HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Here's a famous TED talk by Hans Rosling that shows a lot of the trends continuing into the last few decades: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_...

The social virtue of capitalist selfishness is illustrated by the most rapid drop in poverty in history:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/amazing-chart-shows-thanks...

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_...

This massive decline in misery is far more the influence of markets than bureaucracies. We should be so lucky as to be in a new age of Ayn Rand.

His TED talks are well worth watching too:

* http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y...

* http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_o...

* http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_at_state

* http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g...

* http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_good_news_of_the_d...

* http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies

* http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_truth_about_hiv

* http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_...

⬐ Evgeny

There goes my weekend! Thank you so much.

⬐ TeMPOraL

I strongly recommend those talks.

The 'magic washing machine' talk is beautiful. One of my favourite quotes of all time comes from it.

And what we said, my mother and me, "Thank you industrialization. Thank you steel mill. Thank you power station. And thank you chemical processing industry that gave us time to read books."

⬐ agumonkey

IIRC that talk had a powerful ending (beside that quote).

⬐ zo1

Are you referring to the one where he performs sword eating? (I kid you not)

You can look at the ICD9 to ICD10 transition we are finally making. ICD9 is 30 years old. The ICD codes can basically be used for classifying mortality. Polio is one of the first codes on the ICD9 list. I believe its rank had to do with the amount of people it killed. Thankfully, it is no longer #1 on the list.

There is an interesting Ted talk on this: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_o...

> it's the poor that need help

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_o...

This is happening. Slowly. Like all change.

⬐ oliverhunt

You do realise those things dont just happen. They happen through progressive social and economic policy.

⬐ pekk

For example, one of Rosling's major points is that you don't get health improvements magically by increasing GDP

⬐ dmix

Government policy?

Or industry and human innovation?

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?db=comics&id=2589

I'd recommend watching all the TED talks by Hans Rosling, they are pretty awesome and eye opening, in particular these:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_shows_the_best...

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_reveals_new_in...

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_at_state.html

If you place the non-TED talk's transcript next to Hans Rosling's discussion about Global Poverty [1] it's easy to see the differences.

Mr. Rosling made a seminal talk that is one of the 3 or 4 that I think of when I think of TED. It was data-driven and multi-dimensional. At the same time, you're learning about the content -- global poverty through the eyes of a top UN advisor -- you're watching world-class data visualization.

Since their inception, TED has done a tremendous job staying on message. Most talks are given by people who are up to their elbows in the subject matter that they're talking about. This entrepreneur works in the business community, so there's relevance there, but that's pretty abstract. I would much rather this point be made by a union organizer.

The core message of the non-TED talk is a good one. That is the problem. The entrepreneur and the internet grassroots that have followed him are over the moon for it and are happy with the implementation that have here. If they were a bit less resistant to the criticism they've received, they could probably find a better way to get their message out.

For instance, how much more credible would it be if there were an enterprising union leader who could talk about his or her chapter's strategies, and who has measured the boost that their union members' employment has brought to their local community? In this age when many employers can't afford to invest in training employees who will leave their firms in 5 years, a union that provided job security to its members through training partnerships with local community colleges, and provided quality assurance to employers through licenses, and certifications in order to close the skills gap would be an inspiring organization. If they were providing each other with unemployment insurance and allowing the federal government to spend less money, that's a bi-partisan win!

An approach like that works at TED. One that can't be cobbled together in a weekend. These talks are almost always personal, representing years of on-the-ground activity. If they aren't given by the leader in the field they're given by someone with a unique perspective, like Jill Bolte Taylor, the stroke victim/neuroscientist who talked about the stroke she had.

This entrepreneur has a compelling message, one that I agree with, but his standpoint isn't special and his content hasn't progressed further than a well fleshed-out idea.

1. http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_o...

Indeed. Couple of optimistic talks at TED that shows that on an 'average' it IS getting better. http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen... http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_o...

However, the 24/7 news cycle drums up everything that is negative and hence most of "feel" that it is getting worse.

