2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor

http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/?cid=bg_fb_po0_012103/#section=home

by pyduan • 13 years ago

490 307 13 years ago

annualletter.gatesfoundation.org

gregwtmtno2• 13 years ago

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.

maxerickson• 13 years ago

Minus the awful solutions, the best long term strategy to reduce resource consumption is to reduce population growth.

It doesn't miss the central concern, it reasons through it within some reasonable moral framework.

mikeash20• 13 years ago

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.

g8oz• 13 years ago

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.

acconrad• 13 years ago

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."

humanrebar14• 13 years ago

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.

sp3322• 13 years ago

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.

beachstartup• 13 years ago

1. the photo you provided shows far more middle-class high rise dwellings than the low-lying tenament slums.

2. he was talking specifically about mexico city, not mexico as a whole.

the point is real, tangible progress is obviously being made, and that the work needs to continue. it's not "hopeless".

sdegutis47• 13 years ago

"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.

btian• 13 years ago

Do you mind explaining why?

Providing contraception (especially condoms) can prevent STDs in addition to preventing unwanted child birth.

sdegutis47• 13 years ago

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.

humanrebar14• 13 years ago

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.

mikeash20• 13 years ago

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.

jordan0day• 13 years ago

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.

hkolek2• 13 years ago

Please, for the love of god, stop with fearmongering about overpopulation already. It's pure nonsense.

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#growthrate

"The latest United Nations projections indicate that world population will nearly stabilize at just above 10 billion persons after 2062." [1]

Also recommended: The documentary "Population Boom" by Werner Boote [2][3]

[1] http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Documentation/publications.htm

[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3107706/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

[3] (German) http://www.populationboom.at/

zeidrich• 13 years ago

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.

sdegutis47• 13 years ago

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.

sdegutis47• 13 years ago

"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.

EDIT: added a little tact

macspoofing4• 13 years ago

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.

humanrebar14• 13 years ago

The only objections to contraceptive access are religious in nature, and we can safely discard those.

I think this is pretty much his (her?) point. You've basically said that no matter what the point is, it's either not cogent or not valid.

stonemetal• 13 years ago

You should, because there really is no downside.

Right, there are no negative side effects to taking birth control, like increased risk of heart disease.

run4_too14• 13 years ago

Could I ask why? Would you, for example, ban them in our own society?

sdegutis47• 13 years ago

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.

abraininavat2• 13 years ago

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.

run4_too14• 13 years ago

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.

sdegutis47• 13 years ago

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.

moocowduckquack4• 13 years ago

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?

MichaelGG2• 13 years ago

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.

cperciva• 13 years ago

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.

MartinCron5• 13 years ago

Serious question: are you a parent?

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.

sdegutis47• 13 years ago

My wife and I have 4 kids, from ages 1 to 10. Raising them is incredibly hard.

pessimizer• 13 years ago

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.

rmah• 13 years ago

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).

Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP for more info.

mikeash20• 13 years ago

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.

quinnchr• 13 years ago

This is an interesting campaign trying to tackle those exact issues of perception: http://www.africafornorway.no/

mikeash20• 13 years ago

That is truly excellent.

wisty• 13 years ago

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.

nl• 13 years ago

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.

[1] In terms of deaths: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War

philwelch2• 13 years ago

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.

Apocryphon• 13 years ago

True, but there was a time prior to that, before modernization. "Those sandal-wearing goldfish tenders? Ha ha! Bosh! Flimshaw!"

stan_rogers2• 13 years ago

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.

slurry2• 13 years ago

Two points:

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.

scarmig• 13 years ago

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.

theraccoundude2• 13 years ago

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.

squeed• 13 years ago

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.

pnathan2• 13 years ago

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.

yobb2• 13 years ago

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.

localhost3• 13 years ago

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"?

pnathan2• 13 years ago

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.

mikeash20• 13 years ago

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?

dragonwriter8• 13 years ago

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.

localhost3• 13 years ago

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.

dragonwriter8• 13 years ago

I don't see how your criticism refutes Myth 1

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.

Guvante3• 13 years ago

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.

