
2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor - pyduan
http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/?cid=bg_fb_po0_012103/#section=home
======
mikeash
This is a fascinating letter that helps combat some of the "doom and gloom"
that's so prevalent in... well, everything.

I kept coming back to one thought while reading this: _why_ are people so
mistaken about Africa in particular? The article covers misconceptions all
over the place, but it keeps coming back to Africa, and it seems that the
disparity between what people think and what's actually the case is far larger
there than anywhere else.

It would be easy to blame this on casual racism and move on. And I'm sure
that's a factor. But there must be more.

I wonder if there might just be a cliff effect in people's perceptions. The
perception of China, for example, changed rapidly from "shithole" to "where
all our stuff is made". India quickly switched from "shithole" to "where our
IT gets outsourced". (And reminder, I'm talking about _perceptions_ here,
specifically in the US, or possibly the western world as a whole.) I wasn't
around for it, but I have the impression that more or less the same thing
happened for e.g. Taiwan and Japan.

If that's the case, then Africa is still in the "shithole" perception category
simply because we don't see much of them. Not much of our stuff comes with a
"Made in Kenya" label on it, and our experience with IT-related outsourcing to
Africa is mostly limited to Nigerian scammers. Once that changes, the
perception will rapidly go from "those guys have no food" to "those guys are
taking all of our jobs".

A counterpoint would be South America, which is not overall perceived as
"shithole" but nor is it a place we interact with a whole lot.

Perhaps it's just mental inertia. The places that are changing most rapidly
will be the most incorrectly perceived.

~~~
slurry
Two points:

I still perceive India as a "shithole". Whereas China's elite has used its
newfound wealth to finance widespread infrastructure and especially sanitation
projects, India's has not, not on a mass countrywide scale. Fallen prey to
coordination problems is the best gloss you can put on it but I still find it
scandalous.

Second, South America's recent progress has mostly been under governments of
the left, using more or less coercive statist means that neither the Gates
Foundation nor the average HNer would endorse. But maybe it's worth
considering.

~~~
theraccoundude
Right. And of course you have countries like Chile, which has the highest GDP
per capita of any south american country and probably the most stable economy,
all after adopting free market principals from Friedman. And some of these
countries have grown, but to what extent? Where would Brazil be if it dropped
it's insanely regulated state and bloated beauracracy and freed up its people?
These countries are all still held back by their overbearing governments.

~~~
Daishiman
Chile is a terrible example of this; it has one of the higher levels of income
inequality on that side of the continent and privatized education and health
care. Private education in Chile is appalling; wealthy Chileans send their
kids to study to the US or EU and the middle class that can't afford education
sends them to Argentina or Brazil. Capital is concentrated on a few hands with
a strong dependency on basic commodities exports with low added value. It's
better than many places, but the GDP figures don't reflect the realities of a
substantial amount of its population.

~~~
paul_f
This "inequality" stuff is really getting annoying. The poor in Chile are far
better off than other countries in the region, but because the rich are also
richer somehow inequality is all that matters to some.

In fact, the wikipedia article "Poverty in South America" doesn't even mention
Chile
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_South_America](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_South_America)

~~~
Daishiman
If the poor can't afford basic health care then there is something really
wrong with an economy.

------
crazygringo
It's an excellent piece. I'll admit to being a bit confused by the assertion,
however:

> _" letting children die now so they don’t starve later—doesn’t actually
> work, thank goodness. It may be counterintuitive, but the countries with the
> most deaths have among the fastest-growing populations in the world. This is
> because the women in these countries tend to have the most births, too."_

I spent five months in Kenya, and a couple weeks with the Samburu tribe during
a drought. All their animals were dead, piled up, because there were no more
leaves to eat. We were driving a caravan of food to distribute in the region,
since otherwise the people would have been next. And the dilemma was explained
to me clearly: we can't just let people die. But it means we have to send food
aid all the time now, unlike decades ago, because the population is simply
larger than the land can support, except in its best years, and it makes the
people essentially permanently dependent on outside aid.

So I'll admit to being stumped by what Melinda Gates means when she says that
overpopulation isn't the result of aid. Simply asserting that "countries with
the most deaths have among the fastest-growing populations in the world"
doesn't explain anything -- it's just a correlation, and might very well be
due to the fact that such countries _already_ receive the most food aid, for
example.

I'm certainly not arguing that I am against, or that anyone should be against,
food aid. But I am utterly unconvinced by Melissa Gates saying that "saving
lives leads to overpopulation" is a myth -- she doesn't substantiate it, and
it seems like the weakest part of the whole post. It all depends on how you
define overpopulation, but I just don't see it yet. Of course, rising income
and education lowers birth rates in the future, but that doesn't change the
simple fact that, at low levels of income and education, more food aid
directly results in more people, which is often more than traditional local
practices and agriculture can reliably and sustainably support.

~~~
thwest
Overpopulation can also result from simple trade. NYC and generally the entire
US eastern seaboard are overpopulated by your definition.

~~~
dredmorbius
Or virtually all of the Persian Gulf. Some of the fastest-growing populations,
in what's empty desert without even sufficient water for cities let alone
agriculture.

The economist's answer is that these regions have economic outputs (financial
wizardry, advanced manufacturing, tourism, oil) which the rest of the world
wants, and the rest of the world (which in the case of the Atlantic seaboard
is largely the US's own inland agricultural regions -- breadbasket to the
world) is willing to exchange its agricultural produce for those goods.

There's a difference between _economic_ self-sufficiency and _ecological_
self-sufficiency. Arguments can be made over which is preferable. Comparative
advantage means that the economic argument leads to greater overall population
and productivity, sustainability means the ecological argument leads to
greater sustainability.

There's also that little matter that agriculture has largely transformed into
a factory system for converting petrochemical energy to food energy via modest
sunlight inputs.

~~~
bcoates
Worrying about ecological self-sufficiency and sustainability at a smaller
than planetwide scale is essentially throwing away the entire advantage of how
much our massive global logistics network has shrunk the world in recent
decades.

~~~
dredmorbius
Relying on the massive global logistics network to support massively
nonequilibrium populations in highly infertile land is counting on a patently
unsustainable level of resource use to create a massive risk.

It's one thing to have local shortfalls of food or water of a few percent
which can be satisfied with largely local imports of a few hundred kilometers
(say, Germany, which is roughly 90% self-sufficient for food production). It's
quite another to require massive imports of food and fresh water.

Economic efficiency is directly opposed to sustainability and risk.

~~~
eru
> [...] is counting on a patently unsustainable level of resource use to
> create a massive risk.

Can you please elaborate? We sit on a giant ball of matter, and there's enough
energy coming in from the sun (or via nuclear power) to last us a few billion
years.

~~~
dredmorbius
You could start here:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/wiki/index#wiki_that_.22...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/wiki/index#wiki_that_.22general_interest.22_list_you_gave_was_kind_of_vague.2C_can_you_be_more_specific.3F)

The reading list starts here, it's a brief introduction to a _very_ broad
topic:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/wiki/index#wiki_so_..._a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/wiki/index#wiki_so_..._all_this_deep_stuff.2C_you_got_any_references.3F)

(And for anyone stumbling on this comment in the future -- I'm planning on
substantially reorganizing that Wiki page though it should link to the
appropriate sections).

The major issue with tapping solar power for high-grade electrical energy is
whether or not it's possible to do so in a manner that sustains the ability to
create that solar energy infrastructure _and_ support technological life.
EROEI, capital and maintenance requirements, and other resource limits all
come into play.

The last time humans had a sustainable-energy based economy was 1700. The
state of technology was markedly lower. If we return to that energy state, we
should continue to have the benefit of scientific understanding gained since
then (engineering, germ theory, metalurgy, sanitation, evolution, steam power,
thermodynamics, electricity, chemistry, relativity, quantum mechanics, atomic
physics, astronomy, electronics, pharmacology, aviation, rocketry), though how
much of it we'll have the techological stack to support is another question.

Joseph Tainter, Charles Hall, Robert Ayres, Donna & Dennis Meadows, and
William Stanley Jevons would make for some interesting reading.

Oh, and you've only got 800 million - 1 billion years: solar flux and/or C4
synthesis will mean the end of life as we know it. Life on Earth is past
middle age. Even allowing for the lignin revolution and decomposer lag, that's
barely sufficient time to replenish fossil fuel stocks for a do-over should
humans fail.

~~~
mkaziz
Will we still be human at that point?

~~~
dredmorbius
Were we ever?

The timescale of human evolution to date is on the order of 2 million years or
so since we branched from our common ancestor with chimpanzees.

Somewhere around 80,000 years ago (plus or minus) we seem to have reached
modern levels of cognitive ability, specifically, the capacity to keep 7 +/\-
2 things in mind at the same time, as evidenced by the anthropological record
-- stone artifacts and such.

Written history and most civilization spans roughly 6,000 years.

So, if you're looking at what "sustainable" might mean, I'd argue for
somewhere within that timeframe. A minimum of 6,000 years, a reasonable upper
bound of about 2 million.

A few folks have played with this:

[http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-next-ten-
bil...](http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-next-ten-billion-
years.html)

[http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-next-
ten-...](http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-next-ten-billion-
years.html)

------
Symmetry
The Gates are quite correct that we shouldn't ordinarily worry too much if
some of the aid is siphoned off into government corruption. But while if 2% of
the money goes into the creation of some official's new manor that isn't too
bad, there are much worse things that money can go to.

In the Great Lakes Crisis[1] the perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda were
charging aid organizations for access to the the refugees they controlled.
They were using the money to try to buy enough weapons to re-conquer Rwanda
and finish what they had started. Most private aid organizations wisely
decided they weren't willing to pay the genocidaires off, but the UN was
willing to and the army of the new Rwandan government ended up invading to
stop them, touching off the Congolese civil war.

Paying for access to refugees can also turn refugees into a de-facto lootable
resource that can help sustain conflicts the same way that diamonds can.

Corruption in stable states isn't a huge problem for aid (development is
another story), but it's interactions with aid are much worse in unstable
areas.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_refugee_crisis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_refugee_crisis)

------
hawkharris
The United States' news coverage concerning Africa perpetuates these myths.

It seems as if 95% of news stories focus on poverty, war and chaos in the
continent. They rarely go so far as to differentiate among countries.

In fact, many African nations are great centers for innovation. Kenya and
Nigeria spring to mind for higher education and mobile computing.

As a way of confronting condescending stereotypes, I have often fantasized
about organizing a group of Nigerian school children to "help build a school
somewhere in America" — a twist on the cliche trip that many U.S. students
take to Africa — because education in some Nigerian cities is far superior to
most U.S. high schools.

~~~
gnerd
> because education in some Nigerian cities is far superior to most U.S. high
> schools.

Do you know that for sure though? Isn't it possible that you are drawing a
conclusion on a far away place based on some events/cultural ideas that are
provocative enough to make it to your screen as a topic of interest?

Isn't that the same thing you are complaining about, just in reverse?

~~~
hawkharris
I base that conclusion on a comparison of students' performance on various
aptitude tests, the likelihood that they will go to college and the percentage
of those who find jobs related to their fields of study.

~~~
gnerd
So then show us so we can take your conclusions seriously.

------
dragonwriter
I've been to Mexico City fairly recently, and I guarantee that in the right
places -- possibly the same place the 1986 picture was taken -- you could take
something very much like that 1986 picture today (which is perhaps even more
tragic today, since its not just after the major earthquake). And I've seen
Mexico City pictures just like that 2011 one, barring changes in fashion, from
the 1980s. And even the 1960s.

On a bigger problem with Myth 1, not only are the pictures distortion, so is
the main set of economic claims supporting the myth thesis they are meant to
illustrate. Gates makes claims about "per person income", but the statistic he
uses and treats as if it meant that is actually GDP per capita. Because much
of the value of goods produced in developing countries is captured by foreign
capital holders owning the firms doing the production, and because all that
value extracted from the country's economy still shows up as part of the GDP
of the country it is extracted from, GDP per capita, particularly in the
developed world, is often very different than income per person.

~~~
WildUtah
I've lived in Mexico City a couple years and visited regularly since 1997.

Things have changed drastically in the last seventeen years. Statistics show
that they changed even faster between 1985 and 1997, but I didn't see that.

The middle class has been growing at an astonishing pace. Vast swathes of
Azcapotzalco, Xochimilco, and even Iztapalapa that were poor and backwards are
now prosperous, clean, and exciting. The fashionable neighborhoods in
Coyoacán, Polanco, and the Roma have become outright opulent. The Historic
Center is neat, safe, popular, and crowded at all hours with local and
international botiques and restaurants.

You can clearly see the mountains Chiquihuite from downtown and El Águila from
Coyoacán nearly every day now. In 1997, the mountains around the city were
more like rumors behind the pollution. Last month, I actually saw Iztaccihuatl
and Popocatépetl from the center of the valley. Out by the canals of Cuemanco,
local wildlife biologists tell me that the water is cleaner, the population of
birds is increasing again, and recovery programs for the aquatic axolotl are
working.

High school graduation and college completion rates have been skyrocketing.
New universities are spreading and growing across the valley. Education is
especially important because Mexico City college graduates live nearly as well
as American college graduates. The income gap is in the working classes
without credentials.

GDP per capita is misleading, so let's consider personal income. Housing and
transportation and meals cost about a quarter as much as in the USA for the
middle class. That's about 80% of a typical budget. Cops and public
administrators with good educations are now making US$10k to start and
programmers and engineers around US$20k. The median household income in Benito
Juarez county, with about 600k people and no fashionable rich areas, is
approaching US$30k. The neighboring parts of Coyoacán, Miguel Hidalgo, Álvaro
Obregón, and Cuauhtémoc counties are richer.

So I really endorse the Gates's impression of development success in Mexico
City.

~~~
pacofvf
> GDP per capita is misleading

that's why is better to use Purchasing Power Parity indexes, for example
Mexico is 14th in Nominal GDP with 1,183B USD, but in PPP terms it is the 11th
with 1,758B USD. The country as a whole has a GDP per capita PPP of 15K USD,
but Mexico City has a GDP per capita PPP of 44K USD. It's a very big country
with a lot of inequality between urban and rural population.

------
misterbishop
This should be titled "Strawmen that block progress for the poor". Few serious
thinkers actually believe any of those supposed myths.

Not one word about the exploitation of labor and natural resources in "poor
nations" by rich nations (&corporations). Not one word about economic
sanctions imposed on several poor nations by the US and its allies.

Gates sounds like the optimist against a world of cynics, but he ignores major
reasons why these nations are poor in the first place.

------
kilroy123
In regards to "people believe the world is getting worse", is mostly Americans
and the US media. I believe things are getting worse, or at least harder for
the majority of Americans; not the rest of the world.

Unemployment, large disparity in wealth, massive problems with debt (student
debt), and highly dysfunctional political system. Americans see things as
getting worse, here at home. We don't really focus on the rest of the world.

------
sdegutis
"Creating societies where people enjoy basic health, relative prosperity,
fundamental equality, and access to contraceptives is the only way to secure a
sustainable world."

I suppose I'm one of the 0% (rounded) who disagree with putting contraception
in this list. When this gets thrown around, it makes me feel like an outsider
in a programming community where I otherwise agree with probably everything
else.

~~~
zeidrich
Access to contraceptives allows people who do not intend to have children, but
engage in sex, to remain childless.

No access to contraceptives means that people who do not intend to have
children, but engage in sex, will have children. These children will be
unintended or unwanted and may not be cared for either through disinterest or
lack of ability to provide for them.

A child who grows up in that sort of circumstance is not kept safe, may
succumb to disease, may spread disease, will not be educated, and will have
difficulty providing for themselves.

A common rebuttal is that people should just not engage in sex if they are not
intending to have children. This is maybe ideal in some moral frameworks, but
whether it's ideal or not, it's not the reality. The reality is that some
people will engage in sex anyways, and some people will be forced to engage in
sex against their will. While it might be a goal to prevent these things from
occurring, the reality is that they occur, and methods to mitigate the
negative impacts of their occurrences are better than just finger-wagging.

That said, if your argument is more along the lines of "The Pope says that it
is wrong, and the Pope espouses God's will." then I can't really refute it. I
can just disagree.

In any case, if people can choose whether they want to have a child or not,
then contraception just helps them make that choice. If they shouldn't engage
in sex for non-childbearing reasons, then they can struggle with that decision
as well. However, when succumbing to that results in an unwanted childbirth,
it does more than just punish the parent, it now involves the child and the
whole community.

~~~
sdegutis
My line of reasoning behind my position is complex and can't be simplified
into a bite-sized form that can be defended in a HN thread. Especially
considering my original point: I'm one of the 0%; there's no chance for a fair
debate.

~~~
ubercore
I think it's fair to expect at least an attempt, given that you felt strongly
enough to post your first comment. Without context, it boils down to "I have
an opinion." Not surprising people would ask you to expand on that.

------
acconrad
> There are still slums and pockets of poverty, but by and large when I visit
> there now I think, “Wow, most people who live here are middle-class. What a
> miracle.”

Overall I enjoyed his letter, but I find this quote a bit deceptive. A recent
photo ([http://i.imgur.com/atxDiw6.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/atxDiw6.jpg)) of
the poverty line in Mexico City paints a very different picture than Gates'
conclusion that most people there are "middle-class." Another source
([http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/30/us-mexico-
poverty-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/30/us-mexico-poverty-
idUSBRE96T01F20130730)) claims that Mexico's poverty line is nearly 50%, far
different than "pockets of poverty."

~~~
humanrebar
I'm surprised he chose Mexico as an example as well, but because of the issues
it has with corruption, emigration, and violence. Even a middle-class country
with those problems seems like a bad example of progress.

~~~
sp332
Does Mexico still have an emmigration problem? I know that for the last few
years, the USA has had net-negative immigration from Mexico, as people are
moving back.

~~~
humanrebar
I'm not an expert, but I understand that was more a function of the economic
downturn than anything.

Relevant: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/us/immigrant-population-
sh...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/us/immigrant-population-shows-signs-
of-growth-estimates-show.html?_r=0)

That article reports that immigration from Mexico may be on the rise again. It
also cites that half of the undocumented immigrants in the U.S. (about 6
million people) were born in Mexico.

I guess my point is that Mexico has significant issues to deal with and
therefore it may not be a good anecdote and instead be a better candidate for
the special-considerations bucket.

------
jfoster
Is it just me, or is there some bias in the before & after photos?

Mexico city "before" is just one dwelling versus a full street in the "after".

Nairobi "before" is taken when most of the city was dark due to clouds,
whereas the "after" is a bright, sunny day.

Similarly, Shanghai "before" looks like it was taken with an unfavourable
filter on a hazy day.

I'm not doubting that the world is improving, especially in those places. I
just find it unusual that they used such obviously biased photos.

~~~
cowls
Yes, that also put me off somewhat. There's an air of dishonesty about it.

------
pella
"How Occupy Wall Street Won In One Chart"

\--> "income inequality has been the #1 global risk."

[http://www.businessinsider.com/how-occupy-wall-street-won-
in...](http://www.businessinsider.com/how-occupy-wall-street-won-in-one-
chart-2014-1)

------
pnathan
Fascinating. This addresses one of my key concerns, that aid often is a bag of
cash to high officials, who then go buy 6-10 Lamborghinis and a new apartment
rather than actually helping people out.

~~~
yobb
It is still that, perhaps not in such a distilled fashion, but corruption is
rampant throughout the world. Those in power in the "third world" are as
susceptible, if not more so, to greed as those here in the "first world." Aid
does work to an extent simply because not all of humanity is evil, there are
some in positions of power who actually do wish to do good. His report just
appears too idyllic and utopian compared to reality.

~~~
mikeash
Are you seriously saying that one of the most significant philanthropists
alive today, who has given tens of billions of dollars of his own personal
money in aid, who has a large role in overseeing the aid organization he
built, and who has seen the results of corruption as applied to that aid, is
"too idyllic and utopian compared to reality"?

If Gates says that X is true when it comes to aid, and you say that X is not
true, what reason could I possibly have to believe you over him?

~~~
yobb
I don't give a shit if you believe me or not.

