
Global living conditions are getting better - diogofranco
http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/12/23/14062168/history-global-conditions-charts-life-span-poverty
======
mjohn
It's sad how many comments dismiss the remarkable data, e.g. by commenting
that the article "only" shows that average living conditions have improved, as
if that is an argument against the conclusion that global living conditions
have been continuously improving (and likely to continue if the trend
continues).

The data shows that for all the selected metrics global living standards have
improved, regardless of wealth distribution etc. For example, fewer children
are dying today than in 1800 or 1960:

\- a child born in 1800 had a 43.3% probability of dying before their fifth
birthday

\- in 1960 the probability was 18.5%

\- in 2015 the probability was 4.25%

The 1800 estimate is astonishing. Almost half the children born in 1800 would
probably have died by 1805. To me even the 1960 mortality rate is astonishing.
Almost a fifth of all children born in 1960 would probably have died by 1965.

An even bigger improvement can be seen in extreme poverty (defined as living
on $1.9 a day adjusted for inflation and price differences between countries):

\- in 1820 94% of the global population lived in extreme poverty

\- in 1960 64% lived in extreme poverty

\- in 2015 only 9.6% lived in extreme poverty

I cannot see how such statistics can be interpreted as anything other than
extraordinarily positive, and I just hope the trend continues.

~~~
return0
I don't think the people that are pessimistic about the future (The premise of
the article) dispute or are ignorant of the fact that we are better than a
century ago or even a decade ago. I think the article is attacking a straw
man: they were not asked if things got better in the past, but about the
future. People don't see an optimistic narrative that they subscribe to
anymore. The mantra "we 'll keep doing what we are doing and things will
improve because it worked in the past" doesn't seem to catch on anymore. Past
performance does not guarantee future results.

~~~
mjohn
Without knowing the future, I think the best we can do is look at historic
trends to give us an idea of what is going to happen in the future. I agree
1800 is an interesting datapoint but probably not that relevant for the
present day. Nonetheless, there appear to have been consistent improvements
even in the past few decades, and there is still plenty of scope for
improvement given almost 10% of the world population are in extreme poverty
(about 700 million people).

I think a lot of people answering the survey question:

 _“All things considered, do you think the world is getting better or worse,
or neither getting better nor worse?”_

focus on whether _their_ world is getting better or worse, and not the whole
world. Most of the improvements in the past few decades have been in
developing countries, which have experienced dramatic improvements in
standards of living (and developing countries are also home to the majority of
the global population). Meanwhile standards may well have been relatively
stagnant or declining for many people in developed countries.

If we are talking about whether the world is getting better or worse,
expectations based on experiences in India and China are far more pertinent
than the recent history of the USA.

~~~
return0
Predictably, Chinese are the most optimistic in that survey
([https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/01/05/chinese-people-are-
most...](https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/01/05/chinese-people-are-most-
optimistic-world/)). Obviously everyone's subjective opinion is different and
that's what the survey was seeking in the first place.

Why would the experience of the Chinese be pertinent to people of the US or
France, however? I don't think their economic regimes are transferable.

~~~
mjohn
The point of the article is that objectively the world, as a whole, is getting
better, and in some cases improving quite dramatically. Personally, I don't
think the survey quoted in the opening paragraph is really that interesting -
it's not the least bit surprising that people replied subjectively rather than
objectively.

My point about the Chinese experience being more pertinent was regarding these
objective measures not how people replied subjectively to a survey question.
It's not that the Chinese experience is pertinent to someone in US or France,
but that recent Chinese economic development has been more pertinent to
whether or not the world has objectively gotten better.

In the future we are also going to see far more reductions in poverty and
child mortality in countries like India and China than in the USA, because the
USA is so much wealthier. Additionally, if we want to understand how to
improve the world in the future, I believe it's more important to look at
countries that have recently improved standards of living, like China, rather
than countries like the USA that experienced their most significant
improvements in standards of living before the 1960s.

------
tabeth
I would love to see a complement to this piece examining our "loss potential",
which I basically define as the potential for us to undo all of the good we've
done.

