
A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty - winterismute
https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty
======
grecy
One of the most amazing things I learned reading the excellent "Factfullness"
by Hans Rosling [1] is that the poorest countries in the world are currently
improving faster than any country ever did, at any point in history.

That's correct - countries like Lesotho and Central African Republic are
improving faster than his home country of Sweden ever did, at any time. In
only his lifetime Sweden went from having an infant mortality rate similar to
that of the poorest countries today, to being one of the world leaders. Those
poor countries are improving faster than Sweden ever did... so in just one
more lifetime they'll be where the world leaders are today.

The book makes it plainly clear that the world is improving much, much, much
faster - even for the poorest - than the mainstream media would have anyone
believe.

[1] [https://amzn.to/2Ihb6jM](https://amzn.to/2Ihb6jM) \- full title is great
"Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are
Better Than You Think"

~~~
Maro
I read the Factfullness book, and I thought it's really poorly argued. I
remember my BP was through the roof on the plane when I was reading that. HR
is not believable imo. (I work in data, I'm a physicist.)

~~~
nabla9
Rosner, Pinker and Co fell into the same trap they critiqued others - belief
in destiny. They try to counter pessimistic destiny narratives with positive
destiny narratives and selecting data that fits the narrative.

You can't extrapolation the future from current trends. There are
discontinuities and challenges that can change the dynamics.

~~~
pas
Aren't they simply trying to explain and persuade people current institutions
are responsible for the positive changes, and that therefore they are good,
and thus we should be supporting them? Also, they seem to counter
misconceptions, not advocate for blind faith in a never ending progression.

Pinker actually addressed this, but unfortunately I can't remember in which
book/lecture/talk/article. Largely paraphrasing he said that we have to work
for the gains, but that doesn't mean we can't have a positive attitude about
these processes. (Such as comparative advantage resulting in trade resulting
in cooperation and some degree of altruism - or we can just call it
"counterparty risk management", or simply looking out for your buyers and
suppliers.)

~~~
nabla9
> people current institutions are responsible for the positive changes, and
> that therefore they are good, and thus we should be supporting them?

Current institutions as a vague continuity or the same?

Because if Pinker and other try to argue that current institutions have been
historically enough, we just continue growth, they are very much wrong.

Benefits from innovations and growth have been accompanied with massive
institutional changes in every 30 years or so. The current era is becoming an
exception where institutions are becoming stale after 40-50 years of the same.
That threatens continuity because institutions have to change in response to
the change in the environment or they collapse.

~~~
pas
I'm of course no Pinker himself, nor a tenured prof at Hardvard, or even
friends with him, but based on what I read from him and about him, he is very
much in support of change toward new, more inclusive, more fair, more
egalitarian and more rational institutions. And argues that trade and good old
classic liberal ideas are slowly but surely bringing forth these changes
(through the work of many hundreds of millions of slightly altruistic people),
_despite_ the efforts of our demons (innate or cultural/contextual xenophobia,
ignorance, extreme greed/selfishness, etc).

------
derriz
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-w...](https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is-the-world-
really-getting-poorer-a-response-to-that-claim-by-steve-pinker/)

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.

~~~
andrewwharton
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
> \- 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.

~~~
andrepd
>The trend is the same regardless of which poverty line you pick. Poverty is
decreasing, education, literacy and health are rising.

The story changes quite a bit - and you know it. If we use $7.40 per day, we
see a decline in the proportion of people living in poverty, but it’s not
nearly as dramatic as your rosy narrative would have it. In 1981 a staggering
71% lived in poverty. Today it hovers at 58% (for 2013, the most recent data).
Suddenly your grand story of progress seems tepid, mediocre, and – in a world
that’s as fabulously rich as ours – completely obscene.

~~~
barry-cotter
You say that African poverty is obscene, and it is. But that obscenity is not
for a lack of effort to help. Aid has been a constant in Africa and in other
formerly more dreadfully poor places since WWII when the Soviet Union and the
US sought to buy influence and it’s never stopped. Development aid hasn’t
helped Africa much though it has far, far surpassed aid to Europe after WWII.
Absent colonialism you need a functioning state if you’re going to help. Aid
doesn’t work unless the government does. Ghana was richer than South Jorea in
1951. Now Ghana looks promising, like maybe it will develop over he next
thirty years but South Korea is developed.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/opinion/the-politics-
of-a...](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/opinion/the-politics-of-aid-a-
marshall-plan-is-not-what-africa-needs.html)

> By comparison, Africa is already relatively flooded with aid. The continent
> as a whole receives development assistance worth almost 8 percent of its
> gross domestic product. Exclude South Africa and Nigeria, and aid jumps to
> more than 13 percent of GDP — or more than four times the Marshall Plan at
> its height — for the other 46 African countries.

~~~
dahart
The quote you replied to is referring to global poverty, not Africa
specifically. And maybe you missed that it’s a quote from Hickel straight out
of the article.

------
spandrew
It's a bit frustrating to read his follow-up letter because it largely ignores
the root counterpoints Pinker made in favour of pushing the data integrity
angle.

Hans spends an awful lot of time poking holes in the historical accuracy of
income data. But Pinker states in very basic, understandable terms that the
benchmark isn't the point — setting the benchmark at $7 or 100k doesn't stop
the fact that wealthy has trended positively. Starting from 1981 or 1810
doesn't matter because it's relative: Do people have access to more wealth
(things they desire) than before? The answer is yes. The other benchmarks of
education and literacy round out the picture — wealth and money isn't the only
thing being measured.

As much as Hans paints a utopia of open fields and shared communal livestock
we know people historically chose to pillage each other's resources. Without
incentive to look beyond differences we went to war and took from each other's
cultures to accumulate wealth.

~~~
falcor84
I somewhat disagree, Hans does spend some time in this article refuting the
claim that benchmark doesn't matter. In particular, he shows charts
demonstrating how raising the benchmark changes the result.

~~~
titanomachy
Who is Hans? Isn't this article by Jason Hickel?

