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Comment by aspaceman | Hacker News Reader

There are so many folks in the comments who seem to be focused on a particular narrative. There's a lot of comments saying "It's so much better than it used to be!"

While true, this feels to me like a deflection. It seems to come up any time inequality is mentioned here. It feels like an excuse.

"yes things may be hard for someone making $2 a day, but they're better now so it's all ok."

I find it to be a distraction. I don't care if things are better than ancient times. I think they can improve significantly more, and I'm frustrated by such short-sighted viewpoints distracting from the point of the article.

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I can't speak for everyone in the comments, but when I say the world's improving, it's a reaction to either defeatism ("we can fix the problem so you shouldn't stop trying") or calls for revolution ("don't flip the table over when things are getting better").

It's not that things are improving so we don't need to do anything else, it's that current efforts are working and we should keep going.

>> I don't care if things are better than ancient times.

The world population living in poverty has decreased from >1.7 billion to 700 million over the past 25 years. So, it's not a comparison to ancient times. We've made considerable progress in just the past couple decades.

There's still a lot of work to be done, and we should celebrate the progress made at the same time.

Another way of looking at it is that two of richest countries in the world from 300 years ago spent the most of the past 300 years with most of their citizens in extreme poverty. Now that those countries are catching up again, we're seeing these reductions in extreme poverty.

In other words, these improvements are not the result of a valiant effort to fight poverty, but a regression to the historical meaning happening because the effects of colonization are beginning to fade away.

Why does a decrease in world poverty matter in a thread about living on $2 a day?

I really don’t care about your stats, make your own post if you wanna talk about them. My point is that folks like you redirect the topic because you’re uncomfortable with reality.

I don’t think we’re anywhere close to “celebrating”

...because it's a thread about people living on $2 per day. Would you say the trend is irrelevant if it was negative and things were getting worse? How is talking about poverty trends irrelevant deflection?

I totally disagree with the sentiment that being change oriented means avoiding positive news.

> Why does a decrease in world poverty matter in a thread about living on $2 a day

Because if the population living in poverty has decreased by 1 billion in 25 years, then were clearly doing the right things to reduce poverty. If you think reducing poverty is a bad thing because you’d only accept a solution that eliminates it instantaneously, then I’d question your priorities.

Aside from the fact that its obviously relevant, maybe it was mentioned because the thread is about an article that opens with some of those same statistics on the reduction of poverty.

>> Why does a decrease in world poverty matter in a thread about living on $2 a day?

Because the definition of poverty is $1.9/day or less. Did you read the article?

Yet these statistics don't matter to individuals for whom life is mostly suffering. We're together in our happiness, but alone in our grief. The Gates note here recounts such stories, and even they haven't captured the deep anguish and helplessness that consumes individuals when they have no money to eat (and worse, to feed their children), and when they can't treat family from curable ailments.

Often people seem to use ideas in Factfulness (Rosling) to assuage the guilt of living well and free when there is suffering all around. This is fine, but this also seem to give ammunition to others who argue that people's fates are in their hands alone, minimum wages should be abolished, and being a rickshaw driver is fine - because they need jobs, and it is as good a job as any for people "like them". The reasoning from "things are improving" to "society don't owe individuals succor" seem to be illogical, but reoccuring nonetheless.

How much has world population grown in the past 25 years? I think seeing it as percentages would be interesting.

I agree, such a positive tone encourages complacency. And the reality is that we could do so much better: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/8/30/the-moral-egregio...

"We shouldn’t be looking at the cost of ending poverty as a percentage of total world income, but rather as a percentage of the income of all the people who are not poor; say, those who live on more than double the poverty line. In 1990, it would have cost 12.9% of their total income to end poverty. In 2013, it would have cost only 3.9%. According to this measure, our capacity to end poverty has improved by a factor of 3.31."

I disagree with this, somewhat.

I think the problems of poverty and extreme poverty are undeniable when you look at the examples gates gave. OTOH, in terms of political discussion^ it is a mistake to avoid including positive trends in a discussion. Trends are a huge part of understanding. Does the world need a break from the processes ongoing or do we need to double down and continue/accelerate the trend?

The idea that good news is bad because it distracts from the bad news that still needs attention is shortsighted... and common in change oriented politics.

^id argue when arguments like deflection and staying on message come into play, it's a sign that this is a political discussion

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