This is a fascinating letter that helps combat some of the "doom and gloom" that's so prevalent in... well, everything.
I kept coming back to one thought while reading this: why are people so mistaken about Africa in particular? The article covers misconceptions all over the place, but it keeps coming back to Africa, and it seems that the disparity between what people think and what's actually the case is far larger there than anywhere else.
It would be easy to blame this on casual racism and move on. And I'm sure that's a factor. But there must be more.
I wonder if there might just be a cliff effect in people's perceptions. The perception of China, for example, changed rapidly from "shithole" to "where all our stuff is made". India quickly switched from "shithole" to "where our IT gets outsourced". (And reminder, I'm talking about perceptions here, specifically in the US, or possibly the western world as a whole.) I wasn't around for it, but I have the impression that more or less the same thing happened for e.g. Taiwan and Japan.
If that's the case, then Africa is still in the "shithole" perception category simply because we don't see much of them. Not much of our stuff comes with a "Made in Kenya" label on it, and our experience with IT-related outsourcing to Africa is mostly limited to Nigerian scammers. Once that changes, the perception will rapidly go from "those guys have no food" to "those guys are taking all of our jobs".
A counterpoint would be South America, which is not overall perceived as "shithole" but nor is it a place we interact with a whole lot.
Perhaps it's just mental inertia. The places that are changing most rapidly will be the most incorrectly perceived.
It's not totally wrong about Africa. HIV hit Africa like a sledgehammer, and stopped development cold for 20 odd years. 10 years ago, people had seen Sub Saharan Africa going backwards for a decade.
Plus, that was the 20 years when everyone looking for cheap labor went to China.
Now, they're much better at preventing and treating HIV. And China is going to Africa for cheap labor. So things are getting much better.
Also, Africa had the 3rd biggest war in human history[1], which probably didn't help development much. There was a major genocide and assorted other significant wars, all of which have been pretty much forgotten in the developed world.
This really is a nitpick and I don't mean to detract from your point in any way, nor from the horror of that war, but that war looks like it's quite a bit farther down the list from #3 in terms of death toll.
It's kind of shocking to take this list and sort it by number of deaths:
We're generally taught, at least implicitly, that the two World Wars were uniquely terrible. I'm assuming (and I certainly could be wrong, here) that this is the basis for your "3rd biggest" comment. But it's not really true. Even if you exclude long, ongoing events that aren't really single "wars", like the Mongol conquests, there are still some astonishingly deadly events farther in the past.
The An Lushan Rebellion is the one that amazes me the most, personally. It's one of the deadliest wars in history by absolute death toll, and since it happened so long ago (in the 8th century), that means it killed a huge portion of the world population at the time. The low estimates for deaths in that war amount to 5.5% of the population of the entire planet. The high estimate is over 15% of the world population.
And it's not the only one that rivals the World Wars. The Taiping Rebellion killed 20-100 million. And, well, you can see the list above. It's amazing how many of these things involve China. I mean, that's where all the people were, and thus the greatest potential for killing them, but even so it seems a bit excessive.
I still perceive India as a "shithole". Whereas China's elite has used its newfound wealth to finance widespread infrastructure and especially sanitation projects, India's has not, not on a mass countrywide scale. Fallen prey to coordination problems is the best gloss you can put on it but I still find it scandalous.
Second, South America's recent progress has mostly been under governments of the left, using more or less coercive statist means that neither the Gates Foundation nor the average HNer would endorse. But maybe it's worth considering.
It's easy to overstate how leftist many of the governments there are. Outside of Venezuela (and Cuba), I wouldn't consider anything they have done surprisingly or inappropriately leftist. Photo-ops with Chavez or Castro are meant more for domestic PR than anything policy related.
Right. And of course you have countries like Chile, which has the highest GDP per capita of any south american country and probably the most stable economy, all after adopting free market principals from Friedman. And some of these countries have grown, but to what extent? Where would Brazil be if it dropped it's insanely regulated state and bloated beauracracy and freed up its people? These countries are all still held back by their overbearing governments.
Chile is a terrible example of this; it has one of the higher levels of income inequality on that side of the continent and privatized education and health care. Private education in Chile is appalling; wealthy Chileans send their kids to study to the US or EU and the middle class that can't afford education sends them to Argentina or Brazil. Capital is concentrated on a few hands with a strong dependency on basic commodities exports with low added value. It's better than many places, but the GDP figures don't reflect the realities of a substantial amount of its population.
Are you just making stuff up? Chile has a public education system with voucher options, but almost all of the schools are publicly funded with voucher options, and even the private ones get government subisdies. And health care is a mix of public and private (like most countries) and free if you are over 60 or make a low income. So I think you are going to need to elaborate on those points a bit more
This "inequality" stuff is really getting annoying. The poor in Chile are far better off than other countries in the region, but because the rich are also richer somehow inequality is all that matters to some.
An enlightening example is to consider people's perceptions of New York City. The popular perception / comedian's perspective I remember of the 2000s was that NYC was also a shithole, where you would be mugged at the drop of a hat and everyone was murdered.
Of course, things were bad for a long time between early 80s and early 90s, but that wasn't the case by the time I moved there in 2003. I lived there for 4 years and never saw anything exciting, despite doing some dumb things. However, I had cousins, living in in New Jersey, who refused to take the subway or bus "'cause bad stuff happens there."
Actual anthropologists must surely have better ways of quantifying this, but it sure seems like negative popular perceptions of places lag at least 10 years behind reality.
Japan has been a relatively developed, industrialized country for a very long time, judging by the fact that they spent the 1930's and 1940's trying to conquer east Asia and were doing a decent job of it.
Postwar Japan was a different beast for quite a while. Weird Al Yankovic's line "don't you know that other kids are starving in Japan" was what parents used to guilt their kids into eating until Biafra happened. A "Made in Japan" joke was funny in the '50s and '60s because it was true, for the most part. "Toyota" was a word that to most people meant "poor bugger couldn't even afford a Beetle". My '71 Datsun (Nissan) pickup could barely reach highway speed (although it did have a sort of tractor-like utility about it) and I don't think there was a single original body panel left on it by '79. But the cameras weren't bad. And then the "miniature" electronics (a radio you could put in your pocket!) happened. It took a while to get back up to speed. Now people look for "Made in Japan" as a sign of quality instead of a warning.
There's a classic (and probably apocryphal) story about this, from the time when Japan was just starting to turn things around. I can't locate it (even though I'm sure it's out there) so I'll paraphrase and retype:
Back in the dark ages, when computers filled rooms and devoured power, IBM decided to take a risk and try outsourcing some electronics manufacturing to Japan to see how it would go. They put out bids with full specs and also specified a 3% defect rate, which was considered aggressively low at the time.
They found a willing Japanese supplier and manufacturing began. Some months later, the parts arrived in big crates. The IBM people cracked open the first one to find their parts inside, but some of them were off to the side in a separate compartment. A note was attached. "Dear sirs: our cultural differences make it so that we have difficulty understanding some of your requests, but we have done our best to do what you have asked. Here are the 3% defective parts as you requested, packaged separately for your convenience."
> Postwar Japan was a different beast for quite a while. Weird Al Yankovic's line "don't you know that other kids are starving in Japan" was what parents used to guilt their kids into eating until Biafra happened.
Sure, but that was largely due to the effects of WW2. Children were also starving in Germany and the UK in the postwar era.
It's an excellent piece. I'll admit to being a bit confused by the assertion, however:
> "letting children die now so they don’t starve later—doesn’t actually work, thank goodness. It may be counterintuitive, but the countries with the most deaths have among the fastest-growing populations in the world. This is because the women in these countries tend to have the most births, too."
I spent five months in Kenya, and a couple weeks with the Samburu tribe during a drought. All their animals were dead, piled up, because there were no more leaves to eat. We were driving a caravan of food to distribute in the region, since otherwise the people would have been next. And the dilemma was explained to me clearly: we can't just let people die. But it means we have to send food aid all the time now, unlike decades ago, because the population is simply larger than the land can support, except in its best years, and it makes the people essentially permanently dependent on outside aid.
So I'll admit to being stumped by what Melinda Gates means when she says that overpopulation isn't the result of aid. Simply asserting that "countries with the most deaths have among the fastest-growing populations in the world" doesn't explain anything -- it's just a correlation, and might very well be due to the fact that such countries already receive the most food aid, for example.
I'm certainly not arguing that I am against, or that anyone should be against, food aid. But I am utterly unconvinced by Melissa Gates saying that "saving lives leads to overpopulation" is a myth -- she doesn't substantiate it, and it seems like the weakest part of the whole post. It all depends on how you define overpopulation, but I just don't see it yet. Of course, rising income and education lowers birth rates in the future, but that doesn't change the simple fact that, at low levels of income and education, more food aid directly results in more people, which is often more than traditional local practices and agriculture can reliably and sustainably support.
"When children are well-nourished, fully vaccinated, and treated for common illnesses like diarrhea, malaria, and pneumonia, the future gets a lot more predictable. Parents start making decisions based on the reasonable expectation that their children will live."
The data seems to support the notion that healthier lives for children leads to a decrease in birth rate and family size. The size of the children population decreases as the overall quality of life for them improves because parents don't shotgun approach procreation. Also, from the piece, millions of women are unaware of contraceptives so as education increases so does the use of contraceptives.
I think the idea is that food aid isn't just being given out on its own but as part of a development strategy. I agree that just giving food isn't enough, and it's wrong to pretend that the drought is the problem and not the practices that resulted in a population dependent on favorable weather to live.
Hopefully, we feed the people now so that starving to death isn't their top worry, and societies with food security are more stable societies that can make improvements in other ways (on their own, or with help) which eventually lead to prosperity and independence.
Manhattan has more population than the land can support--the Manhattanites are entirely dependent on delivered food to survive, and have been for many generations. It's hopefully a permanent situation. Nobody worries about it because they've reached a place of development where they can just buy the food shipments instead of getting charity.
The plural of your anecdote is not data that contradict the Gates' assertions. What is meant by 'population larger than the land can support'? The requirement 'land can support' is valid for communities which rely on subsistence farming. But the very fact that your caravan went there with food means that they have other sources than just 'land'. Now, if in a few years, when their population has critical mass, it becomes commercially feasible for a company to truck food there and sell it, then the problem is solved. So your anecdote, or even a systematic study of just subsistence-farming communities cannot be used to contradict the Gates' association.
The point is that it's not like famines stop happening once a suitable number of people die. People keep reproducing, famines keep happening - the population bounces each time.
If you cut all food-aid, then you just set the boundary lower - and you know, condemn a bunch of people to a painful death. You don't solve the underlying problems - and it's worth nothing that this type of population bounce is very much the historical normal for human civilizations. Our ability to organize and plan is what alleviated it - and we were thorough since granary-like enterprises can be found in the ruins of every previous human civilization that has ever existed.
I think it is important to distinguish between the different method of aids and different causes of deaths here.
Let:
P1 = % of human population who live in tribes and will die in droughts
P2 = % of human population who are children, live in villages/urban areas, and will die without vaccinations/medicine
M1 = Multiplier for P1 (to replace the tribal people who died of hunger)
M2 = Multiplier for P2 (to replace the children who died due to lack of medication)
If we give food to P1 and medicine to P2, the population will be: 100%
If we don't do anything, Earth's population will be: 100% - P1 - P2 + M1xP1 + M2xP2
So basically if M1 or M2 are > 1, the population due to P1 or P2 will rise. M1 might be 0 if the entire tribe dies out. But it could be > 0 if another tribe now takes over the land. M2 is most likely > 1, even as much as 3-4 depending on the location as the letter pointed out.
This letter was primarily addressing P2 population. Sir David Attenborough has spoken out against foreign food aid for P1.
: we can't just let people die. But it means we have to send food aid all the time now, unlike decades ago, because the population is simply larger than the land can support, except in its best years, and it makes the people essentially permanently dependent on outside aid.
It is worth noting that the Samburu tribe is one of the smallest and live in the least sparsely populated area with the worst rainfall conditions.Central and Western Kenya are heavily populated and do not need food caravans to survive.
Basically, the problem you talk about has more do with the political complication of wealth distribution than with overpopulation.
People need food aid not because they are in a drought, but because they can't trade with the people who have the food. Solve that problem, and you solve the food problem. Lots of people live in inhospitable, drought stricken countries at a population level that the land itself could never support.
The key is in trade. The people have to develop something they can trade for food to escape from food aid.
Or virtually all of the Persian Gulf. Some of the fastest-growing populations, in what's empty desert without even sufficient water for cities let alone agriculture.
The economist's answer is that these regions have economic outputs (financial wizardry, advanced manufacturing, tourism, oil) which the rest of the world wants, and the rest of the world (which in the case of the Atlantic seaboard is largely the US's own inland agricultural regions -- breadbasket to the world) is willing to exchange its agricultural produce for those goods.
There's a difference between economic self-sufficiency and ecological self-sufficiency. Arguments can be made over which is preferable. Comparative advantage means that the economic argument leads to greater overall population and productivity, sustainability means the ecological argument leads to greater sustainability.