WildUtah• 13 years ago

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.

pacofvf• 13 years ago

GDP per capita is misleading

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.

spodek• 13 years ago

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?

sp3322• 13 years ago

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.

pekk• 13 years ago

No, whether it's a misconception or not it's a legitimate concern about what is effective, not a rationalization

chrisgd3• 13 years ago

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. . .

ori_b2• 13 years ago

Where did he say that there was no poverty? "Look at the progress we've made" is a far cry from "Ok folks, we're done here".

gregwtmtno2• 13 years ago

Third point was by Melinda. (She)

dictum• 13 years ago

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.

misterbishop2• 13 years ago

Thanks for the camel facts!

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.

For an interesting discussion of Malthus, check out Betsy Hartmann in this episode of Behind the News: http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2013/13_06_13.mp3

unmole• 13 years ago

I'll just leave this here: http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/430318/Foreign-aid-spent-on...

chime4• 13 years ago

I don't think Sir Attenborough is saying anything that disagrees with the Gates letter. He singled out one form of aid - direct food - as harmful. Not all aid is helpful. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_aid

Gates letter's point was that just because there are forms of aid that are harmful, does not mean all aid is harmful.

JumpCrisscross3• 13 years ago

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.

rbanffy6• 13 years ago

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.

akamaka• 13 years ago

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:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20081006164746AADzo4l

BlackDeath3• 13 years ago

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.

bayesianhorse• 13 years ago

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.

Spooky23• 13 years ago

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)

chime4• 13 years ago

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.

JumpCrisscross3• 13 years ago

Out of curiosity, which was the specific argument which changed your mind?

cm2012• 13 years ago

You may also find Hans Roslings Ted Talk, "The Beat Stats Youve Ever Seen" enlightening.

InclinedPlane2• 13 years ago

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.

brc2• 13 years ago

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.

CreakyParrot• 13 years ago

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population..."

yeukhon• 13 years ago

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).

spikels4• 13 years ago

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.

[1] http://blog.givewell.org/2008/08/03/infant-mortality-and-ove...

[2] http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/21/opinion/la-oe-harte-...

[3] http://www.conserve-energy-future.com/causes-effects-solutio...

MartinCron5• 13 years ago

Bill Gates said that he himself had this misconception when he first started in philanthropy. It's good that he's working to unwind it.

sifarat• 13 years ago

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.

MarkMc• 13 years ago

I've never heard of anyone ever suggesting letting suffering children die as some way to keep the population low

Here is someone suggesting exactly that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4372752

misterbishop2• 13 years ago

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.

humanrebar14• 13 years ago

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.

Guvante3• 13 years ago

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.

humanrebar14• 13 years ago

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.

hawkharris2• 13 years ago

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.

dragonwriter8• 13 years ago

It seems as if 95% of news stories focus on poverty, war and chaos in the continent.

That's because news stories, regardless of continent, focus on tragedy, war, and chaos; its not something special about Africa.

gnerd2• 13 years ago

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?

hawkharris2• 13 years ago

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.

JumpCrisscross3• 13 years ago

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.

_delirium2• 13 years ago

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"

Sort of along those lines, http://www.africafornorway.no

gcb0• 13 years ago

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.

InclinedPlane2• 13 years ago

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.

bfe• 13 years ago

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.

pella• 13 years ago

"How Occupy Wall Street Won In One Chart"

--> "income inequality has been the #1 global risk."

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-occupy-wall-street-won-in...

Symmetry• 13 years ago

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.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_refugee_crisis

agarwlGaurav5• 13 years ago

Yesterday I read the Oxfam report that 85 people own half of the world's wealth. http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2014-01-20/ri...

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.

Kiro• 13 years ago

this extreme inequality is blocking the progress of poor

How so?

agarwlGaurav5• 13 years ago

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.

spikels4• 13 years ago

You misquote the OXFAM claim. They actually say:

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.

[1] http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-fo...

[2] http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/

[3] http://www.businessinsider.com/wfe-world-stock-market-capita...

[4] http://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1212h.pdf

[5] http://www.investmentmanagement.prudential.com/documents/pim...

agarwlGaurav5• 13 years ago

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."

