
Poverty Kills - ph0rque
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/povertykills
======
bokonist
Anti-poverty policy (especially foreign aid) over the past five decades has
consisted mainly of giving away food, healthcare, etc. For a while, this
decreased death rates substantially in the third world. But the problem was
that when the death rates decreased, we simply got more and more poor people.

Ethiopia received great quantities of foreign aid in the 1980's. Now thirty
years later its population has doubled and it is on the brink of famine yet
again:

 _Yet the wide-eyed children of 1984-86, who were saved by western medicines
and foodstuffs, helped begin the greatest population explosion in human
history, which will bring Ethiopia's population to 170 million by 2050. By
that time, Nigeria's population will be 340 million, (up from just 19 million
in 1930). The same is true over much of Africa._

 _Thus we are heading towards a demographic holocaust, with a potential
premature loss of life far exceeding that of all the wars of the 20th Century.
This terrible truth cannot be ignored._ ( Kevin Myers,
[http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-
myers/wri...](http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-
myers/writing-what-i-should-have-written-so-many-years-ago-1437779.html) )

Neill Blomkamp, the director of District 9, makes the same point about
Johanessberg in South Africa: _Well, in my opinion, you have out-of-control
population growth … —we are heading for the biggest train wreck our
civilization has ever come across ever. If your population curve is on an
exponential growth, and the resources are on an exponential decline, what
happens first is you get … rich pockets of gated communities with security
guards outside them, and you get more and more poverty outside that area. …
and people start having resource wars over water and food and agriculture and
arable land, and then you have Joburg in 2050._

The difference in fertility rates between the classes is astounding ( source
<http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/06/tfr-by-class-and-nation.php> )

\-------------------Poorest-5th--|--Middle-5th--|--Top 5th

Bangladesh------4.6---------------3.3--------------2.2

Brazil----------------4.8---------------2.1--------------0.7

South Africa--------4.8---------------2.7-------------1.9

Recently I was in Rio de Janeiro. Slums push out for miles and miles. They
grow bigger every year. Meanwhile the pretty old 19th century buildings slowly
rot away.

When poorest 5th have 4 or 5 kids, the result is going to be even more poverty
the next generation. No amount of foreign aid can alter this logic, the aid
will simply fall into a bottomless well.

In theory, aid could go more towards "teaching a man to fish". But the reality
is that I cannot think of a single historical example of a group of one
nation/culture/ethnicity achieving economic development via the charity of
another nation/ethnicity. If someone knows of an example, I'd be interested to
hear it.

All cases of economic development I know have either a) come from within (Deng
in China, the Meiji Restoration, etc) or b) come from colonialism ( examples
range from Roman Gaul to Hong Kong to parts of Africa before decolonialism )

~~~
derefr
Bothers me to say it, but "trade based" eugenics might fix this—it might be
possible to genetically engineer the crops we send as aid, so that they
decrease fertility when consumed over a lifetime. It wouldn't have to be
complete sterility, just just enough to bring the rate of successful
procreation down to a 2.0 on average. The _hard_ part (that is, the part that
I can't think of an ethical means of studying) would be making sure that the
infertility/impotence occurs only at the point of conception, and doesn't
affect growing foetuses or developing children or hormone production in
adults.

EDIT: To those that downvoted me, can you clarify what's wrong with the
suggestion? When changing the social structure is impossible (without
destroying the culture that informs it), you have to resort to a technical
solution, no matter how distasteful it may be to imagine. The cultures
affected most by overpopulation won't _use_ condoms and birth control, won't
_listen_ to those that proselytize them, and won't let those that _would_
listen anywhere near the educators. Just making a trade agreement such as "you
may only have two children if you take this aid crop" won't work, because once
they _have_ the food, they'll go ahead and have the kids anyway (or more
likely, just won't know _how_ to _not_ have the kids, whether you require it
or not.) An agreement of "you must allow sexual health educators to talk to
your people in exchange for the aid" might be closer, but again, nothing's
making them take the advice to heart. What's so important about fertility that
makes it override concerns about people's actual happiness over their
lifetime? We're not talking about killing living people (or even living
_cells_ ), we're talking about making sperm not attach to eggs.

And I apologize that this has turned into a definitively-non-HN comment; it
was originally—humans can be "hacked" just as well as anything else, you
know—but it seems people use the arrows to express their _ethical_ opinion,
which is something I've never seen before, so I decided to defend my own
ethical stance, rather than just being objective and technical like most
positively-seen discussions here are.

~~~
cwan
This is a horrifying suggestion. An individual donor at an aid agency meeting
said something similar where a cost effective healthcare alternative was being
developed in sub-Saharan Africa. His question was "what if you're successful?
won't having more people damage the environment?"

The rest of us in the room were stunned - this man explicitly valued the
environment over human life. You make a similar mistake in attempting to smite
a symptom. Poverty is never caused by the lack of resources - or the related
overblown fears of overpopulation (look up why oil is often called the Devil's
excrement where it's discovered particularly in the developing world). It's
bad governments - prior and/or current. High birth rates drop dramatically
after a society industrializes.

What makes the suggestion repulsive (as much as it is unequivocally absurd) is
that instead trying to alleviate suffering and addressing the root causes of
absolute poverty, you're effectively starving and forcing deeply impoverished
people who are in no position to deny food to accept sterilization.

If you're reading HN, you've already hit a genetic jackpot having the
opportunities that most of the world will never have. Not only would this be a
slippery slope (if you accept forced sterilizations for the "greater good",
why not deny needed medical drugs and treatments or worse?), it's an
unnecessary slope. So instead of trying to provide the poor with economic
opportunities you'd provide them with sterility?

~~~
bokonist
_It's bad governments - prior and/or current._

I agree with this. But what should the developed countries do about fixing
African governments? Anything?

To go off the anti-PC deep end in another direction I pose a different
solution. The past fifty years of African history has been an unmitigated
disaster. The entire continent has been plagued by war, famine, disease, awful
governments, and economic stagnation or decline. The years before that - the
colonial years - were generally peaceful and saw rising economic prosperity.
We have model B which is awful. We have model A which worked reasonably well.
The answer to me seems blindingly obvious: figure out a way to bring back
colonialism.

~~~
cwan
The solution is multi fold. Solutions include immediately offering trade free
of tariffs, to help countries stabilize following the collapse of their
governments (there are a few good presentations on TED.com about this), and
offer the expertise to create legal structures that enshrine property rights
for all. We don't need nor would we want colonialism (or even the mercantilist
approach France still practices to a certain degree). We can however provide
good examples and support countries that attempt to make the transition. We
can help make it as smooth and painfree as possible and ensure that the
incentives exist to do so.

------
yummyfajitas
_A black man in Harlem is 4.11 times as likely to die in a given year as the
average American male._

This fact brings to mind an anecdote illustrating the fact that people have no
clue about relative risks.

While jogging, I passed by a protest near Harlem Hospital. Signs mentioned
this death rate disparity. I asked someone what the protest was about, and was
told that they wanted more funding for the hospital.

Most of the protesters were sitting on lawn chairs, smoking, and eating fast
food. Many were obese, few were of healthy weight. They didn't seem to realize
that running in circles around the hospital would do far more to reduce the
disparity in death rates than any amount of funding.

~~~
iamelgringo
I'll see your anecdote and raise you a couple of years of experience.

I've worked as an ER nurse for 15 years in over 30 hospitals in 5 states. A
lot of that work was contract work in hospitals in poor neighborhoods that had
a lot of trouble staffing their departments. I now work in a very, very nice
upper middle class neighborhood in Silicon Valley.

Absolutly, unequivocally I can say that if you're sick and want the best
medical care, go to the hospital in the neighborhood where the rich people
live. The difference in care is night and day. Well to do hospitals have
patients with private insurance that pay a lot more than Medicare or public
health insurance. They also tend to expect more from their medical care, and
are usually a lot more educated and can be more proactive in their care.

One ER that I worked at in Chicago, I drove past a funeral home. And almost
every single shift, there was a group of kids standing on the street corner
outside of the funeral home "tipping a forty" for a friend that had just died.

I've worked in ER's that were so overcrowded, that when a patient died, we'd
have to shove the body into a dirty utility room to make room for patients we
could still help. That would __* never __* fly in a rich hospital.

In poor neighborhoods, people are used to dying young. They are used to the
crappy care that's given them, and yes, they tend to have a lot more lifestyle
diseases.

But, why do they have more lifestyle disease? In Silicon Valley, I can go to
my local farmers market, and I can afford to spend money on organic produce.
When I didn't have a car, and lived on the edge of the ghetto in Chicago, it
was really easy to get my calories at McDonald's down the street or get crap
food at the 7-11 down the block instead of walking 12 blocks each way to the
grocery store.

Poverty does kill, for many reasons. Please dont just chalk it up to "they
should stop eating crap and get some excercise."

~~~
cwan
I suspect you're right that you do get better care from hospitals in better
neighborhoods and that there are differing expectations, but other factors may
have much larger effects that have little or anything to do with social
advantage.

From a recent article on infant mortality:
[http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-
oped0823ch...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-
oped0823chapmanaug23,0,7962367.column) "African-American babies are far more
likely to die than white ones, which is often taken as evidence that poverty
and lack of health insurance are to blame. That's entirely plausible until you
notice another racial/ethnic gap: Hispanics of Mexican or Central or South
American ancestry not only do consistently better than blacks on infant
mortality, they do better than whites. Social disadvantage doesn't explain
very much."

~~~
aaronsw
The Latino infant mortality rate differs from the non-Hispanic white one by
0.1 per 1000. This is largely attributed to methodological issues around
getting appropriate records and the selection bias of immigration.

------
TheElder
Poverty is the natural state for humans, not the wealthy prosperous state that
most Westerners live in. What those in the west created is an aberration.
People, like the author of this article wonder, why are people poor? Why is
there poverty? The deeper question to ask is, why was wealth ever created? And
what do we do to encourage it everywhere?

~~~
fallentimes
Your comment reminded me of this quote:

 _"We don't take steps to redress inequalities of looks, friends, or sex life.
We don't grab a kidney from you to save someone's life, even though that
health difference was unfair brute luck. Redistribution of wealth has some
role in maintaining a stable democracy and preventing starvation. But the
power of wealth redistribution to produce net value is quite limited. The
power of wealth creation to produce net value is extraordinary. Most of
America's poor are already among the best-off of all humans in world history.
We should be putting our resources, including our advocacy and our
intellectual resources, into wealth creation as much as we can." -Tyler Cowen_

~~~
andreyf
_the power of wealth redistribution to produce net value is quite limited_

Considering what some rhetoricians label as "wealth redistribution", this is
flat-out wrong. Consider socialized education, medicine, or early childhood
education - all have shown to have strong impacts on social mobility, and
hence, wealth creation.

This might be too subtle for a slogan, but it isn't rocket science, either:
systems of smart wealth redistribution are absolutely necessary, although not
sufficient, for maximum wealth creation. Also necessary, off the top of my
head: social pressure for parents to be responsible, and a "path to
prosperity" with which individuals can identify.

~~~
bokonist
_Consider socialized education, medicine, or early childhood education - all
have shown to have strong impacts on social mobility, and hence, wealth
creation._

Evidence? Sources?

~~~
GavinB
Yes, there is plenty of evidence that education has a positive effect on
wealth creation. Here's one example:

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WPG-45JB1XN-2F&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=989751790&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=49a431dae887d571f89a263e18860e11)

 _Early childhood education is found to produce persistent effects on
achievement and academic success, but not on IQ . . . Cost-benefit analysis
based on one randomized trial finds that the economic return from providing
early education to children in poverty far exceeds the costs._

~~~
bokonist
This article is behind a $31.50 paywall. Did you actually read this article?
Or are you just assuming that just because some academic wrote it an abstract
that its true? I used to browse my college's social science library for fun.
The number of methodological flaws in the typical journal article is enough to
make a person cry. If you have a copy of the article, maybe you could send it
to me. If you haven't read it - well - citing a gated journal article that you
haven't even read is not evidence and does not contribute to the discussion.

~~~
GavinB
I wasn't assuming that it was true or wouldn't have methodologial flaws. It's
basically impossible to find a study of any real-world sociological study
whose methodology is beyond dispute.

If it helps, here's one with more details:
<http://www.waisman.wisc.edu/cls/cbaexecsum4.html>

Site with more details, including sample surveys etc:
<http://www.waisman.wisc.edu/cls/REPORTS.HTM>

Conclusion: _As the first cost-benefit analysis of a federally-financed,
comprehensive early childhood intervention, findings indicate that
participation in each component of the program was associated with economic
benefits that exceeded costs. This was accomplished by increasing economic
well being and reducing educational and social expenditures for remediation
and treatment. Similar to Head Start, the CPC preschool program is the most
intensive and comprehensive component and yielded the greatest benefits by age
21. Findings for school-age and extended intervention demonstrate the benefits
of reduced class sizes and enriched school environments in the early grades.
Thus, contemporary, large-scale child-development programs can provide
substantial long-term benefits to society._

Google has many many studies that you can look at:
[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=effect+of+early+childhoo...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=effect+of+early+childhood+education&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-
US:official&hs=gYo&um=1&ie=UTF-8&oi=scholart)

The effect of education on income is a subject that has been studied heavily.
I'm sure that you can find studies that support many conclusions. But I think
you will have trouble proposing that someone is making an unsupported claim
when they say that education increases wealth and social mobility.

Edit: This doesn't mean you can't claim "I think that system X would achieve
_better_ results." It's not necessary to tear down the economic results that
the American system has achieved in order to propose something that would work
better in the future.

~~~
bokonist
_I wasn't assuming that it was true or wouldn't have methodologial flaws. It's
basically impossible to find a study of any real-world sociological study
whose methodology is beyond dispute.._

Well yes. And in general, the flaws are pretty gaping flaws. If you have
studies with gaping methodological flaws, then you must completely disregard
them. They are not evidence.

The study you cite about the CPC program, is majorly flawed. In general, the
most astute parents figure out how to find their way into these types of
programs. When you look at a more broad based program - like Head Start - the
evidence effectiveness does not seem to be exist or be enough to stand out
from the noise (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Start#Reports_and_statemen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Start#Reports_and_statements_critical_of_Head_Start)
)

 _But I think you will have trouble proposing that someone is making an
unsupported claim when they say that education increases wealth and social
mobility._

I dispute it. If you want to play the social science game, check out this
article: [http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/does-education-
really-...](http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/does-education-really-make-
you-smarter-349)

Despite dramatically increasing the amount we spend on education, and the time
spent in school, basic measures of vocabulary and math have been flat over the
last century.

But I don't like playing the social science game.

The real reason I don't believe schooling increases national wealth is because
I got a topflight education. But after a private high school and an ivy league
college, neither I nor virtually any of my friends learned much in the way of
wealth-creating skills. I earn a much higher than average income, but its all
because of self-taught skills.

After spending some time in the workforce, I've noticed the vast majority of
people learn their wealth producing skills on the job. This is the norm now,
it was the norm fifty years ago, and it was the norm one hundred fifty years
ago. It applies to machinists and it applies to software engineers. The only
difference is that we are so rich now, we can afford to waste hundreds of
billions of dollars on formal schooling.

If people who graduate college earn more, it must because of some other affect
( selection effects, zero-sum credentialing laws, or because of social
networks). I know this must be the case, because I knows what happens in
schools, and I know that outside of engineering (which is a tiny minority of
all majors) college does not teach wealth producing skills.

~~~
roundsquare
Well look, its pretty obvious that people who are successful didn't learn most
of the skills they use in college. Thats not the claim that is being made
though.

The claim is that going to college somehow increases your chances of being
successful. I.e. that it sets you on the right path to becoming successful.
How could this be? Could be that it teaches you something useful (problem
solving, the ability to power through difficult assignments, etc...) that is
necessary in a lot of jobs.

I worked for a company before where they didn't necessarily hire people with
CS degrees or backgrounds. They just hired smart people and taught them what
was necessary. Some people would claim that these people were smart enough to
do this because of their college education.

Note: I'm not necessarily sure that college does make you smarter in a
relevant way. As has been pointed out, most of the studies have bad
methodology and anecdotal evidence is not sufficient to prove a point. So all
we can do here is lay out theories .

------
lupin_sansei
Poverty doesn't kill. Nature kills you. Wealth just reduces the effect nature
has on you (food, clothing, shelter, healthcare etc).

We've known about the solution to poverty since the 18th century (free trade -
aka capitalism) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations> but the
solution isn't popular among intellectuals, despite the correlation of free
trade and per capita GDP (admittedly crude but one the more objective measures
available).

[http://www.investmentu.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/02/200601...](http://www.investmentu.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/02/20060123iub.gif)

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/e/e2/2...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/e/e2/20090215144510!GM_-
_Countries_by_Economic_Freedom_Index.png)

[http://images.absoluteastronomy.com/images/encyclopediaimage...](http://images.absoluteastronomy.com/images/encyclopediaimages/e/ec/economic_freedom_charts.png)

[http://www.invest.is/resources/images/invest.is/News/Index05...](http://www.invest.is/resources/images/invest.is/News/Index05_EconFreedomMAP.jpg)

The current state of the third world was caused by the UK and others
encouraging places like Africa and India to follow the socialist model in the
post collonial era after World War 2.

The extent to which former collonies have prospered is the extent to which
they ignored that advice (Singapore, India since 1990 etc)
<http://mises.org/books/conquest.pdf>