There's also that little matter that agriculture has largely transformed into a factory system for converting petrochemical energy to food energy via modest sunlight inputs.
Worrying about ecological self-sufficiency and sustainability at a smaller than planetwide scale is essentially throwing away the entire advantage of how much our massive global logistics network has shrunk the world in recent decades.
Relying on the massive global logistics network to support massively nonequilibrium populations in highly infertile land is counting on a patently unsustainable level of resource use to create a massive risk.
It's one thing to have local shortfalls of food or water of a few percent which can be satisfied with largely local imports of a few hundred kilometers (say, Germany, which is roughly 90% self-sufficient for food production). It's quite another to require massive imports of food and fresh water.
Economic efficiency is directly opposed to sustainability and risk.
> [...] is counting on a patently unsustainable level of resource use to create a massive risk.
Can you please elaborate? We sit on a giant ball of matter, and there's enough energy coming in from the sun (or via nuclear power) to last us a few billion years.
(And for anyone stumbling on this comment in the future -- I'm planning on substantially reorganizing that Wiki page though it should link to the appropriate sections).
The major issue with tapping solar power for high-grade electrical energy is whether or not it's possible to do so in a manner that sustains the ability to create that solar energy infrastructure and support technological life. EROEI, capital and maintenance requirements, and other resource limits all come into play.
The last time humans had a sustainable-energy based economy was 1700. The state of technology was markedly lower. If we return to that energy state, we should continue to have the benefit of scientific understanding gained since then (engineering, germ theory, metalurgy, sanitation, evolution, steam power, thermodynamics, electricity, chemistry, relativity, quantum mechanics, atomic physics, astronomy, electronics, pharmacology, aviation, rocketry), though how much of it we'll have the techological stack to support is another question.
Joseph Tainter, Charles Hall, Robert Ayres, Donna & Dennis Meadows, and William Stanley Jevons would make for some interesting reading.
Oh, and you've only got 800 million - 1 billion years: solar flux and/or C4 synthesis will mean the end of life as we know it. Life on Earth is past middle age. Even allowing for the lignin revolution and decomposer lag, that's barely sufficient time to replenish fossil fuel stocks for a do-over should humans fail.
The timescale of human evolution to date is on the order of 2 million years or so since we branched from our common ancestor with chimpanzees.
Somewhere around 80,000 years ago (plus or minus) we seem to have reached modern levels of cognitive ability, specifically, the capacity to keep 7 +/- 2 things in mind at the same time, as evidenced by the anthropological record -- stone artifacts and such.
Written history and most civilization spans roughly 6,000 years.
So, if you're looking at what "sustainable" might mean, I'd argue for somewhere within that timeframe. A minimum of 6,000 years, a reasonable upper bound of about 2 million.
For me the difference between economic and ecological self-sufficiency is that the economic system is a societal output and is malleable to a greater degree than the ecological.
"Don't send them food, move them out of the desert where nothing grows" might not be funny, it might not be accurate, but one could hardly call it disgusting...
No offense, but did you read the article? The point is that when children stop dying, parents stop having so many children. When the mortality rate goes down, the birth rate does too.
Parents want to have X kids. If Y kids are likely to die, parents must have at least X+Y kids to get what they want. That, combined with a general lack of knowledge/access about/to contraceptives means population growth. Make it so that kids stop dying and parents stop having the Y+ part of the equation. Educate and give access to contraceptives and you complete the puzzle. Contrary to popular belief</sarcasm>, women don't want to spend their entire lives being pregnant.
The Gates are quite correct that we shouldn't ordinarily worry too much if some of the aid is siphoned off into government corruption. But while if 2% of the money goes into the creation of some official's new manor that isn't too bad, there are much worse things that money can go to.
In the Great Lakes Crisis[1] the perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda were charging aid organizations for access to the the refugees they controlled. They were using the money to try to buy enough weapons to re-conquer Rwanda and finish what they had started. Most private aid organizations wisely decided they weren't willing to pay the genocidaires off, but the UN was willing to and the army of the new Rwandan government ended up invading to stop them, touching off the Congolese civil war.
Paying for access to refugees can also turn refugees into a de-facto lootable resource that can help sustain conflicts the same way that diamonds can.
Corruption in stable states isn't a huge problem for aid (development is another story), but it's interactions with aid are much worse in unstable areas.
The United States' news coverage concerning Africa perpetuates these myths.
It seems as if 95% of news stories focus on poverty, war and chaos in the continent. They rarely go so far as to differentiate among countries.
In fact, many African nations are great centers for innovation. Kenya and Nigeria spring to mind for higher education and mobile computing.
As a way of confronting condescending stereotypes, I have often fantasized about organizing a group of Nigerian school children to "help build a school somewhere in America" — a twist on the cliche trip that many U.S. students take to Africa — because education in some Nigerian cities is far superior to most U.S. high schools.
> As a way of confronting condescending stereotypes, I have often fantasized about organizing a group of Nigerian school children to "help build a school somewhere in America"
> because education in some Nigerian cities is far superior to most U.S. high schools.
Do you know that for sure though? Isn't it possible that you are drawing a conclusion on a far away place based on some events/cultural ideas that are provocative enough to make it to your screen as a topic of interest?
Isn't that the same thing you are complaining about, just in reverse?
I base that conclusion on a comparison of students' performance on various aptitude tests, the likelihood that they will go to college and the percentage of those who find jobs related to their fields of study.
>It seems as if 95% of news stories focus on poverty, war and chaos in the continent. They rarely go so far as to differentiate among countries.
I can't go a month without an FT special on Nigeria or Tanzania. This may be more a critique of the news sources you are exposed to than media as a whole.
The United States' news coverage of the United States makes it seem like a pretty horrible place that nobody would want to live in. Bias certainly plays into it, but the larger problem is the fundamental nature of news reporting. The central fallacy is the idea that watching the news is a way to become informed about what's happening in the world. That's utterly false, it only informs you of some of the more notable or unusual events in the world, while largely ignoring more complex and long term developments.
they aren't really myths. This is just ignoring the cause twice... so it seems right. remember, they 'sell' aid.
what happens is, country A explores country B. country B is now in misery. Country A now gives out aid, while continuing to explore. Country A is still making country B miserable, but now feeling good about it.
...And this institution, in exchange for tax breaks, have to sell you the idea that the last step is not bad. While blatantly ignoring that the cause is the first step.
Of course Aid is not bad. What is bad is that it is at that point to begin with. And we all know that giving out handouts is necessary, but hardly the solution to the problem they advertise.
I've been to Mexico City fairly recently, and I guarantee that in the right places -- possibly the same place the 1986 picture was taken -- you could take something very much like that 1986 picture today (which is perhaps even more tragic today, since its not just after the major earthquake). And I've seen Mexico City pictures just like that 2011 one, barring changes in fashion, from the 1980s. And even the 1960s.
On a bigger problem with Myth 1, not only are the pictures distortion, so is the main set of economic claims supporting the myth thesis they are meant to illustrate. Gates makes claims about "per person income", but the statistic he uses and treats as if it meant that is actually GDP per capita. Because much of the value of goods produced in developing countries is captured by foreign capital holders owning the firms doing the production, and because all that value extracted from the country's economy still shows up as part of the GDP of the country it is extracted from, GDP per capita, particularly in the developed world, is often very different than income per person.
I've lived in Mexico City a couple years and visited regularly since 1997.
Things have changed drastically in the last seventeen years. Statistics show that they changed even faster between 1985 and 1997, but I didn't see that.
The middle class has been growing at an astonishing pace. Vast swathes of Azcapotzalco, Xochimilco, and even Iztapalapa that were poor and backwards are now prosperous, clean, and exciting. The fashionable neighborhoods in Coyoacán, Polanco, and the Roma have become outright opulent. The Historic Center is neat, safe, popular, and crowded at all hours with local and international botiques and restaurants.
You can clearly see the mountains Chiquihuite from downtown and El Águila from Coyoacán nearly every day now. In 1997, the mountains around the city were more like rumors behind the pollution. Last month, I actually saw Iztaccihuatl and Popocatépetl from the center of the valley. Out by the canals of Cuemanco, local wildlife biologists tell me that the water is cleaner, the population of birds is increasing again, and recovery programs for the aquatic axolotl are working.
High school graduation and college completion rates have been skyrocketing. New universities are spreading and growing across the valley. Education is especially important because Mexico City college graduates live nearly as well as American college graduates. The income gap is in the working classes without credentials.
GDP per capita is misleading, so let's consider personal income. Housing and transportation and meals cost about a quarter as much as in the USA for the middle class. That's about 80% of a typical budget. Cops and public administrators with good educations are now making US$10k to start and programmers and engineers around US$20k. The median household income in Benito Juarez county, with about 600k people and no fashionable rich areas, is approaching US$30k. The neighboring parts of Coyoacán, Miguel Hidalgo, Álvaro Obregón, and Cuauhtémoc counties are richer.
So I really endorse the Gates's impression of development success in Mexico City.
that's why is better to use Purchasing Power Parity indexes, for example Mexico is 14th in Nominal GDP with 1,183B USD, but in PPP terms it is the 11th with 1,758B USD. The country as a whole has a GDP per capita PPP of 15K USD, but Mexico City has a GDP per capita PPP of 44K USD. It's a very big country with a lot of inequality between urban and rural population.
Bill Gates is not saying that everywhere in Mexico City is like the picture on the right.
"There are still slums and pockets of poverty, but by and large when I visit there now I think, “Wow, most people who live here are middle-class. What a miracle.”"
Sadly, I don't understand what you are saying in your second paragraph. I don't see how your criticism refutes Myth 1 "Poor Countries are Doomed to Stay Poor"? Take a metric, look at it over time. Watch it change. That's exactly what Bill Gates did in his piece.
I'm not refuting that the myth is a myth (though I think its more of a strawman that Gates attacks poorly than a myth), I'm pointing out that Gates particular attempt to argue from so-called "income per person" trends (that starts with mistreating GDP per capita as "income per person") line of argument against the "myth" is fundamentally flawed.
I don't think poor countries are "doomed to stay poor". But I don't think Gates attacks on that supposed myth (which I don't think is really a particularly dominant belief) are very good, and particularly I don't think they support the alternative thesis he is presenting to the "myth" (which seems to nbe not merely that they aren't "doomed to stay poor", but that the "poor" countries are in fact not poor now.)
> Take a metric, look at it over time. Watch it change. That's exactly what Bill Gates did in his piece.
Except that the metric he takes (which he attempts to conceal by presenting it as something it is not) includes wealth extracted from the nation to other nations, as well as income earned in the nation, so it isn't actually a good measure to show whether the poor nations are actually getting less poor over time.
Taking a metric that doesn't actually measure the thing you are using it to measure is, well, wrong.
Another issue with GDP is that it increases as an artifact of marketization, independently of changes to efficiency or standard of living produced by marketization. If two people each cut their own lawn, this contributes $0 to GDP. If they swap so that each mows the other person's lawn for $5, GDP goes up! If they each hire the other person as childcare to watch their own kids while cutting the other person's lawn, GDP goes up even more! This is because GDP does not include non-paid productive work, so simply making it paid increases GDP (even if actual production goes down).
Some of these shifts might improve welfare, but GDP increases regardless of whether they do or not, just by putting dollar figures on existing activity. A government really wanting to artificially boost GDP could give it a big boost by mandating that each parent take care of a different parent's kids for N days a week instead of their own, at a government-fixed rate of pay. The payments in each direction net out, childcare probably does not improve, and GDP goes up.
I see what you're saying. However, I wouldn't attribute to malice "attempts to conceal by presenting it as something it is not" what could otherwise be explained by the difficulty in getting a different globally available metric. GDP per capita is a metric that is globally available from reputable sources.
Is there a different globally available metric from reputable sources that you would suggest?
> However, I wouldn't attribute to malice "attempts to conceal by presenting it as something it is not" what could otherwise be explained by the difficulty in getting a different globally available metric.
Using GDP per capita can be explained by its ready availability compared to better measures.
Calling it "income per person", which it very much is not (and not, in explaining what metric you are actually using, noting the very significant way in which it is not "income per person"), cannot be explained that way.
You skipped over the quote where he explicitly calls that out.
Additionally don't most measures of GDP explicitly exclude those cases where the money is immediately siphoned out of the country?
In either case it is usually true that GDP and income per person are at least linearly related, meaning the kinds of comparisons he is doing are valid, since he is comparing the numbers within a country. The scale of growth may be off by little bit, but the fact that growth occurred is still true.
This should be titled "Strawmen that block progress for the poor". Few serious thinkers actually believe any of those supposed myths.
Not one word about the exploitation of labor and natural resources in "poor nations" by rich nations (&corporations). Not one word about economic sanctions imposed on several poor nations by the US and its allies.
Gates sounds like the optimist against a world of cynics, but he ignores major reasons why these nations are poor in the first place.