ZachPruckowski• 13 years ago

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.

agarwlGaurav5• 13 years ago

Agreed, I made a mistake and misunderstood the fact but my point that we have failed miserably at distribution of wealth remains.

kilroy123• 13 years ago

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.

elwell• 13 years ago

Breaks back button...

crazygringo• 13 years ago

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.

chime4• 13 years ago

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.

caublestone• 13 years ago

"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.

XorNot2• 13 years ago

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.

nostromo• 13 years ago

It seems they could have the causation arrow exactly backwards.

Alternate hypothesis: Countries with fewer children have more resources to put towards those children.

The Gates Foundation is super smart, so I'm hopeful they've seen enough data to consider and refute this.

alphydan2• 13 years ago

A good place to start for an overview on the research on that causation is Hans Rosling, http://www.nooventures.org/hans-rosling-on-global-population... and http://www.gapminder.org/

shas3• 13 years ago

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.

thwest3• 13 years ago

Overpopulation can also result from simple trade. NYC and generally the entire US eastern seaboard are overpopulated by your definition.

dredmorbius10• 13 years ago

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.

trentmb• 13 years ago

Is food given to people in NYC/East Coast for free, or do the people there purchase it?

bcoates5• 13 years ago

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.

ekm2• 13 years ago

: 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.

brc2• 13 years ago

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.

pravda• 13 years ago

The (late) great Sam Kinison gave the solution to world hunger over 20 years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0q4o58pKwA#t=64

Kliment• 13 years ago

Sorry if you're trying to be funny, but that is disgusting.

clarky07• 13 years ago

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.

noselasd• 13 years ago

And here's some data about what's happened to the world (not so much "why", but "what") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUwS1uAdUcI

jl6• 13 years ago

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.

peterashford• 13 years ago

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.

slackson• 13 years ago

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.

jfoster• 13 years ago

Is it just me, or is there some bias in the before & after photos?

Mexico city "before" is just one dwelling versus a full street in the "after".

Nairobi "before" is taken when most of the city was dark due to clouds, whereas the "after" is a bright, sunny day.

Similarly, Shanghai "before" looks like it was taken with an unfavourable filter on a hazy day.

I'm not doubting that the world is improving, especially in those places. I just find it unusual that they used such obviously biased photos.

cowls• 13 years ago

Yes, that also put me off somewhat. There's an air of dishonesty about it.

mathgenius• 13 years ago

Yeah that was enough for me to close that tab.

Meow.

pikewood• 13 years ago

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.

grecy2• 13 years ago

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.

Brilliant.

dnautics2• 13 years ago

yes, but we have demanded that the funds no longer be transferred through those governors.

grecy2• 13 years ago

It will just be transferred through the next governor... who, based on history, has a pretty good chance of being corrupt too.

jokoon• 13 years ago

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.

dredmorbius10• 13 years ago

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.

http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1vlksg/economic...

As I write this, I'm listening to a news story that the IEA has announced that US oil consumption, flat for years, is up 2%

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/rising-demand-oil-gr...

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.

____________________________

Notes:

1. Sources: http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/ and http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/597/2/

2. "The Real Population Problem" http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2013/09/the-real-populat...

3. "Revisiting demographic transition: correlation and causation in the rate of development and fertility decline." http://www.iussp.org/sites/default/files/event_call_for_pape...

bcoates5• 13 years ago

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.

dredmorbius10• 13 years ago

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.

higherpurpose• 13 years ago

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.

jhull• 13 years ago

What good is technology if you are sick or hungry? If you have no electricity? It would be the first thing sold.

dnautics2• 13 years ago

#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.

excellence24• 13 years ago

best line in the letter: "As public knowledge goes up, corruption goes down, and more money goes where it’s supposed to."

This means you NSA and US black budget. Computers and robots have no need for money. Our black budget goes to paying PEOPLE off and keeping secrets.

niio• 13 years ago

ignore... testing saved articles.

wowsig• 13 years ago

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.

Datsundere• 13 years ago

Never mind the fact that the divide between the rich and the poor is growing, and only

growing.

goggles99• 13 years ago

Darn, I was hoping that he was talking about the domestic poor.

2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor

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