undefined | Better HN

0 pointshn_throwaway_993y ago0 comments

I think this misses the point of the article. Yes, the world has had, and will always have, rich and poor. But to raise the poor up, what you fundamentally need is more energy.

I think this article also does a good job in emphasizing country-level poverty is what's really important to think about. That is, in the US, since we already have the infrastructure of a rich country, even poor people can afford safe food and refrigeration (but even then it's not evenly distributed, e.g. much has been written about "food deserts" in the US).

But, in say, Nigeria, they are so undersupplied with refrigeration trucks that making it possible for the poor to get reliable access to safe food would take a massive investment, which would mean a lot more energy.

0 comments

theptip3y ago

Right. Don’t confuse “poor”, ie relative poverty, with absolute levels of wealth ($ per household) and downstream claims about absolute levels of, say, child mortality.

In 1800, almost everyone was destitute by current standards, even prosperous merchants. Child mortality rates were appalling. And at the same time, there was a spectrum between relatively rich and poor, and merchants appeared “rich”.

The article is solely about absolute wealth levels, and is making empirical claims about energy requirements to get there. Concerns about wealth inequality are orthogonal to this set of claims. You could have incredibly equal or unequal societies, but none of them can (with current technology) produce low child mortality rates with very-low per capita energy usage.

joe_the_user3y ago

In 1800, almost everyone was destitute by current standards, even prosperous merchants.

If you measure wealth by dollars or iPhone access, this tautologically true but it's not a good measure of how life was. A wealthy person had enough food, access to leisure, a large house with luxurious possessions and probably servants. Sure, health care might have been bad and they might have died of various epidemics. Their lives would have been far more appealing than the life of, say, someone working 60 hours per week in a factory (who has some health care but risks on the job injury and is worn down by the stress and routine - even if their cheap Android would have worth a trillion dollar in 1800).

bborud3y ago

Then why did people migrate to where the industrial jobs were?

3 more replies

moistly3y ago

> But to raise the poor up, what you fundamentally need is more energy.

Or to direct the energy differently, e.g. shift some of it from rich users to poor ones.

> in the US … even poor people can afford safe food and refrigeration

Poor people are living homeless in tents and cars. They can not afford safe refrigeration and many do not have good access to safe food.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse