings through official propaganda and power control channels. Sort of stuff we saw with Arab Spring, now Turkey. This is kind of stuff is really interesting. Apparent stability to a large state of revolt in <24hrs is pretty impressive. 4) Back-pressure starts building from entrenched interests (countries, governments, traditional gatekeepers). The idea that there is citizenship and you can't just move from one part of the world to another unless you are a large multinational corporation, is here now, does it make sense, who does it benefit? The desire to de-anonymize sharing of information. I can see cryptography becoming illegal in many contexts. DRM being shoved into more devices -- on one side yay, more people have access to information!", on another, "oh but they only get locked down controlled, filtered and monitored information coming from a few distribution channel monopolies". Religious, nationalism, fear was/is a very good mass control lever. Maybe that won't work as well going forward? But what will?
unclebucknasty 13y ago
No mystery here. Of course most of the "progress" came from China. Meanwhile middle class wages in the U.S have been stagnant for decades, structural unemployment has taken hold in the U.S. and other Western nations, social program and welfare dependency is on the rise, and corporate profits are at an all time high. We have simply unplugged the middle class in the U.S. and plugged in people who can be paid relative dirt wages, yet still see it as progress because they were so utterly poor before. This is no great economic mystery or capitalist achievement. It is good that there are fewer people in extreme poverty, but there has also been a heavy cost. The western world and America in particular have long been addicted to free or cheap labor and this is now simply coming at the expense of those whose forebears built this country right up until the last decades. True democratic capitalism is long overdue.
- hencq 13y ago
  You make it out like this is a zero-sum game. As if lifting people out of poverty means other people (Americans and Europeans) will necessarily be worse off. I don't believe this is the case. More people with money also means a bigger market for western products. I'm frankly a little bit put off by the scare quotes you put around "progress". As if giving a billion people a better life is somehow not something to aspire to.
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    Most of the time, capitalism works as a zero-sum game - profits can be extracted more easily from moving resources than from creating them and therefore moving will be prefered to making. We must admit there is something wrong when unemployment is rising together with corporate profits and economic inequality. It's not only the average rising - standard deviation is also increasing. The social tissue can only stretch that much before it ruptures and nobody likes to be near the rupture.
    - CompelTechnic 13y ago
      >Most of the time, capitalism works as a zero-sum game - profits can be extracted more easily from moving resources than from creating them and therefore moving will be prefered to making. This isn't true. At the heart of capitalism is any economic exchange- trading sheep for wheat, trading dollars for an xbox, etc. For any trade to occur, each party in the trade has to believe that they will gain from the exchange, i.e. get increased utility/value from it. By that means, any economic exchange where both parties are acting freely is most likely to be positive-sum, in terms of value received. Where jobs have moved to poorer countries, real wages have increased- this is indicative of the fact that they are now able to produce goods and services that their trading counter-parties perceive to be more valuable. This doesn't make rich countries as much worse off as you think it does- the majority of the increased production of poorer countries goes to meet local needs, overall having a relatively small effect on the price of global labor. On your other point, I will agree with ya that our current income inequality is pretty bad.
EternalFury 13y ago
The end of idiotic journalism is not in sight, obviously.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  If you have criticism, please, be more detailed. Point the flaws you found in the article and share with us.
trg2 13y ago
Loved this article. There's so much doom and gloom out there, and yeah, there's plenty more we could be doing and need to fix. That said, it's nice to stop every now and then and realize what's really going on here: we're living in the god damn golden age.
- digitalengineer 13y ago
  The HN crowd is. Most Americans? Not exactly moving forward: The United States now ranks lowest or close to lowest among advanced “affluent” nations in connection with inequality (21st out of 21), poverty (21st out of 21), life expectancy (21st out of 21), infant mortality (21st out of 21), mental health (18th out of 20), obesity (18th out of 18), public spending on social programs as a percentage of GDP (19th out of 21), maternity leave (21st out of 21), paid annual leave (20th out of 20), the “material well-being of children” (19th out of 21), and overall environmental performance (21st out of 21). Add in low scores for student performance in math (17th out of 21), one of the highest school dropout rates (14th out of 16), the second-highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions (2nd out of 21), and the third-highest ecological footprint (3rd out of 20). http://www.nationalmemo.com/weekend-reader-what-then-must-we-do-straight-talk-about-the-next-american-revolution/#.UatMuNzMQHI.reddit http://www.nationalmemo.com/weekend-reader-what-then-must-we... Not US bashing, EU is taking a different but essentially equal direction.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Comparing the US with other countries doesn't tell you if you're moving forward or not. You need to compare it to its own past. How do those metrics compare with the US of the 1950s? Or of the 1980s?
    - digitalengineer 13y ago
      Agreed. But I think it is rather obvious the US did not always rank so low. Here is some more data on poverty in the US (dating back 50 years): WASHINGTON — The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net. The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/22/us-poverty-level-1960s_n_1692744.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/22/us-poverty-level-19...
dreadsword 13y ago
Is the "poverty" line not a moving target? i.e.: isn't $1.25 and abitrary snapshot in time? As any nation starts up the curve of development, people will make more, as the line simultaneously moves up. To put it another way - more people may make more than $x.x dollars per d/m/y --- but are they individually any better off? And is the society any better off for all of its "development?"
- hencq 13y ago
  The line is of course somewhat arbitrary, but it's meant to be at a level where people can barely feed themselves. While this varies from country to country, it's striking that it doesn't vary that much. It's also easier to market one (if arbitrary) poverty line than individual ones for each country. You might find this article [1] interesting. It mentions your point as well: "But even in quite poor countries, a different concept of poverty also seems to creep in, the authors argue. It begins to matter whether a person is poor relative to his countrymen; whether he can appear in public without shame, as Adam Smith put it." [1] http://www.economist.com/node/11409401 http://www.economist.com/node/11409401
tnuc 13y ago
As rural/developing country poverty decreases, urban economically split poverty increases. The amount of poverty in the US (and many other "developed" countries) is quite astonishing. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States > 16% of Americans lived in poverty in 2011
kristianp 13y ago
This article is about the US $1.25 a day poverty line. This [1] article indicates that diminishing returns will make it much harder to move the remaining billion over that line. 1. http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578643-world-has-astonishing-chance-take-billion-people-out-extreme-poverty-2030-not http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578643-world-has-as...

