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Comment by tomdale | Hacker News Reader

I was just in Medellín for JSConf Colombia a week ago. It was my first time in Colombia and I didn’t know exactly what to expect.

I was blown away by how friendly and engaged the developers I met were. I can say unequivocally I have never had the audience burst out in spontaneous cheering and applause at the end of a technical talk with such enthusiasm as they did in Medellín.

The conference venue was a beautiful, modern building next to the botanical gardens. The coffee was both delicious and strong. But most of all, the people were whip-smart and hungry to make their dent in the world. I can’t say enough positive things about Colombia.

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> I can’t say enough positive things about Colombia.

You can't say enough positive things about the small, elite privileged slice of Colombia that you interacted with. It's a bit disturbing that you appear to have no notion of how different the reality for the masses is in comparison to your own thin slice of experience. I'd be very careful before extrapolating.

Hmm, your comment is actually kind of funny because the cool looking Ruta N building he mentions, in which the conference has held, is located right in the center of a slum, where it was intentionally built (like most big public works in Medellin) to actually make the city more inclusive by mixing people from different backgrounds in these spaces. It's a bit disturbing that you speak with such property when you have no notion of what you are taking about. I'd be very careful before extrapolating.

Building view for reference: http://static.iris.net.co/dinero/upload/images/2015/6/18/209...

The building (part of the Ruta-N complex) was designed by http://alejandroecheverri-valencia.co It was the first LEED Gold-certified public building in Columbia (in 2016) so it's cutting edge rather than typical.

It's worth noting that Alejandro Echeverri also teaches (edit: has taught) at Syracuse University.

It sounds like you experienced the lives of the privileged, mobile elite of Colombia. That's valid, as far as it goes, but any boosterism should be tempered with at least a mention of the countries massive inequality (sadly not that atypical for Latin America).

"but any boosterism should be tempered"

You say that as though boosterism has a negative effect on the non-mobile-elite of Columbia when I would think that any economic activity would be a boost for the whole economy there.

>You say that as though boosterism has a negative effect on the non-mobile-elite of Columbia when I would think that any economic activity would be a boost for the whole economy there.

This is not always the case, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics

Wealth inequality in Colombia is high, but actually lower than wealth inequality in the US by most measures.

If someone posted about a positive experience at a tech conference in New York, I wouldn't expect to see a follow up reminding us about poor people in Tennessee.

If somebody tried to make a sweeping generalized comment about the country as a whole based upon that one experience I would expect exactly that.

> Wealth inequality in Colombia is high, but actually lower than wealth inequality in the US by most measures.

Really?

CIA Gini coefficients: US 47.0 (2014), Colombia 53.5 (2012)

Ratio of the average income of the top 10% to the bottom 10%: US 18.5, Colombia 60.4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

Granted, this is income not wealth inequality. And there are many ways of measuring it. I would like to know your source.

http://fortune.com/2015/09/30/america-wealth-inequality/ (the relevant list is at the end of the article)

I'm sure there are lots of different measures that give lots of different results. My point was just that the US and Colombia aren't radically different in terms of economic inequality.

>My point was just that the US and Colombia aren't radically different in terms of economic inequality.

What if you take into account the non-linear value of money, though? This seems to be missing in most accounts of inequality.

The US is not a high bar for comparison of wealth inequality. In fact wealth in equality in the US is a problem, and by any measures Columbia is either about the same or much worse.

The goal is places like Denmark.

South America in general has serious inequality problems.

There should be that reminder here too

> Wealth inequality in Colombia is high, but actually lower than wealth inequality in the US by most measures

When everyone's at the bottom, there's little wealth inequality

Sure, but that's not the situation in Colombia. Colombia has a high level of wealth inequality.

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