~~~
falcor84
Apologies, yes, I was referring to Hickel. I can't seem to be able to edit the
comment anymore.

------
LaGrange
So I went and read the Pinker's "rebuttal." He just casually avoided the claim
about the entire base of their infographic being bogus, then went on to
calling mild centre-left socialdemocrats "far leftists". Why is _anyone_
treating that guy seriously?

~~~
Mirioron
Because Pinker's rebuttal was initially supposed to be an email to somebody
else. He recognized that Hickel was likely pushing an ideology and left it at
that. Even in the email Pinker is saying that he's citing experts in the
field.

> _then went on to calling mild centre-left socialdemocrats_

A central point in the criticism Hickel wrote was that markets don't work, but
regulation, protectionism and state intervention does. I'm not sure that would
qualify him as a "mild centre-left social democrat".

~~~
andrepd
I'm pretty sure regulation, protectionism and state intervention in a market
economy is the definition of social-democracy.

~~~
jopsen
No, not really.

Social democracy is about solidarity. It does not conflict with a free market
which needs regulation to stay free, it does not encourage protectionism,
rather it seeks solidarity with others.

I should know I live in one :)

~~~
esarbe
I too live in a Social democracy.

And I'd say that the GP is pretty much spot on.

Social democracy, from Wikipedia, an excerpt: "The protocols and norms used to
accomplish this involve a commitment to representative and participatory
democracy; measures for income redistribution and regulation of the economy in
the general interest; and welfare state provisions."

So, there you have regulation and and state-intervention.

If you then consider that every Social Democracy in Europe has some sort of
protectionist policy with regards to it's agricultural sector, I'd say that GP
is spot on.

For the European Union, the agricultural subsidies still make up about 38% of
the budget. What's that, besides protectionist?

([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy))

So, there you have all three; regulation and state-intervention by definition,
protectionism by fact.

------
mabbo
It sounds to me like both sides are picking metrics that make their point the
strongest. And the reality is, both can be right. The proportion of the world
in extreme poverty (<$.190/day) can be going down while overall number of
people in poverty (<$7.50/day) can be increasing. These aren't contradictory.

And reducing both metrics are good goals!

The problem, as I see it, is that both of these sides seem to be exploiting
the problem of poverty to support political agendas that are perhaps unrelated
to poverty. Pinker perhaps moreso than Hickel (but that may be because we
literally just read Hickel's very well-written thoughts on it).

The correct way forward, in my view, is to have both sides agree to a
combined, single metric or a set of metrics that best capture the essence of
the problem. When we agree on how to measure success, we can best see what
works to improve it. I mean, presuming both sides actually care about reducing
poverty and not just promoting their favorite political system, then coming
together to come up with a better overall goal should be something everyone
wants to do.

------
jfnixon
Needs more consistency:

"There is nothing worth celebrating about a world where inequality is so
extreme that 58% of people are in poverty, while a few dozen billionaires have
more than all of their wealth combined."

Followed later by:

"Yes, life expectancy, mortality and education have improved – this is
fantastic news that we should celebrate!"

------
colechristensen
Can anyone summarize what is going on here? It seems like a flamewar with
graphs, and not interesting enough to invest the time in reading.

~~~
barrkel
I followed this a little bit when it popped up on Twitter last week.

The fight appears to be about whether rising global prosperity is helping poor
people or mostly just poor people in China; and around the edges, about
whether your definition of poor is simply GDP, or includes other harder to
quantify things like commons, or if you want to measure it against the US
poverty line at purchasing power parity dollars.

It's a kind of oblique attack on neoliberal globalist capitalism's potential
to increase living standards for people at the bottom of the global income
distribution. Hickel reckons Pinker and Gates and friends have been too self-
congratulatory on the merits of neoliberalism.

IMO globalist capitalism has increased living standards for the poorest people
in countries that were well-run enough to take advantage of it, China in
particular. But there's still lots of improvement possible and we shouldn't
feel too smug about the current situation.

~~~
harrumph
> IMO globalist capitalism has increased living standards for the poorest
> people in countries that were well-run enough to take advantage of it, China
> in particular.

But China is not a market economy and as such can't be described simply as an
outpost of global capitalism. It has an aggressive, state-led industrial
policy, it regulates the shit out of what it does, and it exercises enormous
amounts of trade protections. It is a state that admits and fosters economic
liberalism in areas, but is in no way a market economy otherwise.

Pinker and Gates are here to tell us that neoliberal markets are what
eradicate poverty when a) historically the reverse is true -- poverty has been
exacerbated by colonialism wrought by neoliberals b) the example they keep
harping on -- China -- isn't even an example of a market economy.

IMO this world is in fact getting worse for most persons living here, and
there is no doubt that mouthpieces for the status quo are invested to deny
this in the language Pinker et. al, use. These denials are ahistorical
horseshit and will be viewed on par with trepanation and eugenics, all the
more with every inch of sea level rise.

~~~
jhbadger
Modern China is definitely a "market economy" in every meaningful sense of the
term. Unlike in Maoist times, there is no central planning committee deciding
what should be manufactured and sold and private businesses make their own
decision based on what they think will sell. Is there government intervention
in the Chinese market? Of course, but that's true of every country -- even the
US. The completely free market is just a theoretical concept never practiced
anywhere at any time.

~~~
harrumph
They build cities...using their _army_. Your description of the country's
general economic characteristics is off-the-charts wrong, and is especially
wrong concerning the area where Pinker pretends that liberalized markets are
why poverty in China has been in sharp decline.

~~~
jhbadger
There's no question that China is still an authoritarian country with a
powerful military, but that's beside the point. You have to look at what has
changed to stop making them poor. It's the new policy of "socialism with
Chinese characteristics" (their euphasism for capitalism)

~~~
harrumph
It is you that is missing the point. Their army is not worth noticing because
it's "powerful", it must not be overlooked because of what role it serves in
the economy. _It_ builds cities itself. Armies don't build (dozens of) cities
in market economies. China is in a literal sense a command, not a market,
economy in whole swathes of its body, starting with the beating heart of its
double digit growth: its construction sector.