37 points by denzil_correa 13y ago

FD3SA 13y ago

An excellent sentiment, but it must be noted that this is a very transient time, both technologically and socioeconomically. The current situation in Europe is a canary in the coal mine for the developed world, as technology fiercely marches on and makes plebs of the middle class and rulers of the lucky few who can capitalize on this technological upheaval. I'm far more interested in conversations regarding where we are headed, rather than from whence we've came [1]. 1. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robots/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robo...

thebear 13y ago
I'm far more interested in conversations regarding where we are headed, rather than from whence we've came Can you have the former without the latter?
rdtsc 13y ago
> I'm far more interested in conversations regarding where we are headed, rather than from whence we've came [1]. Interesting, I can think of a number of issues: 1) Rising inequality in the Western World. And the article you pointed out really shows the end result -- robots replacing people. That has been happening with industrialization for a while now. But now robots can build robots and the ones who will have the power will be the ones who will control the robots that build the robot factories. Kind of like meta robotics (I am sure there is a more defined term or concept that I am just not familiar with here). What happens to all the masses then. Robots make us food, do our work for us, and what do the average number of people do? State sponsored welfare? Just get a check every month enough to buy food and shelter and then play video games. There is thought that it actually wouldn't be that bad to have a direct subsidy like that but it would be a complete anathema according to certain other political and economic principles. Resources will be become the final bottleneck? Maybe even with robots we can't grow enough corn. 2) Related to the above there is some notion of "trickle-down" effect. Not related to wealth necessarily but related to technology, where countries can jump from agrarian or tribal life straight to using cell phones. That's pretty interesting. Idealistic perhaps, as I doubt that in an of itself will make a dramatic difference in their quality of life but it is good to keep an eye on that. What happens if even the most poor eventually have access to smart phones? Does it help them put food on the table in the evening? 3) Related to 2) -- information becomes unchained. The real globalization happens when groups of citizens can communicate with each other directly rather than goings through official propaganda and power control channels. Sort of stuff we saw with Arab Spring, now Turkey. This is kind of stuff is really interesting. Apparent stability to a large state of revolt in <24hrs is pretty impressive. 4) Back-pressure starts building from entrenched interests (countries, governments, traditional gatekeepers). The idea that there is citizenship and you can't just move from one part of the world to another unless you are a large multinational corporation, is here now, does it make sense, who does it benefit? The desire to de-anonymize sharing of information. I can see cryptography becoming illegal in many contexts. DRM being shoved into more devices -- on one side yay, more people have access to information!", on another, "oh but they only get locked down controlled, filtered and monitored information coming from a few distribution channel monopolies". Religious, nationalism, fear was/is a very good mass control lever. Maybe that won't work as well going forward? But what will?

unclebucknasty 13y ago

No mystery here. Of course most of the "progress" came from China. Meanwhile middle class wages in the U.S have been stagnant for decades, structural unemployment has taken hold in the U.S. and other Western nations, social program and welfare dependency is on the rise, and corporate profits are at an all time high. We have simply unplugged the middle class in the U.S. and plugged in people who can be paid relative dirt wages, yet still see it as progress because they were so utterly poor before. This is no great economic mystery or capitalist achievement. It is good that there are fewer people in extreme poverty, but there has also been a heavy cost. The western world and America in particular have long been addicted to free or cheap labor and this is now simply coming at the expense of those whose forebears built this country right up until the last decades. True democratic capitalism is long overdue.