⬐ tomkin

Part of me wants to accept this information, but I am worried that some kind of Freakonomics will come into play and we'll find that the reason why there appears to be less poor is because X is no longer being considered as Y.

⬐ antihero

I wonder - is the amount adjusted base on cost of living and inflation? IE if $2 a day now gets the poor the same as $1.50 in the 90s, they haven't really gained anything.

⬐ roel_v

Yes, see this excellent reply by Lazare below: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3756021 .

⬐ tfb

As much as I despise all of the negativity in the news, the optimistic part of me sees it as a way to shine light on the many things wrong with the world at present. While the news may be a bit of a downer, I believe the lasting effects of it are for the best.

When I learn of something terrible or even of a minor crime or injustice, the first thing that comes to my mind is along these lines: "There is obviously some ideal we're working towards, but the current system is inherently flawed; so what can I do to hack this system and make it better?"

Maybe someday we'll have the kinks worked out and will have managed to minimize the "bad" things happening throughout the world. And I believe the news will have ultimately played some role such improvements. The day we see more good news than bad will be a great day.

⬐ InclinedPlane

The problem is that a skewed sense of what's going on in the world can give you a skewed sense of how to improve the world. Case in point: many people imagine that the developed world buying cheap goods and labor from the developing world is a kind of exploitation rather than a form of enrichment.

It also tends to focus on exceptional events rather than on broad trends (positive or negative).

⬐ DanBC

To be fair, sometimes there is exploitation involved.

(http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94721/AFRICA-High-cost-of-chi...)

(http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94939/ZIMBABWE-Child-labour-o...)

(http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94822/KENYA-Gold-mining-beats...)

⬐ huxley

I think one would most reasonably hold that it is both a form of exploitation and a form of enrichment.

The interesting part of the article is that the biggest benefit has been to those in abject poverty: "Most of the progress has been concentrated among the poorest of the poor—those who make less than $1.25 a day. The bank’s figures show only a small drop in the number of those who make less than $2 a day."

One interesting bit buried in the lede was that the article also highlights the benefits of counter-cyclical fiscal expansions among governments. Those that expanded government programmes held down the damage caused by the recession. I would be interested in seeing if those that tried austerity measures suffered more.

Update: changed last sentences to better reflect the point I wanted to make.

⬐ randallsquared

I think one would most reasonably hold that it is both a form of exploitation and a form of enrichment.

Enrichment would leave them -- well, enriched, and exploitation would leave them poorer. These possibilities are diametrically opposed, unless you change the referent of "them" midargument.

⬐ _delirium

It can depend on what you count as riches, in part. For example, several African countries are being enriched by oil and mineral sales, if you count wealth in currency. But several of the countries have cut very bad deals (often due to corrupt governments) over their commodity exports, so that they're exporting considerably more valuable commodities than what they're getting paid for them in currency. So if you include commodities as a form of value, net value is flowing away from the country, enriching the government's short-term budget figures at the expense of draining their long-term commodities reserves.

⬐ huxley

Not at all.

A country can be simultaneously enriched and exploited if the people in the country are not equally enriched and exploited, which is usually the case. It doesn't have to sum out.

Also you need to consider that you can be enriched by one factor and exploited in another. Say I pay you $10,000 for your kidney and you agree because your family is destitute. I have both enriched and exploited you.

⬐ Lazare

I think the problem here is that "exploitation" is very poorly defined. It's widely used concept, and most people have an intuitive sense of what the word means, but these definitions conflict.

Let's step back a moment: Let's say person A has a widget, which he values at $5. Person has $20, and would like a widget, which he values at $10. In a free market we would expect these people to negotiate and reach an agreement where A swaps the widget with B in exchange for between $5.01 and $9.99 of cash. The aggregate benefit of the transaction is $5 (that is, as a society, we are $5 better off after this transaction is made), and A and B are each somewhere between $0.01 and $4.99 better off.

In this simple model, clearly both sides are benefiting, or if you prefer, are being enriched. Question: Is anyone being exploited? Does it depend on the price? Or do we need to know more details about the transaction, and if so, what?