In regards to "people believe the world is getting worse", is mostly Americans and the US media. I believe things are getting worse, or at least harder for the majority of Americans; not the rest of the world.
Unemployment, large disparity in wealth, massive problems with debt (student debt), and highly dysfunctional political system. Americans see things as getting worse, here at home. We don't really focus on the rest of the world.
"Creating societies where people enjoy basic health, relative prosperity, fundamental equality, and access to contraceptives is the only way to secure a sustainable world."
I suppose I'm one of the 0% (rounded) who disagree with putting contraception in this list. When this gets thrown around, it makes me feel like an outsider in a programming community where I otherwise agree with probably everything else.
Access to contraceptives allows people who do not intend to have children, but engage in sex, to remain childless.
No access to contraceptives means that people who do not intend to have children, but engage in sex, will have children. These children will be unintended or unwanted and may not be cared for either through disinterest or lack of ability to provide for them.
A child who grows up in that sort of circumstance is not kept safe, may succumb to disease, may spread disease, will not be educated, and will have difficulty providing for themselves.
A common rebuttal is that people should just not engage in sex if they are not intending to have children. This is maybe ideal in some moral frameworks, but whether it's ideal or not, it's not the reality. The reality is that some people will engage in sex anyways, and some people will be forced to engage in sex against their will. While it might be a goal to prevent these things from occurring, the reality is that they occur, and methods to mitigate the negative impacts of their occurrences are better than just finger-wagging.
That said, if your argument is more along the lines of "The Pope says that it is wrong, and the Pope espouses God's will." then I can't really refute it. I can just disagree.
In any case, if people can choose whether they want to have a child or not, then contraception just helps them make that choice. If they shouldn't engage in sex for non-childbearing reasons, then they can struggle with that decision as well. However, when succumbing to that results in an unwanted childbirth, it does more than just punish the parent, it now involves the child and the whole community.
My line of reasoning behind my position is complex and can't be simplified into a bite-sized form that can be defended in a HN thread. Especially considering my original point: I'm one of the 0%; there's no chance for a fair debate.
I think it's fair to expect at least an attempt, given that you felt strongly enough to post your first comment. Without context, it boils down to "I have an opinion." Not surprising people would ask you to expand on that.
There certainly isn't if you make a statement and then refuse to say why you made it. People discuss complex stuff on HN regularly, surely the complexity of the argument cannot be higher than exists in some of the maths threads.
"A child who grows up in that sort of circumstance is not kept safe, may succumb to disease, may spread disease, will not be educated, and will have difficulty providing for themselves."
A person's life is far more than just how they start out. Many people have started in situations like this and have gone on to have wonderful lives. Many have even changed the world. This alone isn't enough to convince me that we should give in to short-sightedness by allowing people to prevent or destroy future human lives.
"In any case, if people can choose whether they want to have a child or not, then contraception just helps them make that choice."
In the same way that it's smart to invest money long-term, I think it's smart to invest in long-term human potential. I think that's really our greatest resource.
It seems that many people are intent at proving your original point, which is sad, but not entirely unexpected I guess.
Regardless, I agree 100% with this comment of yours. I can't extend the rational to not supporting contraceptives, however. To me it doesn't connect.
Allowing a young couple to increase their earnings/career potential by delaying childbirth directly relates to making the smart investment over the long term, as you relate. I should know, as I've done this myself. My children are much better off now and in the long term with a solid roof over their heads and two loving parents in a committed marriage than they ever would have been with a 20 year old father who was in the army and dating a woman that really wasn't good for him at all.
Your intentions don't seem to connect with the methods you are suggesting; I don't see any issue with your intentions however.
Welp, my brain is shutting down, so I can't respond to half the stuff you just said.
But I wanted to thank you for being so courteous and kind in your responses. Turns out you and I disagree, but somehow we figured it out in a positive and constructive way. That's pretty awesome.
Indeed, and I've found HN is (for the interwebs at least) pretty tolerant of unpopular opinions, provided there is substance behind them.
Regardless I hope you never feel burdened at sharing your opinions again. You and I are very different in our experiences and backgrounds, that much I can deduct easily. It's a respectful difference of opinion though that allows each of us to grow.
Preventing the creation of a life is not the same as destroying it. Many Christian groups conflate contraceptives with abortion in order to further their cause. Pay attention to this.
I have confidence in the malleability of human nature. We can adapt to new situations and still thrive. Change isn't always bad nor does it "destroy" life, even if it seems painful at first.
I don't. My life is pretty great by probably all standards. You're right. But we're all entitled to form our own views of how the world works best, and to discuss it peaceably with others. I think that's kind of the spirit of HN (except usually it's applied towards more technological things).
I have been married for about 20 years now (with a little hiatus between marriages). Had we not used any contraceptive methods, I'd have about 20 children. While it could be argued that propagating my genes would be in the best interest of mankind, I think that 20 kids would be way too much. Of the various contraceptive methods we used, every one of them prevented fecundation and, therefore, not a single life was lost to them. This is not destruction of life, but the means to prevent its creation.
People are entitled their own religious ideas, but nobody has the right to impose those values on someone else. If giving access to contraceptives to someone who wants them will make lives better, I'm in favor.
Having a larger number of humans disregarding our ability to feed and educate them is cruelty, pure and simple. It's not investing in human potential unless you are able to ensure all of them live to their fullest potential.
"People are entitled their own religious ideas, but nobody has the right to impose those values on someone else."
Actually we do in most democracies, just in the form of a vote. The reason behind our votes are almost always "religious", even if they aren't explicitly so. For example, the statement: "If giving access to contraceptives to someone who wants them will make lives better, I'm in favor." That's based on a belief that you hold, that you can't prove one way or another.
Why would that be wrong outside a specific set of religious values? It's not atheists (or the defenders of a secular state) that should prove a religion wrong. It's the participants in that religion that should prove their deity exists and its moral code should be applied to everyone regardless of their opinion.
I'm not saying anything like that. I'm just saying that in a democracy, individuals vote based on their world-views. Sometimes that world-view is informed by a religion, sometimes it's informed by "spirituality", or sometimes by something else. But whatever it may be, a person's world-view is always informed by ideals that can't be proven one way or another.
I have to disagree. Ideals informed from religions cannot be proven (they could, actually, if the deities cooperated, but, while they don't, there can't be proof) but decisions informed by scientific knowledge can and that's a very important difference.
That's unrelated to my point. I'm not talking about science or religion. I'm saying that everyone holds some unprovable views about how society works best, and they cast their votes based on these ideals, whether they're religious or not.
>I suppose I'm one of the 0% (rounded) who disagree with putting contraception in this list.
That's because access to contraceptives has been shown to provide a wide range of benefits. From reducing poverty, prevention of STDs, increasing maternal health (from unsafe abortions, and increasing inter-pregnancy interval), reinforcing women's rights and allowing for proper family planning.
>When this gets thrown around, it makes me feel like an outsider in a programming community where I otherwise agree with probably everything else.
You should, because there really is no downside. The only objections to contraceptive access are religious in nature, and we can safely discard those. It's kind of like being on the Jenny McCarthy side in the vaccine 'debate' - sometimes you're just wrong.
Sometimes things are arguable and debatable, and sometimes the evidence is stacked on one-side so much that a contrary position is irrational.
Contraceptive access is a cornerstone of health policy in every developed nation. It has been endorsed by WHO and every study done has implicitly or explicitly has supported this position. What are the odds sdegutis has a good reason to object?
Being able to understand and interpret evidence properly is not a universally held trait. That has implications on both sides of any debate. Related note: I often wonder how many people are victim to argumentum ad populum.
On the other hand, sometimes when you find yourself, alone, on the wrong the side of the debate, it may make sense to at least rethink your assumptions and consider that you may be wrong. Maybe the debate isn't actually there. Maybe all those well-meaning public health-policy writers at the WHO and at the national levels have a point. At the very least, maybe consider that pragmatic realities trump religious ideologies.
Besides, I've read your arguments in other threads. They are backwards, destructive (if actually implemented as public health policy) and have no basis in actual reality (your only argument is a hand-waving 'every-POTENTIAL(!!)-human-life-is-precious'). There is a reason why you, Jenny McCarthy and Ken Ham find yourself outsiders by the 'establishment' with your respective positions.
I'm not sure how I can do that. If he has a conscientious objection that's his right. I neither can nor want to force him to change it. It's a free (speech) country after all. However, I reserve the right to call this objection deranged, insane or stupid. That's my right.
Which is defined as being a personal choice, not one you get to force onto others. Which is what they advocate - using their position of privilege to deny the choice to others.
Seems pretty negligible compared to the one that mandates people to pay for unjustified foreign wars, incarcerating people because they put a certain molecule into their own bodies, etc.
There's an argument to be made against taxation there, but if we're going to have it, you should probably start with the better part of a trillion dollars Americans pay each year for killing brown people (or building the capability to kill them in the future), rather than the relatively negligible amount spent on contraception.
It still amazes me that people can make a fuss about being forced to pay for contraception with their tax dollars but those same people have no problem with their tax dollars being spent on war.
It's not worth debating over, but there's clearly a difference in category between drug laws, war policy, and philanthropic aid programs. Opting out of war funding sounds great, but I'm not sure how that would work. As far as drugs, it's harder but we could make drug prohibitions state laws and let people move or make changes at the state level.
Philanthropic aid programs, on the other hand, are clearly optional (even if they are amazingly beneficial). If minorities object to contraception, let them opt out of paying for it on their tax form or something. And let other people choose to pay triple. Like you said, it's not a lot of money, so I don't know why we should grief a minority of people on this point.
I don't understand what this supposed difference is. In what way are government aid programs optional that war and drug laws aren't? Why does it make sense to allow people to opt out of one but not another?
You say "clearly", but it's definitely not, at least not to me.
My objections to opting out of war policy and drug laws were practical. Nations must be able to fight wars. Drugs must be regulated (if only to establish civil liability). I don't see how an individual can practically opt out of at least funding those things. Humanitarian aid, however noble, is not essential like war policy, and it's not inevitable like drug regulations. I can go into more detail, but it's fairly off topic.
I am interested in finding ways to let people live their consciences in the face of unjust wars and laws. One way is to make more decisions at the local level and then people can move if they get really fed up with policies. This doesn't work with war policy, but it can certainly work with drug prohibitions and humanitarian aid programs. I don't see why the city of Tampa Bay couldn't legalize marijuana and send millions of condoms to southern Asia or southern Africa.
I agree that national defense is a necessity, but I don't think the ability to blow up huts on the other side of the planet is a necessary component to that.
Similarly, while I agree that regulating drug manufacture is a necessity, regulating drug consumption is not.
So there's first an argument from degree. It's not as simple as "Nations must be able to fight wars." Details matter a great deal, and I think a case could be made that even if war-fighting is necessary, the vast majority of what we currently spend on it is unnecessary and immoral.
Further, who decides what's necessary? I imagine a hard-core pacifist would argue that national defense is not actually a necessity. That same person might argue that access to good health care, including contraception, is a fundamental human right and therefore funding that is a necessity. Why should someone be forced to pay for anything they find immoral and unnecessary, even if you happen to think it's necessary?
My own response to that would be that some people are simply wrong about that, and allowing people to opt out of things they feel are unnecessary and immoral simply wouldn't work. The good thing about government is that it allows us to take collective actions that benefit us all but would fall victim to things like the free rider problem if they were funded voluntarily. But then we need some way of collectively deciding what's worth funding through government and forcing people to pay for, and what's not.
And this really just puts is back where we started. We have to fund some things, and no matter what they are, some taxpayers will feel that those things are unnecessary and immoral. That, I think, indicates that "I shouldn't be required to pay for things I find immoral" is not a good argument.
As one of those people who doesn't want my tax dollars spent on war, I have no idea what more I can do to stop it from happening. As far as I can tell, the government will spend my money on whatever it wants to, and I have no control over it.
There's plenty of room for debate and argument, but ultimately the whole point of taxes is that you don't get to decide what they're spent on. If this stuff worked when everyone decided for themselves, we wouldn't need taxes in the first place. The good thing is that it means we can pool our resources and e.g. build a bridge that none of us would individually contribute towards, but then we get bad stuff too.
For the record, I don't agree with you about contraception. I'm all for building wells in Africa and setting bins of free condoms right next to them.
But people started talking about force, and the only force I can see in this case is the IRS (or the equivalent).
I'm frankly dismayed that HN seems so opposed to conscientious objection in this case. I presume it's an irrational prejudice against different (or maybe particular?) ethical worldviews.
They're just taking the mindset of: "Such and such things are inherently wrong, and I'm 100% certain that I'm right about this; therefore anyone who disagrees about it is an enemy to humanity and the common good, and therefore must be silenced and must not be allowed to affect legislation."
That's all they're doing. And it's understandable. But that's not the part I take issue with.
My objection may stem from religious beliefs, but that isn't to say it isn't arguable from non-religious standpoints.
People use a hill of solid reasoning with a kernel of faith at very the bottom (kind of like the L4 microkernel family), whether that faith is in religion or something else. At the end of the day, everyone's argument will always come down to "I just think that's how the world works best."