Sure, things are better, but I would argue that there's a greater loss
potential. As technological potential grows that means more and more people
have a target on their back, dooming them to inevitable irrelevance. Say our
technological/societal progress results in us destroying ourselves with some
weapon/technology in the year 3000. One would amortize the negative infinity
loss through the preceding years. This would result in negative progress each
year, right? Of course it's impossible to predict when such a thing would
happen.

\----

Also, it would be nice to compare things to what we could have achieved. For
example, if western civilization really did stunt potential of certain places
or people, and NOW they're finally catching up, is that impressive? The
alternative could mean we would be where we're at now a few decades ago.

------
epalmer
This is interesting and give me hope but is it accurate?

This article suggests that vox does not get it right all the time:

[https://www.quora.com/Media-Business-in-2015-How-credible-
ar...](https://www.quora.com/Media-Business-in-2015-How-credible-are-articles-
on-vox-com)

~~~
mjohn
The author is Max Roser, the economist behind the Our World in Data website
([https://ourworldindata.org/](https://ourworldindata.org/)). The data is all
sourced from that site and seems to be well researched when I have casually
browsed the datasets.

I have a lot of respect for his work, but I can't really judge it's accuracy
without diving more into the data.

~~~
neon_electro
Adam Johnson at FAIR ([http://fair.org](http://fair.org)) criticized the Our
World in Data website's standard for Democracy in this article:
[http://fair.org/home/voxs-cia-backed-democracy-standard-
is-o...](http://fair.org/home/voxs-cia-backed-democracy-standard-is-ok-with-
slavery-and-women-not-voting/)

I need to read more about the website and where its data is sourced to make a
judgement myself, but the above link was informative to me.

------
losteverything
I recall a dead-tree uncle writing his daughters (longhand perfect cursive) a
summary of life. His life is "good" ( I forget his exact words) conclusion was
very surprising.

The "humanity" question is really one thing to me. More or less live births.

The mindset of "better" had been passed down our generations and I am greatful
for it

Edit. He lived in the US in the mid 1800s

------
yladiz
Regardless of my opinions on this, it's the comments from articles like this
that make me wish there really was a longer reprieve from political
discussions on Hacker News. I'd take no political discussion over really
heated political discussion, because often in comments (from both sides)
people get so heated that I can't even get through one or two paragraphs
without losing understanding of whatever point they are getting across or
refuting. I enjoy reading HN for the comments primarily, but it seems that
when it comes to political discussions it seems worse off than Reddit.

------
3nki
there are also things that are worse now. half of animal species alive in 1970
are now extinct. we have created new diseases as we've removed the threat of
old ones. things like sitting outside and looking at the stars are harder, or
listening to birdsong. the family no longer spends much time together. our
lives are more virtual and less based in reality, which leads to a lower
quality life and less happiness.

~~~
Chronic2h
Have you even talked to the elderly? They are much happier today than they
were kids. The ability to communicate with old friends and family across the
globe and purchase medicine easily.

Over half of your claims relate to the environment. Perhaps you are too
attached to that? Or are you so firmly fixed to your narrative that quality of
life is decreasing? I can easily cite many MORE animal species that are not
extinct today, but would have been, if it were not for our technological
advances and conservation efforts. But of course, this doesn't match your
narrative, so you will deny it at all costs.

~~~
3nki
amazingly, i have spoken to some elderly people, and not all were happier
today than as kids. although who's to say how much their current circumstances
and memory affect their recollection. and how can there be many MORE species
that would have been extinct if not for us humans and our "progress" and
technology, which is what drives their extinction in the first place?

what good is it to live in a great techno-wonderland if we've traded much
greater gifts to get there? i could say perhaps you are too attached to the
idea of progress, the idea that because time passes things must get better?

------
AnsemWise
I like the hope in this article. I can't trust it any more than I can trust
other media sources but I'd rather believe this than some doomsday prophecy
that was mostly designed to scare views into watching more.

~~~
karmelapple
> I can't trust it any more than I can trust other media sources

Do you consider absolutely every single media source the same as every other
one?

There are most definitely organizations that have proven to report more
accurately than others, and have ethical standards.