I think most people intuitively have one of two reactions:

1) "Unless fraud or force is being used, of course nobody is being exploited. Both sides enter into the transaction with open eyes, and both sides benefit. They can negotiate however they want to divy up the $5 in benefit - but as long as fraud or force aren't used, this can't be exploitation."

2) "Well, we need to know more. If one side has a lot more power than the other, they might drive the price unfairly far to one side or the other. If A is a large factory churning out widgets, a price of $5.10 might be a perfectly reasonable wholesale price; if A is peasant hand-crafting widgets and B is a multi-national widget trader, maybe anything less than $6 may represent the unfair exploitation of A. Conversely, a price of $9.90 might be fine if B is a collector of rare widgets, but even $8 might be exploitive if B is desperately trying to find a widget to repair his generator after an earthquake. We just can't know."

I don't think either response is inherently more correct - both definitions are valid. But, obviously, they conflict. :) Also, in my experience people rarely, if ever, will change their initial intuition. Either you think exploitation is only the result of fraud or force (ie, using slave labour to produce widgets), or you think exploitation is involved in any transaction with a price that seems "unfair" (to you, based on fuzzy and usually undefined metrics).

As a result, I'm not sure discussions of exploitation really make a lot of sense. Given the same objective and universally agreed facts about, e.g., Foxconn, a certain chunk of the population will say "that's obviously not exploitation" and a certain chunk will say "that's clearly exploitation", despite there being no real disagreement about what's actually taking place on the ground.

⬐ InclinedPlane

"I think one would most reasonably hold that it is both a form of exploitation and a form of enrichment."

Sure. But that's how it works. If I pay a photographer to take my portrait then I am exploiting as well as enriching him, it's a 2 way street of trading things the other person wants. In an unequal relationship such as between the developed and developing world then sometimes the exploitation can seem a bit much compared to the level of enrichment. However, at present there is no known better way to enrich the developing world. In the short term it may seem like it's only exploitation but in the long run the overwhelming likelihood is that it pulls people out of poverty. And this has been true not just in recent times in the countries I've listed, and others, but also farther back in countries like Japan and the US.

However, I should make clear to differentiate trade from other kinds of work. It is very possible to make use of labor in the 3rd world without enriching the people there. There are certainly a good number of examples from the history of colonialism where that was the case. But manufacturing seems to be fundamentally different.

⬐ None

None

⬐ nickik

Yes, if they talk about avrage but it will say that one of the two eat eat 100% of the food too. Dont piss on statistics piss on specific a statistic.

Critisims like your are a reason its so hard to talk about this subject.

⬐ gruseom

the 24/7 news cycle drums up everything that is negative and hence most of "feel" that it is getting worse

Lewis Lapham said something brilliant and hilarious about this in a Google talk: people who wonder why the news is always so negative haven't noticed what the positive news is: it's the commercials! Crime, war, and terror, but Tide washes the dirt right out of your clothes!

The whole problem with these scaremongering articles about equality and the lack of it is that it doesn't matter. They promote this because it fits in to their zero sum world view. A world where it is always someone-elses fault and where we as community must do something or we are selfish. This world view thats based on Dickensian stories of children living on the streets with coal dust on their cheeks. It just isn't true.

I find it particularly disturbing that these thoughts even find an outlet on HN which is the antithesis of the zero sum world. You, yes you coder, entrepreneur are part of building wealth out of nothing. How can you possibly think that by doing so you are stealing food out of the mouthes of poor children in the inner city. You are helping them in the long run by growing the economy.

To a poor person objectively speaking it doesn't matter on anything but an envy level if someone else is rich. What matters is their own life. And this is what Gini coefficients and graphs like this one doesn't show. Yes it's interesting that people have different views of this, but it is not important.

Imagine we can put a number on quality of life. If the poor person starts out at say 1 and is at 10 after 10 years (as has happened in many developing countries). Does it matter that the rich person also is 10 times better off or even 100 times better off? I don't think so. That poor person now is healthier, has better opportunities etc than before.

The children of this poor person will likely have a much better life while inequality might not have budged much in his country.