------
marcus_holmes
I'm a bit confused about the global poverty amount. What is that $7.50
exactly?

I've recently lived in Cambodia, and I'm now in Australia. $7.50 in Cambodia
is enough to get three good meals and a couple of beers (for a local). $7.50
in Australia is not enough to get a single meal.

How do they calculate it so they take into account disparate purchasing power?

~~~
crefflar
The dollars quoted are in terms of purchasing power in the United States as of
2011.

~~~
marcus_holmes
I think I see - so if $7.50 in the USA in 2011 can buy 5Kg of rice, then the
equivalent income in Cambodia is about $2.50 and in Australia is about $25...
is that right?

------
eoinmurray92
Just to note - Branko Milanovic (cited by Roser) backed up Hickel on many of
the main poinst:

[https://glineq.blogspot.com/2019/02/global-poverty-over-
long...](https://glineq.blogspot.com/2019/02/global-poverty-over-long-
term.html)

~~~
yboris
I strongly recommend Branko Milanovic's book _The Haves and the Have-Nots: A
Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality_ as an overview of
poverty across millennia.

------
lixtra
> Real data on poverty has only been collected since 1981, by the World Bank.
> It is widely accepted among those who research global poverty that any data
> prior to 1981 is simply too sketchy to be useful, and going back to as early
> as 1820 is more or less meaningless.

Just like for global warming you expect reasonable proxies.

~~~
barry-cotter
To say that going back to 1820 is meaningless is already deceptive. At that
stage the only parts of the world that weren’t in extreme poverty are those
that are now first world and that’s marginal.

In 1750 in 1990 dollars GDP per capita in the first world was 804 dollars
according to Paul Bairoch. In 1830, in 1960 dollars the richest country in the
world, the highly monestised Netherlands which we have excellent records for
had a GDP per capita of 347.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(P...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_\(PPP\)_per_capita)

------
allworknoplay
Most people here seem to be missing the point: it’s not that poverty hasn’t
been moderately improved over the past 30 years, but rather that Pinker’s work
has had an incredibly outsized impact on policy and influence on media
narratives.

Simply put, Pinker and Gates have tricked much of the world into thinking
neoliberalism is the best thing ever, even though the data actually shows that
the majority of the improvement comes from other brands of economic policy and
that most of the wins overall are going to a small number of extremely wealthy
people. It’s not abjectly terrible but also not great, and when our capacity
to improve poverty has improved so much, isn’t there a moral imperative to do
better?

Here’s an episode of one of my favorite podcasts that features Hickel as a
guest:

[https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-58-the-
neolib...](https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-58-the-neoliberal-
optimism-industry)

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/citations-
needed/id12585...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/citations-
needed/id1258545975)

~~~
JanSt
"even though the data actually shows that the majority of the improvement
comes from other brands of economic policy"

Can you expand on this? Genuinely interested.

~~~
sedor123
They are referring to Chinese and other Southeast Asian policies, as Hickels
said in his post.

What they won't say is that those policies are fundamentally capitalist in
nature. China's economy is capitalist at its core, with a super powerful state
(that happens to be remarkably repressive to its citizens, an inconvenient
fact Hickels simply ignores) that engages in protectionism for specific
national industries.

Hickels is trying to get us to implicitly assume that Chinese policies are
socialist and that non-capitalist policy is responsible for their gains, but
he won't say it directly because he knows that would be an outright lie.

~~~
allworknoplay
I didn’t say markets are a bad way to value goods, man, I said china’s state
planned and financed approach to the market has produced the gains Pinker is
saying neoliberalism should get credit for. What we’re talking about here is
the false idea that America’s approach to capitalism is responsible for very
much of the global reduction in poverty, and whether we should consider other
modes instead.

------
yboris
A fantastic overview of poverty across the history of humanity comes in a
short book: _The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of
Global Inequality Paperback_ by economist Branko Milanovic, in which he
compares wealth and poverty across millennia.

And for a serious philosophical treatment about poverty, informed by numerous
statistics comes in a long treatise _World Poverty and Human Rights_ by
philosopher Thomas W. Pogge who among other things points out the fudging of
numbers by the international community. For example creating seeming
amelioration of extreme world poverty by redefining malnutrition (how long it
needs to persist for it to count), caloric deficit (for sedentary lifestyle
rather than a hardworking farmer), redefining success (proportion of humanity
rather than absolute numbers), etc. Link to relevant time in a talk by Dr.
Pogge about this subject:
[https://youtu.be/Dsl9cyaIn-g?t=382](https://youtu.be/Dsl9cyaIn-g?t=382)

------
Mirioron
> _Real data on poverty has only been collected since 1981, by the World
> Bank._

Perhaps we didn't collect data on poverty globally before that, but we most
certainly collected data on poverty before that regionally.

~~~
prepend
This is the oddest argument in the article, I think. No one claims the data
are perfect or identical before 1981, but it’s what we have and it’s used. I
think it’s acceptable to provide an alternate proxy. Or to critique the
methods rigorously. But it is frustrating when a rhetorical trick is used to
point out how the pre-1981 data are different than 1981, that is known by
anyone reading Pinker, and then throw out all pre-1981 data and claim it is
meaningless. And even more strangely, that poverty during this period is just
unknowable.

I would think that the best way to critique this is to develop some other
method of proxying poverty rate that doesn’t show drops. Later in the article,
the author shows this with the $7.90 poverty rate, but only from 1981.

~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
I stopped reading after he began with that GDP point and spent so much time on
it. Felt like a manipulative attack to dismiss an entire argument (“your
argument is so laughably wrong, you can’t even get basic facts right.”)

