2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor

This is a fascinating letter that helps combat some of the &quot;doom and gloom&quot; that&#x27;s so prevalent in... well, everything.<p>I kept coming back to one thought while reading this: <i>why</i> are people so mistaken about Africa in particular? The article covers misconceptions all over the place, but it keeps coming back to Africa, and it seems that the disparity between what people think and what&#x27;s actually the case is far larger there than anywhere else.<p>It would be easy to blame this on casual racism and move on. And I&#x27;m sure that&#x27;s a factor. But there must be more.<p>I wonder if there might just be a cliff effect in people&#x27;s perceptions. The perception of China, for example, changed rapidly from &quot;shithole&quot; to &quot;where all our stuff is made&quot;. India quickly switched from &quot;shithole&quot; to &quot;where our IT gets outsourced&quot;. (And reminder, I&#x27;m talking about <i>perceptions</i> here, specifically in the US, or possibly the western world as a whole.) I wasn&#x27;t around for it, but I have the impression that more or less the same thing happened for e.g. Taiwan and Japan.<p>If that&#x27;s the case, then Africa is still in the &quot;shithole&quot; perception category simply because we don&#x27;t see much of them. Not much of our stuff comes with a &quot;Made in Kenya&quot; label on it, and our experience with IT-related outsourcing to Africa is mostly limited to Nigerian scammers. Once that changes, the perception will rapidly go from &quot;those guys have no food&quot; to &quot;those guys are taking all of our jobs&quot;.<p>A counterpoint would be South America, which is not overall perceived as &quot;shithole&quot; but nor is it a place we interact with a whole lot.<p>Perhaps it&#x27;s just mental inertia. The places that are changing most rapidly will be the most incorrectly perceived.

It&#x27;s an excellent piece. I&#x27;ll admit to being a bit confused by the assertion, however:<p>&gt; <i>&quot;letting children die now so they don’t starve later—doesn’t actually work, thank goodness. It may be counterintuitive, but the countries with the most deaths have among the fastest-growing populations in the world. This is because the women in these countries tend to have the most births, too.&quot;</i><p>I spent five months in Kenya, and a couple weeks with the Samburu tribe during a drought. All their animals were dead, piled up, because there were no more leaves to eat. We were driving a caravan of food to distribute in the region, since otherwise the people would have been next. And the dilemma was explained to me clearly: we can&#x27;t just let people die. But it means we have to send food aid all the time now, unlike decades ago, because the population is simply larger than the land can support, except in its best years, and it makes the people essentially permanently dependent on outside aid.<p>So I&#x27;ll admit to being stumped by what Melinda Gates means when she says that overpopulation isn&#x27;t the result of aid. Simply asserting that &quot;countries with the most deaths have among the fastest-growing populations in the world&quot; doesn&#x27;t explain anything -- it&#x27;s just a correlation, and might very well be due to the fact that such countries <i>already</i> receive the most food aid, for example.<p>I&#x27;m certainly not arguing that I am against, or that anyone should be against, food aid. But I am utterly unconvinced by Melissa Gates saying that &quot;saving lives leads to overpopulation&quot; is a myth -- she doesn&#x27;t substantiate it, and it seems like the weakest part of the whole post. It all depends on how you define overpopulation, but I just don&#x27;t see it yet. Of course, rising income and education lowers birth rates in the future, but that doesn&#x27;t change the simple fact that, at low levels of income and education, more food aid directly results in more people, which is often more than traditional local practices and agriculture can reliably and sustainably support.

The Gates are quite correct that we shouldn&#x27;t ordinarily worry too much if some of the aid is siphoned off into government corruption. But while if 2% of the money goes into the creation of some official&#x27;s new manor that isn&#x27;t too bad, there are much worse things that money can go to.<p>In the Great Lakes Crisis[1] the perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda were charging aid organizations for access to the the refugees they controlled. They were using the money to try to buy enough weapons to re-conquer Rwanda and finish what they had started. Most private aid organizations wisely decided they weren&#x27;t willing to pay the genocidaires off, but the UN was willing to and the army of the new Rwandan government ended up invading to stop them, touching off the Congolese civil war.<p>Paying for access to refugees can also turn refugees into a de-facto lootable resource that can help sustain conflicts the same way that diamonds can.<p>Corruption in stable states isn&#x27;t a huge problem for aid (development is another story), but it&#x27;s interactions with aid are much worse in unstable areas.<p>[1]<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_refugee_crisis" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Great_Lakes_refugee_crisis</a>

The United States&#x27; news coverage concerning Africa perpetuates these myths.<p>It seems as if 95% of news stories focus on poverty, war and chaos in the continent. They rarely go so far as to differentiate among countries.<p>In fact, many African nations are great centers for innovation. Kenya and Nigeria spring to mind for higher education and mobile computing.<p>As a way of confronting condescending stereotypes, I have often fantasized about organizing a group of Nigerian school children to &quot;help build a school somewhere in America&quot; — a twist on the cliche trip that many U.S. students take to Africa — because education in some Nigerian cities is far superior to most U.S. high schools.