See Hans Rosling who illustrates this very well:

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_o...

America is a very unequal country that is true. Just not unequal in opportunities. The richest people in the US (the ones with 80% of the wealth) have probably in most cases earned it.

Many of them have come from other parts of the world and created lots of jobs both here and abroad. Due to the fact that there are so many opportunities wealth distribution of course is skewed towards the rich.

Another fact that simple populist statistics don't show is that many of the poor are new immigrants arriving here because of those same opportunities. Their kids will be considerably well off.

Just by virtue of the HN community being who we are, we should keep doing our bit to increase the overall wealth of our world and countries, even if we may end up with more than our "fair" share.

⬐ dkarl

I find it particularly disturbing that these thoughts even find an outlet on HN which is the antithesis of the zero sum world.

Splitting the world into two sides based on some simple criterion, and assuming that one side will always have one opinion and the other side the opposite opinion, is a gross oversimplification and disrespectful of everyone involved.

To run with the taxation example, taxing the rich is not simply a matter of "less" or "more," "good" or "bad." That kind of thinking simply drives the rate to 0% or 100%. Of course there is some optimal level, and deciding whether that level is higher or lower than the current rate requires some examination of the current state of affairs, not just a cartoon narrative that always says "less" or "more" no matter what the current situation is.

Policy decisions have to be based in facts and reality. I find it flabbergasting to see on HN -- where we are supposed to be hackers, people adept at working with concrete technology that is not amenable to rhetoric (could you please persuade my code it should run faster?) -- I am flabbergasted to see someone suggest that a gross misconception about reality is harmless, and that drawing attention to such a misconception should be stigmatized as "scaremongering." The author doesn't hide his political leaning, but he limits his editorializing to a few stray comments, and he makes an excellent point about the importance of facts: "It's fine if reasonable people have different ideas about whether we should extend the Bush tax cuts for people making more than $250,000. Or think estate taxes are unfair. But when we have those debates, it's critical that everyone has a clear understanding of how things really are."

If anything should be accepted as fair in political argument, it's the presentation of facts, unless you wish to challenge their accuracy.

Finally, as a point of rhetoric: By disagreeing with the above, by stigmatizing facts as "scaremongering" without challenging their accuracy, and by assuming that the presentation of these facts has an inherently redistributionist implication, you appear to be endorsing the slogan, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." You may want to consider making your point in a different way to avoid this perception.

⬐ pelle

First of all I was not at any point challenging the accuracy of the points in the article. I haven't fact checked them or anything but AFAIK they are completely accurate. I was however challenging the importance of them.

Policy decisions should absolutely be based in fact and reality. Yet they rarely are and the unintended consequences of almost every single law in every single country in the world proves it. This is why it's best to avoid policy decisions in the first place or at least minimize them and their impact.

Thirdly, yes it's terrible that people believe wrong things. But here is a surprise. They always have and they always will. Who knows maybe you and I both believe wrong things. As long as these wrong facts can't harm other people it doesn't do a lot of harm.

Should we try to teach them about the truth. Of course we should try. Should we punish them if they don't accept our version of the truth? No.

I for example am frustrated when intelligent people still insist on seeing the world as zero sum. It is a cultural issue more than anything. As that is what we have been brought up with from countless hollywood movies with evil rich guys taking land away from the common folks and what have you. I try whenever I can to teach about this, but I know it is an uphill battle.

Facts are important. But understanding the effects and importance of facts is even more important and is unfortunately not an objective task.

If you're interested Russ Roberts of EconTalk had a very interesting discussion of bias within Economics, where he attempted to look critically at his own and other economists biases in analyzing empirical evidence, which is essentially what our discussion is about:

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/01/roberts_and_han.htm...

⬐ dspeyer

America is a very unequal country that is true. Just not unequal in opportunities. The richest people in the US (the ones with 80% of the wealth) have probably in most cases earned it.

Can you provide evidence for either of these claims?

⬐ pelle

Which part do I need to provide evidence for?

That America is not unequal in opportunities? Just look at the membership of HN and YC. People from all over the world come here to follow opportunities they did not have at home.

