Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC

This is just personal but anytime I feel similar to the OP, I watch something by Hans Rosling [1] or Anna Rosling [2]. Although 10 and 5 years old respectively, I feel the general sentiment is still true - that human progress is slow, in the background and might be ebbing and flowing in your specific sub-population. And when compared to the present, media narrative driven present its hard to see the improvements happening across the global population. It helps me put stuff in perspective - of course mileage may var (and maybe it's just helping me delude myself into getting out a funk but it works!). [1] Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - [this video] [2] See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income - Anna Rosling Rönnlund [link]

I am making a statement about the reasoning that results in current policies. I'm not saying that the policies are well-executed (indeed I think they are not), merely that they have something more than just "reward a well-connected lobby" justifying them. As for African poverty and famine, you're right that measures that protect farmers in rich countries will hurt farmers in poor ones. However the #1 cause of African famine remains corruption and war inside of Africa. And on current economic trends, we'll see economic powerhouses emerging in Africa in near decades. So as sad as our neglect of the interests of over a billion Africans is, it does not seem to be a permanent boot in the face. For perspective, take 5 minutes to watch [this video] . There are - today - African countries that are better off than any country in the world was 70 years ago. If others continue on trends that have happened elsewhere, things are going to improve fairly dramatically. I agree with you that our agricultural policies create problems. But I'm optimistic about what the future holds for people who are impacted.

Not utopia compared to what? My great grandmother had to have 8 kids so that she could have 4 or 5 adult children. That was less than 100 years ago. My grand parents were the children of subsistence farmers without running water or electricity. They went to high school, worked in factories, and could get broadcast TV in their living room. Electricity and running water became a base default. My parents work in an office pushing papers around. Even the society of their youth seems alien in its antiquatedness of both social mores and amenities. I get paid to think things and can reasonably expect to live essentially disease free until my 70's. Achieving 90 in relatively good health and vitality doesn't seem out of the question. Seems pretty utopic to me. What not-utopia are you talking about? EDIT: Watch: [this video] Over the past 200 years, the difference between 1st world and 3rd world has all but vanished. We still have a ways to go, but no utopia is perfect. Even in the movies.

To quote David Mitchell (the comedian, not the author) it would be tempting to take this kind of thing seriously if it wasn't for a damnable sense of perspective. Some thoughts: 1. Much like how the entire centrist media machine feeds off the insanity of the current US administration, somehow this article is at the top of HN. We put it there. (Well, 42 of you did, as of the time I wrote this.) 2. Perhaps the best-kept secret in the world is that it is getting better by almost every measurement. The late, great Hans Rosling was superb at breaking down these dimensions in video form (eg. [this video] ) but if you want the real deal, I recommend Steven Pinker's excellent "Enlightenment Now". 3. I couldn't care less that Intel has "stalled" since you can now buy a Raspberry Pi that pwns my first computer by an order of magnitude or three and costs less than $25. Meanwhile, Apple is refocusing on Mac hardware again because so many "poor" people have phones now that they can see a sales ceiling... this means that a huge percentage of the planet has a significant computer on them all of the time. 4. Not only does age and wisdom allow you to observe tech over many cycles, but the older I get the more I realize that tech is nothing outside of its relationship to politics, culture, and ourselves. Look at how young children just assume everything is a screen, now. Tech is now an important aspect of the daily political conversation. In just 15 years we've gone from a society that rents VHS mo

Fair point. In defense of my moral model, it's backed up by this idea: are things perfect? No. Is the system working? Yes, and astonishingly well. Is there a better way to get from here to there, where "there" is some improved state of prosperity and development? No. Human nature is what it is, and our systems must exploit our nature rather than combat it. It's all based on measurable positive outcomes, rather than some theoretical idea that being eye-wateringly rich is somehow bad - morally bad, or bad for society. That idea is rooted in the old, pre-growth, pre-industrial paradigm, when all wealth was seized by force in some way. Today, some wealth is from violence, but the overwhelming majority is new money that was created out of nothing but good old human intelligence. Here are some references backing up my idea that the system works. Here's one focusing on the most important metric, human development: [link] This one is from the World Bank. You have to go into the metrics and countries. There are metrics that aren't of interest here, but some are, like access to clean cooking fuels, or electricity. But it's easy to see that most of it is pointing in the right direction. [link] Here's a book about all the things that ordinarily fuel existential pessimism: [link] Here's a book about how innovation progresses exponentially, and what it means for the masses: [link] Here's that classic video by Hans Rosling giving us some perspective on the progress over the last century: [V

The original video link ( [this video] ) was submitted 5 days ago ( [link] ). Then a slightly different url ( [this video] ) was submitted 10 hours ago ( [link] ) It seems quite unfair to me that the person who submitted this content first, and did so without linking to their own blog, gets none of the recognition and karma. While 100% of sthomps submissions ( [link] ) are links to his own blog, where he mirrors or links to the original content. I just said it ( [link] ) but I'll say it again: I think this is a flaw in HN's ranking scheme. If the original link isn't upvoted quickly, it never gets on the front page. After that, the rewards (recognition, traffic, and karma) go to people who mirror the original content or simply link to it from their own websites.

I think it makes sense for a community to own its local roads, the last mile. But I don't think government control makes sense for highways, except perhaps where there is no competition. There are many ways to get to most places. Even with a monopoly, there is a price level where the road makes the most money. You can't raise prices above that without losing money. Even then, it is possible for communities to have contracts with road providers that pay a provider for each mile travelled but that give the community the proceeds of the surge pricing. And certainly communities have to agree to connect to and use a road for it to be profitable. And we certainly don't want to have a situation like that privately owned bridge connecting the US and Canada where there are no other bridges nearby. But I pay an even higher bridge toll to drive to Queens. I'm all for maximizing the benefits. That is the reason we should have to pay to use roads, especially at peak times. Because we waste a lot of time on them when they are free. It's not about collecting the most money for the government. It's about maximizing the flow of traffic when demand is highest. And yes, its hard to eat in places without strong markets and property rights. And things have improved greatly over the last 30 years where people now have more rights and markets set the prices for food rather than political decisions. [this video] The more accurate prices are, the more sensible our decisions can be and the more opportunity

I'm bored, so I'll respond. But where to begin? First, the most basic role of money is to be a medium of exchange. With reasonable overhead and in acceptable time, people need to be able to exchange money for goods and services. Crypto fails this in every practical way. If I want to buy pizza with bitcoin, my overhead exceeds the value of the pizza, the average time to make the purchase is longer than the average time to order, have it made, delivered, and get eaten by my family. (Have you ever SEEN hungry teenagers tear into pizza.) Also if people started trying to buy pizza with bitcoin, you'd quickly run into the problem that the maximum number of transactions per second on the bitcoin network is a fraction of the number of pizzas sold per second. Yes, yes. This is all improvable. I've heard that for years. But these issues are not new, and haven't gone away. OK, what next? You are making a big deal out of the fact that there are poor people in horrible third world countries who want to use crypto to escape authoritarian oversight. At best this is a red herring, I lean towards calling it disingenuous. A far more important use case for crypto is crooks trying to get paid for their ransomware attacks without themselves being caught by law enforcement. And the third world has benefitted far more from payment networks like M-PESA than all of crypto. Besides, the single best way to help the poor people in horrible third world countries is to continue the worldwide economic prog