~~~
eru
I agree. Though poverty can kill in at least one more way than not sheltering
you from nature, somewhat more directly.

Social status is a positional good. I.e. relative affluence counts more than
absolute affluence. High status people have better health etc than low status
people. This seems to be at least partly a psychologic effect.

------
TomOfTTB
To me, this idea couldn't be more wrong headed. In my experience it is
rationality that solves most problems.

Emotionalism is the antithesis of rationality. So framing everything by
projecting the outcome that is the most likely to provoke an emotional
response (e.g. death) is basically the recipe for a thought process that won't
solve the world's problems.

Let me put it another way. We all know it's better to teach a man to fish than
to just give him a fish. But if that man refuses to learn the emotional person
will give him the fish anyway while the rational person will force him to
choose between learning to fish or nothing. In that way the rational person
forces the man to learn how to feed himself while the emotional person simply
rewards his laziness and feeds him for a day.

~~~
kgrin
And what happens when, faced with the rational person's ultimatum ("learn to
fish or you get nothing"), the man chooses nothing? Surely it's his own fault,
but suffering still happens. Of course, that's a small-scale, contrived
example, but there are plenty of areas in public policy where many or most
people's behavior isn't rational.

Health care is actually a great example of this: classical theory and basic
common sense suggests that if you make people pay for their health care more
directly, they'll have more of an interest to negotiate a better deal, or at
least comparison-shop. This is occasionally true, but far more often, people
aren't actually comfortable bargaining with the surgeon who's going to be
handling their innards.

Likewise, with health care, people often make "irrational" decisions and go
into $500K debt to prolong an 89-year-old grandparents' life for 6 days,
because life, death and health just seems to be one of those areas that we're
not wired to be rational about.

Health care aside, there are all sorts of other examples of irrationality -
for instance, I remember seeing multiple studies in which people preferred a
_lower_ reward as long as everyone got the same reward (basically they valued
relative well-being and parity over absolute well-being).

The point of all this is that while rationality is a great tool for "solving
problems" generally speaking, when you deal with people you really must take
into account the fact that most people (and I suspect even most people on HN,
which is a pretty atypical group!) aren't all that rational in many, many
areas.

~~~
anamax
> And what happens when, faced with the rational person's ultimatum ("learn to
> fish or you get nothing"), the man chooses nothing? Surely it's his own
> fault, but suffering still happens.

Yup, it does. What of it? What makes you think that giving him the fish helps?

You can spend all your resources on problems that can't be fixed, and
accomplish nothing, or you can spend them on problems that can be fixed and
actually accomplish something.

It's unclear why you prefer the former.

------
lionhearted
I believe Aaron has an account here. If so, I'd love for him to read this
comment, and anyone who generally supports his ideas to read this comment,
because I think it could change lives.

I read this piece by him:

<http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/handwritingwall>

Short summary: A speaker tells a story about an evil king. The king gets 10
hostages, and you, and asks you to decide, "I'll kill the hostages, or you can
die in their place. What do you choose?" When asked, most people choose to
sacrifice themselves.

