
The Politically Incorrect Guide To Ending Poverty - nochiel
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/
======
varjag
One thing tacitly not mentioned in the article is the guns and the Navy of the
British Empire that made the Hong Kong deal work.

If any country decides to cede sovereignty over some territory, they should
agree that the guest power will asserts its sovereignty over it. And it has to
be full way, without option to be undone after next coup, mood swing or
populist elections. And that can be guaranteed only with implicit threat of
violence from superior power.

Anyway the big problem these days is actually finding a progressive nation
willing to commit to such threats.

~~~
arethuza
Does anyone else find it rather ironic that an American economist is citing an
example where a mini-state (Honk Kong) created as the results of a war fought
by the UK to support drug dealing (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars>)
is cited as a great example of how to run a country?

~~~
Confusion
I don't find that ironic, because

a) We don't know this economists ideas about drug prohibition and the fact
that he is American is quite irrelevant. Whoever asserts something, you can
always find something to deem it 'ironic' or even 'hypocritical'. In the vast
majority of cases, that does not detract in any way from their argument. That
would require counterarguments.

b) Different times, different customs. It's anachronistic to use todays moral
standards to argue that behavior back then was considered immoral back then.

------
marcusbooster
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429>

~~~
MichaelApproved
Looks like 3 segments of the URL can be changed without causing a redirect.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/MichaelApproved/...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/MichaelApproved/Is/Great/8134/)

The page canonical meta tag shows the current article url
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-
poli...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-politically-
incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/)

The previous article shows /2010/06
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/06/the-
poli...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/06/the-politically-
incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/)

Maybe HN should use canonical meta tag instead of just url to check for
duplicates?

~~~
10ren
This is a feature, not a bug. There are many great articles that 1. are very
helpful to read again; 2. you missed the first time; 3. newcomers haven't even
had a chance to miss yet. Especially for newcomers, considering the rate that
HN grows (an endless summer). But even more importantly, there are some
articles that represent what HN is all about. There's a limited supply of
great articles. If they cannot be reposted, how can newcomers ever learn what
great articles are?

Therefore, I suggest the opposite: _automatic_ reposting - but only for those
"great" articles, in the "HN library" (membership being defined by a special-
case vote - i.e. vote for this article to be in the library). These would be
reposted on a 6 month cycle, and include the old comments. Biannual
resurrection. And to be marked as "library", so you can skip if you want.

But this won't happen, because the existing "bug" already does it (if people
vote it up, it was a reasonable repost; the present repost checker act as a
low barrier). And pg advocates iteration only for things needed.

~~~
PidGin128
I dug through the guidelines and associated texts and couldn't find it, but I
see it stated often enough that I don't mind sharing it:

_Resubmissions are allowed after a year or so._

[beyond paraphrasing, completely reconstituting the thought, still meaningful
however.]

This solves all the problems in your first paragraph. Automatic re-posting is
almost a guarantee if it's that good, so that's paragraph two handled.

------
lkozma
Also worth reading a rebuttal: [http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-cr...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-cromer-to-romer-and-back-again.html)

~~~
fgf
The word rebuttal could be misleading, Mencius is not against romers idea. If
memory serves me right he thinks he doesn't go far enough and is annoyed with
the intellectual dishonesty necessary (?) to sell this idea to the
media/universities etc.

------
DaniFong
As an immigrant here in the United States, I feel like I must be totally out
of touch. How is this politically incorrect?

~~~
yummyfajitas
Romer is pushing colonialism (minus the militarism and racism), but giving it
a new name for the purpose of marketing. That's hardly a popular position.

------
joe_the_user
OK,

We have many countries already competing on the world market by trying to
offer little regulation and lots of flexibility for investors.

How's that been working?

Are Chinese workers going up towards American standards? Or are Americans
moving towards Chinese standards?

If Africa could also compete here, would living standards going further down
or further up?

What do you think?

~~~
mseebach
China has lifted 400 million people from poverty to lower middle class in
20-30 years. This is wealth creation on an unprecedented scale. And when I say
unprecedented, I mean it in the literal, absolute sense.

The fact that many of them are working in unpleasant factories completely
overshadows the fact that their parents were subsidence farmers and that their
kids will have access to decent/good education and healthcare.

China isn't perfect, but the velocity of the development is central. Much of
the western knee-jerk reaction to the conditions in China seems to work from
the premise that eliminating poverty is only worthwhile if it can be done in a
clean stroke with no unpleasant intermediate steps.