I may very well have overstated the issue about 80% of the wealth have earned it, but if they inherited at some point in their family history someone earned it. It is far from the old communist image though of fat laughing capitalists in top hats stomping over the poor proletariat, which while extreme is essentially the subtext to "The rich are not paying their fair share". "Ooh the rich own 80% of the US" etc. etc. ad nauseum.

⬐ hackinthebochs

Assuming it wasn't inherited, I would still argue that its mostly unearned. I don't believe "passive" income is earned. In most cases, wealth over a certain threshold is essentially passive generation--money making money. The wealthy own the means of production and when technology advances makes this more productive, they're able to create more passive wealth. I don't consider this earned wealth. The same goes for bankers and investors who make money through a function of the money they already have.

⬐ pelle

What do you mean passive income isn't earned? Isn't someone's pension earned? What about VC's? PG? Isn't PG earning his keep or is he just sucking blood out of the productive masses? What is going on with this kind of neo marxism on HN?

⬐ hackinthebochs

A pension is more deferred income than anything, so it isn't passive. I don't know the details of how PG gets the money he invests, but for what he does there isn't a requirement that he have millions to begin with. He could simply be manager of a fund. And whether he's earning his keep or sucking blood depends more on the specific arrangements.

If PG's terms were that he collect 100% of the profits of successful companies, while paying people a flat rate, then yes he would be 'sucking blood from the productive masses'. Yet, this is essentially what happens in most other spheres. Those who own the means of production let those on the bottom use their "property" while keeping the ever-increasing profits to themselves.

Yes, everyones quality of life increases, but at a radically disproportionate rate. At this point the income is passive and there should be a line where you're not entitled to any more of it.

⬐ IvanAcostaRubio

"The richest people in the US (the ones with 80% of the wealth) have probably in most cases earned it"

That is a lie. Only a negligible fraction of actual capital accumulation can be tie to life cycle savings. Therefore, we must conclude that intergenerational transfers account (inherit capital) for the VAST MAJORITY of aggregate capital accumulation in the USA.

See an MIT/Yale study on the subject. http://bit.ly/fjmyIw

I am not advocating a cero sum game or that everybody should be equal, but when you have the VAST majority of capital in the USA being inherit, the merit of earning that capital fades away pretty quickly.

⬐ ewjordan

Imagine we can put a number on quality of life. If the poor person starts out at say 1 and is at 10 after 10 years (as has happened in many developing countries). Does it matter that the rich person also is 10 times better off or even 100 times better off? I don't think so. That poor person now is healthier, has better opportunities etc than before.

The question on the table, though, is whether it's worth knocking the rich person (or maybe all rich people) down from (on some "quality of life" scale) a 100 to a 99.9 in order to lift the poor people from a 10 to a 20.

If you just look at that wealth distribution, you'll realize how little the rich have to suffer in order to help the poor a huge amount. And that's even before taking into account logarithmic utility functions...for all the arguments about how taxation reduces the incentive to make money, it's oh so rare for libertarians to explain why the rich still keep trying to make money even though they derive far less utility from it due to logarithmic utility functions than they could ever lose from a modest taxation rate.

In any case, here's where most of the disagreements stem from: most people that are against redistribution are concerned with optimizing the long term dollar value of the entire economy, so they want to keep wealth in the hands of those that are good at turning it into more wealth, even if the wealth that's created doesn't benefit those people directly at all (give $1 million to Bill Gates and he won't even notice; give it to someone on welfare, and it would change their life).

People that are for redistribution are concerned with optimizing the short term utility value of the entire economy, so they'd rather put wealth in the hands of the people that would benefit from it the most rather than in the hands of the people that would create more of it.

Taken to the extreme, each of these positions is absolutely indefensible and leads to a ridiculously inefficient and/or cruel economy. So we should always summarily discard any argument that does not promote some balance between the two sides.

Sadly, it's been a long time since I've heard someone present an argument that actually supports a stable balancing point, most people just argue blindly to push in one direction or the other.