I am arguing for it without appealing to religion, but my replies are kind of scattered and drowned out by requests for them. This whole thread is really hard to navigate. Shouldn't have started it out the way I did. Lesson learned.
No, you're stating your opinion without appealing to religion, but you haven't argued for it at all.
Basically, you stepped into a community that heavily leans atheist and rationalist, stated an opinion based on religion that the community disagrees with, and said that this makes you feel like an outsider. All I can say is, duh. And if you aren't interested in actually defending that opinion, what is the point? As far as I can tell, you were just looking for a little hit of persecution and martyrdom.
3 so obviously follows from 1 that anyone who thinks contraception is a good thing clearly does not believe 1. It's so direct that it doesn't really qualify as an argument, but merely a restatement of the original position.
It's like saying that spheres are good, and when asked why, saying that they're three-dimensional and round, and three-dimensional round things are good. Is that an argument? I don't really think so. An argument is where you state your reasoning in such a way that it could, at least potentially, convince the other person. Merely stating one of your opinions that happens to be related to another of your opinions doesn't qualify.
Personally, for #1, I don't think there's anything good or bad about a birth. More or fewer births, by themselves, don't matter. They take on good or bad qualities based on the context in which they happen. Preventing a birth before anything related even happens is not by itself good or bad, it's just something that happens. I'd wager most of the others on the "pro-contraception" side think likewise.
> It's so direct that it doesn't really qualify as an argument.
Do you see how that cuts both ways?
The original point was about disagreeing, on ethical grounds, with the idea that contraceptives are essential parts of sustainability initiatives. There really isn't a good counterargument to that objection since both sides really rest on qualitative opinions.
I thought I gave some good support for my position. The alternatives are contraception, killing people, or an Earth covered deep in human beings. That seems like a fine counterargument to me. It may not necessarily work, but it's at least an argument.
There's nothing wrong with arguing on ethical grounds, but you need to actually show how something is ethical, not just say "it just is" as is effectively being done here.
I don't think philosophical arguments are very alien to HN. They're usually just applied to different problems, like what the best programming paradigm is, or how security should best be implemented in the kernel, or what's the best attitude to found your start-up on, etc.
I thought I was. Which means there's a disconnect somewhere, either in your brain or mine. I won't venture to guess which, considering it could be in mine, rendering my reasoning invalid. (Assuming that makes sense.)
Are we talking about individual incidents or the overall impact on the economy?
The health impacts of contraceptives are insignificant compared to the benefits.
To put it another way, look at how expensive kids are in the developed world. Now think about handling that expense when you are part of the extreme poverty bracket. The economic benefit of not having kids when you don't want them is huge.
Sustainability means keeping the population at a consistent level. Otherwise, exponential growth means that the planet is eventually covered in humans to a depth of 50ft, and nobody wants that.
There are only two ways to accomplish this: having fewer children, or killing more people. The latter is what has historically dominated, but we've become so much better at keeping people alive in the last couple of centuries or so that it's no longer working. That aside, many people find that solution to be tasteless.
That leaves having fewer children. Contraception is the only way to accomplish this. Yes, technically it is possible to accomplish this by avoiding sex. But socially, this doesn't work, because people simply don't do that. Contraception, however, does work.
It's the only available solution to a serious problem, and that's why it's on the list.
Could you please point out what part of that supports the idea that a leveling off of the population would be possible without contraceptives?
Both of the replies I've received so far appear to completely misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not saying the population will grow without limit no matter what. I'm saying that contraceptives are vital to avoiding that. Which is not at all contradicted by the fact that our world appears to be headed for zero population growth, because our world contains readily available contraceptives.
> Both of the replies I've received so far appear to completely misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not saying the population will grow without limit no matter what.
Point taken. I'm sorry, and you're right, I don't disagree with anything you actually said.
> Sustainability means keeping the population at a consistent level. Otherwise, exponential growth means that the planet is eventually covered in humans to a depth of 50ft, and nobody wants that.
But the third myth section covers your proposed malthusean explosion, and declares that it's not a valid concern.
"In Southeast Asia and Latin America, average fertility dropped from six or seven children per woman to two or three in a single generation, thanks in large measure to the modern contraceptives available by the 1960s."
The article is talking about our world, which is one in which contraceptives are widely available. We can't really look at alternate realities in which there are rich countries with no contraceptives and see how their birth rates fared, but I see no reason to assume they would drop, because people will still have sex.
The Malthusian explosion is not a valid concern precisely because of contraception.
Of the many replies to this post, this is the best response (so far) because it promotes discussion instead of trying to presume, argue, or pre-emptively invalidate sdegutis's opinion.
I think you mean forthcoming. I think he was initially fairly straightforward (forthright) about saying he didn't want to state his position (not being forthcoming).
It's a pedantic point, but there are implications about the character of the person you're talking about.
Good point, although I didn't even notice, and I'm probably the one who could have taken offense at it. So I guess my ignorance worked out as a win this time?
I can't. Not because I don't have legit reasoning (I'm convinced I do). But for a far more interesting reason: I'm one of the 0% in this community who hold this position. This means there's no chance for a fair debate. Socially speaking, I think this is far more interesting than my disagreement itself.
EDIT: Ignore this, I have already responded. See the rest of the thread.
No, you are making your opinion seem far worse by not even bothering to explain your reasoning.
You make it sound like you would be a victim. HN may be biased in it's views by and large but if you don't even try to explain yourself, you give the impression that you are even more ignorant of others views than the ~100% are of yours.
This belittles your argument in a way nobody else could even approach.
When someone asks you why you have come to a conclusion, they are looking to understand you. That is automatically counter to your assertion that there "is no chance for a fair debate".
More people disagreeing with you than agreeing with you is not the measurement of the validity of your opinion. There are many things that I believe that I know are unpopular but I still believe them, and if you ask me why, I will give you my reasoning.
Basically stating that you have no reason (or do but refuse to share it) is something that is bound to be ridiculed, and deservedly so, since it doesn't demonstrate a thought process at all.
I encourage you to share your reasons, so that we may understand your point of view better.
You're right in that holding a position that is extremely divergent from the consensus view is an interesting place to be.
I don't know if that necessarily follows that having a "fair" debate is impossible. There's nothing unfair about a majority of people disagreeing with you. Objective truth isn't determined by majority vote.
It is unfair to say "you're the only one who thinks that, so you must be wrong" but I don't see any of that happening here. If anything, I see a lot of "you're the only person who has expressed this opinion, I'm curious to know why that is?"
I'm thinking more of those who fall prey to the argumentum ad populum, and inspired with that confidence, they cite respectable-looking sources and consider them to be irrefutable proof. These people always win their arguments.
Interesting perspective, I would say that almost nobody ever actually wins an argument. Nor do I think that winning an argument is even a meaningful goal, especially online.
The best that you can hope to do is make a new and interesting point that will resonate with someone. Don't be afraid to do that. Even when you're wrong.
You're totally wrong on the contraception thing, by the way :)
I agree. I wasn't here to "win" any argument or debate. And the reason I didn't expound on my position at first was to avoid those who are.
And I know I'm right about the contraception thing. But exploring this open communication between people who disagree with me is much more important to me than having yet another going-nowhere debate about ethics and morals.
So you're saying it's interesting that you assume your point will be shot down? Assuming the reception of your viewpoints HN does nothing except suggest that you don't really have any reasoning at all, but want to frame yourself as a victim.
My position on birth control comes from seeing human life as something worth bringing into the world. There are so many wild cards, so many variables, that all these "but what if" arguments aren't convincing to me.
In terms of resource depletion, I'm confident that the human race is capable enough to solve its major sustainability problems without stifling this major source of creative and resourceful potential.
Why not take that to it's logical conclusion? If having kids is such a positive effect overall, to the point where people shouldn't be allowed to have sex without natural chances of procreation, why not require them to have kids? Why not fine people that are not procreating?
I don't understand the point of saying producing more human life is so important, it's worth robbing people of the freedom to decide how to live their lives. That it's worth more than the personal and societal issues arising from having unwanted kids.
If making babies is such a moral imperative that trumps so many other considerations, then it seems you've got some contradictions if your position doesn't include always strongly encouraging people to have more kids.
That's taking the wrong understanding of my point. I'm not saying the choice should be taken away on a personal level. In fact it's central to my point that individuals should have the choice. Which is why I'm arguing against giving the choice on a societal level, because there are long-term ramifications of doing so, which include implicitly biasing the choice of individuals within future generations towards not having children.
No one is suggesting that societies mandate contraceptives, simply give them the choice and education. Along the lines of "hey, if you're barely surviving, and already have 3 children, you may want to reconsider getting pregnant right now".
How is that not a personal choice?
"implicitly biasing" sounds like you're saying societies shouldn't offer full technology and knowledge, because people might make decisions you don't agree with. Please clarify.
I explained it better somewhere else on this thread. I don't fully know what HN etiquette is (I'm new here) but I assume it's probably in bad taste for me to copy/paste it into several different replies.
Contraception doesn't stop people being able to have kids, it allows them to have sex without having kids if they want to.
Out of interest, do you want to see contraception restricted in the areas where it is already widely available, or just restricted for the people who do not yet have that access?
"Contraception doesn't stop people being able to have kids, it allows them to have sex without having kids if they want to."
I can't agree. I'm not saying it physically and literally stops them. But it does create an artificial separation that makes it more alluring to choose sex sans children.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you somehow saying that procreation should be more or less random? That it's better if people don't get to decide when they will have children?
What's your opinion of people who choose to remain celibate?
On an individual level, people can choose to have or not have children. That's not really what I'm getting at.
My point is more about the collective mental separation between sex and having children. When children grow up in a society where you can have sex without having children, the default is to just have sex with no regard to this consequence. The thought of having children occurs less and less often. In fact, it often encourages a fear of having children, which suddenly taunts in the form of a life-ruining "accident".
This is the kind of mental "artificial" limiting that I'm concerned about. It's not about the choice itself, it's about making one choice the default.
How would you triage what you're saying against preventing the spread of HIV which, according to the WHO, is greatly helped by condom use?
Would your solution be abstinence?
I've read each of your replies, and it honestly seems to me that you're not treating the subject like these are real people. Additionally, that you would prefer to make their decisions for them.
High minded ideas have a definite place, but until the entire world is up to the standard of living of a mid 20th century working class America, it's hard to see anything else as a priority.
If I may ask a question, do you believe your religion is influencing your views on this subject? Anecdotally, there aren't many non religious people that hold similar views, but correlation is not causation.
Yes, religion is influencing my views. I am first and foremost a Catholic (although a pretty crappy one who's always in a state of mortal sin). And the Catholic Church teaches that birth control is objectively and inherently offensive to God.
But I don't argue from that angle because all of God's truths are rooted in common sense and logic. They aren't just some random rules or decrees that are disconnected from reality and meant to make people's lives harder. They can all be argued for rationally and without needing to appeal to the supernatural for a good long time. It's like a mountain of logic built on a kernel of faith.
8 Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” 9 But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. 10 What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.
It is the main biblical reference for the Catholic Church's position on contraception. It is the very kernel of faith that the mountain of logic you were claiming is built on. What are you standing by, if not scripture?
My position on birth control comes from seeing human life as something worth bringing into the world.
I agree with the view that human life is something worth bringing into the world; but don't you think there's value in letting people choose when they bring human life into the world?
Most people I know want to have kids -- just not yet.
I'm not arguing against the personal choice aspect of this. Just that it changes a culture's attitude toward having children, creating an unfair bias against it in future members of society.
Personally, I don't think this is great danger. The urge to have children is tremendously strong - it's primary purpose of our evolutionary dna, after all!
Although I'm a father of two, I look around me and I see that we could probably benefit more as a society if fewer people didn't bow to that pressure to procreate. Most people that choose not to have children are doing so for very good reasons (whether it is "not now" or "never").
Perhaps you are influenced by an immediate circle that shares a rather harsh view of children, but I can tell you that from my experiences, there is rather little bias in our society against the next generation directly - I will allow that we do a lot of things that indirectly cause harm to our children, and theirs.
I probably wasn't clear on what I meant by "creating an unfair bias against it in future members of society".
When children grow up in a world where sex doesn't automatically mean children, it biases them towards having sex without having children, and prevents them from considering the option of children as often as they naturally would have. This violates the integrity of future generations, implicitly taking away some amount of their individual personal choice.
That's an interesting stance that I see no evidence to support. The urge to procreate is tremendously powerful. In many cases it is even more powerful that the urge for sex, believe it or not. I think you are massively understating it.
Now, this may not seem likely when you look at those in their 20s, but it jumps out at you if you look at those in their 40s. It's so bad that it actually leads to all sorts of loveless marriages and bad situations - particularly for women worrying about "running out of time". These are first world problems though.
What the third world problems are is children being born far to soon for the parent to become established - financially, emotionally, and spiritually, if you will. This leads to less than ideal environments for children to be raised, and as a result a poorer 'end product', if you will.