I&#x27;ve been to Mexico City fairly recently, and I guarantee that in the right places -- possibly the same place the 1986 picture was taken -- you could take something very much like that 1986 picture today (which is perhaps even more tragic today, since its not just after the major earthquake). And I&#x27;ve seen Mexico City pictures just like that 2011 one, barring changes in fashion, from the 1980s. And even the 1960s.<p>On a bigger problem with Myth 1, not only are the pictures distortion, so is the main set of economic claims supporting the myth thesis they are meant to illustrate. Gates makes claims about &quot;per person income&quot;, but the statistic he uses and treats as if it meant that is actually GDP per capita. Because much of the value of goods produced in developing countries is captured by foreign capital holders owning the firms doing the production, and because all that value extracted from the country&#x27;s economy still shows up as part of the GDP of the country it is extracted from, GDP per capita, particularly in the developed world, is often very different than income per person.

This should be titled &quot;Strawmen that block progress for the poor&quot;. Few serious thinkers actually believe any of those supposed myths.<p>Not one word about the exploitation of labor and natural resources in &quot;poor nations&quot; by rich nations (&amp;corporations). Not one word about economic sanctions imposed on several poor nations by the US and its allies.<p>Gates sounds like the optimist against a world of cynics, but he ignores major reasons why these nations are poor in the first place.

In regards to &quot;people believe the world is getting worse&quot;, is mostly Americans and the US media. I believe things are getting worse, or at least harder for the majority of Americans; not the rest of the world.<p>Unemployment, large disparity in wealth, massive problems with debt (student debt), and highly dysfunctional political system. Americans see things as getting worse, here at home. We don&#x27;t really focus on the rest of the world.

&quot;Creating societies where people enjoy basic health, relative prosperity, fundamental equality, and access to contraceptives is the only way to secure a sustainable world.&quot;<p>I suppose I&#x27;m one of the 0% (rounded) who disagree with putting contraception in this list. When this gets thrown around, it makes me feel like an outsider in a programming community where I otherwise agree with probably everything else.

&gt; There are still slums and pockets of poverty, but by and large when I visit there now I think, “Wow, most people who live here are middle-class. What a miracle.”<p>Overall I enjoyed his letter, but I find this quote a bit deceptive. A recent photo (<a href="http://i.imgur.com/atxDiw6.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;atxDiw6.jpg</a>) of the poverty line in Mexico City paints a very different picture than Gates&#x27; conclusion that most people there are &quot;middle-class.&quot; Another source (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/30/us-mexico-poverty-idUSBRE96T01F20130730" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;2013&#x2F;07&#x2F;30&#x2F;us-mexico-poverty-...</a>) claims that Mexico&#x27;s poverty line is nearly 50%, far different than &quot;pockets of poverty.&quot;

Is it just me, or is there some bias in the before &amp; after photos?<p>Mexico city &quot;before&quot; is just one dwelling versus a full street in the &quot;after&quot;.<p>Nairobi &quot;before&quot; is taken when most of the city was dark due to clouds, whereas the &quot;after&quot; is a bright, sunny day.<p>Similarly, Shanghai &quot;before&quot; looks like it was taken with an unfavourable filter on a hazy day.<p>I&#x27;m not doubting that the world is improving, especially in those places. I just find it unusual that they used such obviously biased photos.

&quot;How Occupy Wall Street Won In One Chart&quot;<p>--&gt; &quot;income inequality has been the #1 global risk.&quot;<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-occupy-wall-street-won-in-one-chart-2014-1" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;how-occupy-wall-street-won-in...</a>

Fascinating. This addresses one of my key concerns, that aid often is a bag of cash to high officials, who then go buy 6-10 Lamborghinis and a new apartment rather than actually helping people out.

I think myth number 3, that saving children’s lives leads to overpopulation, misses the central concern. People are concerned about world resource depletion, not overpopulation. And while it is 100% true that bringing countries out of poverty reduces population growth, it does not reduce consumption. In fact, it does the opposite.