⬐ pelle

It is true what you say when you are talking about the mega rich that they can do a lot to help and that is what people like Bill Gates etc are doing without anyone legislating them to do so.

When it comes to wealth distribution, I can not see any better way of doing it than letting the markets manage it. Where the governments and charity's come in should be in efficient exception handling dealing with the various emergencies the real world raises. Don't misunderstand me though. "Rich" people are not necessarily nice people and often are not believers in free markets. They are often directly in cahoots with government and make lots of money being invested in the status quo.

The problem with just about every single attempt at taxing this little tiny group of extremely rich people is that in the end it hardly affects them, but almost always harm the entrepreneurs who aren't yet at the Billionaire level.

(Excuse my CS metaphors) My own country Denmark got rich by having an open economy with little redistribution but plenty of exception handling. Since the late 60s the focus shifted from exception handling to having a heavy handed kernel process maintaining resource sharing in realtime which now counts for over half the economy. This has stagnated the economy, which currently only looks better than Greece because of our oil resources. We are an extremely equal country, with only a small handful of outliers. End result to maintain our equality many of the smart coders/entrepreneurs now live abroad (eg. DHH, Rasmus Lerdorf) while more and more resources are being spent beating immigrants into being as equals as the rest of us to which we are now being rightly condemned throughout the world.

A little thought experiment to which I do not know the answer:

What part of Bill Gates deeds will over history have done more to multiply peoples quality of life in the developing world? The Bill and Melinda Gates foundations good work throughout the world or the millions of pirated Windows copies used throughout the developing world in everything from small businesses to internet cafe's to schools.

It's not so simple as 'developed world' vs 'developing world'. There's an awesome Hans Rosling ted talk [1] about that. Here's an quote from it:

"I find my experience from 20 years of Africa is that the seemingly impossible is possible. Africa has not done bad. In 50 years they've gone from a pre-Medieval situation to a very decent 100-year-ago Europe, with a functioning nation and state. I would say that sub-Saharan Africa has done best in the world during the last 50 years. Because we don't consider where they came from. It's this stupid concept of developing countries which puts us, Argentina and Mozambique together 50 years ago, and says that Mozambique did worse. We have to know a little more about the world. I have a neighbor who knows 200 types of wine. He knows everything. He knows the name of the grape, the temperature and everything. I only know two types of wine -- red and white. (Laughter) But my neighbor only knows two types of countries -- industrialized and developing. And I know 200, I know about the small data. But you can do that."

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_o...

⬐ metamemetics

>It's not so simple as 'developed world' vs 'developing world'

Of course. These are just useful categories. Humans like to put things into categories so we can make statements about ideas. Saying it's "not so simple" is a strawman as I don't think anyone is claiming that a country is a data structure with the capacity of 1 bit (developed or developing).

Maybe if you said or quoted something about how the act of using this categorical construction in analysis when performed too often is the physical cause of some sort of injustice.

Hans Rosling says in "1957 the United States had the same economy as Chile has today ... [in] 2002 the United States has the same health than Chile. Chile's catching up! Within some years Chile may have better child survival than the United States."

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_o...

So it looks like it might be a good place to live and start a business. Lots of opportunity and good healthcare.

It's a pretty clear link. Take a look at about 8:58 in Hans Rosling's TED Talk

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_o...

Practically every country has gotten out of poverty at the cost of carbon emissions. The link isn't perfect but it is very strong. We need to get on a different curve. There doesn't seem to be any other way.

⬐ bballant

It is true that a developing nation typically needs to exploit its natural resources and cheap labor to industrialize and grow, which means CO2 emissions, but this is not true in modern, primarily service-based, economies, like the US. Again, US's GDP is roughly the same (slightly higher) per capita as that of the EU, but our CO2 emissions are (pitifully) over double the EU's, per capita. If there was a clear link, the the US's GDP should be much higher in comparison.

Finally I reject the notion that there doesn't seem to be any other way. I have much more faith in human innovation than that. I firmly believe that there is a market for green technologies, that, when fully developed, will create jobs, boost economies, and improve our global environment.