------
gregwtmtno
I think myth number 3, that saving children’s lives leads to overpopulation,
misses the central concern. People are concerned about world resource
depletion, not overpopulation. And while it is 100% true that bringing
countries out of poverty reduces population growth, it does not reduce
consumption. In fact, it does the opposite.

~~~
g8oz
Lifestyle accounts for resource depletion far more than raw population
numbers. A mall addicted American SUV driver who flies twice a year is far
worse for the planet than than a village woman in Mozambique with 6 children.

------
grecy
> _Four of the past seven governors of Illinois have gone to prison for
> corruption, and to my knowledge no one has demanded that Illinois schools be
> shut down or its highways closed._

Brilliant.

~~~
dnautics
yes, but we have demanded that the funds no longer be transferred through
those governors.

~~~
grecy
It will just be transferred through the next governor... who, based on
history, has a pretty good chance of being corrupt too.

------
jl6
I would be interested to hear how HN readers approach charity. I personally am
constantly struggling with questions like: once my basic needs are met, how
can I possibly justify _not_ giving the rest of my income to life-saving
causes?

My working theory is a combination of (a) my basic needs are actually quite
high when you consider the many potential rainy days for which I must save,
(b) I don't know enough to donate with confidence that my money is doing more
good than harm (this Gates letter addresses some of my concerns here), and (c)
I must simply come to terms with being selfish to the point where I would
rather spend money on a candy bar than a life-saving vaccination for someone
else.

~~~
peterashford
Personally I don't believe that you need to save the world. Just making a
contribution now and then and being aware of the issues and speaking / voting
with empathy for the poor is enough.

------
bfe
This is a great and wise overview of some of the most important aspects of the
state and trajectory of humanity today. I wish there were more widespread
exposure to analysis like this.

------
jokoon
I view this as a political sensitization, and I think it's greater than trying
to talk numbers and topics about charities and myths.

I think this foundation is showing that you can be optimistic and right at the
same time for many things about charities, but it's not the organization and
the means and the money sent that will effectively change things.

I don't know how this foundation works at the political level, and what are
the political issues, but I hope it will make people really reflect their view
on the world. You don't often have billionaires initiating a communication
campaign and articles about charities, and attracting that much attention.

I don't think Bill Gates would really like to answer the question "when did
you encounter politics in that work, and what was good and what was not ?",
because I don't think that he's a very political guy, but at least he has
enormous talent for everything else.

I honestly thinks that diplomacy and politics can immensely help charities. I
wish this foundation is not just doing this mission without minding the
geopolitics, and has at least a few political partners and advisors. I wonder
if they tried to do some lobbying, if just think there is a lot of potential
if you try to approach foreign aid with a moderate amount of politics.

------
dnautics
#2 is really tortured. first he makes the argument that foreign aid works,
then narrows it down to "development aid" and then when it comes time to
presenting evidence he really pares it down to "health aid".

And addressing the second part of myth #2(aid breeds dependence), is it not
possible that the countries that escaped aid are getting better in spite of
foreign aid, and not because of it? There are a lot of other things that have
happened to those countries in the era in which foreign aid was given, like
political shifts, introduction of technology, improvement of trade relations
with neighboring countries, no longer being at war with other countries, etc,
etc, etc. Seems like a standard correlation/causation fallacy.

------
humanrebar
> It is ironic that the foundation has a reputation for a hard-nosed focus on
> results, and yet many people are cynical about the government aid programs
> we partner with. The foundation does a lot to help these programs be more
> efficient and measure their progress.

It's not ironic. Some people value government charity spending less than they
value private nonprofit spending. Gates implicitly acknowledges that
government aid has weak points (poor focus on outcomes, inefficiency, and lack
of good measurement). Aside from that, there are also principled concerns
about using tax dollars for aid projects.

~~~
Guvante
> there are also principled concerns about using tax dollars for aid projects

Are you using the typical "let the church handle it logic" not specifically
religious entities, but that if the government didn't waste money on aid then
people would make up the difference?

Because if that is what you are saying it is based on the flawed logic that
aid is a zero sum thing. It is certainly not at this point.

I can guarantee that the US stopping foreign aid would reduce available
foreign aid by nearly the entire amount it currently spends, given that the
total budget is around 0.1% and no one would notice an increase of 0.1% of
their income.

This is not to say that the US should increase their aid, just saying that
some level of aid makes sense since it has a significant impact for a nearly
negligible cost on the total scale.

~~~
humanrebar
I didn't say those things. I was saying that it's not ironic and pushing back
against a particular straw man in the letter.

1\. Government aid has its problems.

The fact that the Gates Foundation helps government programs implies that
private organizations execute better, at least in some aspects. Gates later
admits that government aid has its problems, so it's odd that he dismisses
objections in this way.

2\. Philosophical objections should be acknowledged and addressed.

At another point in the letter, Gates hypothetically asked, "Imagine that the
income tax form asked, 'Can we use $30 of the taxes you’re already paying to
protect 120 children from measles?' Would you check yes or no?"

Many people would have no problem with that arrangement but do have a problem
with not-optional line items in the federal budget. The point is that right
now donations are enforced by the IRS, which is an odd form of charity, and I
think it's reasonable (and certainly not ironic) to have philosophical
problems with that and to prefer more democratic forms of aid.

Perhaps the benefits are worth overruling the drawbacks (point 1) and
philosophical objections (point 2), but calling reservations about government
aid ironic is either sloppy or disingenuous.

------
agarwlGaurav
Yesterday I read the Oxfam report that 85 people own half of the world's
wealth.
[http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2014-01-20/ri...](http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2014-01-20/rigged-
rules-mean-economic-growth-increasingly-winner-takes-all-for-rich-elites)

Now this is amazing and simple fact. This shows we have completely failed at
distribution of wealth. If we could fix this many many problem will vanish.
Now instead of what Gates has written this extreme inequality is blocking the
progress of poor.

~~~
spikels
You misquote the OXFAM claim. They actually say:

The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85
people in the world.[1](p2 bottom)

See the difference? The richest 85 people have about $1.7 trillion in
wealth[2]. To put that in perspective the world stock market capitalization is
$63 trillion[3], world bond market capitalization is around $100 trillion[4],
world investment grade real estate $26 trillion[5]. That already $189 trillion
of world wealth and ignores most real estate, commodities, durables,
government owned assets, etc. So the richest 85 people actually own much less
than 1% of the world's wealth. The problem is that the bottom 50% also own
much less than 1% of the world's wealth.

You will have a very hard time solving the world's problems if you can't even
get basic facts straight. Gates, the world's second richest man, could give
his entire fortune away to the bottom 50% and they would only get $19.00 each
(=$67B/3.5B). Of course he would then have to shut down the Gates Foundation.

[1] [http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-
fo...](http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-
political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-en.pdf)

[2]
[http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/](http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/)

[3] [http://www.businessinsider.com/wfe-world-stock-market-
capita...](http://www.businessinsider.com/wfe-world-stock-market-
capitalization-2013-12)

[4]
[http://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1212h.pdf](http://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1212h.pdf)

[5]
[http://www.investmentmanagement.prudential.com/documents/pim...](http://www.investmentmanagement.prudential.com/documents/pimusa/Birds_Eye_View_2012_PRU.pdf)

