Re:A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty
by nabla9 on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @10:03AM
(#19143994)
> people current institutions are responsible for the positive changes, and that therefore they are good, and thus we should be supporting them?
Current institutions as a vague continuity or the same?
Because if Pinker and other try to argue that current institutions have been historically enough, we just continue growth, they are very much wrong.
Benefits from innovations and growth have been accompanied with massive institutional changes in every 30 years or so. The current era is becoming an exception where institutions are becoming stale after 40-50 years of the same. That threatens continuity because institutions have to change in response to the change in the environment or they collapse.
Re:A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty
by pas on Sunday February 17, 2019 @04:38PM
(#19187088)
I'm of course no Pinker himself, nor a tenured prof at Hardvard, or even friends with him, but based on what I read from him and about him, he is very much in support of change toward new, more inclusive, more fair, more egalitarian and more rational institutions. And argues that trade and good old classic liberal ideas are slowly but surely bringing forth these changes (through the work of many hundreds of millions of slightly altruistic people), despite the efforts of our demons (innate or cultural/contextual xenophobia, ignorance, extreme greed/selfishness, etc).
Pinker actually addressed this, but unfortunately I can't remember in which book/lecture/talk/article. Largely paraphrasing he said that we have to work for the gains, but that doesn't mean we can't have a positive attitude about these processes. (Such as comparative advantage resulting in trade resulting in cooperation and some degree of altruism - or we can just call it "counterparty risk management", or simply looking out for your buyers and suppliers.)