------
tmpfs
I think the focus on money is misplaced, forget about GDP and start measuring
GNH (Gross National Happiness); it is about time the rest of the world looked
to Bhutan and realized there is much more to a pleasurable human existence
than simply quantifying in terms of income/money/wealth. It is an over-
simplification that degrades humanity and our potential.

~~~
PixyMisa
Bhutan?

Great, unless you're LGBT, in which case they lock you up. Or you're a
journalist and write something critical of the government, in which case they
lock you up. Or you practice a religion other than Buddhism or Hinduism, in
which case they lock you up. Or you want to wear Nepalese clothing, in which
case they skip right past locking you up and simply revoke your citizenship
and kick you out of the country.

~~~
amanaplanacanal
They were talking about happiness, you are talking about personal freedom. Two
different things.

It's possible that people are most happy when minorities are done away with.
Not exactly what I would prefer, but it's still possible.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I doubt that the _minorities_ are most happy...

------
0db532a0
Sam Hyde’s 2070 Paradigm Shift [1] to solve world hunger. Link in references.

[1] [https://youtu.be/KTJn_DBTnrY](https://youtu.be/KTJn_DBTnrY)

~~~
he6s4vyu
This is illuminating, even if humorous.

------
imartin2k
It seems to me that the whole debate would benefit from some Quantum Thinking.

The world can get better and worse at the same time. Poverty can go away in
some parts and increase (in absolute or relative terms) in others.

People can be more happy because they don't starve, don't die from trivial
diseases and don't get murdered anymore on the street - while at the same time
starting to be depressed about lack of meaning or sense of belonging,
senseless (but well-paid) jobs, worries about allergies, eating animals,
stress, climate change or whatever thing they worry about basic needs are met.

There is just no point to attempt to come to a conclusion from a binary set of
options ("things getting better" vs "things getting worse").

In my eyes, this question is too complex, too philosophical and too subjective
for anyone to actually come to an absolute, definite and unassailable
conclusion which everyone else could stand behind.

------
heyjudy
Must reads about what was done to South America:

\- Various works by Smedley Butler, c. 20th c.

\- _A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (Español: Brevísima
relación de la destrucción de las Indias)_ , c. 1542

\- The well-researched videos of TheHistoryGuy on YT. Bunga! Bunga!

------
starchild_3001
I'm 40 years old. I remember the last 30 years in my home country (Turkey)
very well. What happened in this period? Awesome things. Access to food,
shelter, healthcare, cars, many many amenities and luxuries of life have
expanded wildly.

The marxist dude is likely cherry picking data to make a bogus point. E.g. the
charts in his letter aren't normalized by world population. Pinsker is
presenting distributions, not absolute numbers, as world population has a
tendency to grow.

He has one valid point. $1.90 might be too low to draw the poverty line. But
as the whole distribution has shifted, that point seems moot.

He has another interesting point: People had access to land in the old age,
although they didn't have cash. I think that makes sense. Land has some
value... but but there's a big cost to utilizing it---it's a full time job :)
Anyone can go back... become a farmer, hunter or a herder... live at
subsistance-level. I think few people want that lifestyle, as is clear from
occupancy stats. The benefits of having access to land and its cost (the
specific lifestyle) may cancel each other.

~~~
huffmsa
The difference of opinion between those who've lived through something and the
opinion of bourgeoisie academics who've studied the same thing from an Ivory
tower is usually quite different.

Like how the advice and experience of a startup founder, regardless of
success, is almost immeasurably more valuable than that of a consulting
analyst.

------
paulpauper
_The vast majority of gains against poverty have happened in one region: East
Asia. As it happens, the economic success of China and the East Asian tigers –
as scholars like Ha-Joon Chang and Robert Wade have long pointed out – is due
not to the neoliberal markets that you espouse but rather state-led industrial
policy, protectionism and regulation (the same measures that Western nations
used to such great effect during their own period of industrial
consolidation). They liberalized, to be sure – but they did so gradually and
on their own terms._

China's trade policy is consistent with neo liberalism. China's economy began
its huge expansion in the 70's and 80's after opening up trade with the rest
of the world, and especially the U.S. So that example fails. Trump is the one
who began the tariff war, not china.

------
dash2
The argument about the poverty line is a bit weird.

It's completely reasonable that $1.90/day is still very low, and that we might
want to take a higher point as a poverty line.

But if the numbers below that line have decreased, that is still a huge win.
Going from $1.80/day to $3.60/day, say, is a big improvement. That is true
precisely because $1.90 is so low.

Jason Hickel's argument seems to show that there is still a lot to do. But it
does not show that we have not got much better.

------
throw2016
We urgently need to jettison naive and simplistic models of the world that
ignores centuries of history to deflect accountability, provide a comfort zone
for some and perpetuate another fraud on the world. Look at the word fraud of
'aid' when it's loans and 'leverage' that are used to further the creditors
interests in the region.

Africa has suffered at the hands of global agendas for centuries now, some of
these countries are barely 50-60 years of colonialism and were divided
arbitrarily for reasons suited to colonialists. Yet we have narratives that
seriously suggest all these invasive actions do not have consequences and
these 'made up' countries after centuries of systemic exploitation and plunder
will magically emerge developed in mere decades and if they don't its their
own fault. That may suit a certain blame shifting worldview but has nothing to
do with reality.

Narratives that ignore the kind of effort, century scale timelines, political
and religious conflicts, colonialism and context in which we grew and how the
current world operates and ignores all that to point to statistics have to go
because they are completely lacking depth and connection with reality.

Look at the 'extraction' in pre-colonialism and post colonialism, the methods
change but the objective is the same, corrupt the top leadership to benefit
yourself and your companies, while 99% of the local country suffers. And if
they don't fall in line organize coups, destabilize countries to get new
despots who benefit you. This model is replicated efficiently in South America
and across Africa and is happening right now. How can you 'develop' and
improve the conditions of people across the world when your policies are
actively and intentionally sabotaging them?