~~~
agarwlGaurav
Agreed, I made a mistake. But I appreciate that you agree that we have failed
miserable at distribution of wealth and I quote you "The problem is that the
bottom 50% also own much less than 1% of the world's wealth."

~~~
spikels
The distribution of wealth is a symptom of a problem not the problem itself.
We haven't failed at distributing wealth: poor people are not poor because
somebody didn't distribute wealth to them.

Most poor people are poor because they don't have paying work (i.e. a job or
business). In the poorest countries unemployment rates are always very high
(50%+) and even if rich countries the poorest are usually unemployed. Without
any income basic survival is difficult and it is almost impossible to save and
accumulate wealth.

As I pointed out above you could take all of Bill Gates wealth away and only
have $19 for each of the 3.5 billion in the bottom 50%. While this might help
some in the short run because Bill Gates would have to stop his aid activities
many would be worse off in the long run. But more importantly it does not
solve the problem.

The only solution is to get the unemployed into paying jobs or businesses.
Even the lowest paying jobs on earth, such as Bangladesh garment jobs, pay
twice what redistributing Bill Gates fortune would - not just once but EVERY
MONTH. Unfortunately making this possible is a lot more complex than writing a
check but it certainly helps to better understand what needs to change.

~~~
agarwlGaurav
1\. I never said we should redistribute the wealth. I believe that will only
create more problems.

2\. I never suggested Bill Gates should give away his wealth.

3\. All I am saying is whatever caused this (85 richest human have wealth
equal to 3,500,000,000 poorest humans) extreme inequality is blocking the
progress of poor. For example - In India corruption in government is making
problem of inequality worst. If you spend sometime trying to understand the
corruption problem of India you will be surprised to see it's extend and
scale. Therefore if we agree that we have a problem we may find the cause and
finally remedies.

~~~
spikels
I apologize if I misunderstood you - so much simplistic inequality talk
lately.

I completely agree that government corruption (and simple incompetence) are a
big part of the reason the poor are poor and many of the super rich are super
rich (e.g. Carlos Slim and Latin American telephone monopolies). However these
are two separate thing. If having a few super rich was the price of elevating
tens of millions of people out of extreme poverty, I would be very happy. This
is what has happened in China. If we could encourage this in Congo, it would
be a big win.

Other than what is already being done by people like Gates the only idea I
like is having government focus on things it can do well and avoid doing harm.
But I think everyone knows this already and it must be almost impossible to
do.

------
pessimizer
The myth in this article is that a per capita average of income tells you
anything about the condition of the poor. Many countries can raise that number
significantly by simply asking Mr. Gates to visit for a day.

~~~
rmah
GDP is a reasonably good measure of a nation's economic activity and per
Capita GDP is a reasonably good measure of overall well being under all but
the most extreme circumstances. Using purchasing power adjusted GDP is a bit
better. IMO, using median income is even better. But GDP figures tend to be
more accurate and less subject to bias and thus more commonly used.

To address your snide side comment... Gates visiting would not change the per
Capita GDP. GDP and per capita GDP is not calculated that way.

GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports
− imports)

and

Per Capita GDP = GDP / Population

Visiting rich foreigners, or even rich expats who just reside somewhere but
have no business activity do not change GDP except through their local
spending (private consumption).

Read [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP) for
more info.

------
dredmorbius
There are multiple problems with Gates's predition, but two of the biggest are
these: 1\. Growth in real economic wealth is very strongly tied to growth in
real resource consumption. The master resource is energy, but numerous other
resources are in tight supply, with a critical set being "bauxite whose
production peaked in 1943), copper (1998), iron ore (1951), magnesium (1966),
phosphate rock (1980), potash (1967), rare earth metals (1984), tin (1945),
titanium (1964), and zinc (1969)" (from Richard Heinberg's The End of
Growth[1])

I've explored the concept of decoupling in greater length using Wolfram+Alpha
data to show the relationship between energy use and GDP for the G8 nations
plus China, India, and Brazil, as well as global growth, in the periods of
2000 - 2010, 1990 - 2012, and 1980-2012 (not all data available for all
periods, though the 2000 - 2010 data are complete for all nations analyzed).
While there's some sign of very weak decoupling of energy and GDP growth,
principally in Japan and the USA, for global GDP growth, there's a very strong
relationship between GDP and energy usage, and both have been increasing. With
limited exceptions, global per capita energy use has also been increasing.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1vlksg/economic...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1vlksg/economic_decoupling_the_recent_relationship/)

As I write this, I'm listening to a news story that the IEA has announced that
US oil consumption, flat for years, is up 2%

[http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/rising-demand-oil-
gr...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/rising-demand-oil-growth-easy-
when-youve-been-pits)

2\. The second major problem is that the so-called Demographic Transition
which Gates and Hans Rosling like to trumpet is little more than a largely
unexplained phenomenon observed in some but not all data series. Tom "Do the
Math" Murphy, UCSD physics professor, has specifically looked at this with
regards to oil states, and makes the observation that "surplus energy makes
babies"[2]. This is significant for two reasons: it means that the demographic
transition isn't being observed in all countries, and it means that population
growth, and hence domestic energy consumption growth, is highest in the major
oil exporting nations. Growing domestic consumption means reduced availability
of energy for export markets -- a phenomenon known as the "export lands
model". Other research suggests that the causality link between development
rates and birth rates is less clear than popularly portrayed[3].

I could bore (or terrify) you with numerous other challenges: flat or falling
agricultural productivity, EROEI deficiencies in virtually every non-fossil
energy alternative, pandemics risks. There's a reason I don't get invited to
parties much .... But I think these two will do. While I have respect for some
of Bill Gates's work (and I'm by no means an uncritical fan of his), his
optimism here seems misplaced and founded on a very incomplete portrayal of
the situation.

____________________________

Notes:

1\. Sources:
[http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/](http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/)
and
[http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/597/2/](http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/597/2/)

2\. "The Real Population Problem" [http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-
math/2013/09/the-real-populat...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-
math/2013/09/the-real-population-problem/)

3\. "Revisiting demographic transition: correlation and causation in the rate
of development and fertility decline."
[http://www.iussp.org/sites/default/files/event_call_for_pape...](http://www.iussp.org/sites/default/files/event_call_for_papers/OSullivan_IUSSP27_DemographicTransition_FullPaper.pdf)

~~~
bcoates
There's two big missing facts that I've never noticed Murphy in particular
acknowledge: the 1980s peak in global births -- population growth is now
driven entirely by decreasing mortality -- and the late 20th century
decoupling of energy consumption from economic growth.

Both point to an obvious counter-theory: That industrialization was a
centuries-long process, involving exploding populations and energy
consumption, that in much of the world _has come to an end_. The nice little
exponential lines are overfit to a particular span of human history and
stopped being predictive somewhere in the 20th century.

Also, most of those peaked resources are not even vaguely scarce. I'm not even
sure what it would mean to run out of iron ore or bauxite -- a large fraction
of the Earth's crust is iron- and aluminum-bearing rock, and the definition of
"ore" is "the particular chunks of rock and dirt that are economically viable
to extract metal from". Production peaked because of limited demand and
lowered shipping costs that made foreign supplies cheaper.

