Computer guy tries to hack the US Constitution with the American Nations - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2010/06/sean_tevis_to_save_america_starting_with_kansas_2nd_district.php#more <comment><USER3> AIUI, Federal authority over relations with the Indian tribes comes from Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the authority "To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes". (The idea that the Founding Fathers were concerned about defending those tribes' "culture, identity, and rights" is very sweet; actually, _King George III_ tried to defend Indians' rights by not letting settlers expand further into their territory.) The term "domestic nations" came about _to describe_ the tribes' twilight-zone status of not exactly independent sovereign states and not exactly subject to the laws of the states in which their reservations existed either.

Tevis's theory is that a bunch of people who are (a) not indigenous Americans, (b) not related to each other, and (c) not possessing anything resembling the semi-sovereign territories that Indian tribes used to have... that these people can get together, declare themselves to be a "domestic nation", and have the same legal status of Indian tribes. I can't see how one could construe the Constitution to get away with this. More importantly, I can't see how _state governments_ would stand for a law giving people such an easy escape hatch away from their own jurisdiction.

<comment><USER4> AIUI == As I understand it

<comment><USER5> Can we refrain from esoteric abbreviations like these? I don't feel like they save that much space, not that space is even an issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I truly admire his dedication to creating something people can identify with and working towards a higher cause of true nationhood, but a major contributing cause to the disarray of American politics is the polarization of the citizenry. We're too quick to take sides, regardless of issues and will gladly "drink the kool-aid" of whatever side parallels the most with what we believe is good, versus what's intrinsically right.

This is manifested even in the examples he presented; being an online entity, who's to say that foul play wont occur? What is the system for checks and balances when poisoning the wells to gain followers? Look at Digg and Reddit:

Ostensibly, both sites serve the same purpose, and on a given day you'll very likely find links to the exact same controversial article. It's also likely you'll hear two completely different sides of the issue-one pro, one against, one conservative, one progressive, one rational, one emotional.

The American Nations isn't going to address anything, further segmenting people into groups only reinforces the idea that you need to be with people who agree with you, and rally against those who don't. It's giving the middle finger to compromise and collaboration among people with opposing viewpoints, we don't need further segmentation of ideologies, we really don't.

And I get that he's wanting a microcosm of progressive individuals who want to address major issues as they are, but creating a group within a group, that's already divided and indecisive about how policies shape their day to day lives isn't the answer. It's the pot calling the kettle black.

If you want to FIX America, start by teaching people to think for themselves and dislodge themselves from the meme that everything in the political arena has to be constructed under an "us versus them" mentality, and to not base their moral compasses on sound-bites and blogger pundits. Then you need to teach them how beneficial and enjoyable it can be to actually learn what the guy on the other side of the table has to say.

Stop playing sides. It's destroying us as a people.

<comment><USER7> > If you want to FIX America, start by teaching people to think for themselves > and dislodge themselves from the meme that everything in the political arena > has to be constructed under an "us versus them" mentality,

This is, I believe, not possible.

Our media has every incentive to carve out a demographic and get them angry at others. We have a winner-take-all political system with two political parties, which creates polar arguments. Duvarger's Law makes fixing this impossible.

And I think you have the wrong impression of what these are. They are very limited, but the newspaper story doesn't go into those rules. It's a way to remove differences so that one group, say people who believe Obama is the Anti-Christ, can try to achieve something for themselves free from those of us who prefer reason. In any peace process, there a few tried and true steps. One is to separate the two warring sides so that they can't escalate fear or damage.

This is a massive undertaking, but i don't see anyone trying to bring America back together. You ask good questions. Your worries about where we're headed are justified. And I'm going to add at least four answers to the FAQ based on this. Thanks!

<comment><USER8> Have you considered joining forces with Lawrence Lessig for this? His Change Congress is a drastically different mechanism but the end results seem roughly similar.

Besides the Voltron aspect he is a recognized legal scholar and might quiet some of the "this could never work" arguments if he signs off on it.

<comment><USER7> That's a great idea. I think we have some mutual friends. I'll see if i can get to him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of the Millet system used under the Ottoman empire. The central government had very little direct involvement in what we would today call "personal law" or "social policy"; instead, these were organized into separate communities along religious lines. Muslims, Jews, and various Christian denominations each had their own sets of institutions.

A more modern example is Belgium, which has a kind of double federalism, where regional governments for Flanders and Wallonia have territorial jurisdiction, and community governments for the French-, Flemish-, and German-speaking populations have separate "social" jurisdiction.

In these cases, the social jurisdiction was determined by religious or linguistic affiliation, with only a handful of communities and very limited mobility among them. It would be very interesting to see such a system organized on a much more pluralistic and dynamic basis, in which people could charter their own communities and change their affiliations freely.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for that example, Gormo. We hadn't seen that one. Most of the other examples we'd found were separate, but geographically overlapping systems based on secular vs. religious laws.

<comment><USER9> Out of curiosity, which was example was the new one, the Ottoman millet system, or modern Belgium?

<comment><USER7> Both actually, but the Belgian example is really helpful. -- note to self - <USER2> more clear. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me of the "phyles" in Neal Stephenson's _The Diamond Age_. Figuring out how the social contract can reasonably diverge among people residing in the same physical and economic space seems like a hard problem. It isn't obvious that health care qualifies.

<comment><USER11> I haven't read The Diamond Age, but this sounds like the beginnings of the franchise states in Snow Crash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> His "Public Healthcare Nation" is likely to be hit with an adverse selection problem- unless you have to pass a physical to be admitted.

<comment><USER13> It will also have problems because the real problem with health care costs is what hospitals charge. Health care is expensive because hospitals rip you off. They can do this because most people don't even consider the costs and will pay whatever it takes (its not their problem - its their health insurance's problem).

I had a doctor take a cotton ball out of my ear in the hallway. It took about 10 seconds. I got charged $700.

<comment><USER14> Wait a second, granted you may not have expected to be charged $700, but why have a doctor do something so simple? Why not just do it yourself or have a friend with tweezers do it?

<comment><USER15> A nurse practitioner probably could have done it cheaper, but you probably want to be pretty sure that the tweezer plan is going to work before digging around deep in your ear canal with them. A doctor or nurse is presumably trained enough to make that call, or defer that call to someone who would know better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The US Constitution is known to have failed. On several levels.

 _I think I should say right away an unpleasant fact which is barely if ever mentioned in American school books - the founders were not interested in founding a democracy._ \-- It's a nine ring circus and you'll never be bored, AC, Letter from America

<http://morgenstern.jeffreykegler.com/>

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/letter_from_america/10...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/letter_from_america/1054039.stm)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is actually kind of brilliant. It's very similar to parliamentary voting systems in top down democracies ( as seen in Europe tm ). Except it's US constitution compatible. Clever hack.

I tentatively like it. Will require more research.

</comment><comment><USER18> Seems like the same kind of thinking that says e.g. I don't have to pay my income tax.

The law does not lend itself to "hacking." It just doesn't work like that.

<comment><USER7> This has nothing in common with that. It's really just as simple as allowing enforcement of a group contract. And people look for legal workarounds all the time. The really expensive lawyers are excellent at it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I imagine more information is going to be made available at <http://seantevis.com/>, but its an interesting idea.

</comment><comment><USER19> Purely illegal and unconstitutional. I admire the spirit, but this is the sort of thing that wouldn't make it past a District Court judge.

<comment><USER7> Sure, if you make the case based on the Establishment clause and try to sue your way to creating them. Legitimate Native Americans have tried to sue their way into their own nations and it's been thrown out.

But I'm not. It's based on Congress' Plenary Authority over the Indian Nations. Congress can modify the rules however they see fit, including creating a new class.

That was a good question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can someone point me to the explanation of how this will do all the things he promises? What will be the difference between the nations, etc?

<comment><USER7> It's not live yet. Probably Tuesday by the looks of it. We gave this interview hoping to flesh out the natural questions that people might have. So far, Hacker News has done the best job. We're compiling things for the FAQ and the other 80% of the comic not shown on the newspaper site.

<comment><USER21> Do you need someone to design/build a website for you? Your current site displays in a very thin column that is difficult and frustrating to read. Not to mention it's a bit lack luster.

<comment><USER7> No, but thank you. There's actually a full, beautiful site behind that hastily hacked together front page. That's what will go live soon - probably Tuesday or Wednesday.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What SaaS or Apps are you paying for? - <AUTHOR>
 I am curious to know what saas or apps are HN user's paying out of their own pocket for? Not business apps, but for your own personal use. Personally, I pay for feedly (rss reader), G Suite domain (for my personal email), todoist premium (task/to do app). Not an app, but I pay for the Wall Street Journal.<p>It's been nearly 2 years since I ask this question so I thought it would be good to get an update. <comment><USER2> Actually, I don't pay for hardly any SaaS or Apps. Microsoft Office is the only exception, and the only thing I really need there is OneNote. (I use Word and Excel, but only because I've already paid for them to get OneNote - neither is essential.) Other than that, the only thing I pay for is storage for backups in S3. I also have a recent copy of CorelDraw Suite, but they've gone subscription now, so I'll have to find an alternative. Other than those, it's all open source.

</comment><comment><USER3> Netflix, Spotify, Amazon prime, Nytimes, HBR, Australian finance review [https://afr.com](https://afr.com), listing on [https://hackerspad.net](https://hackerspad.net), Prime video, micro transactions on [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kabam.doam...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kabam.doamobile&hl=en_AU) around ~100 per month.

</comment><comment><USER4> Apps: Netflix, Notability, MindNode (discontinued), Memrise (discontinued)

IaaS/ PaaS/ SaaS: Digital Ocean for VPS, Stripe for subscription billing, GoDaddy for domains, Dropbox for online storage and file sharing, Google Voice for phone number porting.

Recently, I have been thinking about setting up a blog based site, not sure whether to setup my own on DigitalOcean or go with something like Wordpress.com. I just see too many attempts of WP exploits on my non-WP site, and haven't come across any decent non-WP based blog driven site CMS.

<comment><USER5> Digital Ocean has one-click WordPress installs.

<comment><USER6> Interesting to know. Do they provide support of transferring existing one?

<comment><USER5> Sorry, I do not know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nothing that needs recurring payments. If I cannot find a suitable program, generally I will try to write it by myself instead. Also even with proprietary programs I have already paid for, I will try to make a free software which is better.

</comment><comment><USER8> NetFlix and Spotify. And there's one that I'm not paying. And it helps my business a lot. [https://www.reliabills.com/](https://www.reliabills.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Canva, Spotify, Netflix

</comment><comment><USER10> Setapp, Evernote, Textexpander, Cloud storage for backups, Magzter (magazines), and couple of financial services in India.

</comment><comment><USER11> 1Password. It's $4/mo, which (forgive me for sounding privileged) is nothing, and it works well across all devices.

</comment><comment><USER12> HEY, Netflix, Disney+, Dropbox, iCloud, Todist (won't subscribe to another year when it is up)

</comment><comment><USER13> Screenflow has paid for itself multiple times over- business use, personal use... I use it easily 5 to 10 times a week.

<comment><USER14> Also a big fan of Screenflow. I find it so much easier to record a quick 5 minute screencast when trying to get a point across.

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't screen recording built in to windows, macos, ios now? Why pay for a separate tool?

I use quicktime to record screencasts all the time. The biggest issue I have is having to upload the video to youtube to easily share it. They are usually too large to just email around.

<comment><USER14> Yes screen recording is built-in, but something like Screenflow allows you to do a lot more, for example adding other audio or video (like camera for example), adding transitions, effects, annotations etc. This won't be important if you literally just want to record your screen, but if you are publishing anything these sorts of tools are useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I forgot about password managers: I do pay for one; but I also use the built in keychain password manager

</comment><comment><USER15> Netflix, Emby, DigitalOcean/Vultr, Spotify, Amazon Prime, GDrive, iCloud, and a few domains.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hulu, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime, GSuite, Notion (now free), HEY, YNAB, and Bitwarden.

</comment><comment><USER17> lastpass, although I am looking for a better alternative,

Office365

Adobe photoshop and lightroom

I am also paying for todoist and newsblur, although I moved to newsboat and will probably have to find another task manager. Maybe I will just use org- mode.

</comment><comment><USER18> lastpass; office 365; fastmail; digital ocean; wallabag.it; you need a budget; twilio & spaghetti detective for 3d printing notifications; backblaze;

</comment><comment><USER19> lastpass

bunch of aws services (s3 for file storage, some r53 domains, some resources backing alexa skills my family uses)

twilio for an sms bot

washington post sub (thinking about picking up wsj and economist)

robokiller

<comment><USER20> Have you tried BitWarden? I recently switched after using lp for the last 6 years. Couldn't be happier. Things just work with BW. It's simple and convenient. Also being free doesn't hurt.

<comment><USER21> I've used LP for 4 years and can't recall things not working?

<comment><USER18> There was a period circa 2014-2015 that LastPass was pretty glitchy on Firefox in MacOS, but for quite a while I've had no problems at all with it - it just works. Even my non-technical wife has no issues with it, and sharing secure passwords is a breeze.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1Password, Spotify, Netflix, Stoa Meditation

<comment><USER18> How long have you been subscribing to Stoa? Have you been able to stick to it, and do you find it beneficial?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Google storage. Dropbox. Dashlane. Netflix.</comment>


Extreme Keyboarding - <AUTHOR> http://oreilly.com/news/zenclavier_1299.html <comment><USER2> I had posted the same article some time back.

Basically he is talking about a concept called Flow: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29>

The secret sauce in Flow with regards to programming isn't really vim. But rather things like repetitive jobs, interesting work and having clarity on what you need to do.

Sure learning to touch type helps. Actually its not difficult to touch type, once you learn it you do extreme keyboarding automagically.

But true extreme keyboarding happens when you get things done fast, automagically and you totally lose the track of time.. heck you may become totally unaware of your very existence and reach a zen like state to totally become one with the the task your are executing. Sure its the most enjoyable state you can ever be in, and I have been in such a state quite a few number of times.

But as I mentioned before the secret sauce here is a term called 'Flow'. Not vim.

<comment><AUTHOR> This article is from 1999, I think the term flow wasn't as widespread. I agree with you, and with him, regarding the role of muscle memory on achieving flow. And I love emacs but it really hurts me much more than vim.</comment></comment>


Rotary Jails - <AUTHOR> https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/10/rotary-jails.html <comment><USER2> Tom Scott has made a video on this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGXHMOhXAw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGXHMOhXAw)

</comment><comment><USER3> I was reminded of the panopticon [1] prison design paradigm. The rotary controls the prisoners physically by only allowing one cell door to be open at once, while the panopticon doesn't necessarily limit how many doors are open at once. The rotary jail doesn't make it easier to watch the prisoners, while the panopticon allows the wardens to convince the wards that they are always watched.

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

<comment><USER4> You could in theory combine the two with the cells arranged in a rotating barrel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" Why Brown and Haugh went the convoluted route and chose to rotate the cells instead of the circular cage, is a mystery."_

Any guesses? It does seem like a dumb idea to rotate the massively larger/heavier cells.

<comment><USER6> Seems simpler to know exactly where the entrance is, relative to the entire building. You could build a hallway off it.

<comment><USER7> This theoretically makes it usable in a smaller space, since you don't need a hallway to run around the entire ring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If one person could rotate the whole thing with a crank, why couldn't the prisoners do the same by holding the bars and pushing on the walls?

Anyway, this reminded me of the mechanical fortress from Myst.

<comment> fake-name There's a variety of motion mechanisms that can't be backdriven. A worm drive[1] is a common one.

Alternatively, they could simply have a external lock on rotation that's engaged when someone's not actively moving the cells.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm curious as to how the plumbing worked in this system. Would seem difficult to pipe water in a manner that can rotate like this.

</comment><comment><USER10> This sounds inhumane and thus unlikely to happen in modern prison design (which tbh is more of a jobs program these days than actually designing for restitution or rehabilitation)

"The rotary jails had many design problems. For example, in the event of fire, it was not possible to evacuate the inmates fast enough".

<comment><USER11> Well, you could make it such that in event of a fire, the external cage would drop down low enough to facilitate evacuation into a designated fenced up area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If this caught your imagination, you'll want to read the short story "Manuscript Found in a Police State" by Brian Aldiss

<comment><USER13> Aldiss also has described the Wheel of Kharnabar in "Helliconia Winter": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helliconia#Helliconia_Winter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helliconia#Helliconia_Winter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's always interesting to see the weird things that are designed after technology advances but before it is optimized.

<comment><USER15> Or, alternatively, horrible over-engineering for only a very slight benefit (fewer guards), with huge externalized cost (prisoners feelings about living in such a concoction, fire safety).

<comment><USER16> The externalized cost doesn't seem so bad if you don't care about prisoners' feelings or if they die in a fire. Unfortunately, I think that mindset is probably more common, especially historically, than many realize.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I got a real flashback to Wolfenstein: The New Order from this :D

</comment><comment><USER18> Iowa was one of the unethical states using them well into the 1960s. Shameful.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wanted to block the cookies on this website. After flipping about 20 of the pages off, I've noticed that the list contains probably more than a 100 3rd party websites. Nope, bye.

</comment><comment><USER20> There's some kind of sickening scroll acceleration applied to this page, making it exceedingly frustrating to use with a magic mouse. Not surprised due to level of shit shoveled onto the site, but I have no idea why anybody would want to subject their users to this.

<comment><USER21> Also an ad appeared over the "I accept" cookie banner right before I was going to click it.

<comment><USER22> On my end I saw 40 things blocked which must have included both all ads, that cookie accept garbage, and any other nonsense. Ublock origin + firefox 71. Even scrolling seemed to be pretty normal on the normal page although its even nicer with one click to view in reader mode.</comment></comment></comment>


A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty - <AUTHOR> https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty <comment><USER4> One of the most amazing things I learned reading the excellent "Factfullness" by Hans Rosling [1] is that the poorest countries in the world are currently improving faster than any country ever did, at any point in history.

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

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

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

<comment><USER5> I read the Factfullness book, and I thought it's really poorly argued. I remember my BP was through the roof on the plane when I was reading that. HR is not believable imo. (I work in data, I'm a physicist.)

<comment><USER6> Rosner, Pinker and Co fell into the same trap they critiqued others - <USER2> in destiny. They try to counter pessimistic destiny narratives with positive destiny narratives and selecting data that fits the narrative.

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

<comment><USER7> Aren't they simply trying to explain and persuade people current institutions are responsible for the positive changes, and that therefore they are good, and thus we should be supporting them? Also, they seem to counter misconceptions, not advocate for blind faith in a never ending progression.

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

<comment><USER6> > people current institutions are responsible for the positive changes, and > that therefore they are good, and thus we should be supporting them?

Current institutions as a vague continuity or the same?

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

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

<comment><USER7> I'm of course no Pinker himself, nor a tenured prof at Hardvard, or even friends with him, but based on what I read from him and about him, he is very much in support of change toward new, more inclusive, more fair, more egalitarian and more rational institutions. And argues that trade and good old classic liberal ideas are slowly but surely bringing forth these changes (through the work of many hundreds of millions of slightly altruistic people), _despite_ the efforts of our demons (innate or cultural/contextual xenophobia, ignorance, extreme greed/selfishness, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hickels rebuttal in the letter is that GDP cannot be used to gauge poverty which he claims has only been measured directly by the UN since 1981. But if you look around the world today, GDP/head is a remarkaby strong indicator of the level of poverty in a country. Nevermind that all the other quality of life stats: life expectency, child morality, average working hours, literacy, education levels, food affordability support Pinker's argument.

Actually here is a fairly convincing (in my opinion) response which covers this and more: [https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is- the-w...](https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is-the-world- really-getting-poorer-a-response-to-that-claim-by-steve-pinker/)

Slightly off-topic: as I get older I get more and more suspisious of promoters of apocalyse narratives. Both hard left and hard right both require people to believe the "world getting worse and worse" in order to promote their opposition to the liberal democratic multilateral global world order. Apocalypse stories are one of the oldest "hacks" against human judgment and have been exploited by the religious, cults and political extremists for millennia.

<comment><USER9> To be fair, that's only a very small part of his rebuttal, dealing specifically with the period prior to 1970, as well as the fact that GDP estimates for this period "take little if any account of the goods and resources that people may have acquired from their land, from trees, from forests, from rivers and the sea, and in the form of gifts from relatives."

From 1981 onward, I would summarize his argument as being that:

\- While some measures have improved, the picture is no where near as good as it is represented.

\- Using $1.90 as the baseline to beat is too low for what we would consider as being out of poverty.

\- Most economic successes have not been due to neoliberal markets but rather state-led industrial policy, protectionism and regulation.

\- Most quality of life improvements have not been due to neoliberal globalization but simple public interventions including free healthcare and education.

\- Progress is slowing relative to the resources available to tackle the problem.

<comment> barry-cotter > \- While some measures have improved, the picture is no where near as good > as it is represented.

Name a measure of human suffering that has not improved. Healthy lifespan, deaths in childbirth, infant mortality, they've all gotten better.

> \- Using $1.90 as the baseline to beat is too low for what we would consider > as being out of poverty.

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

> \- Most economic successes have not been due to neoliberal markets but > rather state-led industrial policy, protectionism and regulation.

Indeed, in every state where they've followed an industrial policy of "Let's do capitalism." poverty has decreased, whether with heavy handed government economic intervention like Japan or Korea or just leaving business alone like Hong Kong. If protectionism worked Argentina would have a car industry. They tried for 30 years. It doesn't.

> \- Most quality of life improvements have not been due to neoliberal > globalization but simple public interventions including free healthcare and > education.

The UN's human development index is 70% explained by GDP per capita. Poor countries can't afford good policy and capitalism is the proven way to escape poverty.

> \- Progress is slowing relative to the resources available to tackle the > problem.

As far as absolute poverty goes, maybe, kind of. The countries that have shown no real improvement are the ones with no real government or state capacity. Everywhere else is in the process of escaping absolute poverty or has done so. These are the countries that do not work, mostly in Africa. We just have to work towards integrating them into the global economy so they can grow. One hopes the nearby example of Ethiopia, Ghana, South Africa or Nigeria will help, as they grow their way out of poverty.

<comment><USER10> >The trend is the same regardless of which poverty line you pick. Poverty is decreasing, education, literacy and health are rising.

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER11> The quote you replied to is referring to global poverty, not Africa specifically. And maybe you missed that it's a quote from Hickel straight out of the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a bit frustrating to read his follow-up letter because it largely ignores the root counterpoints Pinker made in favour of pushing the data integrity angle.

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

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

<comment><USER13> I somewhat disagree, Hans does spend some time in this article refuting the claim that benchmark doesn't matter. In particular, he shows charts demonstrating how raising the benchmark changes the result.

<comment><USER14> Who is Hans? Isn't this article by Jason Hickel?

<comment><USER13> Apologies, yes, I was referring to Hickel. I can't seem to be able to edit the comment anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So I went and read the Pinker's "rebuttal." He just casually avoided the claim about the entire base of their infographic being bogus, then went on to calling mild centre-left socialdemocrats "far leftists". Why is _anyone_ treating that guy seriously?

<comment><USER16> Because Pinker's rebuttal was initially supposed to be an email to somebody else. He recognized that Hickel was likely pushing an ideology and left it at that. Even in the email Pinker is saying that he's citing experts in the field.

> _then went on to calling mild centre-left socialdemocrats_

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

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure regulation, protectionism and state intervention in a market economy is the definition of social-democracy.

<comment><USER17> No, not really.

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

I should know I live in one :)

<comment><USER18> I too live in a Social democracy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It sounds to me like both sides are picking metrics that make their point the strongest. And the reality is, both can be right. The proportion of the world in extreme poverty (<$.190/day) can be going down while overall number of people in poverty (<$7.50/day) can be increasing. These aren't contradictory.

And reducing both metrics are good goals!

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

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

</comment><comment><USER20> Needs more consistency:

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

Followed later by:

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

</comment><comment><USER21> Can anyone summarize what is going on here? It seems like a flamewar with graphs, and not interesting enough to invest the time in reading.

<comment><USER22> I followed this a little bit when it popped up on Twitter last week.

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

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

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

<comment><USER23> > IMO globalist capitalism has increased living standards for the poorest > people in countries that were well-run enough to take advantage of it, China > in particular.

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

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

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

<comment><USER24> Modern China is definitely a "market economy" in every meaningful sense of the term. Unlike in Maoist times, there is no central planning committee deciding what should be manufactured and sold and private businesses make their own decision based on what they think will sell. Is there government intervention in the Chinese market? Of course, but that's true of every country -- even the US. The completely free market is just a theoretical concept never practiced anywhere at any time.

<comment><USER23> They build cities...using their _army_. Your description of the country's general economic characteristics is off-the-charts wrong, and is especially wrong concerning the area where Pinker pretends that liberalized markets are why poverty in China has been in sharp decline.