Same scenario. Evil king, 10 hostages. But now the king asks, "I'll kill the
hostages, or you can give me all your money and live in poverty for the rest
of your life. Which do you choose?" And the people asked think, and it seems
reasonable to choose the poverty alternative. Certainly, it's better than
dying, and they already agreed to die to save the people.

Then it talks about children dying in Africa, and how with just a little bit
of money you could save those people. The speaker concludes, "Thus if you
decide to go on with the life you were probably planning to lead, you will be
letting 10 people die rather than give up your flat-screen television and your
cocktail parties. And that is more than gluttony, it is murder."

Now there's a major, major, major flaw with this line of thinking, which is
also in "Poverty Kills" and many pieces along those lines. It's the assumption
that there are no choices besides the "evil king" and "dying/sacrificing for
the rest".

Never was this more clear than my travels in the back provinces of China. I
climbed Mount Emeishan in China, and the locals farm the mountain and live
quite poorly. By selling food and crafts on the side of the road to visitors
(mostly Chinese, didn't see any foreigners besides me) - by selling, they got
the money they needed to buy tools, medicine, and so on. I got to eat some
local food, and bought a wooden sword for my then-kid brother. The sword cost
basically nothing except a few hours, and the money from that could buy weeks
worth of medicine or seasons worth of clothing, and so on.

This money went to the heads of households and most industrious people on
Emeishan, who in turn would help their relatives and so forth. The Communist
Chinese government couldn't begin to do half the job feeding and providing
medicine to these people that free trade did. It was never more clear to me -
honestly working for money and spending it on things I wanted helped other
people. It helped the people who paid me to for them (I freelance/contract
work, I haven't been salaried ever). It helped the people who I bought food
and crafts from. Everyone won.

So back to the "evil king" - what if instead of giving in for the hostages
right now, you came back later, kicked in the door with your sword, and
assassinated the evil murderous king? That's the third option.

There's more choices than "give up your money in taxes/charity or bad outcomes
happen". I almost built an international school in China with my girlfriend. I
still might go build schools someday. If I do, they'll run for a profit. The
teachers will be paid more than they would at another job (or else they
wouldn't come work for us). The parents will value it (or else they wouldn't
send their kids there). The administrators of the school will be paid. The
kids will learn better, speak more fluent English, and increase trade between
China and English speaking countries. That'll bring more money to China, and
lower the expenses of all English speaking people abroad who can afford the
Chinese goods.

If there were more taxes, and I had less of my own money to fund a school, it
wouldn't be possible. The Chinese government is not run by people as driven,
intelligent, and empathetic as my girlfriend. If they took her money, and the
American government took my money, then we couldn't build a school, and
instead you'd have schools like Sichuan and the United States currently have.
Quality - not so much.

Charity has its place. I've run charity events and donate to charities. I tend
to support St. Jude's Children Hospital in North America and Great Ormond
Street in London. A friend is getting a therapy dog program started in Tokyo,
I pledged some money for that and volunteered for the auction.

But there's greater options. Really now, governments have proven themselves
incompetent many times over. And nonprofits, God bless them, frequently have
people drawing way over market salaries and making themselves rich, while
working at a job with less pressure, lower expectations, and very little
accountability. If you look at the statistics, nonprofits are depressingly
ineffective and do very little towards succeeding in their missions and
improving the world.

There's a third option. It's improving the world honestly, getting compensated
for it, and paying people who improve your life in return. That system has
built almost everything of value on the planet. I reject the "evil king or
your life" dichotomy; it is false; there are other options.

Aaron's a hell of a writer, and I hope he reads this. I know political views
can be like religions - but I try not to make mine. I've studied all sorts of
history and sciences and commerce and all manner of things. The results look
like charity/government (and _especially_ taxes) underperform the rather cold
and heartless market in any long term time horizon. Now, these aren't
fashionable viewpoints in many intellectual circles, but we all ought to
consider them - is the end good is our objective, then even unfashionable
opinions against our circles' worldviews must be considered.

If anyone knows Aaron, would they kindly point him to this comment? He seems
like an incredibly intelligent and thoughtful guy, and I really hope there's
something I've written in here that's valuable to him.

~~~
aaronsw
You can just email me, you know. I check my email. I argue for killing the
king in my latest piece on this subject:
<http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/savealife>