~~~
dredmorbius
_the late 20th century decoupling of energy consumption from economic growth._

If you bothered reading my post and links, I've gone into extensive length on
how economic decoupling _hasn 't_ happened and that the observed increase in
efficiency is fully consistent with complex systems / dissipative systems
theory.

The problem with technical capital is that it depreciates rapidly. While some
Roman infrastructure remains standing to this day, odds are that most of
today's electronics won't be functioning in 20 years, let alone 2000.

On peak minerals: Leibig's Law of the Minimum states that it's the least
abundant resource that constrains your growth. Pointing out that there's
plenty of X when Y is a limiting factor doesn't buy you much. I'd look very
closely at ag productivity.

Heinberg and others go into the issues of working from low-yield ores. Most
significantly, energy requirements scale inversely with or yield, and the
critical problem would be a technological collapse which would lapse beyond
the stage of a feasible reboot. While you _can_ extract minerals from dirt or
seawater, the energy and capital requirements are immense. Citations on your
claims of foreign supplies would be appreciated.

~~~
AaronFriel
I appreciate the dialog you're already having, but I thought you might like to
know that some of the statements you're making are causing my skepticism of
the whole argument to increase, not decrease. I'm not knowledgeable enough to
weigh in, but it might be useful for you to know what arguments work well and
which don't.

Here's what I noticed in your reply that I found myself questioning your
authenticity:

1\. Your first sentence is long and diminutive to the reader. I don't know who
the other person is, but maybe they did read your post and links? I'm not
sure. I also am highly skeptical of anyone that refers to their extensive
anything on anything. It really highly signals "quack" to me. Again, I'm not
trying to suggest you are.

2\. Your first sentence includes a number of terms that demand unpacking. This
is really strongly related to the first point, because I feel like as a reader
I'm being talked down to and then hit with some deep jargon that I don't
understand. Perhaps I'm just out of my league on this conversation, though.

3\. Your argument on peak minerals doesn't seem to make sense to me. It's one
of those things where, I read it and it feels very strongly like when I read a
staunch libertarian/Austrian economic argument between friends on Facebook and
see someone cite a universal law of microeconomics and then they use it to
justify something much larger or more complex. Looking up Leibig's law didn't
help me here. I'm just left a little more bewildered and even if I read and
interpreted Leibig's law as being one hundred percent correct in its original
formulation, there's a gap in my intuition between that and your use here, as
near as I can tell.

~~~
dredmorbius
_Your first sentence is long and diminutive to the reader._

He specifically reiterated without support an assertion of a fact I'd
addressed specifically, at length, and with considerable real world data. A
finer point: I wasn't dismissing him specifically, but _his actions_. I'm not
here to make friends or even particularly to persuade, but to expand my own
understanding of a subject I find of absolutely crucial importance.
Occasionally I find merits to discussing matters with those holding opposing
viewpoints.

Some guy came up with this concept called "Graham's Hierarchy of
Disagreement". You should check it out:

[http://blog.garrytan.com/grahams-hierarchy-of-
disagreement-h...](http://blog.garrytan.com/grahams-hierarchy-of-disagreement-
how-to-writ)

As to decoupling: I'm not aware of anyone who's specifically looked at
GDP/quad data, but I had, using public data (the blog post consists of a set
of graphs with links to the original from Wolfram+Alpha), and a bit of
commentary. You're welcome to agree or disagree with specifics, though an ad
hominem without any other basis for disagreement doesn't do you much credit.
You're at levels 2 & 3 of the hierarchy. bcoates managed to attain level 3.

Though as a DDG fan I've got a newfound softness for quacks.

 _Your first sentence includes a number of terms that demand unpacking._

Which? "Economic decoupling" or "capital depreciation"?

First: yes, this is a complex area, it's got a bit of its own language. That's
typical of any advanced field. That said it's not overly complex, though
you've got to be willing to take and bin a fair amount of conventional wisdom.

For more on decoupling, associated with resources in general, see:

[http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-technology/true-
raw...](http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-technology/true-raw-material-
footprint-nations)

[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/28/1220362110](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/28/1220362110)

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

Briefly on peak minerals:

⚫ Exhaustion of any extractive resource follows a curve similar to that M.
King Hubbert demostrated for oil in the 1940s and 1950s, accurately predicting
US peak production in 1970, and a global peak between 2000 and 2010[1]. Data
are a little hazy on global production yet, but it's clearly been flat despite
massive increases in market prices and capital expenditures by oil companies.
See Shell Oil's profit warning issued just this week. You're welcome to read
my take at [http://reddit.com/r/dredmorbius](http://reddit.com/r/dredmorbius)
or The New York Times, whichever you find less quackish:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/business/energy-
environmen...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/business/energy-
environment/shell-issues-profit-warning.html?_r=0)

⚫ Mining costs increase with falling ore grades. Heinberg cites this OilDrum
piece:
[http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/6974](http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/6974) "As
a rule of thumb, when the quality of the ore drops, the amount of energy
required to extract the resource rises". The rationale: lower grade means more
overburden and tailings to remove -- you've got to mine deeper, or excavate a
large area, or filter more seawater, or go through whatever it is that's your
source for the mineral.

I'm aware of a few specific lower bounds on ore concentrations. Estimates are
that uranium ores must be at least 200ppm for net positive production. See:
[http://www.stormsmith.nl/i05.html](http://www.stormsmith.nl/i05.html) and
generally:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium)

Leibig's Law is a separate observation to the issue of peak minerals -- it's
not describing how or when minerals peak, but what the effect of their peaking
is on the remainder of the system. For a critical mineral (say, phosphorus) to
peak would have dramatic effects throughout the system. Having enough cobalt
or gallium for iPhones won't do much if you can't grow food to feed the iPhone
user.