<comment><USER24> There's no question that China is still an authoritarian country with a powerful military, but that's beside the point. You have to look at what has changed to stop making them poor. It's the new policy of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (their euphasism for capitalism)

<comment><USER23> It is you that is missing the point. Their army is not worth noticing because it's "powerful", it must not be overlooked because of what role it serves in the economy. _It_ builds cities itself. Armies don't build (dozens of) cities in market economies. China is in a literal sense a command, not a market, economy in whole swathes of its body, starting with the beating heart of its double digit growth: its construction sector.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm a bit confused about the global poverty amount. What is that $7.50 exactly?

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

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

<comment><USER26> The dollars quoted are in terms of purchasing power in the United States as of 2011.

<comment><USER25> I think I see - so if $7.50 in the USA in 2011 can buy 5Kg of rice, then the equivalent income in Cambodia is about $2.50 and in Australia is about $25... is that right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just to note - Branko Milanovic (cited by Roser) backed up Hickel on many of the main poinst:

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

<comment><USER28> I strongly recommend Branko Milanovic's book _The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality_ as an overview of poverty across millennia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Real data on poverty has only been collected since 1981, by the World Bank. > It is widely accepted among those who research global poverty that any data > prior to 1981 is simply too sketchy to be useful, and going back to as early > as 1820 is more or less meaningless.

Just like for global warming you expect reasonable proxies.

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

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

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Most people here seem to be missing the point: it's not that poverty hasn't been moderately improved over the past 30 years, but rather that Pinker's work has had an incredibly outsized impact on policy and influence on media narratives.

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER31> "even though the data actually shows that the majority of the improvement comes from other brands of economic policy"

Can you expand on this? Genuinely interested.

<comment><USER32> They are referring to Chinese and other Southeast Asian policies, as Hickels said in his post.

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

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

<comment><USER30> I didn't say markets are a bad way to value goods, man, I said china's state planned and financed approach to the market has produced the gains Pinker is saying neoliberalism should get credit for. What we're talking about here is the false idea that America's approach to capitalism is responsible for very much of the global reduction in poverty, and whether we should consider other modes instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A fantastic overview of poverty across the history of humanity comes in a short book: _The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality Paperback_ by economist Branko Milanovic, in which he compares wealth and poverty across millennia.

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

</comment><comment><USER16> > _Real data on poverty has only been collected since 1981, by the World > Bank._

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

<comment><USER33> This is the oddest argument in the article, I think. No one claims the data are perfect or identical before 1981, but it's what we have and it's used. I think it's acceptable to provide an alternate proxy. Or to critique the methods rigorously. But it is frustrating when a rhetorical trick is used to point out how the pre-1981 data are different than 1981, that is known by anyone reading Pinker, and then throw out all pre-1981 data and claim it is meaningless. And even more strangely, that poverty during this period is just unknowable.

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

<comment><USER34> I stopped reading after he began with that GDP point and spent so much time on it. Felt like a manipulative attack to dismiss an entire argument ("your argument is so laughably wrong, you can't even get basic facts right.")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think the focus on money is misplaced, forget about GDP and start measuring GNH (Gross National Happiness); it is about time the rest of the world looked to Bhutan and realized there is much more to a pleasurable human existence than simply quantifying in terms of income/money/wealth. It is an over- simplification that degrades humanity and our potential.

<comment><USER36> Bhutan?

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

<comment><USER37> They were talking about happiness, you are talking about personal freedom. Two different things.

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

<comment><USER38> I doubt that the _minorities_ are most happy...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Sam Hyde's 2070 Paradigm Shift [1] to solve world hunger. Link in references.

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

<comment><USER40> This is illuminating, even if humorous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It seems to me that the whole debate would benefit from some Quantum Thinking.

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

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER42> Must reads about what was done to South America:

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm 40 years old. I remember the last 30 years in my home country (Turkey) very well. What happened in this period? Awesome things. Access to food, shelter, healthcare, cars, many many amenities and luxuries of life have expanded wildly.

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

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

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

<comment><USER44> The difference of opinion between those who've lived through something and the opinion of bourgeoisie academics who've studied the same thing from an Ivory tower is usually quite different.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> _The vast majority of gains against poverty have happened in one region: East Asia. As it happens, the economic success of China and the East Asian tigers – as scholars like Ha-Joon Chang and Robert Wade have long pointed out – is due not to the neoliberal markets that you espouse but rather state-led industrial policy, protectionism and regulation (the same measures that Western nations used to such great effect during their own period of industrial consolidation). They liberalized, to be sure – but they did so gradually and on their own terms._

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

</comment><comment><USER46> The argument about the poverty line is a bit weird.

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER47> We urgently need to jettison naive and simplistic models of the world that ignores centuries of history to deflect accountability, provide a comfort zone for some and perpetuate another fraud on the world. Look at the word fraud of 'aid' when it's loans and 'leverage' that are used to further the creditors interests in the region.

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

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER48> Medium grey text on a white background makes this almost unreadable. I don't know what point he was trying to make, because tow paragraphs gave me a headache.