~~~
ctdonath
"More accurately" is relative and not "perfect accuracy". The "ethical
standards" depend on the institutionalized ethics, which you & others may or
may not agree with. Alas, we have a generation of reporters who seem more
interested in changing the world than objectively reporting on the state
thereof; if they want to change it the way you want it changed, you tend to
consider it "accurate" and "ethical".

~~~
yladiz
Ethicality is subjective but accuracy is not. It's pretty much impossible to
have perfect accuracy but there are some organizations that do provide more
accurate news and data than others.

------
Retric
There is for example less land per person now than ever before. So, it's more
a question of what you value than objectively better.

~~~
kmicklas
If you think owning property is more important than the metrics in the
article, I think something is objectively wrong with your belief.

~~~
ctdonath
If you were raised in a self-sufficient rural mindset, owing property is a
_very_ important value - to the point that someone saying it's "objectively
wrong" is offensive.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Is it a more important value than not having your children die by the age of
five?

kmicklas said "more important". He/she is right. If you think available land
is more important than your kids not dying, something's very wrong with you.

~~~
ctdonath
Consider that other people hold different axioms. For many of us, it's not
that one is valued above the other, it's that one facilitates the other.

When much of your survival comes from the land, _having_ sufficient (or more)
land is a major factor in preventing your kids from dying, and in doing much
better than "not dying". Food comes from land. Shelter (wood, brick, rocks)
comes from land. Heat (wood, straw, dung) comes from land. Growing up, half my
family's food came from our backyard, and most of our heat _could_ have
(easier to get firewood delivered, but the fallback was there).

You may look at a city and praise the wonders of modern upscale living. I look
at a city and see a million people dead in a week if the water/gas/electricity
gets shut off. You may look at a rural community and see sub-optimal living
conditions. I look at a rural community and see a culture that will continue
on thru major EMP/Y2K/etc technological disasters.

It's not that I think available land is more important than my kids not dying,
it's that I think available land is a major component to ensuring my kids
don't die.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
But under _actual existing conditions_ , why do children die? It's not
starvation (at least in the US and Europe), or EMP. It's lack of medical care.

So, back to the question at hand. Isn't the availability of medical care more
valuable than the insurance value of the land? Yes, the land lets your kids
live if there's an EMP. But the medical care lets your kids live through all
the years until there's an EMP, if there ever is. Isn't the actually-happening
reality more important than the might-be?

Or, to put it in more brutal terms: How many of your kids would you be willing
to have die due to lack of health care, in order to have the land to keep all
your kids from dying if there ever is an EMP? For most people, I think the
answer is "zero".

------
hamoid
What's heavier, the linked web page as provided (html, css, js and image
files) or as ONE large image?

I tested it: the whole page rendered as one high quality 1918 x 17591 JPEG
file weighs 3.58 MB.

As loaded by the browser, without ad blocking, it does +280 http requests to
dozens of servers and downloads 6.9 MB.

If pages were provided as images, we might burn less CPU cycles and produce
less CO2. Not so good for clicking ads though ;)

~~~
RodericDay
what if you make it monochrome?

~~~
hamoid
As a 16 color grayscale png it's 870KB.

------
louisswiss
The article should be retitled 'proof that life became net better between 1800
and today'.

No evidence is given that life at any point in the future will be better than
it is currently.

Disappointing and misleading.

~~~
otalp
>No evidence is given that life at any point in the future will be better than
it is currently.

Because you cannot say that with certainty. He in fact addresses this very
point towards the end:

"Big problems remain. None of the above should give us reason to become
complacent. On the contrary, it shows us that a lot of work still needs to be
done — accomplishing the fastest reduction of poverty is a tremendous
achievement, but the fact that one out of 10 people lives in extreme poverty
today is unacceptable. We also must not accept the restrictions of our liberty
that remain and that are put in place. It is also clear that humanity’s impact
on the environment is at a level that is not sustainable and is endangering
the biosphere and climate on which we depend. We urgently need to reduce our
impact.

It is far from certain that we will make progress against these problems.
There is no iron law that would ensure that the world continues this trend of
improving living conditions."

~~~
louisswiss
I think you misunderstand my criticism.

