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Is Poverty Necessary?

BicycleRepairMan says...

Actually, it probably wont.. All the stats point in the same direction: reducing childhood/maternal mortality, eradicating poverty and educating people seems to have an interesting side effect: People have less kids. Typically a poor, uneducated population with 10-15% child mortality theres 5-6 kids per woman, whilst rich, educated populations CM less thand 0.2% or so, 1-2 kids per woman. So the population growth slow down or stops as countries move from developing to developed.

KrazyKat42 said:

The next problem will be birth control. Sorry but it's true.

Kevin O'Leary on global inequality: "It's fantastic!"

Trancecoach says...

"it just sounds like a return to feudalism."

How so specifically? An agrarian culture based on farmland ownership?

It sounds to me that your imagination is getting the best of you. Creative, but not at all what I am describing. Somalia is a failed state, and a socialist failed state at that. However, as you know, things from medical services to life expectancy to infrastructure to child mortality to crime all dropped in the 20 years in which Somalia had no functioning government. Things got better not worse. Why do you think that is?

Saying a free market would be like Somalia is like saying that a government-regulated market would be like North Korea. There are other issues to consider.

Libertarianism does not posit that a free market automatically means a perfect or even a great society. But it does posit that a free market system will ease poverty, increase wealth, and ensure peace at a faster pace than a statist one. At whatever level a culture/society starts at, they will improve and be better off in a free market rather than under state rule. Somalia started off in a mess, caused by its failed state circumstances. You cannot seriously expect to go from one day to the next, eliminate the state, and expect that overnight all that damage will sort itself out just because now -- a day later -- there's no state. You have to rebuild and accumulate wealth over time. And Somalia did remarkably well considering the mess it started from.

A society like the US, which is much better off (for the time-being!), would improve even more, rather than deteriorate, with less or even no government. But of course, if a meteorite wipes out DC overnight, that does not mean overnight improvement. After all, the government has wiped out many private institutions that would need to be in place to take over from the government in providing the services they put out of business.

On the other hand, the road towards more state control (which you, strangely continue to support and defend) leads to more deterioration of the society/culture. The US is doing better because of all the capital it accumulated during the century in which it functioned under little government intervention with regards to its economic matters. That wealth has been badly squandered, and now Americans are living off what remains, slowly but surely bankrupting the country though more government interventions, currency inflations, needless war, bailouts, surveillance, ad infinitum.

But make no mistake: whatever wealth the US as a nation has came about though free exchange in commerce, and was not the result of government regulation. The more government interferes, the slower the growth, until now it has reached the point where there is no growth, only debt. (The Treasury should be renamed the Department of Debt, because it has no money, only debt -- just like a majority of Americans.)

In sum: Somalis are improving. Americans are not. Whoever you are, I assure you, you started off in a much better place than the average Somali did. But look at their rate of change!


EDIT: Somalia also did not have a "free market" when it came to warlord gangs. Unless people had a choice as to which warlord to hire for protection or not, then that is not a free market when it comes to protection services. If allegiance to a particular warlord was voluntary, then you could more honestly make the claim that they had a "free market." Still, the situation is improving. And I think it would have improved faster had there not been the (UN-fueled) expectation of a future centralized government, had the UN not been financing groups towards this end, and had they not been incentivizing gangs to fight each other for position in a future "government."

There is nothing "free market" about forced conscription. I don't know why you would even say that.

enoch said:

exactly! @ChaosEngine

this is exactly where @Trancecoach always loses me.

it just sounds like a return to feudalism.
everytime i try to envision @Trancecoach's free market world i picture somolia and roving bands of warlords,conscripting 8 yr olds to consolidate their power.

they have a free market and an ineffectual government.

which is what i hear you promoting..and i find it horrifying.

Republicans are Pro-Choice!

hpqp says...

@ReverendTed
Many issues to address here, but first, some clarifications. My analogies (wonky as they are) were to point out the immorality of the “you’ve got to live with the consequences” stance, they were not about who’s harmed. But speaking of harm, it would be more ethical to let the two analogical characters “suck it up” than to demand of a woman she bring an unwanted pregnancy to term. In the first cases, there is only one victim, but in the latter there are two. When I say abortion is “punishment enough”, what I mean is that it is already a disagreeable outcome of mistake-making/poor-choice-making, while obliging a woman to give birth to (and raise) an unwanted child not only negatively affects the mother’s life, but that of the child as well; it is a disproportionate price to pay for the former and completely unfair for the latter. Hence, imo, abortion is by far the lesser of two “evils”.

Adoption instead of abortion is “a non-solution and worse” for several reasons. First, there are already more than enough children already alive who need parents, and you know very well that most people prefer making their own than adopting, so many of these will never have a family (not to mention the often inferior care-giving in foster homes and social centres). Now imagine that every abortion is replaced with a child given up for adoption; can you not see the horror? It’s that many more neglected lives, not to mention the overall problem of overpopulation.

I’m going to go on a slight tangent, but a relevant one. I have a certain amount of experience with humanitarian aid in Africa, and one thing that causes me no end of despair is the idiotic, selfish way much of it is performed. Leaving aside corruption, proselytization, etc., the “West” pours food and medicine into Africa with that whole “life is sacred” “feed the poor” mentality – good intentions of course – but with disastrous results because education and contraception (not to mention abortion) are almost always left out, even discouraged, with the support of the usual religious suspects (remember the pope on condoms causing aids?). The result is simple, and simply appalling: despite aid and funds increasing globally every year, starvation and child mortality continue to rise. Why? Because the people being barely maintained keep making kids who grow up to starve and die in turn, instead of focusing on the education of one or two children to get them out of the vicious cycle (there is another argument to be made about the education of women, but I’m ranting enough as is).

The point of this digression is to show that the non-pragmatic “all life is sacred” stance is terribly counter-productive, and the same holds for abortion (viz: on adoption above). As for lack of pragmatism, the same goes for your comment on abstinence:
I appreciate that "don't have sex if you can't accept being pregnant" is not a magical incantation that makes people not have sex, but it has to be a part of it, because no method of contraception is 100% effective, even if used correctly.
What you’re saying basically is “people shouldn’t have sex unless they’re ready for childbearing/-raising”, which is absurd when one considers human nature and human relations.

All of the above arguments weigh into the question of the “ball of cells” vs “human being/identity”. The “sacred life” stance is one of quantity over quality, and in the long run devalues human life altogether. To quote Isaac Asimov on overpopulation: “The more people there are the less one individual matters”. In the abortion debate, what we have is one side so intent on protecting the abstract “life” that they disregard the lives of the two individuals in question, namely the “individual who is” (the mother) and the “individual who might be” (the child). The former is already a human individual, with memories, relationships, a personality, etc. The latter is not. The abortion question takes into account the future quality of life not only of the mother but of the would-be child as well, something the anti-abortion stance does not. Abortion doesn’t end an individual’s life, it prevents a ball of cells from becoming one. Here is where the religious aspect is crucial, because while embryologists see a complex mass of cells with no capacity for cognition/sensation, superstitious people assign an individual “consciousness” or “soul” to it, thus making abortion feel like murder instead of like the removal of a tumour. The question of potential is an emotionally manipulative one that does not hold up to criticism, because as @packo sarcastically (and the Monty Python brilliantly ) point out, you can go a long ways up the stream of potential.

I like the first half of @gorillaman’s tomato analogy for that reason (the second half is hyperbolic absurdity), that it underlines what is important in the debate: the living “thing”’s capacity for sensation/cognition/interaction. If you grew up with a tumour on your body which giggled when you tickled it and cried when you hit it, you would probably think twice before getting rid of it. That does not mean I’m categorically against late-term abortions, but for me the scale seriously tips between the 20-25th weeks when the nervous system of the foetus centralises. Of course, it is preferable that should an abortion take place it would be before the foetal stage, for the sake of medical and psychological comfort, but unfortunately one cannot always know so soon that one is pregnant.

Congressman Will Cut Your Govt Healthcare But Keep His

enoch says...

i feel ya BB.

it's just the current narrative that most people buy into propagated by the media.
why?
because they have shit to do,families to take care of and many times two jobs..sometimes three.
the factual information is out there but you have to look to find it and most people just dont have the time.
so we get folks regurgitating factoids and arguments given to them by well-paid pundits.
"they took our jobs"
if some dude from mexico who cant even speak the language, and has no education, took your job then you are a loser of such EPIC and humiliating proportions.
pablo didnt take your job,your job was outsourced to india.blame your company not some migrant worker.

in the 80's they gave us the narrative "welfare queens" now we are being told it is those "greedy" and "lazy" school teachers,and the unions they are part of,totally ignoring the history of unions and the thousands who died fighting so we can have:
40 hr work weeks.
weekends off.
safer work enviroments.
equal labor practices and the fact that its illegal to have your 8 yr old daughter working 14 hrs a day..7 days a week.
the list is impressive.