You don't because that's just cover, conversations about statistics by pinker
and his ilk then fall right into place to deflect, deceive and affect fake
concern. South Korea and Taiwan have great stats but what those stats don't
tell you is South Korea grew under a dictatorship with extreme western
political and economic support that grew oligarchic chaebols for political
reasons to counter the North and China. Can that context be replicated?

------
caiocaiocaio
Medium grey text on a white background makes this almost unreadable. I don't
know what point he was trying to make, because tow paragraphs gave me a
headache.

------
skybrian
The part where he writes off East Asia as not really counting, somehow, while
acknowledging its success, is rather strange:

"As it happens, the economic success of China and the East Asian tigers – as
scholars like Ha-Joon Chang and Robert Wade have long pointed out – is due not
to the neoliberal markets that you espouse but rather state-led industrial
policy, protectionism and regulation (the same measures that Western nations
used to such great effect during their own period of industrial
consolidation)."

It's true that many of the countries there are state-led. (Some also have lots
of corruption and many have extreme inequality.) But they also had spectacular
growth via export-led economies.

I don't know what "neoliberal" means other as a term of disparagement, but
there's clearly a lot of capitalism and international trade going on.
Participating in the global system has been a huge win there.

------
padobson
_The process of forcibly integrating colonized peoples into the capitalist
labour system caused widespread dislocation (a history I cover in The Divide).
Remember, this is the period of the Belgian labour system in the Congo, which
so upended local economies that 10 million people died – half the population.
This is the period of the Natives Land Act in South Africa, which dispossessed
the country’s black population of 90% of the country. This is the period of
the famines in India, where 30 million died needlessly as a result of policies
the British imposed on Indian agriculture. This is the period of the Opium
Wars in China and the unequal treaties that immiserated the population. And
don’t forget: all of this was conducted in the name of the “free market”._

This paragraph basically backs up all of Pinker's criticisms. No one
advocating for neoliberal capitalism would suggest that any of the evils of
colonialization are the policies that most quickly brought prosperity to
developing nations. Pinker is advocating that as economies become more free,
they become more prosperous. There's nothing free about forced labor or death
marches.

The bit on "absolute povery numbers" is insane:

 _The poverty rate has worsened dramatically since 1981, from 3.2 billion to
4.2 billion, according to World Bank data._

This willfully ignores the fact that the world population has gone from 4.5
billion to 7.5 billion, because of plummeting mortality rates and access to
healthcare and infrastructure. 3 billion extra people survived in 30 years.
That's CRAZY! We should be having parades about that everyday.

And the main problem with his poverty metric is that he's changing the numbers
to obfuscate the progress. It doesn't matter if you use $1.90/day, $3.20/day,
$5.50/day or $7.40/day. What matters is that fewer people live on the wrong
side of the line today than they did yesterday, and fewer people did yesterday
than the day before, and that has happened every single day for the past 30
years.

Almost every example he uses of capitalism being bad are really colonialism
enforced by state power. He rightly points out that some countries enjoyed
increased prosperity when they freed themselves from their colonial powers,
but that only enforces Pinker's arguments.

Hickel spends most of this piece turning Pinker's arguments into strawmen.
It's a marxist rant with cherry-icked stats that don't actually support his
position. He should rightfully be dismissed as a bad faith actor in the
conversation.

~~~
andrepd
Maybe you should put "that bit about absolute numbers" in the proper context
instead of wilfully misrepresenting it:

> _[After discussing 1.9$ /day as a completely inhumane measure; the
> equivalent of 35 people living with a UK minimum wage, without any gifts,
> loans, donations, or help of any kind] the story changes quite a bit - and
> you know it. If we use $7.40 per day, we see a decline in the proportion of
> people living in poverty, but it’s not nearly as dramatic as your rosy
> narrative would have it. In 1981 a staggering 71% lived in poverty. Today it
> hovers at 58% (for 2013, the most recent data). Suddenly your grand story of
> progress seems tepid, mediocre, and – in a world that’s as fabulously rich
> as ours – completely obscene. There is nothing worth celebrating about a
> world where inequality is so extreme that 58% of people are in poverty,
> while a few dozen billionaires have more than all of their wealth combined.
> _

> _That’s proportions. Don’t get me wrong: proportions are an important
> indicator – and we should pay attention to it. But absolute numbers are
> equally important. In fact, that is the metric that the world’s governments
> first agreed to target in the Rome Declaration in 1996, the precursor to the
> Millennial Development Goals. The goalposts were shifted to proportions in
> the following years, which created the impression of faster progress. But
> really now it’s a moot point: if the goal is to end poverty, what matters is
> absolute numbers. Certainly that’s what matters from the perspective of poor
> people themselves._

> _And if we look at absolute numbers, the trend changes completely. The
> poverty rate has worsened dramatically since 1981, from 3.2 billion to 4.2
> billion, according to World Bank data. Six times higher than you would have
> people believe. That’s not progress in my book – that’s a disgrace. It is a
> crushing indictment of our global economic system, which is clearly failing
> the majority of humanity. Your claims about global poverty intentionally
> skate around this fact. Again, that is not responsible scholarship._

So yeah. Either you didn't read it or you wilfully ignored it, because
comments such as "hat matters is that fewer people live on the wrong side of
the line today than they did yesterday, and fewer people did yesterday than
the day before" are incomprehensible otherwise.

------
macspoofing
This is the guy who claimed subsistence rural leaving shouldn't count as
poverty, and that we really can't say anything about poverty pre-1981. Come
on! How is he credible.

------
JackPoach
Yes, I think that Pinker's attitude 'don't mess with liberal capitalism model,
it's working miracles' kind of shuts off any possibility of real critics of
real problems that we are facing today.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Pinker is not arguing that economic neoliberalism is perfect.

Almost nobody is.

~~~
JackPoach
Sorry, but I don't see the word 'perfect' in my statement. I stated what I
stated and I think I am fairly accurate when I say that Pinker's main premise
is that modern global neoliberal capitalist model is fighting poverty much
better than anything else.