On a very simplistic level, the article can be reduced to three statements:

1) A minority of people today believe that life is getting better for humanity

2) Between 18XX and today, life improved (at least as measured by the examples
given)

3) There are challenges facing humanity for the future and there is no
guarantee that life will continue getting better

I'm not disputing any of the points or data sets in the article, nor am I
disagreeing with the author. I am simply disappointed that at an article which
barely touches on the issue of whether life is currently improving or not is
misleadingly titled 'Life is getting better for humanity'.

~~~
epistasis
What you're saying would seem to imply that there's a reason to believe that
all the trends in the article have stopped or reversed.

Looking at the data provided, the trends are smooth and showing improvement at
this moment in time, so I think that contention is reallt clearly false.

If you're saying something else, I would like to hear it! But I so far have
not been able to divine a different meaning.

~~~
ThomPete
the point i think is that you cant use average living condition as a source
for validating whether living conditions are getting better on average
especially since we know that wealth and benefits of modern technology isnt
actually getting evenly distributed.

compared to 1800 sure, compared to 1960's not so sure.

~~~
hsitz
At the very least, evidence demonstrating a persistent, long-term trend would
seem to be evidence in favor of the trend applying to the current day.
Especially when the main thing driving people's perception that life is _not_
getting better seems to be media reporting that fails to focus on the big
picture. In other words, the world could be improving while (of course) human
lives are partly bad. Focusing on the bad --which can always be found -- and
not on the overall general trend skews our perception about whether and how
things are changing.

Of course, there could be countervailing reasons (and evidence) that the
general trend does not hold currently, like the suggestion that (a)
distribution of benefits has become more uneven and (b) this uneven
distribution may make things worse overall than they were before the benefits
existed in the first place.

There are lots of ways people could try to provide evidence that the general
trend somehow no longer applies. But I think the linked article points out:
this sort of evidence is not what media is giving. News media points out that
something is bad, sure, but it fails to place it in broader context. The
broader context is one of general slow improvement over long periods of time,
which is something that we don't get from the news; news media likes to focus
on today's bad things, long general trends are not "newsworthy".

Also, as the article suggests, even today's positive evidence for the general
trend is not newsworthy, in part because it is so pervasive and boring (e.g.,
every day 130,000 fewer people are living in extreme poverty). Something that
happens regularly every day is not "news". (Or maybe the 130k fewer people
thing is not news mostly because it's a good thing. The rate of murders and/or
car accidents can be fairly stable, but people seem to have an appetite for
hearing about each of these bad things as it happens, so that's what news
reports.)

~~~
ThomPete
I am not listening to media and I am not saying it can't get better (post-
scarcity is not something I believe is impossible for instance) but you have
to be very precise when you make these kind of statements as they are ignoring
the reality for many people. Just a simple fact that children today are less
likely to live a better life than their parents in the west is worth thinking
about.

It might be an indication that yes life is improving globally but that does
not mean it improving in a way that is proving this trend to continue.

------
return0
Wrong. The average of all lives is getting better. I think people feel
disgruntled because life in the upper end is not improving. Its all good and
nice that humanity is dragging its tail forward, but that kinda happens by
default, all the time, even without effort. Somehow people feel that the head
is not moving forward fast enough , though. We want our flying cars!

~~~
stephancoral
> Its all good and nice that humanity is dragging its tail forward, but that
> kinda happens by default, all the time, even without effort.

No, it doesn't. This isn't some intrinsic element of humanity, positive
societal change requires dedicated effort, will, and resources.

Your point about flying cars is a joke right?Flying cars would kill thousands
more and be a huge liability. Maybe the problem in the developed world isn't
that things aren't growing or improving, but that people don't appreciate the
standard of living they have.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think there are two big things contributing to the lack of appreciation of
the living standard:

\- anything you experience daily becomes a baseline, so people keep
complaining about relative differences within their wealth bracket instead of
comparing to less wealthy societies

\- a typical person in the West doesn't have that much time to enjoy their
standard of living, having to slave away 10-12 hours a day (commute included),
being burdened with mortgage and possibly other credits, and being one
workplace fuckup from serious economic trouble...

~~~
kudokatz
> having to slave away 10-12 hours a day

Well, part of that is a choice to consume at a rate that requires such work.
It's somewhat easy to have a nice financial position by delaying kids and not
pouring money into cars and shopping ... but not many people choose that
lifestyle.