You've got to remember that many third world countries do not have the options and environment we do in the first world. A "pro-contraception" message isn't needed here. When the default is switched however, and you have the procreation urge matched with little to no knowledge of contraception at all, you have a far greater negative effect than what you are concerned with.
"and as a result a poorer 'end product', if you will."
I guess this is where we differ. I think a person's actions are far more important than anything incidental like income or health. Thus it's much less relevant where, when, or how they're born.
Better Income and/or Health begets better actions, generally. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a real thing.
It's rather difficult to be noble when you are starving. That isn't to say it's impossible, but if we are talking about increasing odds of success, it is true.
I'm concerned with enabling people to become better than what they are now. All people. Regardless of their mistakes, the mistakes of their great grandparents or their particular luck in the geography lottery. Can you say you are for the same? Because although you are presenting that outwardly, in detail it seems you are content with enforcing an unequal distribution of hardship based primarily on an ignorance of the human struggle outside of small town USA.
I'm always very wary of people and opinions that suggest suffering is beneficial, particularly when such suffering is notably absent from their own lives.
I have two (planned, lovely, adorable, whatever) children and while I adore them and am proud of what I'm doing, raising kids well (or at least as well as I'm able) is hard. Very hard. I mean, it's so hard that the very idea of compelling other people to do it when they haven't chosen to seems extremely immoral.
Human life is our ultimate resource, for creative potential and resourcefulness and social fulfillment. It seems like we shouldn't squander this resource just because it can seem inconvenient at times. Taking the long view, collective humanity can probably ultimately solve all the "but what if" scenarios that are touted as justifications to stifle human life.
That's a sound argument, and I agree with it, but I'm having trouble linking that to contraception.
You and I are both a result of chance. To the level that your grandparents decided to have sex at 7PM instead of 7AM, and that your grandmother didn't shift to the right afterwards, allowing a different sperm to be "the fastest".
Is our existence a denial of the person that would have been created had the other fact occurred? That's a rather strange position to take.
Conversely, suggesting contraception is squandering our human capital is not much different than suggesting abstinence is. Is a young married couple that chooses to have sex with a condom different from a couple that chooses not to have sex at all?
Perhaps I'm not properly understanding your point though.
"but I'm having trouble linking that to contraception."
"Conversely, suggesting contraception is squandering our human capital is not much different than suggesting abstinence is."
Artificially disconnecting sex from children increases the bias in future generations against having children. I explained it better elsewhere in this thread. Abstinence doesn't cause this artificial disconnect.
> the bias in future generations against having children
You need to provide something that suggests this bias is prevalent in any society at all.
There is a bias against having many children (i.e. 2+), sure. I'm not seeing anything at all suggesting there is a prevalent bias against having any children at all, nor that one will develop over time.
All I have is anecdotal evidence and logic based on that. So I'm afraid I can't give what you're asking for.
But my anecdotal evidence is that, growing up, nobody wanted kids and everyone wanted sex. Having kids was feared as something that would ruin your life. Even if in some sense that's technically true (it could ruin your ability to get a good education and make a living), the attitude lasts longer than the fact. So they would avoid having kids even after they have a good job and could afford it.
Well, I'll add this then to your experiences: Having my sons was the best thing that ever happened in my life, and I can think of no event in the future that could ever compare to the joy and pride that I feel every day that is a direct result of their existence. Children are life changing, that much is true; in every way. I wouldn't change a thing though.
They are a net benefit to the world already based on the feelings they've created in others alone, and they are only 6 and 4.
I do however recognize that I'm in a much better position for the most important role I'll ever have now than I would have been at any point in my life previously. That's why I support the inclusion of contraception in third world aid - the better parents we can create, the better children they will create. In fact, most of the time it is not that people have had children, it's when they've had children.
I'd suggest that your sample size is rather small and (perhaps, just guessing here obviously) skewed unequally to youth. Give it time. Overall I think you have extremely noble intentions, and I commend you for that. I disagree with your ideas regarding implementation though. Cheers. :-)
EDIT: I hope you see this. I saw above that your objection stems at least in part from the traditional Catholic doctrine. Personally I feel this position (of the church) is illogical and counter productive, however I completely understand the argument being made. You should not be afraid to state this immediately. Wikipedia has an excellent write up on this stance and it does make solid points, although I feel the deductive reasoning behind the argument is quite lacking. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_contraceptio...)
That being said, It is highly likely this opinion will chance sooner rather than later. Would you be inclined to re-evaluate your opinion at that time? Why or why not?
I should point out that, as I said in the other thread, I'm Catholic. And I didn't just inherit my Catholicism, I worked hard to find it. And I examined many of its precepts and tenets (including birth control), and found them each to be reliable and founded on a mountain of logic built on a kernel of faith. So they're my own beliefs. Not inherited, and not held blindly.
That's why I can't support the inclusion of contraception anywhere, among other things. I'm well aware that in some people's eyes this makes me an enemy of women, an enemy of the poor, etc. But I stand by my views without shame or regret, because I have acquired and maintain them with all the integrity I can muster.
I don't think you are an "enemy" of anyone, however I do think that the Catholic church's position here isn't very logical.
The church does now support family planning by using a woman's cycle, which in doing so immediately counters the general idea that sex should "always be about procreation". This action renders the position on contraception completely illogical. There is no difference between using a condom to prevent conception and waiting until Tuesday to have sex. The church condemns one yet supports the other; completely inconsistent. The only way to have a consistent opinion on the topic is to decree that all forms of martial interaction approaching sex end with insemination - a completely ludicrous idea (regardless of whether or not you support that), to be honest.
The church is causing real damage with this doctrine, particularly with regards to AIDS in Africa. With Pope Francis reviewing and moderating a lot of traditional doctrine, and with a large group of those within the church opposed to it (particularity those from the first world), I could see this edict being "modified" going forward, to be honest. I was curious as to your reaction in that event.
> With Pope Francis reviewing and moderating a lot of traditional doctrine, and with a large group of those within the church opposed to it (particularity those from the first world), I could see this edict being "modified" going forward
There are many "liberal Catholics" in the world, and organizations dedicated to "modernizing" Catholic doctrine. They're pushing and hoping for things like ordaining women as priests, allowing abortions, gay marriage, etc. [1]
But they'll never succeed. Doctrines can't be changed because they're inherently immutable. [2] So by definition it's impossible.
Yes, there will always be polls trying to demonstrate that doctrinal change is possible given a strong enough public voice [3], but this is and will always be impossible. All those polls do (and I would argue are meant to do) are make people think they're on the right track with their dissent, and that it's not really apostasy, just a harmless opinion.
> Doctrines can't be changed because they're inherently immutable.
If doctrines couldn't change, we wouldn't need to have dogmas (which are doctrines which have been infallibly proclaimed and which, therefore, are, in principle, immutable.)
More importantly than the theoretical questions, church teachings do change, even if that means retrospectively reinterpreting doctrine to change how it is taught while maintaining the pretense of consistency, or reinterpreting something that was previously viewed as doctrinal as something other than doctrine.
This is particularly visible in the area of, say, "when a morally cognizable human exists in pregnancy", a relatively important matter on which Church teaching has changed radically over its history.
It's true that advancements in science have led to a more fuller understanding of when a human life begins. But that doesn't mean there was ever a change in the doctrine that human life cannot be aborted during pregnancy. They're unrelated concepts.
> It's true that advancements in science have led to a more fuller understanding of when a human life begins. But that doesn't mean there was ever a change in the doctrine that human life cannot be aborted during pregnancy.
Early forms of the "understanding of when human life begins" were themselves understood at the time as doctrines (and in some cases were doctrine proclaimed by Ecumenical Councils, such as that of the Council of Vienne in 1312.)
> The church does now support family planning by using a woman's cycle, which in doing so immediately counters the general idea that sex should "always be about procreation". action renders the position on contraception completely illogical.
The position on contraception is not based on the idea that "sex should 'always be about procreation'."
Whether it is logical or not may be debatable, but claiming that an element contradicts a proposition that is outside of the position to start with isn't a way of showing that.
This person is trolling by getting people to argue with a position that he or she doesn't even put forth. Don't fall for it -- ignore people who say things and refuse to back them up.
I think it's more likely the person is being honest. I think the positive move would be to encourage him/her to express their rational and provide an example of how HN accepts different conclusions provided there is a logical process in creating those conclusions.
What you are doing is providing example to buttress op's point as being correct. Best to leave that attitude on reddit.
You disagree with my interpretation of this thread, fine. You might be right, great! The "best leave that attitude on reddit" comment is childish and does more to lower the quality of the conversation than my call to ignore unexplained (not even irrational) points. Grow up.
> There are still slums and pockets of poverty, but by and large when I visit there now I think, “Wow, most people who live here are middle-class. What a miracle.”
Overall I enjoyed his letter, but I find this quote a bit deceptive. A recent photo (http://i.imgur.com/atxDiw6.jpg) of the poverty line in Mexico City paints a very different picture than Gates' conclusion that most people there are "middle-class." Another source (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/30/us-mexico-poverty-...) claims that Mexico's poverty line is nearly 50%, far different than "pockets of poverty."
I'm surprised he chose Mexico as an example as well, but because of the issues it has with corruption, emigration, and violence. Even a middle-class country with those problems seems like a bad example of progress.
Does Mexico still have an emmigration problem? I know that for the last few years, the USA has had net-negative immigration from Mexico, as people are moving back.
That article reports that immigration from Mexico may be on the rise again. It also cites that half of the undocumented immigrants in the U.S. (about 6 million people) were born in Mexico.
I guess my point is that Mexico has significant issues to deal with and therefore it may not be a good anecdote and instead be a better candidate for the special-considerations bucket.
Fascinating. This addresses one of my key concerns, that aid often is a bag of cash to high officials, who then go buy 6-10 Lamborghinis and a new apartment rather than actually helping people out.
It is still that, perhaps not in such a distilled fashion, but corruption is rampant throughout the world. Those in power in the "third world" are as susceptible, if not more so, to greed as those here in the "first world." Aid does work to an extent simply because not all of humanity is evil, there are some in positions of power who actually do wish to do good. His report just appears too idyllic and utopian compared to reality.
Honestly, like Gates, if a small amount of corruption happens - if some % get skimmed off to pad some salaries or expense reports, I'm not going to get too excited. People do that. It's the gratuitous bag of cash -> palace transfer that bothers me.
Are you seriously saying that one of the most significant philanthropists alive today, who has given tens of billions of dollars of his own personal money in aid, who has a large role in overseeing the aid organization he built, and who has seen the results of corruption as applied to that aid, is "too idyllic and utopian compared to reality"?
If Gates says that X is true when it comes to aid, and you say that X is not true, what reason could I possibly have to believe you over him?
One of the aid organizations in his letter, The Global Fund found, during an audit, bribes paid to corrupt Cambodian officials. That's an anecdote in his paper. Do you have facts to back up your assertion that it is "too idyllic and utopian compared to reality"?
I think myth number 3, that saving children’s lives leads to overpopulation, misses the central concern. People are concerned about world resource depletion, not overpopulation. And while it is 100% true that bringing countries out of poverty reduces population growth, it does not reduce consumption. In fact, it does the opposite.
Lifestyle accounts for resource depletion far more than raw population numbers. A mall addicted American SUV driver who flies twice a year is far worse for the planet than than a village woman in Mozambique with 6 children.
It appears that the only non-murderous way to reduce population growth to a replacement level is to make people wealthier. It's the only thing that's done the job so far, anyway.
So given a poor country and two choices, here's what happens: if it stays poor, the population continues to increase and consumption likewise continues to increase. If it becomes wealthy, the population stabilize and consumption, after increasing to feed that increased wealth, also stabilizes.
There's an easy solution to the problem of resource depletion. You simply take the Benderist approach of killing all humans. Problem solved! The trick is doing it in a way that isn't horrible, and while that's completely unsolved, it doesn't look like keeping people poor helps at all.
> Four of the past seven governors of Illinois have gone to prison for corruption, and to my knowledge no one has demanded that Illinois schools be shut down or its highways closed.
I would be interested to hear how HN readers approach charity. I personally am constantly struggling with questions like: once my basic needs are met, how can I possibly justify not giving the rest of my income to life-saving causes?
My working theory is a combination of (a) my basic needs are actually quite high when you consider the many potential rainy days for which I must save, (b) I don't know enough to donate with confidence that my money is doing more good than harm (this Gates letter addresses some of my concerns here), and (c) I must simply come to terms with being selfish to the point where I would rather spend money on a candy bar than a life-saving vaccination for someone else.
Personally I don't believe that you need to save the world. Just making a contribution now and then and being aware of the issues and speaking / voting with empathy for the poor is enough.
If you want to know enough to donate with confidence, GiveWell has good charity recommendations.
In any case, don't let indecision paralyse you into inaction. Put some proportion of money aside for charity, start doing research, etc. We're not perfect, it's okay to be a bit selfish, and it's good to want to do better. There's any number of options between a spartan life where you donate most of your money, and donating nothing.