</comment><comment><USER49> The part where he writes off East Asia as not really counting, somehow, while acknowledging its success, is rather strange:

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER50> _The process of forcibly integrating colonized peoples into the capitalist labour system caused widespread dislocation (a history I cover in The Divide). Remember, this is the period of the Belgian labour system in the Congo, which so upended local economies that 10 million people died – half the population. This is the period of the Natives Land Act in South Africa, which dispossessed the country's black population of 90% of the country. This is the period of the famines in India, where 30 million died needlessly as a result of policies the British imposed on Indian agriculture. This is the period of the Opium Wars in China and the unequal treaties that immiserated the population. And don't forget: all of this was conducted in the name of the "free market"._

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

The bit on "absolute povery numbers" is insane:

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

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER10> Maybe you should put "that bit about absolute numbers" in the proper context instead of wilfully misrepresenting it:

> _[After discussing 1.9$ /day as a completely inhumane measure; the > equivalent of 35 people living with a UK minimum wage, without any gifts, > loans, donations, or help of any kind] the story changes quite a bit - <USER3> > you know it. If we use $7.40 per day, we see a decline in the proportion of > people living in poverty, but it's not nearly as dramatic as your rosy > narrative would have it. In 1981 a staggering 71% lived in poverty. Today it > hovers at 58% (for 2013, the most recent data). Suddenly your grand story of > progress seems tepid, mediocre, and – in a world that's as fabulously rich > as ours – completely obscene. There is nothing worth celebrating about a > world where inequality is so extreme that 58% of people are in poverty, > while a few dozen billionaires have more than all of their wealth combined. > _

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

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

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is the guy who claimed subsistence rural leaving shouldn't count as poverty, and that we really can't say anything about poverty pre-1981. Come on! How is he credible.

</comment><comment><USER52> Yes, I think that Pinker's attitude 'don't mess with liberal capitalism model, it's working miracles' kind of shuts off any possibility of real critics of real problems that we are facing today.

<comment><USER53> Pinker is not arguing that economic neoliberalism is perfect.

Almost nobody is.

<comment><USER52> Sorry, but I don't see the word 'perfect' in my statement. I stated what I stated and I think I am fairly accurate when I say that Pinker's main premise is that modern global neoliberal capitalist model is fighting poverty much better than anything else.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> TLDR; When the numbers don't fit the narrative, you need to pick out different numbers.

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

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

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

Yeah, no shit. _Extreme_ Poverty is _extremely_ bad.

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER10> Wait a minute, how does that go one way but not the other? Why is using $7.4 "doctoring the data" to fit your narrative but $1.9 not?

The author uses arguments such as

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

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

<comment><USER54> I didn't say anyone is doctoring data. The data may well be true, but it may not fit your narrative. If your narrative is "people are getting poorer" you need to set the bar high, if your narrative is "people are getting richer", you need to set the bar low. In that sense it goes both ways.

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

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

<comment><USER55> To be fair, Hickel is discussing the different poverty lines because he is refuting an explicit argument from Pinker in his letter:

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

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

<comment><USER54> Even the data that Hickel picked (excluding China) shows is that the trend is _down_. I'm not sure Pinker is right in that the it's true for _every single social stratum everywhere across the world_ , I would think that certain middle-class earners are poorer today in relative terms.

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

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

<comment><USER11> > Even the data that Hickel picked (excluding China) shows is that the trend > is down.

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

<comment><USER54> This is Bill Gates' infographic:

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

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

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER11> I don't care to litigate Hickel's argument, and I don't even necessarily agree with him. It just seems like you're ignoring the actual points Hickel made. The questions you're asking here are all answered in article, so maybe read it again?

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

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

<comment><USER54> > The questions you're asking here are all answered in article, so maybe read > it again?

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER11> I don't know that Hickel's title was a great choice of words, and I do expect he's being intentionally inflammatory, but it seems like you're getting completely hung up on very literal, possibly pedantic, interpretation of only a few of the exact words written, and ignoring the primary broad implications being made.

> The data says poverty is decreasing.

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

> So how can Bill Gates possibly be wrong?

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

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

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> So this report came out yesterday: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeti...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting- insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature).

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

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

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

<comment><USER32> Needlessly apocalyptic thinking.

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

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

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

<comment><USER56> Having no more insects is needlessly alarmist? What would be worrying to you if not that? Yikes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> The author nit-picks some of the numbers, noting that the poverty numbers prior to some date are unreliable. But this is all meaningless as the numbers aren't Pinker's point. The point is that society is getting richer and both relative and absolute poverty is dropping across the world.

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

But the author doesn't see that:

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

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER58> > _true. Those of us old enough remember a time where we didn 't have the > luxuries we have today. We had a choice of three channels on television, > paid exorbitant long distance fees to call our family abroad and rarely > traveled by plane. _

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

<comment><USER57> Home ownership rates in America are historically very high. It dipped since the peak in the pre 2008 when they were nearly 70% and is now around 65%. Pre- WW2 it was around 45%.

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

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> > *We can end poverty right now simply by making the rules of our global > economy fairer for the world's majority (I describe how we can do this in > The Divide, looking at everything from wages to debt to trade).

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

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

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

To neoliberalism! To the end of extreme poverty!

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

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

> {Summary begins}

> The West got rich by impoverishing the Rest.