------
ZeroGravitas
Anyone know how the teenagers studying under streetlamps charge their mobile
phones?

------
hristov
This has been posted before. And no it wont end poverty, it is essentially a
plan to sell licenses for private dictatorships.

~~~
drewcrawford
Why not? GB's empire seems like mostly the same thing, and it arguably [1]
resulted in a reduction of poverty.

[1] I'm not making a claim of fact here, just saying that there's an
intelligent debate about the issue.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj#Economic_impact>

~~~
hristov
I don't agree. There will always be debate, as there will always be some
historian out protecting British Imperialism but I think and honest
examination does not show that GB improved the lot of their imperial subjects
except in some very specific and limited circumstances.

~~~
cavedave
"The authors also compare the experiences of separate Pacific islands with
eight different colonizers: the United States, Britain, Spain, the
Netherlands, Portugal, Japan, Germany, and France.* Their verdict is that the
islands that are best off, in terms of income growth, are the ones that were
colonized by the United States—as in Guam and Puerto Rico. Next best is time
spent as a Dutch, British, or French colony. At the bottom are the countries
colonized by the Spanish and especially the Portuguese."
<http://www.slate.com/id/2151852>

~~~
gamble
In essence, it doesn't matter who colonized you. The states that were
colonized the longest did the worst, in direct proportion to how long they
were colonies.

~~~
jerf
From the article you seem to be replying to: "Feyrer and Sacedote's key
findings are that the longer one of the islands spent as a colony, the higher
its present-day living standards and the lower its infant mortality rate. Each
additional century of European colonization is associated with a 40 percent
boost in income today and a reduction in infant mortality of 2.6 deaths per
1,000 births." and then goes on to discuss other alternate hypothesis and
explain why they don't make sense.

Since you've simply flat-out contradicted a research paper with nothing more
than assertion, I find it unlikely your upvotes represent anything more than a
set of people who found their preconceptions tickled by your post. Do you have
any sort of actual other study to back you point up, or are you just stating
your own biases?

(I don't feel much like I have a horse in the "colonization is evil" fight,
since I think anyone still personally offended by events from over, say, 150
years ago already has problems I can't solve. But the question of why cultures
succeed and fail is one of the most pressing questions the human race faces
and having it muddied up by stupid political games is costing lives.)

~~~
shadowfox
Not really arguing with you. But for a lot of countries, the colonial
experience is a lot more recent than that. More to the order of 50-60 years
than 150. This does mean that a generation of people who lived under colonial
rule are still alive in these countries.

------
lzw
Capitalism is the antidote for poverty. This is proven by the simple example
of any poor person- whether US born, india born, chinese born, etc, who starts
a business-- any business-- and grows it to the point that they leave enough
money for their kids to be lazy and non-productive. The kids might not be
reared right, but they are no longer in poverty.

The opponent of capitalism is also the cause of poverty. The opponent of
capitalism is collectivism. Or put another way, government. Any entity that
takes by force (eg: taxes, regulations, bribes, etc.) naturally pushes out
businesses that take by free trade (eg: sales, barter, etc.)

The more you have of one the less you have of the other. Notice how there were
many postal services in the US and they were growing and competing and
bettering themselvs until the US government decided to give itself a monopoly
on first class mail delivery. As a result we no longer have a vibrant postal
industry, and instead have the very poor US postal service. Why did the
government give itself a monopoly? To be able to censor political tracts being
sent thru the mail.

How many of you knew that? I'd bet most of you believe the US government
provides mail because it wouldn't be economical otherwise. Ignoring for the
fact that taking money by force doesn't change whether something is
"economical" or not, note that the pony express survived and thrived in a time
when people were much poorer and much further apart-- transportation wise--
than they are now.

So, obviously the fallacy that "without government who would deliver the
mail?" is nonsense. We have an example in mail, but it applies to everything
else- justice, roads, and soon, heatlthcare.

Remember when you didn't have to be politically connected to get treated for
cancer? Good times.

Whatever method of organization, city-states, charter-cities, seasteads, a
great frontier like the US was-- the essential quality is how much regulation
and how much government there was, vs, how much capitalism is allowed to take
hold.

Russia, China and India are all examples of way too much government, and all
three have resulted in a great flourishing-- not without problems or
corruption, but a benefit on the balance-- with the removal of this draconian
level of control.