⬐ DaniFong

"Finally I reject the notion that there doesn't seem to be any other way. I have much more faith in human innovation than that. I firmly believe that there is a market for green technologies, that, when fully developed, will create jobs, boost economies, and improve our global environment."

This is what I meant when I said "We need to get on a different curve."

I recommended checking Rosling's TED talk. Here is the link:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_reveals_new_i...

He discusses the trends. The first few minutes are about child mortality, income and changes over the last few centuries. [Edit: Also see from 14 minutes. Hell, see all of it. If you care about the developing world, it is really informative.]

>That's due to technological progress

Afaik, the industrial revolution needed capitalism. Any references otherwise?

But sure, the technology and the scientific method has been invented. Inefficient systems can grind along for a bit, until we in the open world outcompete them.

For countries to be rich enough not to have starving, they need capitalism and good governance.

>around 1 billion people starve today, that's not a small percentage IMHO:

This have the usual idealist problem -- you have to kill people to help them...

Let us split that value up, a bit. About a billion is hungry, according to Wikipedia (not the same as starving -- did you fake there?).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentage...

Let us get some absolute numbers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malnutrition#Malnutrition_demog...

Top three: India, 217.05. China, 154.0. Bangladesh, 43.45. That is, 400 millions of that billion.

Now, China is a communist country, so the real value is probably higher -- but they are implementing capitalism so the hunger will go away in less than two-three decades (unless the governance is too bad).

India will probably solve their own hunger problems if they can get good governance to work.

We can ignore India/China, because they (a) can solve their own problems and (b) both have nuclear weapons and would not take kindly to external forced solutions.

Bangladesh -- will never solve their hunger problems by themselves. It is generally held to be the most corrupt country on the planet and the politicians steal aid money. You can't solve the problems of Bangladesh without military intervention -- see Iraq, how that goes.

Note that with that population density, a Bangladeshi invasion would kill more people than starvation in decades...

You have no clue how to organize an intervention to China, India and Bangladesh. And how to sell it, without military intervention. And NO ONE ELSE HAS A CLUE, EITHER.

The next two in the "top" list: Congo/Pakistan (with 37.0/35 millions hungry) have civil wars/insurrections. Good luck solving that, without killing more than hunger will, in decades.

The rest of the big hunger case is Africa south of the Sahari desert.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Hunger_Index#Conflicts_e...

"War and violence have been the major causes of widespread poverty and food insecurity in most of the countries with high GHI scores."

Well, as I said, you have an Iraq situation if you try to solve those cases...

(Tanzania might be a case. It is peaceful and has 16 million hungry, but it has gotten foreign aid by billions and billions since decades. It seems to be either too corrupt or too damaged by the early attempt at socialism... Might be a case where aid might be better used. I don't know enough about Ethiopia, but they have 30+ million hungry... might be fixable. But that and Tanzania is 3% [edit: 5%, didn't add] of your billion.)

So, most of the hungry will either be solved by themselves (India, China, Vietnam) with capitalism -- or will need a military intervention to change the governments (and/or stop conflicts which generate the starvation).

Especially good luck with Zimbabwe, South Africa would probably start a war with the military intervention needed to get rid of the b-stards in government, that starves their population.

And about changing the world system:

Consider East Germany. West Germany tried to integrate it and really, really failed. You want to do the same for the whole world? Abolish winter too, please... [Edit: Note that East Germany volunteered, the governments you want to reach are those that won't...]

I consider your thesis that hunger could [Edit: fixed word] be solved crushed and killed. I winz.

I think you are either a troll or ridiculously naive.

Edit: As an additional note:

>> You don't have to wait generations to curb starvation. In Cuba they managed in a decade. That's the issue here: Either we do it on our own accord or one day people will take their fair share by force and that leads to dictatorships.

First, Cuba is already a dictatorship which locks in its population, so they don't go to better places. Second, people in democracies with good governance don't generally starve (as I noted above). Third, that was according to Cuban statistics (see Soviet statistics from the 1930s...)

(To anser the next comment -- Cuba had to lock in their population before 1989 too, when they had both trade partners and lots of aid.)