they say that universal health care is socialism while conveniently ignoring certain aspects of our government being of that very model.
they also ignore those pesky facts that health care would be cheaper on a single payer plan.one that we already have!
medicare is by far one of the most efficient per dollar than any other government institution.
but those facts just get in the way of their narrative.

look at how they formulate their premise.
using words to compare our government with running a business or household.
it is weak and factually dishonest but people can relate to that because they understand...
it relates to how THEY live,so it makes sense to them.
but it has nothing at all to do with reality.

the food stamp program,along with social security have been two of the great success stories.
keeping the poor and working poor from destitution due to all resources going to food.
lowered child mortality because these kids can eat and older,more vulnerable of this society dont end up homeless.
almost 70 million on food stamps but what will they show as their proof these things are a failure?
anecdotal evidence.not to convey a strong point but rather to appeal to the emotional nature of us all.

these people are being duped into believing that certain politicians think and feel just like they do.
no...they dont.
the ONLY time you matter to a politician EVER..is the election cycle.

for as long as public elections are financed by private funding special interest will always have their ears and by proxy...set the narrative.
they call it "public relations".
i call it what it is:propaganda.

oh man.total derailment.
my bad.

The pervasive nature of classism and poverty (Humanitarian Talk Post)

peggedbea says...

you make a good point. the text does not specify. i liked the statistic because it is completely counter to the myth of the "welfare mom".

if i wasn't broke, i'd have 4 kids. even if that meant adopting the other 2. but i cant afford them, so i got my tubes tied at 22. noone makes a profit off of welfare. >> ^jonny:

In regards to your own judgements about trashy girls, I think you're being a little too hard on yourself. Empathy, compassion, and self respect do not require financial stability to be taught, nor do they require loving parents to be learned.
Middle and Upper class women have .8 more children than women living in poverty
Is that have as in "give birth to", or have as in "are raising"? As you note at the end, infant mortality is significantly higher among the poor. If it means the latter, then that statistic is probably skewed significantly by infant and child mortality. If it means the former, then I admit I am completely surprised and very curious how that could be in light of so much anecdotal evidence to the contrary. I don't mean the stereotype of "welfare mothers", but the historic tendency for people to have more babies when they live in a community with low child survival rates.

The pervasive nature of classism and poverty (Humanitarian Talk Post)

jonny says...

In regards to your own judgements about trashy girls, I think you're being a little too hard on yourself. Empathy, compassion, and self respect do not require financial stability to be taught, nor do they require loving parents to be learned.

Middle and Upper class women have .8 more children than women living in poverty

Is that have as in "give birth to", or have as in "are raising"? As you note at the end, infant mortality is significantly higher among the poor. If it means the latter, then that statistic is probably skewed significantly by infant and child mortality. If it means the former, then I admit I am completely surprised and very curious how that could be in light of so much anecdotal evidence to the contrary. I don't mean the stereotype of "welfare mothers", but the historic tendency for people to have more babies when they live in a community with low child survival rates.

David Cross on the Tea Baggers

thinker247 says...

Don't bother QM with facts. He doesn't care.>> ^RadHazG:

>> ^quantumushroom:
Cross begins with "Purposely misinformed people, the crazy shit that they believe..." and ends with...a bunch of crazy shit, like the US 'ranking 37th in the world in health care'.
Really? Just two slots ahead of Cuba?

Thats right. According to the last study done by the World Health Organization, seen here, the US ranked 37th. This study was done back in 2000 granted, but nothing in the US moves fast enough for us to have moved more than a few positions up if not in fact down due to the economic problems since then.
He's wrong on the child mortality rates as according to the current CIA's latest in 2010 seen here, we're at 180 with about 6.22 deaths /1000 live births. Other studies in previous years show that trend of 6/1000 pretty stable as far as I saw.
Poverty is pretty darn close however as according to the OECD here, we're the 4th. For the richest country in the world to have that many children living below the poverty line? Pretty sad.
He may be off on the numbers (it is a comedy show after all not a political debate) but like all good comedy he has the core truth down. We are NOT the greatest country in the world in these categories, far from it. Its great that we have so many children live, but what kind of life do they have after that? The difference between Cross and the Teabaggers is the Teabaggers are just spouting the opinions they've been fed, Cross is just slightly exaggerating on reality.

David Cross on the Tea Baggers

RadHazG says...

>> ^quantumushroom:

Cross begins with "Purposely misinformed people, the crazy shit that they believe..." and ends with...a bunch of crazy shit, like the US 'ranking 37th in the world in health care'.
Really? Just two slots ahead of Cuba?