This is a great and wise overview of some of the most important aspects of the state and trajectory of humanity today. I wish there were more widespread exposure to analysis like this.
I view this as a political sensitization, and I think it's greater than trying to talk numbers and topics about charities and myths.
I think this foundation is showing that you can be optimistic and right at the same time for many things about charities, but it's not the organization and the means and the money sent that will effectively change things.
I don't know how this foundation works at the political level, and what are the political issues, but I hope it will make people really reflect their view on the world. You don't often have billionaires initiating a communication campaign and articles about charities, and attracting that much attention.
I don't think Bill Gates would really like to answer the question "when did you encounter politics in that work, and what was good and what was not ?", because I don't think that he's a very political guy, but at least he has enormous talent for everything else.
I honestly thinks that diplomacy and politics can immensely help charities. I wish this foundation is not just doing this mission without minding the geopolitics, and has at least a few political partners and advisors. I wonder if they tried to do some lobbying, if just think there is a lot of potential if you try to approach foreign aid with a moderate amount of politics.
#2 is really tortured. first he makes the argument that foreign aid works, then narrows it down to "development aid" and then when it comes time to presenting evidence he really pares it down to "health aid".
And addressing the second part of myth #2(aid breeds dependence), is it not possible that the countries that escaped aid are getting better in spite of foreign aid, and not because of it? There are a lot of other things that have happened to those countries in the era in which foreign aid was given, like political shifts, introduction of technology, improvement of trade relations with neighboring countries, no longer being at war with other countries, etc, etc, etc. Seems like a standard correlation/causation fallacy.
> It is ironic that the foundation has a reputation for a hard-nosed focus on results, and yet many people are cynical about the government aid programs we partner with. The foundation does a lot to help these programs be more efficient and measure their progress.
It's not ironic. Some people value government charity spending less than they value private nonprofit spending. Gates implicitly acknowledges that government aid has weak points (poor focus on outcomes, inefficiency, and lack of good measurement). Aside from that, there are also principled concerns about using tax dollars for aid projects.
> there are also principled concerns about using tax dollars for aid projects
Are you using the typical "let the church handle it logic" not specifically religious entities, but that if the government didn't waste money on aid then people would make up the difference?
Because if that is what you are saying it is based on the flawed logic that aid is a zero sum thing. It is certainly not at this point.
I can guarantee that the US stopping foreign aid would reduce available foreign aid by nearly the entire amount it currently spends, given that the total budget is around 0.1% and no one would notice an increase of 0.1% of their income.
This is not to say that the US should increase their aid, just saying that some level of aid makes sense since it has a significant impact for a nearly negligible cost on the total scale.
I didn't say those things. I was saying that it's not ironic and pushing back against a particular straw man in the letter.
1. Government aid has its problems.
The fact that the Gates Foundation helps government programs implies that private organizations execute better, at least in some aspects. Gates later admits that government aid has its problems, so it's odd that he dismisses objections in this way.
2. Philosophical objections should be acknowledged and addressed.
At another point in the letter, Gates hypothetically asked, "Imagine that the income tax form asked, 'Can we use $30 of the taxes you’re already paying to protect 120 children from measles?' Would you check yes or no?"
Many people would have no problem with that arrangement but do have a problem with not-optional line items in the federal budget. The point is that right now donations are enforced by the IRS, which is an odd form of charity, and I think it's reasonable (and certainly not ironic) to have philosophical problems with that and to prefer more democratic forms of aid.
Perhaps the benefits are worth overruling the drawbacks (point 1) and philosophical objections (point 2), but calling reservations about government aid ironic is either sloppy or disingenuous.
Now this is amazing and simple fact. This shows we have completely failed at distribution of wealth. If we could fix this many many problem will vanish. Now instead of what Gates has written this extreme inequality is blocking the progress of poor.
The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world.[1](p2 bottom)
See the difference? The richest 85 people have about $1.7 trillion in wealth[2]. To put that in perspective the world stock market capitalization is $63 trillion[3], world bond market capitalization is around $100 trillion[4], world investment grade real estate $26 trillion[5]. That already $189 trillion of world wealth and ignores most real estate, commodities, durables, government owned assets, etc. So the richest 85 people actually own much less than 1% of the world's wealth. The problem is that the bottom 50% also own much less than 1% of the world's wealth.
You will have a very hard time solving the world's problems if you can't even get basic facts straight. Gates, the world's second richest man, could give his entire fortune away to the bottom 50% and they would only get $19.00 each (=$67B/3.5B). Of course he would then have to shut down the Gates Foundation.
Agreed, I made a mistake. But I appreciate that you agree that we have failed miserable at distribution of wealth and I quote you "The problem is that the bottom 50% also own much less than 1% of the world's wealth."
The distribution of wealth is a symptom of a problem not the problem itself. We haven't failed at distributing wealth: poor people are not poor because somebody didn't distribute wealth to them.
Most poor people are poor because they don't have paying work (i.e. a job or business). In the poorest countries unemployment rates are always very high (50%+) and even if rich countries the poorest are usually unemployed. Without any income basic survival is difficult and it is almost impossible to save and accumulate wealth.
As I pointed out above you could take all of Bill Gates wealth away and only have $19 for each of the 3.5 billion in the bottom 50%. While this might help some in the short run because Bill Gates would have to stop his aid activities many would be worse off in the long run. But more importantly it does not solve the problem.
The only solution is to get the unemployed into paying jobs or businesses. Even the lowest paying jobs on earth, such as Bangladesh garment jobs, pay twice what redistributing Bill Gates fortune would - not just once but EVERY MONTH. Unfortunately making this possible is a lot more complex than writing a check but it certainly helps to better understand what needs to change.
1. I never said we should redistribute the wealth. I believe that will only create more problems.
2. I never suggested Bill Gates should give away his wealth.
3. All I am saying is whatever caused this (85 richest human have wealth equal to 3,500,000,000 poorest humans) extreme inequality is blocking the progress of poor. For example - In India corruption in government is making problem of inequality worst. If you spend sometime trying to understand the corruption problem of India you will be surprised to see it's extend and scale. Therefore if we agree that we have a problem we may find the cause and finally remedies.
I apologize if I misunderstood you - so much simplistic inequality talk lately.
I completely agree that government corruption (and simple incompetence) are a big part of the reason the poor are poor and many of the super rich are super rich (e.g. Carlos Slim and Latin American telephone monopolies). However these are two separate thing. If having a few super rich was the price of elevating tens of millions of people out of extreme poverty, I would be very happy. This is what has happened in China. If we could encourage this in Congo, it would be a big win.
Other than what is already being done by people like Gates the only idea I like is having government focus on things it can do well and avoid doing harm. But I think everyone knows this already and it must be almost impossible to do.
Note that a newly graduated doctor from Harvard Medical School most likely has sufficient debt to put her very deeply in that bottom 50%, but she's still in an extremely enviable position.
Current wealth isn't nearly as important as potential future earnings.
Lets say we distribute this wealth in a more equitable way. That will mean a little more dollars in the hand of poor and a little less in the hand of super rich. Now if we assume(reasonable as far as I can see) that if you are feed and have home you will spend next dollars into healthcare and education. So poor people with little more dollars would attract more workforce towards providing education and healthcare to their kids (instead of writing code for Bill Gates and make him rich) and thus making this world more peaceful and beautiful for all.
Every action has a reaction, while redistributing wealth seems like it would create a utopian world there are consequences and problems it would also create. These billions of dollars aren't simply sitting around in bank accounts doing nothing, they're being invested in companies which are (should be) providing some form of value to the world thus increasing the wealth of the world as a whole. If that money was taken and given to those less well off it could be squandered and then we're in a worse off position than now.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, it seems fantastic, but there are always consequences and the reason we have capitalism is because so far it's proven itself as the best method of improving the wealth of everyone (through technology and cheaper goods.
> I'm not saying it's a bad idea, it seems fantastic, but there are always consequences and the reason we have capitalism is because so far it's proven itself as the best method of improving the wealth of everyone
That's not the reason we have capitalism, since we, generally, don't -- the places that had the system for which the label "capitalism" was created have all since adopted a substantial portion of the redistributive program of some of that systems most strident opponents (such as Marx and Engels) to create the modern dominant "mixed economy", for the precise reason that capitalism was an incredibly bad system and improving conditions for anyone but a very narrow class.
And when we do take steps back toward capitalism, we see that what aggregate gains there are get more narrowly concentrated, and the system gets worse at "improving the wealth of everyone".
That's not what that article says. It says that those 85 people own as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people. The article and accompanying paper say that the world's richest one percent own 46% of the world's wealth - the 71M people who make more than $35K or so.
The myth in this article is that a per capita average of income tells you anything about the condition of the poor. Many countries can raise that number significantly by simply asking Mr. Gates to visit for a day.
GDP is a reasonably good measure of a nation's economic activity and per Capita GDP is a reasonably good measure of overall well being under all but the most extreme circumstances. Using purchasing power adjusted GDP is a bit better. IMO, using median income is even better. But GDP figures tend to be more accurate and less subject to bias and thus more commonly used.
To address your snide side comment... Gates visiting would not change the per Capita GDP. GDP and per capita GDP is not calculated that way.
GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports)
and
Per Capita GDP = GDP / Population
Visiting rich foreigners, or even rich expats who just reside somewhere but have no business activity do not change GDP except through their local spending (private consumption).
There are multiple problems with Gates's predition, but two of the biggest are these:
1. Growth in real economic wealth is very strongly tied to growth in real resource consumption. The master resource is energy, but numerous other resources are in tight supply, with a critical set being "bauxite whose production peaked in 1943), copper (1998), iron ore (1951), magnesium (1966), phosphate rock (1980), potash (1967), rare earth metals (1984), tin (1945), titanium (1964), and zinc (1969)" (from Richard Heinberg's The End of Growth[1])
I've explored the concept of decoupling in greater length using Wolfram+Alpha data to show the relationship between energy use and GDP for the G8 nations plus China, India, and Brazil, as well as global growth, in the periods of 2000 - 2010, 1990 - 2012, and 1980-2012 (not all data available for all periods, though the 2000 - 2010 data are complete for all nations analyzed). While there's some sign of very weak decoupling of energy and GDP growth, principally in Japan and the USA, for global GDP growth, there's a very strong relationship between GDP and energy usage, and both have been increasing. With limited exceptions, global per capita energy use has also been increasing.
2. The second major problem is that the so-called Demographic Transition which Gates and Hans Rosling like to trumpet is little more than a largely unexplained phenomenon observed in some but not all data series. Tom "Do the Math" Murphy, UCSD physics professor, has specifically looked at this with regards to oil states, and makes the observation that "surplus energy makes babies"[2]. This is significant for two reasons: it means that the demographic transition isn't being observed in all countries, and it means that population growth, and hence domestic energy consumption growth, is highest in the major oil exporting nations. Growing domestic consumption means reduced availability of energy for export markets -- a phenomenon known as the "export lands model". Other research suggests that the causality link between development rates and birth rates is less clear than popularly portrayed[3].
I could bore (or terrify) you with numerous other challenges: flat or falling agricultural productivity, EROEI deficiencies in virtually every non-fossil energy alternative, pandemics risks. There's a reason I don't get invited to parties much .... But I think these two will do.
While I have respect for some of Bill Gates's work (and I'm by no means an uncritical fan of his), his optimism here seems misplaced and founded on a very incomplete portrayal of the situation.
There's two big missing facts that I've never noticed Murphy in particular acknowledge: the 1980s peak in global births -- population growth is now driven entirely by decreasing mortality -- and the late 20th century decoupling of energy consumption from economic growth.
Both point to an obvious counter-theory: That industrialization was a centuries-long process, involving exploding populations and energy consumption, that in much of the world has come to an end. The nice little exponential lines are overfit to a particular span of human history and stopped being predictive somewhere in the 20th century.
Also, most of those peaked resources are not even vaguely scarce. I'm not even sure what it would mean to run out of iron ore or bauxite -- a large fraction of the Earth's crust is iron- and aluminum-bearing rock, and the definition of "ore" is "the particular chunks of rock and dirt that are economically viable to extract metal from". Production peaked because of limited demand and lowered shipping costs that made foreign supplies cheaper.
the late 20th century decoupling of energy consumption from economic growth.
If you bothered reading my post and links, I've gone into extensive length on how economic decoupling hasn't happened and that the observed increase in efficiency is fully consistent with complex systems / dissipative systems theory.
The problem with technical capital is that it depreciates rapidly. While some Roman infrastructure remains standing to this day, odds are that most of today's electronics won't be functioning in 20 years, let alone 2000.
On peak minerals: Leibig's Law of the Minimum states that it's the least abundant resource that constrains your growth. Pointing out that there's plenty of X when Y is a limiting factor doesn't buy you much. I'd look very closely at ag productivity.
Heinberg and others go into the issues of working from low-yield ores. Most significantly, energy requirements scale inversely with or yield, and the critical problem would be a technological collapse which would lapse beyond the stage of a feasible reboot. While you _can_ extract minerals from dirt or seawater, the energy and capital requirements are immense. Citations on your claims of foreign supplies would be appreciated.