________________________________

Notes:

1\. Generally, Wikipedia, "Peak Minerals"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_minerals#Peak_minerals_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_minerals#Peak_minerals_and_peak_oil)

~~~
bcoates
Thanks for explaining more. I didn't respond because I realized that we didn't
agree on terms, and dictionary arguments are boring. I was using "decoupling"
in the sense of "what happens to an overfit model after it stops working", and
hadn't really noticed that your reddit post was also using the term to argue
against something I don't claim (or particularly care about), "reduction in
power accompanied by increases in GDP".

I'll admit that my post was more a general reaction to Prof. Murphy's chronic
abuse of statistical modelling, visible in the post you linked to "The Real
Population Problem" where he applies a rather incoherent statistical model
("Population growth is exponential, but the exponential rate keeps changing",
which is another way of saying "Population growth is not exponential"), while
ignoring the real story on population, flat or slightly declining total births
per year.... and his even more baffling and famous post,
[http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-
meets-...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-
physicist/) where he plops down a tight exponential fit that clearly applies
to the 'Industrial Manufacturing' era and visibly and extremely fails to model
after that (it's a log plot, that post-1970-ish curve indicates a massive,
model-falsifying difference between model and observation).

Economic modelling is hard enough for the world we live in, a world where
we're mining 0.02% Uranium from the ground instead of 10+% is so unlike
anything we know that making predictions about it is hubris.

I generally don't find peakery interesting because I don't accept the
fundamental premise (that you can model future resource availability _at all_
using historical consumption volumes), so I'm not even at the point where more
production (=consumption) data, however well sourced, is compelling.

~~~
dredmorbius
_we didn 't agree on terms, and dictionary arguments are boring_

If someone can come up with a dictionary definition that defends their use,
I'll accept that there are multiple common uses of a term. Sometimes utterly
contradictory ("inflammable", "citation", "oversight", etc.) It's when I find
people dismissing common terms or arguing _against_ the dictionary that I
rapidly lose interest. What's the context/field for your use of decoupling?

 _" Population growth is exponential, but the exponential rate keeps
changing"_

Mapping different fits to different portions of a curve is neither unknown nor
invalid. A mathematical model simply describes the behavior of data. The
underlying mechanism isn't itself described by the model (which itself is
something of an orrery). Instead, as Murphy notes, population was responding
to markedly different circumstances at different points along the line. You've
neatly skipped over his explicit recognition of this: "What accounts for the
discontinuity in slope?", and:

 _Plotting global population in the last thousand years (below), we see a few
breaks in the slope. For most of this period, we saw a modest 0.12% growth
rate, amounting to a 600 year doubling time. Around 1700, the rate stepped up
to 0.41%, doubling every 170 years. The next break happens around 1870,
jumping to 0.82% and 85 years to double. Then around 1950, we see another
factor-of-two rate jump to 1.7%_

What happened at those dates? 1700 marks the nascent beginning of the
Industrial Revolution (Newcoman's steam engine pumps in coal mines) and more
abundant coal. 1870 marks (roughly) electricity and modern sewerage,
sanitation, antisceptics, and anesthesia. 1950 marks the beginnings of the
Green Revolution as well as the great advance of manufacturing and post-war
renaissance around the globe. The earlier 0.03% growth to ~6000BC marks the
period prior to advanced agriculture and urbanization. Noting where your tidy
mathematical model breaks is just as important as seeing where it fits.

In the "Economist" dialog, you're failing to recognize the point that it's the
_economist_ who's positing eternal growth:

Physicist: "So what’s a typical rate of annual energy growth over the last few
centuries?"

Economist: "I would guess a few percent. Less than 5%, but at least 2%, I
should think."

The remainder of Murphy's analysis is to demonstrate the patent absurdity of
this.

I've observed that this leads to a number of fairly typical responses from
Murphy's critics:

⚫ He's extending a growth trend which has broken down in recent years (your
objection). The point is that the energy growth he demonstrates is tightly
coupled (correlated) with economic growth. And if you want the latter, you're
going to need the former.

⚫ Economic growth has been decoupled from energy growth. The graphical
evidence I've shown suggests otherwise.

⚫ Technology will fix everything. "Growth doesn't depend on increasing
material consumption at all". /u/geezerman at reddit and Tim Worstall at _The
Telegraph_ essentially make this argument.

⚫ "There is no energy/resource shortage". Humans will find and tap endless
sources of new energy and raw material ... somehow.

 _I don 't accept the fundamental premise_

So: what would be a valid basis for a model of future resource availability?
How do you address Hubbert peaking and depletion curves and the accuracy with
which they've predicted known peaks in local, national (US and elsewhere), and
by appearances, global oil production, as well as other resource peaks?

Rubbishing models without presenting a more accurate one yourself (or pointing
at one) isn't science, it's denial.

------
Datsundere
Never mind the fact that the divide between the rich and the poor is growing,
and only

growing.

------
wowsig
Some major ground has been covered in the article, and sparked a few more
pointers. I come from a country receiving substantial aid, and yet I see that
a lot of new initiatives could be kickstarted by the wealthy citizens
themselves. Covering the reasons why the middle-class and the rich hesitate to
lean in philanthropy would also instigate more people to contribute.

------
pikewood
I appreciated the fractal poetry in including the story of Sadi Seyni's
village well (an example of the need for spreading accurate information to our
fellow villagers), which is itself wrapped in a letter which calls on the
reader to spread accurate information on the myths being presented.

------
higherpurpose
Too bad Gates doesn't think the Internet helps progress in countries, because
technology and the Internet are huge factors in the progress and conditions of
living in a country.

~~~
jhull
What good is technology if you are sick or hungry? If you have no electricity?
It would be the first thing sold.

------
spodek
His third point, "Saving lives leads to overpopulation," is a weird straw man.
I've never heard of anyone ever suggesting letting suffering children die as
some way to keep the population low. He brings up Malthus as another straw
man.

I'm not sure the point he's trying to make. To stop people from stopping
people from saving people's lives? I _think_ he's trying to suggest that the
planet has too many people on it but that shouldn't stop us from saving
people's lives. I know a lot of people who consider the planet overpopulated
and I've never heard of anyone suggesting letting babies die would help, let
alone consider it remotely human.

He seems to conclude educating women and making birth control available helps
most. Why not just make that point? I feel like he's trying to imply those who
disagree with him or agree with Malthus are tantamount to baby-killers.

On another (lighter) note, since dromedaries are camels too, calling the
"camel world" a "bactrian world" would be more clear. The fun mnemonic for
camel names is that the Dromedary has one hump and the Bactrian has two, like
the first letters of their names, 'D' and 'B', turned sideways.

EDIT: Moreover, these statements are at odds, or at least need more
explanation to connect them.

"It may be counterintuitive, but the countries with the most deaths have among
the fastest-growing populations in the world. This is because the women in
these countries tend to have the most births, too."

and

"Human beings are not machines. We don’t reproduce mindlessly. We make
decisions based on the circumstances we face."

The first point suggests people have extra babies in anticipation of some of
them dying before adulthood. The second implies they would target a certain
number to reach adulthood, which would not itself lead to overpopulation. What
would lead to overpopulation on a broad scale would be individuals benefiting
from more children than the planet would, which is more like a tragedy of the
commons.

If people decide based on circumstances, then they wouldn't have too many
children for whatever their values decide, independent of child mortality.
They'd have the right number. If they are having the right number for
themselves, then food and medicine wouldn't affect their target number of
children.

Bringing up food and medicine is a red herring. There may be a myth (which
they don't establish), but it's irrelevant to the point made in that section:
increase education and birth control. It confuses unrelated issues and paints
people concerned with population as ignorant and cruel.

It's not clear to me where their logic suggests I should contribute resources.
Should I favor food causes over education causes, the other way around, a mix,
or neither?

~~~
chime
I'll bite. I believed it. Not only did I believe it until I read this letter,
I thought Gates Foundation was doing an unintentional long-term disservice to
the world by saving so many lives that overpopulation in the remote parts of
the world will lead to more suffering due to starvation/hunger, poverty, and
depression.

If X% of children in villages in Ghana are currently starving, how will
raising that to 2X% starving-but-inoculated children help the world? I was
never able to get that question answered sufficiently well. My background is
in Econ and Comp Sci so I have a pretty good understanding of the impact of
foreign aid. For the past decade, I've preferred the aid to be technological
and infrastructural in nature instead of medical because I presumed that
addressing the health needs of the existing population was merely plugging a
hole on a broken dyke.

I really don't think she was calling me a baby-killer but rather questioning
my faulty assumptions. I had made the same mistake that many others make when
looking beyond their own monkey circles - that even people with little
education make rational decisions about their lives, they're not mindless
machines pushing out kids because that's what tradition or society demands. I
never considered that the mothers in Ghana would have fewer children if
earlier ones survived.

I assumed that because they are poor, did not have access to birth control,
and were trying to maximize their long-term happiness, they would have as many
kids as possible to maximize the chances of at least a few of them becoming
successful. If you have two kids, both might be unemployed. If you have 12,
maybe two of them will get good jobs and take care of you in the future. While
this is great for the mother if two kids are successful, the other ten will
end up repeating what she did and the cycle will continue ten-fold. I honestly
believed that malaria was nature's way of minimizing long-term suffering.

There were too many faults in my assumption and I believed each of the myths
up to a certain extent. My beliefs were not necessarily baseless, they were
just completely out of date. I have a very hard time believing UN reports
because of politics, corruption, and self-preservation interests of
bureaucracy. However, I see no reason to assume Gates Foundation having any
malevolence, especially since they're literally giving away their own money to
improve the world long-term. So when they said my assumptions are in fact
myths, I allowed them the chance to change my mind and by the end of the
letter, I was cursing at myself for being so thick and wrong.

In addition to EFF, Wikipedia Foundation, and other tech causes, my future
donations will also go to health/medical causes thanks to this single letter.

EDIT: If you want to know what REALLY blew me away, it was the single
comparison shot of Mexico City 1986 vs 2011. My cousins in Mumbai grew up in
the slums and now they post photos of their new [car|clothes|apartments] on
Facebook. They were the kids bathing on the street and they weren't alone.
Almost all of their friends are now working for multinationals in Delhi or
Mumbai and most of them are doing better than their parents. An entire
generation of slum-dwelling children have their own bathrooms, kitchens, and
access to unlimited knowledge, technology, and medicine. I assumed that more
people meant more slums. I did not realize that it could be fewer slums and
more apartments.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Out of curiosity, which was the specific argument which changed your mind?

~~~
chime
I just added the "EDIT" section before I saw your question. That was what made
me start questioning my beliefs. Here's a few things the letter said that
eroded away the assumptions I had built regarding:

POVERTY:

> There are still slums and pockets of poverty, but by and large when I visit
> there now I think, “Wow, most people who live here are middle-class. What a
> miracle.”

> There is a class of nations in the middle that barely existed 50 years ago,
> and it includes more than half of the world’s population.

AFRICA:

> “Sure, the Asian tigers are doing fine, but life in Africa never gets
> better, and it never will.”... Seven of the 10 fastest-growing economies of
> the past half-decade are in Africa.

> The percentage of children in school has gone from the low 40s to over 75
> percent since 1970.

AID:

> Also remember that healthy children do more than merely survive. They go to
> school and eventually work, and over time they make their countries more
> self-sufficient. This is why I say aid is such a bargain.

> Here is a quick list of former major recipients that have grown so much that
> they receive hardly any aid today: Botswana, Morocco, Brazil, Mexico, Chile,
> Costa Rica, Peru, Thailand, Mauritius, Botswana, Morocco, Singapore, and
> Malaysia

The above one made me realize I can think of foreign aid like student loans. I
needed the financial aid to afford college education. My loans are now paid
off and I am significantly better off thanks to them.

CORRUPTION:

> Suppose small-scale corruption amounts to a 2 percent tax on the cost of
> saving a life. We should try to reduce that. But if we can’t, should we stop
> trying to save lives?

> On the other hand, four of the past seven governors of Illinois have gone to
> prison for corruption, and to my knowledge no one has demanded that Illinois
> schools be shut down or its highways closed.

Basically, don't throw the baby away with the bathwater.

> The horror stories you hear about—where aid just helps a dictator build a
> new palace—mostly come from a time when a lot of aid was designed to win
> allies for the Cold War rather than to improve people’s lives. Since that
> time, all of the actors have gotten much better at measurement. Particularly
> in health and agriculture, we can validate the outcomes and know the value
> we’re getting per dollar spent.

This was another big seller for me. Gates is brilliant and everyone who has
ever worked with him ends up calling him the smartest guy they know. It was
naive of me to think that he didn't have measures in place to measure the
impact of his investments and make sure waste was minimized.

And then pretty much everything in Myth #3. I was a fool.

~~~
devcpp
As a firm believer that overpopulation won't be solved by throwing money at
it, and that the people who are having children are the ones who shouldn't, I
see most of this as irrelevant. Of course money solves poverty in the short
term, no one should be surprised by that. But notice how he keeps comparing
one generation with only the previous, and never making long-term assertions.

Besides, I doubt Gates can go from the CEO of Bad Guys Corp. (among the
companies with the most evil business practices in history, up there with
Nestle) to Superman just because he has always been a modern Robin Hood,
establishing an OS monopoly to give our money to the poorest. I'd expect some
public guilt or something. I'll keep taking whatever his foul mouth says with
an enormous grain of salt until he explains his post-MS enlightenment and
endorses Linux.

~~~
bcoates
Oh come on. Microsoft's "evil" amounted to giving the competition a few kicks
in the ribs while they were down. It was nasty and unsporting but let's keep
things in perspective.

The comparison with Nestle would only be reasonable if a Windows 95 BSOD
killed one of your children.

------
excellence24
best line in the letter: "As public knowledge goes up, corruption goes down,
and more money goes where it’s supposed to."

This means you NSA and US black budget. Computers and robots have no need for
money. Our black budget goes to paying PEOPLE off and keeping secrets.

------
elwell
Breaks back button...

------
niio
ignore... testing saved articles.

------
goggles99
Darn, I was hoping that he was talking about the domestic poor.