(Which is probably not true if you agree with the Pinker opponent POV).

------
zeroname
TLDR; When the numbers don't fit the narrative, you need to pick out different
numbers.

" _Here are a few points to keep in mind. Using the $1.90 line shows that only
700 million people live in poverty. "_

It shows that "only" 700 million people live in _extreme_ poverty as defined
by the World Bank.

" _If $1.90 is inadequate to achieve basic nutrition and sustain normal human
activity, then it’s too low – period._ "

Yeah, no shit. _Extreme_ Poverty is _extremely_ bad.

" _Remember: $1.90 is the equivalent of what that amount of money could buy in
the US in 2011._ "

Yes, it's bad. Really really bad. Let's drive that point home some more.

" _If we use $7.40 per day, we see a decline in the proportion of people
living in poverty, but it’s not nearly as dramatic as your rosy narrative
would have it. In 1981 a staggering 71% lived in poverty. Today it hovers at
58% (for 2013, the most recent data). Suddenly your grand story of progress
seems tepid, mediocre, and – in a world that’s as fabulously rich as ours –
completely obscene._ "

No it doesn't! The fact that the number of people that used to live in
_extreme poverty_ has gone down means that these people _don 't live in
extreme poverty anymore_. That's actually much more significant than the
number of generally poor people that are now slightly less poor.

~~~
andrepd
Wait a minute, how does that go one way but not the other? Why is using $7.4
"doctoring the data" to fit your narrative but $1.9 not?

The author uses arguments such as

> _The USDA states that about $6.7 /day is necessary for achieving basic
> nutrition. Peter Edwards argues that people need about $7.40 if they are to
> achieve normal human life expectancy. The New Economics Foundation concludes
> that around $8 is necessary to reduce infant mortality by a meaningful
> margin._

to support his view that 1.9$ is a ridiculous measure promoted only to make
the graphs look good and the narrative of "neoliberal progress" work. While on
the other hand, the ~7$ figure, which he argues based on those references is
the _bare minimum_ , makes it all look rather drab (71%->58% in 40 years...)

~~~
zeroname
I didn't say anyone is doctoring data. The data may well be true, but it may
not fit your narrative. If your narrative is "people are getting poorer" you
need to set the bar high, if your narrative is "people are getting richer",
you need to set the bar low. In that sense it goes both ways.

However, the difference between outright starving to death, being _extremely
poor_ and simply "being poor" is staggering. You wouldn't argue that a million
people saved from starvation looks "rather drab when considering that the
average poor person still can't afford to drive a car".

You may say "1.90$ is ridiculous", but hundreds of millions of people actually
do have to live on that. It's not like it's a fantasy number that nobody
actually lives off.

~~~
ar0
To be fair, Hickel is discussing the different poverty lines because he is
refuting an explicit argument from Pinker in his letter:

> "2\. The level at which one sets an arbitrary cutoff like “the poverty line”
> is irrelevant — the entire distribution has shifted, so the trend is the
> same wherever you set it."

Hickel argues (using data) that this statement is at least not qualitatively
true, as the trend is quite different if you set the poverty line at higher
level.

~~~
zeroname
Even the data that Hickel picked (excluding China) shows is that the trend is
_down_. I'm not sure Pinker is right in that the it's true for _every single
social stratum everywhere across the world_ , I would think that certain
middle-class earners are poorer today in relative terms.

However, for anyone considered poor by _any_ reasonable standard, my guess is
that the global trend is _down_ , otherwise Hickel could've come up with that
data. So in that sense the cutoff is irrelevant.

Note that Pinker in his letter talks exclusively about _extreme_ poverty. In a
free market, of course it's easier to lift people out of _extreme_ poverty
than ordinary poverty, so it should come as no surprise that the trend is even
steeper there.

~~~
dahart
> Even the data that Hickel picked (excluding China) shows is that the trend
> is down.

In the infographic Gates tweeted, it claims to show a 75% reduction in global
poverty between 1980 and today. In Hickels chart, it goes up 5% from 1980-2000
and down maybe 7% from 2000 to today. You’re claiming they both show a
downward trend today so therefore they’re basically the same? That’s not just
misleading, but also misses Hickels point. What I got out of his main point
isn’t whether the trend is up or down so much as that poverty is not a solved
problem. Gates’ infographic makes it look like a solved problem, like we don’t
have to do anything because it’s going away on it’s own.

~~~
zeroname
This is Bill Gates' infographic:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DxSZ58_XQAAoxM8.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DxSZ58_XQAAoxM8.jpg:large)

It _does_ show a 75% in extreme poverty. That happens to be a straight down
trend. Nobody even disputes this. It also shows a number of other things, such
that "democracy" is actually stagnating. Bill Gates' actual remark on it is
that people underestimate how much things have improved over the last _two
hundred years_.

Hickel picks that one graph and turns it into the "Bill Gates says poverty is
decreasing, he couldn't be more wrong" headline:

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-g...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-
gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal)

That's dishonest. First of all, _extreme_ poverty _is_ decreasing. That's the
actual claim and it is true. Secondly, poverty even by Hickel's standards is
_also decreasing_. It may not have been decreasing consistently over every
single past decade, but indeed is decreasing today and for the past decade.
Hickel then goes on to say that "the number of people living in poverty" has
increased. Indeed it has, as has _the number of people living_. The _actual
percentage_ of people living in poverty has gone down.

