Re:Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)
by derriz on Monday September 06, 2021 @03:19AM
(#28431286)
Jason Hickel's criticism is either disingenuous or demonstrates basic innumeracy. The criticism uses absolute differences to "prove" that divergence is increasing.
This does not make sense. If A and B went from earning 30k and 45k respectively to earning 70k and 90k respectively, Hickel would claim this was "divergence" - because the gap between them has risen from 15k to 20k.
But it simply isn't - A is converging with B (the gap has narrowed from 50% to 28.5%). If this trend continued linearly, A's income would surpass that of B within about 3 more periods of such "divergence".
> We see that while per capita income has indeed increased in the global South, the global North has captured the vast majority of new income generated by global growth since 1960. As a result, the income gap between the average person in the North and the average person in the South has nearly quadrupled in size, going from $9,000 in 1960 to $35,000 today.
> In other words, there has been no “catch up”, no “convergence”. On the contrary, what’s happening is divergence, big time.
The same goes for the other topics, including biodiversity.
[0] https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/3/17/two-hump-world