The FIRE community is all about the alternatives.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
You can't live in a van in an area as wintry as mine. A somewhat low standard
of living is acceptable, but people need _security_.

~~~
kudokatz
I feel this argument is taking things to extremes. There are many intermediate
states between living in a vehicle without heat and insisting on eating out,
buying nice things, having vacations, expensive phones and plans, etc.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I dunno. I can easily give up on ever eating out, buying new things (I rarely
do anyway, other than books), going on vacations (I only get a couple of
weeks' vacation every year anyway), or purchasing new phones for un-cheap
prices (I already keep mine until it breaks each time). Those are actually
pretty negligible expenses. If I really want to speed up the trip towards
financial independence, I have to reduce my housing and health-insurance
premiums.

That's the only place the money can really come from to invest more than I
already do.

------
prakashrj
Contraception is not improvement in health. Around 1800's women used to have
atleast 10 children. Women now cannot even imagine having 10 children. Most of
them will die before giving birth to 10th one.

~~~
epistasis
Contraception is a huge improvement in quality of life as well as human
freedom.

Women in the past would very frequently die in childbirth. Do you have data to
show that childbirth is as dangerous as it was in the path? Or that it was
safer in the past? (That would be truly shocking and counterintuitive.)

~~~
epistasis
To answer some of my own questions, child birth is becoming tremendously
safer:

    
    
      Year           Deaths per 1000 live births
      ------------   ----------------------------
      1700 to 1750	 10.5  (British [1])
      1750 to 1800	  7.5  (British [1])
      1800 to 1850	  5.0  (British [1])
              1990    3.8  (Global [2])
              2013    2.0  (Global [2])
              2013   <0.09 (UK [3])
              2013   <0.28 (US [4])
    

Though I can't find a source, some articles claim a 1% maternal mortality rate
in the 1600s! [5]

From that same Slate article, child birth is still one of the most dangerous
things for young women, despite it being far safer than ever in the past. This
means that contraception is actually a health benefit. It makes it much safer
to be a young woman.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/)

[2]
[http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.MMRT](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.MMRT)

[3] [http://patient.info/doctor/maternal-
mortality](http://patient.info/doctor/maternal-mortality)

[4] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/health/maternal-
mortality....](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/health/maternal-
mortality.html)

[5]
[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/death_in_childbirth_doctors_increased_maternal_mortality_in_the_20th_century.html)

~~~
antisthenes
Why is it surprising that women are _really good_ at giving birth?

After all, the genes of the ones that weren't have not been selected for, tens
of thousands of years ago.

Either way, contraception is pretty orthogonal to the actual mortality rate of
women due to child birth.

~~~
epistasis
It's actually the opposite: Humans are not very good at giving birth. And that
_is_ surprising.

Child birth is hugely dangerous for humans, and the speculation in the
scientific field is that it's an evolutionary interplay between the size of an
infant's skull at birth, constraints on hip sizes, and the amount of brain
development that can happen as a fetus or as an infant.

Tens of thousands of years is pretty short in terms of morphological
development of humans. Evolution on time scales shorter than that is limited
to extremely simple mutations, usually, such as lactose tolerance by adults
(which has arisen multiple times independently in the past 10k years).

I do agree that contraception has little impact on maternal mortality during
child birth.

------
kenforthewin
Unless you can prove that humans are becoming more content or happier, then I
don't think this proves anything. If we have massive advancements in
technology but we're all still angry, xenophobic, selfish, etc, nothing is
getting better

~~~
mjohn
So you don't think the humans are better off if there is declining child
mortality? And you don't think people now earning $2 a day are happier than
when they were earning $1?

~~~
kenforthewin
I really don't think people are happier. Money isn't a basic need. People want
their fears affirmed and addressed. People want to feel meaningful. etc etc

------
leurfete
I meet a lot of people whose idea of "getting better" is wealth being more
evenly diffused across humanity. If that really is our aim the easiest way to
achieve it would be to halt, or even reverse, quality of life improvements for
the top x percent of people.

If "getting better" means raising the maximum possible quality of life
inequality seems unavoidable, since people need an incentive to pursue and
propagate technological advances.