So what exactly is the problem with what Bill Gates actually said? He never
claimed that poverty is solved, nor did he endorse "neoliberalism" as the
solution.

~~~
dahart
I don't care to litigate Hickel's argument, and I don't even necessarily agree
with him. It just seems like you're ignoring the actual points Hickel made.
The questions you're asking here are all answered in article, so maybe read it
again?

The main argument is one of degree. Hickel isn't contradicting whether the
trend is down or up, and indeed it's somewhat irrelevant whether the trend is
down. What he's pointing out is that the infographic is quite misleading in
the impression that it gives to the lay person. Extreme poverty has a specific
definition that isn't very useful when trying to understand the big picture,
because "extreme poverty" is below the line where you get enough food to live,
and it's very far below the line where you can expect a reasonable life. The
high level message that the infographic conveys is that poverty in general is
nearly gone, where the reality of global poverty is quite different, and not
going away as fast as "extreme poverty". Saying that Gates & Pinker never
claimed poverty is solved is hiding behind a technicality. The social media
they're sharing has a very clear implication, and most people aren't digging
into the details and minutiae of this argument.

It would settle this whole thing to put all the trend lines for extreme
poverty vs regular poverty vs lower class vs middle class vs upper class all
on one graph. No matter what your opinion is here, it's true that using only
extreme poverty on a single graph is cherry-picking and likely to not convey
an accurate impression of the overall situation.

~~~
zeroname
> The questions you're asking here are all answered in article, so maybe read
> it again?

I've only asked a single question: What is wrong with what Bill Gates
_actually said_? Hickel doesn't deal with what Bill Gates actually said, he
talks a great deal about things that he didn't say. Indeed I am ignoring a lot
of these points because they are irrelevant to whether "poverty" or "extreme
poverty" is actually going down.

> Hickel isn't contradicting whether the trend is down or up, and indeed it's
> somewhat irrelevant whether the trend is down.

It isn't irrelevant at all! The title of Hickel's article is "Bill Gates says
poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong."

There really are only three possibilities here: Poverty is decreasing,
increasing, or stagnating. The data says poverty is decreasing. So how can
Bill Gates possibly be wrong? Answer: He isn't wrong, Hickel just wants to
talk about how neoliberalism and globalization is bad, i.e. not actually
anything that either Gates nor Pinker claimed.

~~~
dahart
I don't know that Hickel's title was a great choice of words, and I do expect
he's being intentionally inflammatory, but it seems like you're getting
completely hung up on very literal, possibly pedantic, interpretation of only
a few of the exact words written, and ignoring the primary broad implications
being made.

> The data says poverty is decreasing.

The data show "extreme poverty" decreasing. It's a lot less clear that poverty
in general is decreasing... stagnating would be more appropriate to describe
overall global poverty. If you can ignore the specific claims and accept the
argument as a whole, Hickel's thrust is simply that global poverty is not
declining like the graph of extreme poverty would have you believe, so it's
not doing justice to the issue of poverty to tweet around charts of extreme
poverty in rapid decline, it gives the wrong impression.

> So how can Bill Gates possibly be wrong?

Again, Hickel's article covers this in quite some depth, with many reasons. If
you don't like it, that's fine. If you disagree with it, that's
understandable. But your incredulity here is misplaced.

> Hickel just wants to talk about how neoliberalism and globalization is bad,
> i.e. not actually anything that either Gates nor Pinker claimed.

You're probably right that Hickel wants to talk about how neoliberalism is
bad. Tweeting to the masses a picture of extreme poverty in rapid decline,
however, is a claim and is part of what Gates and Pinker "said".

------
patientplatypus
So this report came out yesterday:
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeti...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-
insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature).

"The 2.5% rate of annual loss (of insect biomass) over the last 25-30 years is
“shocking”, Sánchez-Bayo told the Guardian: “It is very rapid. In 10 years you
will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will
have none.”

So, in 100 years _all_ insects will die. All of them. And therefore us, long
beforehand.

So this "reduction of poverty" through capitalist economic expansion has been
achieved by the use of pesticides for cheap food, plastic, global warming etc.
How can anyone claim that reduction of poverty is a good thing when it comes
at the cost of the survival of the entire world ecosystem?

~~~
sedor123
Needlessly apocalyptic thinking.

No one knows what will happen as a result of this reduction in insect biomass,
that is literally the definition of unprecedented...

Every time some alarmist starts preaching apocalyptic nonsense because of a
story like this, nature inevitably plugs the hole. Do you remember the climate
alarmists telling us Florida would be underwater up to the panhandle by 2010?
Yeah, we are still using those same models, just tweaked around the edges.

Academics are not as smart as they would have you believe.

~~~
patientplatypus
Having no more insects is needlessly alarmist? What would be worrying to you
if not that? Yikes.

------
bko
The author nit-picks some of the numbers, noting that the poverty numbers
prior to some date are unreliable. But this is all meaningless as the numbers
aren't Pinker's point. The point is that society is getting richer and both
relative and absolute poverty is dropping across the world.

I think most reasonable people would believe this to be true. Those of us old
enough remember a time where we didn't have the luxuries we have today. We had
a choice of three channels on television, paid exorbitant long distance fees
to call our family abroad and rarely traveled by plane. And that changed over
the last 100 years or so. Surely on a larger time-scale we would notice even
greater change (indoor plumbing, air conditioning, antibiotics, food safety).

But the author doesn't see that:

> As to my actual claims about the past, my argument was straightforward. I
> simply pointed out that we cannot ignore the fact that the period 1820 to
> circa 1950 was one of violent dispossession across much of the global South.
> If you have read any colonial history, you will know colonizers had immense
> difficulty getting people to work on their mines and plantations. As it
> turns out, people tended to prefer their subsistence lifestyles, and wages
> were not high enough to induce them to leave. Colonizers had to coerce
> people into the labour market: imposing taxes, enclosing commons and
> constraining access to food, or just outright forcing people off their land.

Yes, people joined the urbanization movement but only did so kicking and
screaming. They were perfectly happy living subsistence lifestyles.

This strikes me as not only wrong but somewhat offensive. I don't know
anything about the author but I don't think he lives or has lived a
subsistence lifestyle, and neither have I. But from everything I read from
less ideologically minded researchers, it was a brutal existence. It is a lot
easier to live this subsistence lifestyle today. The world is still a large
place. You can easily buy a cabin in the woods and avoid taxes. Ironically,
the capitalist system the author likes to criticize promotes property rights
that allows for living off the grid.

So I welcome the author the chance to grasp his full potential and go off the
grid. He and his followers could buy 100 acres in Texas for 75k, and pay only
$500 in annual tax [0].

[0] [https://www.landwatch.com/Hudspeth-County-Texas-Land-for-
sal...](https://www.landwatch.com/Hudspeth-County-Texas-Land-for-
sale/pid/333134274)