Edit 2: Some parenthese. And as a last note, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation#Hunger_statistics

In 1970, 37% of the population in the developing world was "hungry", in 2007 it was 17%. (And as I noted above, the large majority of the remaining are in countries which will solve it themselves -- or the results of military conflicts/dictators. Hard to go in and "fix", both of those cases.)

Sigh, i guess I have been trolled but good to answer this whining. Enough.

⬐ onreact-com

"That's due to technological progress

Afaik, the industrial revolution needed capitalism. Any references otherwise?"

So there was no industrial revolution in the Soviet Union? Do we have to rewrite history? You are right though without knowing. The Soviet state capitalism which already resembles the current US state capitalism forced industrialization upon the rural country.

>around 1 billion people starve today, that's not a small percentage IMHO:

This have the usual idealist problem -- you have to kill people to help them...

"Let us split that value up, a bit. About a billion is hungry, according to Wikipedia (not the same as starving -- did you fake there?)."

I don't care what Wikipedia says, the UN says "starving" and the press is reporting "starving". Any jerk can edit Wikipedia.

Also stop suggesting genocide or killing people as a solution. The current system kills people in massive numbers. We have to stop THAT!

"You can't solve the problems of Bangladesh without military intervention -- see Iraq, how that goes."

Did you just suggest to go to war to solve the hunger problem? Sorry, you are downright criminal minded. I can't go on discussing with you. You seem to love the idea of killing people.

P.S.: "Consider East Germany. West Germany tried to integrate it and really, really failed."

Have you actually been to East Germany? You can't see any difference to Western Germany now, it's much more wealthy than any other country from the former Eastern Block.

⬐ berntb

>>I don't care what Wikipedia says, the UN says "starving" and the press is reporting "starving". Any jerk can edit Wikipedia.

By the way, Wikipedia quotes the UN report -- and shows you to lie or be a fanatic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undernourishment#cite_note-51

From key finding #1 in the report: "FAO’s most recent estimates put the number of hungry people at 923 million in 2007"

(Note, not starving.)

In sum, you didn't answer a single one of my points -- and didn't have a fact correct.

I sincerely hope you're a troll and not this dishonest.

⬐ berntb

I thought I could add this interview with Hans Rosling (which I referenced on TED.com), if anyone ever reads this:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=831958

I might also add to the long list of onreact's problems that the first quote made it look as if I wrote the first sentence ("That's due to technological progress").

Quotation error, too! He he, sometimes the trolls are more fun for us trolled, than the other way.

⬐ berntb

>So there was no industrial revolution in the Soviet Union?

Sigh, it is a bit easier to copy things that already is invented...

My next comment was: "But sure, the technology and the scientific method has been invented. Inefficient systems can grind along for a bit, until we in the open world outcompete them."

(My original point was that everything was going better since about 100-200 years ago, for the whole world. You claimed it was just technology, which is obvious -- everyone was poor before! Then I noted that without capitalism, there would probably never have been a fast industrial revolution. Now you answered with something irrelevant.)

But you knew that, you just didn't have an answer.

>Any jerk can edit Wikipedia.

That was a small point, but you can prefer the propaganda material -- and ignore the publication with references... :-)

It does make you look even more like a troll.

>The current system kills people in massive numbers.

>Did you just suggest to go to war to solve the hunger problem?

You claimed the starvation problem motivated a change of the economic organization of the whole planet.

I went over the statistics by country for hunger and noted that either:

(a) The majority will be fixed by their local countries the coming decades.

(b) Changing the situation for most of the rest of the hungry would demand a military intervention (with many more dead than die from lack of food for many years).

But you knew that, you just didn't have an answer.

>>Have you actually been to East Germany? You can't see any difference to Western Germany now

Not relevant to my argument (about the size of a problem a thousand times smaller than what you want to solve). Either.

But you knew that, you just didn't have an answer.

You failed to adress a single one of my points!

But I knew that I wasted time, before you answered.

I sincerely hope you are a troll and not this intellectually dishonest.