hencq 13y ago
You make it out like this is a zero-sum game. As if lifting people out of poverty means other people (Americans and Europeans) will necessarily be worse off. I don't believe this is the case. More people with money also means a bigger market for western products. I'm frankly a little bit put off by the scare quotes you put around "progress". As if giving a billion people a better life is somehow not something to aspire to.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  Most of the time, capitalism works as a zero-sum game - profits can be extracted more easily from moving resources than from creating them and therefore moving will be prefered to making. We must admit there is something wrong when unemployment is rising together with corporate profits and economic inequality. It's not only the average rising - standard deviation is also increasing. The social tissue can only stretch that much before it ruptures and nobody likes to be near the rupture.
  - CompelTechnic 13y ago
    >Most of the time, capitalism works as a zero-sum game - profits can be extracted more easily from moving resources than from creating them and therefore moving will be prefered to making. This isn't true. At the heart of capitalism is any economic exchange- trading sheep for wheat, trading dollars for an xbox, etc. For any trade to occur, each party in the trade has to believe that they will gain from the exchange, i.e. get increased utility/value from it. By that means, any economic exchange where both parties are acting freely is most likely to be positive-sum, in terms of value received. Where jobs have moved to poorer countries, real wages have increased- this is indicative of the fact that they are now able to produce goods and services that their trading counter-parties perceive to be more valuable. This doesn't make rich countries as much worse off as you think it does- the majority of the increased production of poorer countries goes to meet local needs, overall having a relatively small effect on the price of global labor. On your other point, I will agree with ya that our current income inequality is pretty bad.

EternalFury 13y ago

The end of idiotic journalism is not in sight, obviously.

rbanffy 13y ago
If you have criticism, please, be more detailed. Point the flaws you found in the article and share with us.

trg2 13y ago

Loved this article. There's so much doom and gloom out there, and yeah, there's plenty more we could be doing and need to fix. That said, it's nice to stop every now and then and realize what's really going on here: we're living in the god damn golden age.

digitalengineer 13y ago
The HN crowd is. Most Americans? Not exactly moving forward: The United States now ranks lowest or close to lowest among advanced “affluent” nations in connection with inequality (21st out of 21), poverty (21st out of 21), life expectancy (21st out of 21), infant mortality (21st out of 21), mental health (18th out of 20), obesity (18th out of 18), public spending on social programs as a percentage of GDP (19th out of 21), maternity leave (21st out of 21), paid annual leave (20th out of 20), the “material well-being of children” (19th out of 21), and overall environmental performance (21st out of 21). Add in low scores for student performance in math (17th out of 21), one of the highest school dropout rates (14th out of 16), the second-highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions (2nd out of 21), and the third-highest ecological footprint (3rd out of 20). http://www.nationalmemo.com/weekend-reader-what-then-must-we-do-straight-talk-about-the-next-american-revolution/#.UatMuNzMQHI.reddit http://www.nationalmemo.com/weekend-reader-what-then-must-we... Not US bashing, EU is taking a different but essentially equal direction.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Comparing the US with other countries doesn't tell you if you're moving forward or not. You need to compare it to its own past. How do those metrics compare with the US of the 1950s? Or of the 1980s?
  - digitalengineer 13y ago
    Agreed. But I think it is rather obvious the US did not always rank so low. Here is some more data on poverty in the US (dating back 50 years): WASHINGTON — The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net. The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/22/us-poverty-level-1960s_n_1692744.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/22/us-poverty-level-19...

dreadsword 13y ago

Is the "poverty" line not a moving target? i.e.: isn't $1.25 and abitrary snapshot in time? As any nation starts up the curve of development, people will make more, as the line simultaneously moves up. To put it another way - more people may make more than $x.x dollars per d/m/y --- but are they individually any better off? And is the society any better off for all of its "development?"

hencq 13y ago
The line is of course somewhat arbitrary, but it's meant to be at a level where people can barely feed themselves. While this varies from country to country, it's striking that it doesn't vary that much. It's also easier to market one (if arbitrary) poverty line than individual ones for each country. You might find this article [1] interesting. It mentions your point as well: "But even in quite poor countries, a different concept of poverty also seems to creep in, the authors argue. It begins to matter whether a person is poor relative to his countrymen; whether he can appear in public without shame, as Adam Smith put it." [1] http://www.economist.com/node/11409401 http://www.economist.com/node/11409401

tnuc 13y ago

As rural/developing country poverty decreases, urban economically split poverty increases. The amount of poverty in the US (and many other "developed" countries) is quite astonishing. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States > 16% of Americans lived in poverty in 2011

kristianp 13y ago

This article is about the US $1.25 a day poverty line. This [1] article indicates that diminishing returns will make it much harder to move the remaining billion over that line. 1. http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578643-world-has-astonishing-chance-take-billion-people-out-extreme-poverty-2030-not http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578643-world-has-as...