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

<comment><USER60> Protectionism and controlled liberal policies brought China and the rest of the Asian Tigers to prosperity. Forced neoliberal policies is a curse on nascent economies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> >Remember, this is the period of the Belgian labour system in the Congo, which so upended local economies that 10 million people died – half the population. This is the period of the Natives Land Act in South Africa, which dispossessed the country's black population of 90% of the country. This is the period of the famines in India, where 30 million died needlessly as a result of policies the British imposed on Indian agriculture. This is the period of the Opium Wars in China and the unequal treaties that immiserated the population. And don't forget: all of this was conducted in the name of the "free market".

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

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

</comment><comment><USER44> England, what's with the clown show you've got going on at your unis? First the naked Brexit lady now this guy.

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

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER62> What's England got to do with this, and who's the naked Brexit lady?

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER44> _> They had little if any money, but then they didn't need it in order to live well – so it makes little sense to claim that they were poor._

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

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

<comment><USER63> If quality of life isn't a dollar amount then why aren't more people comfortable distributing dollars amongst the public?

<comment><USER44> I'll rephrase. It's not purely a dollar amount. It's what's available for you to do and buy with those dollars.

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


Show HN: Reality of running a [Bitcoin] hardware startup - <AUTHOR>

I am a long term supporter of Bitcoin, and have ordered a couple of specialized mining devices (ASICs) from a well-known individual of the Bitcoin community. This individual, Tom, is known for founding [BTCFPGA](http://btcfpga.com), which sells Bitcoin FPGAs and was one of the first to provide FPGAs to Bitcoin.
Recently, he started [BitcoinASIC](http://bitcoinasic.com) to launch ASICs to the Bitcoin mining market. There have been a couple companies who have promised to deliver ASICs, but none of them have delivered yet. Competition is fierce, as ASICs provide significant advantages in hashing power compared to GPUs, resulting in greater profits to miners.
Today, I was notified of an announcement of the founder stepping down and selling his equity to an Chinese manufacturer in response to not being able to meet shipping expectations.
I find this announcement relatively depressing, Tom had been very enthusiastic and hopeful attempting to have his company be the first to launch ASICs when he started. However from yesterday's announcement, the stress he had taken can be clearly reflected from his post. I also found [this article](http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/20/the-last-day/) relavent through the hard reality of startups.
Announcement link (also in comments; too long for here): https://www.btcfpga.com/forum/index.php?topic=954.msg2804#msg2804 <comment><AUTHOR> \--- actual announcement because doesn't fit in self post ---

I know - no one is happy about this

and I have a confession to make.

I have been dumping my blood sweat and tears into making this happen and perhaps I was in over my head

I thought I could put this together like I did with the ModMiner Quad obviously it was not and I was in WAY over my head

I fixed the post up from last night - so at least now its has a big of legibility

yes I had a few drinks before I posted that post (last night) - I was fucking heart broken, some of you look at my like im a fucking scammer and it kills me - I helped start some of the infrastructure Bitcoin runs on today, and have set many Bitcoin firsts and this idea couldent be farsest from the truth. Look at what ive done for Bitcoin over the last 3 years, I live and breath bitcoin and I love it.

Unfortunately this project was way over my head and I thought I can handle this the same way I handled-ed the ModMiner Quad project, obviously I was sorely wrong and I am so sorry I could not bring this project to market in a timely manner

But I swear to you and I give you my word I never meant to lie to you or tried to give anyone bad advice. I am sorry about my drunken (now fixed ) post from last night - I had a few drinks before that post because after receiving the bad news (about March) - this was the only way I knew how to deal with it. I am selling my share in BTCFPGA and it is now going to be owned by a asian company that is 100% sure of a March Delivery. if you are not interested in doing business with this company please feel free to filll out a refund request and we will refund your money is full. There is plenty enough money to make all of these refunds and I have been a pillar of this community for years, so please no panic. Anyone that wants a refund - they will receive one today. Please I ask you to please accept my apologize - if you can wait until March you will receive a superior ASIC mining device, if you lost your trust in me and my company than I dont blame you at all. But please understand I tried the best at the best of my ability and I can't take any of this anymore. I am not the right man for this job. Your new ASIAN benefactors will be online soon to greet you all and see where were are at and hopefully they can calm some of your nerves. They have the equipment to do most of these processes in house. They dont have to relay on sub contractors and deal with all these little problems that pop up in that process. They can fab pbcs, pick parts, soldering machines, the whole nine yards. You will be much happier with this company and with my out of the picture. Expect contact from them soon.

As for me im going to back to my web hosting business and my computer repair shop and live the simple life for awhile, enjoy time with my kids and please accept my apologies for not being the person you needed - the person who you needed to make his happen.

I will continue to sell modminer quads on <http://btcfpga.com> or mining and hobbyist uses on the side, and im going to try and live a happy life, I am sorry I let you down I really am and I hope the Asians took good care of you.

we are not going to scam anyone - if you request a refund you will receive it right away - if your willing to wait until March you will probably receive a better product than if you stick with me, thats just the reality of the situation.

sincerely with blood sweat and tears, Tom</comment>