~~~
lmm
> I meet a lot of people whose idea of "getting better" is wealth being more
> evenly diffused across humanity. If that really is our aim the easiest way
> to achieve it would be to halt, or even reverse, quality of life
> improvements for the top x percent of people.

What if doing that really would make more people happier on average?

~~~
ctdonath
It won't. It has been tried many times, and failed with spectacularly deadly
results (upwards of 100,000,000 dead in the 20th century from such
governance).

Punishing productivity doesn't work.

------
ommunist
As a species we need more stress to get evolution to shape us harder. We are
cheating! And there is a price to pay to evolution, as a species. From a
single specimen perspective, yes, life is fantastic these days.

~~~
kazagistar
Evolution is too slow to care about anyways. If we artificially added heavy
evolutionary pressure, we might see results in ten thousand years or so. Do
you really think it will take that long to figure out how to do it better and
more precisely manually?

~~~
ommunist
You would not believe how fast speciation become under stress. And right now
humanity has power to create new species quite literally. Question is, will it
use these tools to speed up its own evolution or not?

------
danharaj
This is neoliberal propaganda. It argues from average lives that no one
actually lives. For example: The share of people living in extreme poverty has
decreased immensely. However, your life can be absolutely miserable in a place
like the United States while technically not living in extreme poverty.
Reducing the dynamics of the entire world and the experiences of each human
being to a single number is preposterous.

An example particularly in the United States: Poverty levels have decreased in
the US. However, cost of living has exploded in certain areas, meaning that
people who technically don't meet the official definition of poverty in, say,
San Francisco can have their lives completely upended by the fact that they
can no longer afford housing.

A related example not in exactly the same vein is neoliberal identity
politics: It is ok for people to be oppressed my structurally racist
institutions so long as the oppressor class is sufficiently racially diverse.
s/race/{gender, orientation}/g Hide the fact that identities are tied to
material relationships of economics and power behind a statistic about
"""diversity""".

Reducing people to statistics is a technocrat's wet dream and a fundamental
ideological goal of neoliberalism: Reduce everyone to rational market actors,
measure everything with statistics which abstract away actual reality and
allow governments and corporations to justify any action they want because
they set the definitions, dissimulate coercive power relationships by refusing
to measure them.

Vox is faux-progressive propaganda for the worst kind of capitalism.

~~~
witty_username
You forget what extreme poverty is. It is lacking three square meals a day and
being stunted (like being a couple inches shorter).

The poor of the US live better than the median person in India.

Isn't neoliberalism all about being free to be racist (or not racist)? Feel
free to correct me about this.

> fundamental ideological goal of neoliberalism: Reduce everyone to rational
> market actors, measure everything with statistics which abstract away actual
> reality and allow governments and corporations to justify any action they
> want because they set the definitions, dissimulate coercive power
> relationships by refusing to measure them.

I'm biased as a supporter of neoliberalism; but isn't the fundamental
ideological goal of neoliberalism maximization of human freedom?

Statistics don't abstract away actual reality; it's the best way to analyze a
large number of people. I can't interview all 1.2 billion people in India;
instead I can look at the statistics to understand that population.

Neoliberalism is all about minimizing the coercive power relationship between
the people and the government.