Thats right. According to the last study done by the World Health Organization, seen here, the US ranked 37th. This study was done back in 2000 granted, but nothing in the US moves fast enough for us to have moved more than a few positions up if not in fact down due to the economic problems since then.

He's wrong on the child mortality rates as according to the current CIA's latest in 2010 seen here, we're at 180 with about 6.22 deaths /1000 live births. Other studies in previous years show that trend of 6/1000 pretty stable as far as I saw.

Poverty is pretty darn close however as according to the OECD here, we're the 4th. For the richest country in the world to have that many children living below the poverty line? Pretty sad.

He may be off on the numbers (it is a comedy show after all not a political debate) but like all good comedy he has the core truth down. We are NOT the greatest country in the world in these categories, far from it. Its great that we have so many children live, but what kind of life do they have after that? The difference between Cross and the Teabaggers is the Teabaggers are just spouting the opinions they've been fed, Cross is just slightly exaggerating on reality.

Cryonics ~ Discussion Welcome ! :)

8383 says...

CaptWillard, I don't think population would be a problem. In the developed world we live a lot longer but have less children. While in the developing world they have more children because the child mortality rate is higher (and lack of access to birth control) among other things. So if we started living for hundreds of years we'd still only likely have children for the first few decades, and we may even have colonies on other planets to have people on. Who knows?
Which leads to another problem I have with this technology. That is the future being such an unknown variable (but I'm guessing for some that's part of the attraction).

I suggest SciFi fans read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. It delves into a lot of these issues, and its a superb read to boot .

Marine plays with Iraqi kids

raven says...

Twiddles is right, its not just the bunker busters (which are also built using depleted uranium- makes for a bigger bang apparently), but all sorts of other smaller arms use DU as well. Frankly, you should be educating yourself on this MGR, if only out of concern for your own safety, chances are you were exposed to some of it during your service... and who the fuck knows what else, if history and experience have taught us anything is that in the quest to kill and maim efficiently the US army has been very adept at exposing both the enemy and its own soldiers to a plethora of nasty things... I mean, crap, how many older veterans do I know that are just now exhibiting symptoms of agent orange exposure? Or those of that in between generation that have Gulf War syndrome due to exposure to an as yet undisclosed substance? Too freaking many is the answer... too freakin' many.

And Twiddles is also right in that the assumption that Iraq was shit before we rolled in is completely ridiculous... things may have been relatively crappy in 2003 (see stats below), but you have to realize that our campaign against the stability of that country has been ongoing since the first Gulf War, and it has had a direct effect on the population, and undoubtedly accounts for much of the resentment of the Iraqi population towards their American 'liberators'. If it helps you to understand this, I'll shoot some statistics your way, these are all, by the way, directly from Phebe Marr's The Modern History of Iraq, in which she details the impact of US sanctions on Iraq:

"Oil production dropped 85% between 1990 and 1991 and began to increase again only after sanctions relief in 1997... Iraq's per capita income, which had stood at just over $2,000 in 1989 before the Gulf War, had fallen to $609 by 1992... Before the war, good imports were estimated to be about 70% of Iraq's consumption. These were now drastically reduced. Famine was avoided by an effective rationing system, but calorie intake fell from an average of 3,000 calories a day to about 2,250, most of these provided through a ration 'basket' provided by the government.... By 1995 the UN secretary general noted that living conditions had become precarious for an estimated 4 million people. The Food and Agriculture Organization claimed that child mortality had risen fivefold.... The damage to the education system was also severe... one report claimed that of the 250 primary schools in the center and south of the country, over 80% were in poor or critical condition. Credible figures show that the literacy rate, which reached 67% in 1980, fell to about 57% in 2001..." And I could go on, there is lots more where that came from, and I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Iraq.

But my point is We did that. One can argue that it was punishment on an evil dictator for daring to invade poor helpless Kuwait, and our continued sanctions on that country were meant to cripple him militarily as well as economically, in the hope that his people would rise up and overthrow him. However, that obviously did not happen, for a number of reasons, the primary one being that he was insanely good at keeping the population repressed and too afraid to step out of line. In the end, we may have removed him from being a regional power but we encouraged him to turn on his own people and increase his stranglehold upon them.

I was against the sanctions back in the 90s and I still think that they were one of the worst crimes against humanity that our nation has ever managed to get away with. I think it is of ultimate importance that our generation, (MGR- I'm not that much older than you), recognize now what we did, that we, as a country, completely fucked up another country (and arguably an entire region), so that when we are in charge, we do not repeat these same mistakes again and again.

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