~~~
lazyjones
> _true. Those of us old enough remember a time where we didn 't have the
> luxuries we have today. We had a choice of three channels on television,
> paid exorbitant long distance fees to call our family abroad and rarely
> traveled by plane. _

The same people always seem to forget about this when they complain about not
being able to afford proper housing or to sustain a family on a single income
though.

~~~
bko
Home ownership rates in America are historically very high. It dipped since
the peak in the pre 2008 when they were nearly 70% and is now around 65%. Pre-
WW2 it was around 45%.

The idea that home ownership is rare and out of reach for Americans is not
true.

[0] [https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/housing-market-
persp...](https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/housing-market-
perspectives/2016/if-housing-markets-are-recovering-why-is-homeownership-
falling)

------
jpatokal
> *We can end poverty right now simply by making the rules of our global
> economy fairer for the world’s majority (I describe how we can do this in
> The Divide, looking at everything from wages to debt to trade).

Well, that's a pretty bold claim. Anybody have a TL;DR that doesn't require
forking out 5 days of UN poverty-line income to read?

------
barry-cotter
All of the books on Hickel’s reading list are historians and none of them are
economic historians because it’s impossible to make the case he wants to make
if you use data gathered by economic historians. Hickel references Beckert’s
_Empire of Cotton_ , which, whatever its many virtues does not accord with
economic history at all. The other books he referenced are similarly useless
for answering what is a question of economic history. He criticises the
extreme poverty measure as being beneath human dignity when that’s _the
point_. This is the natural inheritance of man, wretched poverty for almost
everyone and what we would regard as poverty for the tiny elite. Hickel also
ignores the other indicators that show enormous progress, education, literacy,
lifespan, healthy lifespan and the fact that with population growth as rapid
as it the decline in absolute poverty ex-Africa is a substantial achievement.

Finally, neoliberalism delivered China from poverty. If it’s brought to the
rest of the poor areas of the world it’ll do it there too.

To neoliberalism! To the end of extreme poverty!

[https://pseudoerasmus.com/2016/06/16/eoc/](https://pseudoerasmus.com/2016/06/16/eoc/)

> Note: the following are NOT my thoughts. It’s my summary of Beckert’s book.

> {Summary begins}

> The West got rich by impoverishing the Rest.

> “War capitalism” was the violent exploitation of the non-West through
> piracy, enslavement, theft of natural resources, and the physical seizure of
> markets. It was not caused by superior technology or organisation. Nor did
> it rest on “offering superior goods at good prices”, such as you find in the
> la-la-land of economics textbooks, but on the “military subjugation of
> competitors and a coercive European mercantile presence in many regions of
> the world”.

~~~
sooheon
Protectionism and controlled liberal policies brought China and the rest of
the Asian Tigers to prosperity. Forced neoliberal policies is a curse on
nascent economies.

------
baragiola
>Remember, this is the period of the Belgian labour system in the Congo, which
so upended local economies that 10 million people died – half the population.
This is the period of the Natives Land Act in South Africa, which dispossessed
the country’s black population of 90% of the country. This is the period of
the famines in India, where 30 million died needlessly as a result of policies
the British imposed on Indian agriculture. This is the period of the Opium
Wars in China and the unequal treaties that immiserated the population. And
don’t forget: all of this was conducted in the name of the “free market”.

Free market doesn't just mean low or no taxes. People will do all sort of evil
things and hide behind some nice ideal.

The important thing is that none of those countries are doing it anymore and
those who do, are quite the opposite of free market capitalist countries (ie,
North Korea)

------
huffmsa
England, what's with the clown show you've got going on at your unis? First
the naked Brexit lady now this guy.

1) subsistence agrarian lifestyles were not better than our industrialized
world. If Mr Hickel disagrees, he should lay down the pen and pick up the
plow.

2) decreased child mortality and increased lifespans (thanks industrialized
medicine!) means more people alive but not necessarily economically useful =>
lower GDP/head. Stop having babies you can't afford. This leads to a longer
debate about the issues with food aid both raising subsistence levels and
pricing out local farmers.

3) China, Singapore, Vietnam, etc saw huge improvement because they went balls
to the walls with the forced industrialization this quack said was the
problem.

4) Income inequality increasing doesn't matter because the the entry price for
modern technology is decreasing faster than income inequality is increasing.

This guy's a keyboard warrior who's never been in the field and shouldn't have
cost my 5 minutes to read.

~~~
benj111
What's England got to do with this, and who's the naked Brexit lady?

He isn't saying agrarian is better than industrialised. He's saying
industrialisation was forced on them by colonialisation.

Read about the Congo free state for example [1].

Also. The early stages of industrialisation aren't particularly good for a
nations poorest, Britain's industrial revolution was not a land of plenty for
the poor, they just went from being poor farm hands, to poor factory workers.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State)

~~~
huffmsa
_> They had little if any money, but then they didn’t need it in order to live
well – so it makes little sense to claim that they were poor._

His argument is that you can't be poor if you don't have a concept of money,
like in an agrarian society. You overlooked it because your brain knows it's
not true.

Quality of life is not a dollar amount. It's all of those graphs Gates shared.
Not just the first one.

~~~
almost_usual
If quality of life isn’t a dollar amount then why aren’t more people
comfortable distributing dollars amongst the public?

~~~
huffmsa
I'll rephrase. It's not purely a dollar amount. It's what's available for you
to do and buy with those dollars.

Eventually we will just give everyone dollars. I firmly believe Pixar's WALL-E
is our Marxist ideal future. But we're not there yet. Need better robots.