> justify any action they want because they set the definitions

I wouldn't call it definitions (they're normative); but yes, neoliberalism
uses moral justifications.

~~~
danharaj
> You forget what extreme poverty is. It is lacking three square meals a day
> and being stunted (like being a couple inches shorter).

The definition of extreme poverty is living under $1.25/day (2005 dollars).
You'll note that the chart cited in the article is backfilled to 1820. What
does it mean to be living in extreme poverty in 1820? Was 95% of the world
starving every day? It's an extraordinary claim that would require
extraordinarily good analysis to make, but hey, it's a statistic so it must be
true! One way in which this statistic is almost completely likely to be
bullshit is that most of the world was no where near industrialized in 1820
and comparing means of living under an industrial mode of production versus a
subsistence mode of production is suspect.

Furthermore, much of the misery associated with unindustrialized parts of the
world in the time period the chart measures _was directly introduced by
industrialized nations_. One looks at unindustrialized areas of the world
today and sees constant conflict, famine, and systemic societal dysfunction
and extrapolates it backwards under the assumption that it is the absence of
capitalist industrialization that sustains these conditions when in fact these
conditions were created in the process of capitalist expansion that largely
benefited a few hegemonic nations. Neoliberal ideology rewrites human history
so that it can blame preindustrial societies for the misery capitalism and
imperialism visited upon them.

> Isn't neoliberalism all about being free to be racist (or not racist)? Feel
> free to correct me about this.

Neoliberalism is specifically a reprogramming of the elements of liberalism to
reduce all human activity to the actions of rational, atomized economic actors
in a private market. The erasure of the commons, the marketization of social
structures such as education, family structures, personal beliefs, cultural
expression, the erasure of power relationships (because everyone is
voluntarily participating as a rational economically minded being in
everything they do), and the depoliticization of human interactions (there is
no political, only the economic) are all hallmarks of neoliberalism. Another
aspect of neoliberalism is a technocratic view of government which is
antithetical to enlightenment ideals: The point of government is to manage and
regulate markets and nothing more. Neoliberalism also paints its mechanisms,
which are often driven by heavy regulation, police actions, and military
invention as inevitable natural outcomes of human nature: in particular
globalization is seen as an organic growth of human economics when in fact it
has been fostered and directed by deliberate government actions, not laissez-
faire economic development.

I don't know what you think neoliberalism is.

> I'm biased as a supporter of neoliberalism; but isn't the fundamental
> ideological goal of neoliberalism maximization of human freedom?

Sure, and the Party in 1984's ideological goal was to maximize freedom too.
The material goals of neoliberalism are ultimately the class interests of the
capitalist and owning class. The ideological goal of neoliberalism is to frame
the world so that those who control most of its resources are naturally and
inevitably the ruling class and that any objection to the sacred, natural law
of the market is invalid. So, freedom is framed not as a political concept,
but a purely economic one, and ultimately "I want the liberty to grow rich and
you can have the liberty to starve" (Isaac Asimov). Because the market is
natural and inevitable, any structure it may have that disadvantages anyone to
the benefit of another is natural and thus not an impingement of freedom.

> Neoliberalism is all about minimizing the coercive power relationship
> between the people and the government.

Somehow it does this by increasing the power of the police state, increasing
military intervention in weaker countries, staging coups for violent
neoliberal dictators in nations that reject it (e.g. Pinochet), increasing
regulations to the benefit of the largest corporations, consolidating
industries into fewer and fewer independent entities and creating a close
relationship between politician, bureaucrat, security officer, and
businessman.

~~~
epistasis
>Sure, and the Party in 1984's ideological goal was to maximize freedom too.

Pretty much every paragraph has terrible stinkers like this, but I'll focus on
it because it's probably the least political and most open to direct academic
interpretation rather than viewed through highly ideological lenses.

The second slogan of the Party in 1984 was "Freedom is slavery." Their
explicit goal is to prevent individuals from having freedom. And asserting
that everbody must make themselves subservient to the Party (otherwise, bad
stuff).

I can't find a single example anywhere in the book of the Party stating that
they want to maximize freedom.

~~~
danharaj
Oh goodness gracious, I misremembered it as "Slavery is freedom" from when I
read the book 10 years ago. My, oh my, how _careless of me_.

I'm skeptical you can actually engage with any of my more substantials
"""stinkers""" and that's why you resorted to nitpicking. In any case, that
line can be replaced with the general idea of the party's newspeak and
doublethink in the book. In particular, the line "war is peace" from the
slogan fits the bill. Instead of saying the party wants to maximize freedom,
let's say it wanted to maximize peace. The party loves peace, in fact! There.
I clarified the minor point you snagged on.

And for the more substantial points I described in the post, the most
accessible scholarly source I've read is Undoing the Demos by Wendy Brown [1].
Unfortunately, it's impossible reduce any lengthy political analysis to the
point where it can be fit inside of an Internet comment.

[1]
[http://www.zonebooks.org/titles/BROW_UND.html](http://www.zonebooks.org/titles/BROW_UND.html)

