And because of this government, tons of those people lost their jobs and had to go back to the rural farms, where they will go into extreme poverty again. The same government that made these people suffer through 40 years of pain, 70 years ago.

It was American capital and knowledge that lifted these people out of extreme poverty.

Some seem to think the goal of all humanity should be to “lift everyone out of poverty.” Even if it destroys the planet and leads to massive humanitarian crises and ever greater suffering, putting dollars in wallets, that’s the point of it all. Homo economicus.

"poverty" in this case is not "below the US poverty line". "poverty", when used in this context, means failure to satisfy the physiological layer of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: starvation, lack of decent shelter, disease, etc. The suffering from "poverty" in this sense is unimaginable to me. The fact that it's more or less hidden and not a big-ticket media item doesn't make it less of a humanitarian crisis or reduce the suffering involved.

Or put another way, we're not talking about putting dollars in wallets. We're talking about putting food in children's mouths, clothes on their backs, roofs over their heads. Maybe even some education in those heads. Yes, I just used a "think of the children" argument, sorry.

Aren't you using a laptop/phone or something to type this comment on? Seems a bit hypocritical to me.

Seriously, every single one of us being on HN is the product of being stupidly lucky to be born where we were and be typing on whatever we are.

Millions of potential Einsteins have lived and died as subsistence farmers or worse throughout human history. If any of us were born fifty thousand years ago we would not be savant geniuses bringing about the agricultural era - if we even lived to adulthood (highly unlikely) we would have spent our days chasing gazelle to exhaustion to survive just like the rest of mankind.

This is the kind of problem that individual action cannot solve. It's well modeled by tragedy of the commons. Similarly I'd vote for banning slaughter of animals for meat, but in the meantime am not a full-time vegetarian any longer.

If you continue to troll threads by tossing in flamebait, we're going to end up having to ban you. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> You got him bro!! If you don't like that mass industrialization and overpopulation costs us our planet and potentially our grandchildren's livelihoods, instead of using the most effective means to communicate your cause, go to Africa and live in the jungle!!!! epic

Do you not see the hypocrisy in replying to someone like this while saying "Keep the dialogue civil"?

> overpopulation costs us ... our grandchildren's livelihoods

Oh the irony :)

According to this, the greatest culprit isn't China. It's the industrial revolution.

When did lifting millions out of poverty lead to “massive humanitarian crises and ever greater suffering”? How callous and sheltered do you have to be to say something like that?

Surely the absurdity of someone like you telling the world’s poor that they ought to stay poor doesn’t escape you?

>How callous and sheltered do you have to be to say something like that?

Keep the dialogue civil.

It turns out that industrializing a society creates a lot of pollution. That pollution, as we've recently found out, is responsible for "the massive humanitarian crises and greater suffering" we are going to experience as impoverished nations continue to industrialize (ie. get lifted out of poverty).

See: IPCC

Your premise is wrong. This is called the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC):

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

The solution to pollution is more economic development, not less. This becomes even more true once demographic transition effects (like declining birth rates) start to kick in.

You don't understand what you are talking about.

EKC works with pollutants that have short term, acute consequences. Think sulfates, nitrates, carbon monoxide, etc.

EKC has not been proven true with pollutants whose effects are less concentrated and whose effects take longer to realize (CH4, CO2, etc). The catastrophes I'm referring to have little to do with the paper you cited.

According to https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2011/0..., it seems that there is a positive correlation between GDP per capita and carbon emissions per capita at first, but the correlation stops after that and becomes neutral. In the UK and US, for example, carbon emissions per capita remained roughly constant over a 50 year period even as GDP per capita increased significantly.

Area under the curve.

What do you mean?