I appreciate the dialog you're already having, but I thought you might like to know that some of the statements you're making are causing my skepticism of the whole argument to increase, not decrease. I'm not knowledgeable enough to weigh in, but it might be useful for you to know what arguments work well and which don't.
Here's what I noticed in your reply that I found myself questioning your authenticity:
1. Your first sentence is long and diminutive to the reader. I don't know who the other person is, but maybe they did read your post and links? I'm not sure. I also am highly skeptical of anyone that refers to their extensive anything on anything. It really highly signals "quack" to me. Again, I'm not trying to suggest you are.
2. Your first sentence includes a number of terms that demand unpacking. This is really strongly related to the first point, because I feel like as a reader I'm being talked down to and then hit with some deep jargon that I don't understand. Perhaps I'm just out of my league on this conversation, though.
3. Your argument on peak minerals doesn't seem to make sense to me. It's one of those things where, I read it and it feels very strongly like when I read a staunch libertarian/Austrian economic argument between friends on Facebook and see someone cite a universal law of microeconomics and then they use it to justify something much larger or more complex. Looking up Leibig's law didn't help me here. I'm just left a little more bewildered and even if I read and interpreted Leibig's law as being one hundred percent correct in its original formulation, there's a gap in my intuition between that and your use here, as near as I can tell.
Your first sentence is long and diminutive to the reader.
He specifically reiterated without support an assertion of a fact I'd addressed specifically, at length, and with considerable real world data. A finer point: I wasn't dismissing him specifically, but his actions. I'm not here to make friends or even particularly to persuade, but to expand my own understanding of a subject I find of absolutely crucial importance. Occasionally I find merits to discussing matters with those holding opposing viewpoints.
Some guy came up with this concept called "Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement". You should check it out:
As to decoupling: I'm not aware of anyone who's specifically looked at GDP/quad data, but I had, using public data (the blog post consists of a set of graphs with links to the original from Wolfram+Alpha), and a bit of commentary. You're welcome to agree or disagree with specifics, though an ad hominem without any other basis for disagreement doesn't do you much credit. You're at levels 2 & 3 of the hierarchy. bcoates managed to attain level 3.
Though as a DDG fan I've got a newfound softness for quacks.
Your first sentence includes a number of terms that demand unpacking.
Which? "Economic decoupling" or "capital depreciation"?
First: yes, this is a complex area, it's got a bit of its own language. That's typical of any advanced field. That said it's not overly complex, though you've got to be willing to take and bin a fair amount of conventional wisdom.
For more on decoupling, associated with resources in general, see:
⚫ Exhaustion of any extractive resource follows a curve similar to that M. King Hubbert demostrated for oil in the 1940s and 1950s, accurately predicting US peak production in 1970, and a global peak between 2000 and 2010[1]. Data are a little hazy on global production yet, but it's clearly been flat despite massive increases in market prices and capital expenditures by oil companies. See Shell Oil's profit warning issued just this week. You're welcome to read my take at http://reddit.com/r/dredmorbius or The New York Times, whichever you find less quackish: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/business/energy-environmen...
⚫ Mining costs increase with falling ore grades. Heinberg cites this OilDrum piece: http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/6974 "As a rule of thumb, when the quality of the ore drops, the amount of energy required to extract the resource rises". The rationale: lower grade means more overburden and tailings to remove -- you've got to mine deeper, or excavate a large area, or filter more seawater, or go through whatever it is that's your source for the mineral.
Leibig's Law is a separate observation to the issue of peak minerals -- it's not describing how or when minerals peak, but what the effect of their peaking is on the remainder of the system. For a critical mineral (say, phosphorus) to peak would have dramatic effects throughout the system. Having enough cobalt or gallium for iPhones won't do much if you can't grow food to feed the iPhone user.
Thanks for explaining more. I didn't respond because I realized that we didn't agree on terms, and dictionary arguments are boring. I was using "decoupling" in the sense of "what happens to an overfit model after it stops working", and hadn't really noticed that your reddit post was also using the term to argue against something I don't claim (or particularly care about), "reduction in power accompanied by increases in GDP".
I'll admit that my post was more a general reaction to Prof. Murphy's chronic abuse of statistical modelling, visible in the post you linked to "The Real Population Problem" where he applies a rather incoherent statistical model ("Population growth is exponential, but the exponential rate keeps changing", which is another way of saying "Population growth is not exponential"), while ignoring the real story on population, flat or slightly declining total births per year.... and his even more baffling and famous post, http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-... where he plops down a tight exponential fit that clearly applies to the 'Industrial Manufacturing' era and visibly and extremely fails to model after that (it's a log plot, that post-1970-ish curve indicates a massive, model-falsifying difference between model and observation).
Economic modelling is hard enough for the world we live in, a world where we're mining 0.02% Uranium from the ground instead of 10+% is so unlike anything we know that making predictions about it is hubris.
I generally don't find peakery interesting because I don't accept the fundamental premise (that you can model future resource availability at all using historical consumption volumes), so I'm not even at the point where more production (=consumption) data, however well sourced, is compelling.
we didn't agree on terms, and dictionary arguments are boring
If someone can come up with a dictionary definition that defends their use, I'll accept that there are multiple common uses of a term. Sometimes utterly contradictory ("inflammable", "citation", "oversight", etc.) It's when I find people dismissing common terms or arguing against the dictionary that I rapidly lose interest. What's the context/field for your use of decoupling?
"Population growth is exponential, but the exponential rate keeps changing"
Mapping different fits to different portions of a curve is neither unknown nor invalid. A mathematical model simply describes the behavior of data. The underlying mechanism isn't itself described by the model (which itself is something of an orrery). Instead, as Murphy notes, population was responding to markedly different circumstances at different points along the line. You've neatly skipped over his explicit recognition of this: "What accounts for the discontinuity in slope?", and:
Plotting global population in the last thousand years (below), we see a few breaks in the slope. For most of this period, we saw a modest 0.12% growth rate, amounting to a 600 year doubling time. Around 1700, the rate stepped up to 0.41%, doubling every 170 years. The next break happens around 1870, jumping to 0.82% and 85 years to double. Then around 1950, we see another factor-of-two rate jump to 1.7%
What happened at those dates? 1700 marks the nascent beginning of the Industrial Revolution (Newcoman's steam engine pumps in coal mines) and more abundant coal. 1870 marks (roughly) electricity and modern sewerage, sanitation, antisceptics, and anesthesia. 1950 marks the beginnings of the Green Revolution as well as the great advance of manufacturing and post-war renaissance around the globe. The earlier 0.03% growth to ~6000BC marks the period prior to advanced agriculture and urbanization. Noting where your tidy mathematical model breaks is just as important as seeing where it fits.
In the "Economist" dialog, you're failing to recognize the point that it's the economist who's positing eternal growth:
Physicist: "So what’s a typical rate of annual energy growth over the last few centuries?"
Economist: "I would guess a few percent. Less than 5%, but at least 2%, I should think."
The remainder of Murphy's analysis is to demonstrate the patent absurdity of this.
I've observed that this leads to a number of fairly typical responses from Murphy's critics:
⚫ He's extending a growth trend which has broken down in recent years (your objection). The point is that the energy growth he demonstrates is tightly coupled (correlated) with economic growth. And if you want the latter, you're going to need the former.
⚫ Economic growth has been decoupled from energy growth. The graphical evidence I've shown suggests otherwise.
⚫ Technology will fix everything. "Growth doesn't depend on increasing material consumption at all". /u/geezerman at reddit and Tim Worstall at The Telegraph essentially make this argument.
⚫ "There is no energy/resource shortage". Humans will find and tap endless sources of new energy and raw material ... somehow.
I don't accept the fundamental premise
So: what would be a valid basis for a model of future resource availability? How do you address Hubbert peaking and depletion curves and the accuracy with which they've predicted known peaks in local, national (US and elsewhere), and by appearances, global oil production, as well as other resource peaks?
Rubbishing models without presenting a more accurate one yourself (or pointing at one) isn't science, it's denial.
Some major ground has been covered in the article, and sparked a few more pointers. I come from a country receiving substantial aid, and yet I see that a lot of new initiatives could be kickstarted by the wealthy citizens themselves. Covering the reasons why the middle-class and the rich hesitate to lean in philanthropy would also instigate more people to contribute.
I appreciated the fractal poetry in including the story of Sadi Seyni's village well (an example of the need for spreading accurate information to our fellow villagers), which is itself wrapped in a letter which calls on the reader to spread accurate information on the myths being presented.
Too bad Gates doesn't think the Internet helps progress in countries, because technology and the Internet are huge factors in the progress and conditions of living in a country.
His third point, "Saving lives leads to overpopulation," is a weird straw man. I've never heard of anyone ever suggesting letting suffering children die as some way to keep the population low. He brings up Malthus as another straw man.
I'm not sure the point he's trying to make. To stop people from stopping people from saving people's lives? I think he's trying to suggest that the planet has too many people on it but that shouldn't stop us from saving people's lives. I know a lot of people who consider the planet overpopulated and I've never heard of anyone suggesting letting babies die would help, let alone consider it remotely human.
He seems to conclude educating women and making birth control available helps most. Why not just make that point? I feel like he's trying to imply those who disagree with him or agree with Malthus are tantamount to baby-killers.
On another (lighter) note, since dromedaries are camels too, calling the "camel world" a "bactrian world" would be more clear. The fun mnemonic for camel names is that the Dromedary has one hump and the Bactrian has two, like the first letters of their names, 'D' and 'B', turned sideways.
EDIT: Moreover, these statements are at odds, or at least need more explanation to connect them.
"It may be counterintuitive, but the countries with the most deaths have among the fastest-growing populations in the world. This is because the women in these countries tend to have the most births, too."
and
"Human beings are not machines. We don’t reproduce mindlessly. We make decisions based on the circumstances we face."
The first point suggests people have extra babies in anticipation of some of them dying before adulthood. The second implies they would target a certain number to reach adulthood, which would not itself lead to overpopulation. What would lead to overpopulation on a broad scale would be individuals benefiting from more children than the planet would, which is more like a tragedy of the commons.
If people decide based on circumstances, then they wouldn't have too many children for whatever their values decide, independent of child mortality. They'd have the right number. If they are having the right number for themselves, then food and medicine wouldn't affect their target number of children.
Bringing up food and medicine is a red herring. There may be a myth (which they don't establish), but it's irrelevant to the point made in that section: increase education and birth control. It confuses unrelated issues and paints people concerned with population as ignorant and cruel.
It's not clear to me where their logic suggests I should contribute resources. Should I favor food causes over education causes, the other way around, a mix, or neither?
I remember raising money for a UN programme that provides neonatal care to African mothers. The programme has an excellent track record of reducing infant mortality in newborns' first thirty days, when they are most vulnerable.
A common form of pushback I received was along the lines of "why save them now if it just leads to them starving later." I even had one Pacific Northwest environmentalist openly challenge the programme's net benefit on environmental grounds, though most dressed it as a chicken-or-egg dilemma between neonatal support and general poverty reduction. Still, a spade is a spade - the concern that saving people now will put undue strain on finite resources tomorrow is real.
> why save them now if it just leads to them starving later
We can save them now and have a couple years to solve the starvation problem.
> the concern that saving people now will put undue strain on finite resources tomorrow is real.
Indeed, it is. But their land is not producing at 100% efficiency. It would be a problem if it were, but, since it's not, the population that it can sustain is much larger than what it sustains now.
Rather strange and confused comment. Many people have expressed concern "Saving lives leads to overpopulation". It is a common concern of donors[1] and this view seems to be particularly common among those primarily concerned about sustainably and climate change[2][3]. You are simply unaware of the complaints that health campaigners in the developing world, like Bill Gates, actually face.
You appear to be simply grasping at straws so that you can find fault with Bill Gates.
I have heard people worry that since starving people seem to already have a lot of kids, if we send food aid, they'll just have even more kids and then there still won't be enough food. It's one of the things people use to rationalize that people who are in trouble somehow got themselves there and/or deserve it.
It's not a straw man. This is a common question that people have, but you may not have heard it voiced publicly, because people are worried about saying it out loud. Here's a perfect example:
Unfortunately, when you ask important but controversial questions, people tend to simply jump on you for "lacking compassion and humanity". Sometimes the most uncomfortable discussions are the most important to have.
I think we should resist the malthusian overpopulation argument in any form. Resource scarcity cannot be considered a problem when waste is such a major component of our economy. Radically uneven development, maybe, but not scarcity.
I'll bite. I believed it. Not only did I believe it until I read this letter, I thought Gates Foundation was doing an unintentional long-term disservice to the world by saving so many lives that overpopulation in the remote parts of the world will lead to more suffering due to starvation/hunger, poverty, and depression.
If X% of children in villages in Ghana are currently starving, how will raising that to 2X% starving-but-inoculated children help the world? I was never able to get that question answered sufficiently well. My background is in Econ and Comp Sci so I have a pretty good understanding of the impact of foreign aid. For the past decade, I've preferred the aid to be technological and infrastructural in nature instead of medical because I presumed that addressing the health needs of the existing population was merely plugging a hole on a broken dyke.
I really don't think she was calling me a baby-killer but rather questioning my faulty assumptions. I had made the same mistake that many others make when looking beyond their own monkey circles - that even people with little education make rational decisions about their lives, they're not mindless machines pushing out kids because that's what tradition or society demands. I never considered that the mothers in Ghana would have fewer children if earlier ones survived.
I assumed that because they are poor, did not have access to birth control, and were trying to maximize their long-term happiness, they would have as many kids as possible to maximize the chances of at least a few of them becoming successful. If you have two kids, both might be unemployed. If you have 12, maybe two of them will get good jobs and take care of you in the future. While this is great for the mother if two kids are successful, the other ten will end up repeating what she did and the cycle will continue ten-fold. I honestly believed that malaria was nature's way of minimizing long-term suffering.
There were too many faults in my assumption and I believed each of the myths up to a certain extent. My beliefs were not necessarily baseless, they were just completely out of date. I have a very hard time believing UN reports because of politics, corruption, and self-preservation interests of bureaucracy. However, I see no reason to assume Gates Foundation having any malevolence, especially since they're literally giving away their own money to improve the world long-term. So when they said my assumptions are in fact myths, I allowed them the chance to change my mind and by the end of the letter, I was cursing at myself for being so thick and wrong.
In addition to EFF, Wikipedia Foundation, and other tech causes, my future donations will also go to health/medical causes thanks to this single letter.
EDIT: If you want to know what REALLY blew me away, it was the single comparison shot of Mexico City 1986 vs 2011. My cousins in Mumbai grew up in the slums and now they post photos of their new [car|clothes|apartments] on Facebook. They were the kids bathing on the street and they weren't alone. Almost all of their friends are now working for multinationals in Delhi or Mumbai and most of them are doing better than their parents. An entire generation of slum-dwelling children have their own bathrooms, kitchens, and access to unlimited knowledge, technology, and medicine. I assumed that more people meant more slums. I did not realize that it could be fewer slums and more apartments.
There's a common idiom about progress that goes along the lines of "we always overestimate what can be done in the next 5 years and always underestimate what can be done in 10." (Though sometimes the first part is 1 year or 2 years.) This is especially true when it comes to long term socio-economic development. Look at the South Korea portrayed on the TV show "M.A.S.H.", that's the South Korea of the 1950s, and to some extent it was still a common view of South Korea when the show aired in the late '70s and early '80s. But from 1980 to 1990 South Korea's GDP tripled, and from 1990 to 2000 it more than doubled, and it did so again from 2000 to 2010. Today the people in South Korea are not just richer, per person, than Americans were in 1950 they are richer than Americans were in 1980, when M.A.S.H. was on the air. That sort of thing is very difficult to conceptualize, because humans are just generally not good at understanding geometric growth.
But the same trends are happening elsewhere. Mexico, for example, is becoming wealthier. If they can sort out their huge political and security problems in their country then they can easily join the developed world soon. The same goes for Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and China. And a decade from now there will be yet more countries who will have moved into firing distance of becoming a developed country too, and even more countries moving out of poverty and into the developing world as well. In 2050 there are many parts of the world that we will put in the same mental bucket of development status as the US/Europe et al today, places like Morocco, the Philippines, even Nigeria.
One of the problems people often have with history is lack of perspective and cultural bias. People can be exposed to countless portrayals of historical poverty and lack of development in America's past, for example, and yet still fail to draw a line of similarity to undeveloped or developing parts of the world today. Those people aren't so different from us, if given a chance they can do amazing things.
The point is well made - if raise the survival rate it quickly lowers the birth rate, because parents are no longer gambling against unknown but seemingly low odds of children making it past the age of 5. But it has to be backed up by enlightenment of the type mentioned in the article. The work also has to tackle patriarchial societies, child brides and superstitious beliefs. There are a lot of women still suffering under the classification of being a chattel in this world. Perhaps it is a generational thing, and solving child mortality is the first step in bequeathing a generation with better education and thus a rollback of barbaric practices.
I just added the "EDIT" section before I saw your question. That was what made me start questioning my beliefs. Here's a few things the letter said that eroded away the assumptions I had built regarding:
POVERTY:
> There are still slums and pockets of poverty, but by and large when I visit there now I think, “Wow, most people who live here are middle-class. What a miracle.”
> There is a class of nations in the middle that barely existed 50 years ago, and it includes more than half of the world’s population.
AFRICA:
> “Sure, the Asian tigers are doing fine, but life in Africa never gets better, and it never will.”... Seven of the 10 fastest-growing economies of the past half-decade are in Africa.
> The percentage of children in school has gone from the low 40s to over 75 percent since 1970.
AID:
> Also remember that healthy children do more than merely survive. They go to school and eventually work, and over time they make their countries more self-sufficient. This is why I say aid is such a bargain.
> Here is a quick list of former major recipients that have grown so much that they receive hardly any aid today: Botswana, Morocco, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Thailand, Mauritius, Botswana, Morocco, Singapore, and Malaysia
The above one made me realize I can think of foreign aid like student loans. I needed the financial aid to afford college education. My loans are now paid off and I am significantly better off thanks to them.
CORRUPTION:
> Suppose small-scale corruption amounts to a 2 percent tax on the cost of saving a life. We should try to reduce that. But if we can’t, should we stop trying to save lives?
> On the other hand, four of the past seven governors of Illinois have gone to prison for corruption, and to my knowledge no one has demanded that Illinois schools be shut down or its highways closed.
Basically, don't throw the baby away with the bathwater.
> The horror stories you hear about—where aid just helps a dictator build a new palace—mostly come from a time when a lot of aid was designed to win allies for the Cold War rather than to improve people’s lives. Since that time, all of the actors have gotten much better at measurement. Particularly in health and agriculture, we can validate the outcomes and know the value we’re getting per dollar spent.
This was another big seller for me. Gates is brilliant and everyone who has ever worked with him ends up calling him the smartest guy they know. It was naive of me to think that he didn't have measures in place to measure the impact of his investments and make sure waste was minimized.
And then pretty much everything in Myth #3. I was a fool.
As a firm believer that overpopulation won't be solved by throwing money at it, and that the people who are having children are the ones who shouldn't, I see most of this as irrelevant. Of course money solves poverty in the short term, no one should be surprised by that. But notice how he keeps comparing one generation with only the previous, and never making long-term assertions.
Besides, I doubt Gates can go from the CEO of Bad Guys Corp. (among the companies with the most evil business practices in history, up there with Nestle) to Superman just because he has always been a modern Robin Hood, establishing an OS monopoly to give our money to the poorest. I'd expect some public guilt or something. I'll keep taking whatever his foul mouth says with an enormous grain of salt until he explains his post-MS enlightenment and endorses Linux.
Oh come on. Microsoft's "evil" amounted to giving the competition a few kicks in the ribs while they were down. It was nasty and unsporting but let's keep things in perspective.
The comparison with Nestle would only be reasonable if a Windows 95 BSOD killed one of your children.
Even (especially?) geniuses compartmentalize. I applaud life saving and misery reduction regardless of who does it, and I'm not going to make my approval contingent on an apology for past wrongs.
The Gates foundation seems to be doing the best they can to model as far into the future as feasible so as to make best use of their resources. Models that propose death and misery as their means are rightly viewed with skepticism.
Sorry, making Windows ubiquitous on our PC's by monopoly position shenanigans does not equate, evil-wise, to the abuse of workers rights, health and our environment that many blue chip companies have participated in over the past 60 or so years - e.g. oil companies, food giants, mining corps.
While this letter is directed to the general public, Gates talks to many members of the global elites, some of whom may have privately voiced that concern.
Most people concerned about population are ignorant and cruel. Ignorant because they hold opinions based on vacuous news media accounts, and cruel because the underlying assumption is that us middle class western folk with our 2.2 kids are just peachy.
I remember my grandmother talking about these issues, because they were real to her in rural Ireland. She was one of 11 children. 2 siblings died before adulthood. Poor nutrition and no meaningful medical care led to all sorts of chronic health problems for folks in those days. (1910's)
It isn't all that weird to hear that. Peter Singer's paper "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" suggested that if we can help and we don't reduce ourselves to marginal utility we should help. For example, you can skip breakfast and save $5 for the poor. If we reduce ourselves to the point we can die from starvation, as in not eating for a week to save $100, that's not helping. He also mentions (I am paraphrasing) that if we know that by not helping them now can reduce population and decrease the famine severity, that might be a better route to take. Now Singer's point may be controversial, but that's the difference between a utilitarian and an denotologist (and an absolutist).
Much of development aid goes directly into health or food security, one way or another. It can be argued that any foreign aid, no matter how badly it is spent ends up saving lives. With vaccination programs it's just much more obvious and visible.
Gates rightly substitutes "foreign aid" with "saving lives", because that is the comparison that matters. When lifes are at stake, dickering about 1% of the federal budget sounds as ridiculous as it should.
If all human beings on earth used the resources as much as an average American does, it would need the resources of the 7 earth to meet the demand.
Poor country have larger populations, but they ain't using earth resources as much.
What Gates is trying to do, transfer the resources to poor people to make up for this disproportion of resources due to wealth possessed by the comparatively richer people.
It is sort of strange. The letter also talks about looking around and seeing a bunch of middle class people and assuming that no one is poor anymore. If I can't see it, it doesn't exist. . .
Perhaps I extrapolated too much, but the line "There are still slums and pockets of poverty, but by and large when I visit there now I think, Wow, most people who live here are middle-class. What a miracle." just because this particular area had less poverty, doesn't mean there are less people living in poverty, it just means they may be more hidden. Actual stats would have been helpful.
Actual stats would have been helpful where? For Gates to make the conclusion that significant progress has been made? Because I am pretty well convinced that Bill sits around chewing through "actual stats" as a hobby and doesn't just pull this stuff out of his ass. If you're saying that actual stats would have made this illustration a little more compelling, then I also disagree, since the difference between Mexico City appearing to be one giant slum and having to go looking for extreme poverty is pretty compelling in my book.
Why do you (an armchair critic?) assume that the Gates, with direct data and experience, are wrong and overlooking reality with their statement? I'm pretty sure they have available decent data showing them overall progress and are not visiting one development and making a blanket extrapolation based on that.
My comment was that he makes a statement that says "I can't see poor people, which means they must not be here". I tried to clarify my comment and have an armchair critic in you disputing me, when you could have googled it to prove me wrong. But here you go, http://data.worldbank.org/country/mexico
Poverty as a % of population in mexico has increased from 47% to 52% according to the world bank.
I'm just suggesting that they be given the benefit of the doubt given their line and depth of work, and the understanding that you're taking the quote so literally. This piece about myths has been written to reach many people so it's trying to make a fair and convincing argument without detail that's too extreme.
Thanks for that World Bank link - nicely designed site and great data. Do you know why the graph isn't linked for more recent years? Is it speculative data?
I looked for a couple more sources and they had current poverty at about 44-45%. Wikipedia's Povery in Mexico page:
"Current figures estimate that at least 44.2 percent of the population lives under poverty."
And another page:
"Extreme poverty, on the other hand, clearly declined. Both the number and percentage of Mexicans living in extreme poverty fell between 2010 and 2012, from 13.0 million (11.3 percent) in 2010 to 11.5 million (9.8 percent) in 2012."
Beware: Poverty lines are often set as a percentage of the per capita GDP. So, in real terms, if the average buying power increase did not outpace the buying power increase of the richest few, poverty could increase, even as people are able to afford more.
The world bank data that you linked to seems to be using a relative poverty line.
I kept coming back to one thought while reading this: why are people so mistaken about Africa in particular? The article covers misconceptions all over the place, but it keeps coming back to Africa, and it seems that the disparity between what people think and what's actually the case is far larger there than anywhere else.
It would be easy to blame this on casual racism and move on. And I'm sure that's a factor. But there must be more.
I wonder if there might just be a cliff effect in people's perceptions. The perception of China, for example, changed rapidly from "shithole" to "where all our stuff is made". India quickly switched from "shithole" to "where our IT gets outsourced". (And reminder, I'm talking about perceptions here, specifically in the US, or possibly the western world as a whole.) I wasn't around for it, but I have the impression that more or less the same thing happened for e.g. Taiwan and Japan.
If that's the case, then Africa is still in the "shithole" perception category simply because we don't see much of them. Not much of our stuff comes with a "Made in Kenya" label on it, and our experience with IT-related outsourcing to Africa is mostly limited to Nigerian scammers. Once that changes, the perception will rapidly go from "those guys have no food" to "those guys are taking all of our jobs".
A counterpoint would be South America, which is not overall perceived as "shithole" but nor is it a place we interact with a whole lot.
Perhaps it's just mental inertia. The places that are changing most rapidly will be the most incorrectly perceived.