&gt; <i>Four of the past seven governors of Illinois have gone to prison for corruption, and to my knowledge no one has demanded that Illinois schools be shut down or its highways closed.</i><p>Brilliant.

I would be interested to hear how HN readers approach charity. I personally am constantly struggling with questions like: once my basic needs are met, how can I possibly justify <i>not</i> giving the rest of my income to life-saving causes?<p>My working theory is a combination of (a) my basic needs are actually quite high when you consider the many potential rainy days for which I must save, (b) I don&#x27;t know enough to donate with confidence that my money is doing more good than harm (this Gates letter addresses some of my concerns here), and (c) I must simply come to terms with being selfish to the point where I would rather spend money on a candy bar than a life-saving vaccination for someone else.

This is a great and wise overview of some of the most important aspects of the state and trajectory of humanity today. I wish there were more widespread exposure to analysis like this.

I view this as a political sensitization, and I think it&#x27;s greater than trying to talk numbers and topics about charities and myths.<p>I think this foundation is showing that you can be optimistic and right at the same time for many things about charities, but it&#x27;s not the organization and the means and the money sent that will effectively change things.<p>I don&#x27;t know how this foundation works at the political level, and what are the political issues, but I hope it will make people really reflect their view on the world. You don&#x27;t often have billionaires initiating a communication campaign and articles about charities, and attracting that much attention.<p>I don&#x27;t think Bill Gates would really like to answer the question &quot;when did you encounter politics in that work, and what was good and what was not ?&quot;, because I don&#x27;t think that he&#x27;s a very political guy, but at least he has enormous talent for everything else.<p>I honestly thinks that diplomacy and politics can immensely help charities. I wish this foundation is not just doing this mission without minding the geopolitics, and has at least a few political partners and advisors. I wonder if they tried to do some lobbying, if just think there is a lot of potential if you try to approach foreign aid with a moderate amount of politics.

#2 is really tortured. first he makes the argument that foreign aid works, then narrows it down to &quot;development aid&quot; and then when it comes time to presenting evidence he really pares it down to &quot;health aid&quot;.<p>And addressing the second part of myth #2(aid breeds dependence), is it not possible that the countries that escaped aid are getting better in spite of foreign aid, and not because of it? There are a lot of other things that have happened to those countries in the era in which foreign aid was given, like political shifts, introduction of technology, improvement of trade relations with neighboring countries, no longer being at war with other countries, etc, etc, etc. Seems like a standard correlation&#x2F;causation fallacy.

&gt; It is ironic that the foundation has a reputation for a hard-nosed focus on results, and yet many people are cynical about the government aid programs we partner with. The foundation does a lot to help these programs be more efficient and measure their progress.<p>It&#x27;s not ironic. Some people value government charity spending less than they value private nonprofit spending. Gates implicitly acknowledges that government aid has weak points (poor focus on outcomes, inefficiency, and lack of good measurement). Aside from that, there are also principled concerns about using tax dollars for aid projects.

Yesterday I read the Oxfam report that 85 people own half of the world&#x27;s wealth. <a href="http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2014-01-20/rigged-rules-mean-economic-growth-increasingly-winner-takes-all-for-rich-elites" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oxfam.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;pressroom&#x2F;pressrelease&#x2F;2014-01-20&#x2F;ri...</a><p>Now this is amazing and simple fact. This shows we have completely failed at distribution of wealth. If we could fix this many many problem will vanish. Now instead of what Gates has written this extreme inequality is blocking the progress of poor.

The myth in this article is that a per capita average of income tells you anything about the condition of the poor. Many countries can raise that number significantly by simply asking Mr. Gates to visit for a day.

There are multiple problems with Gates&#x27;s predition, but two of the biggest are these: 1. Growth in real economic wealth is very strongly tied to growth in real resource consumption. The master resource is energy, but numerous other resources are in tight supply, with a critical set being &quot;bauxite whose production peaked in 1943), copper (1998), iron ore (1951), magnesium (1966), phosphate rock (1980), potash (1967), rare earth metals (1984), tin (1945), titanium (1964), and zinc (1969)&quot; (from Richard Heinberg&#x27;s The End of Growth[1])<p>I&#x27;ve explored the concept of decoupling in greater length using Wolfram+Alpha data to show the relationship between energy use and GDP for the G8 nations plus China, India, and Brazil, as well as global growth, in the periods of 2000 - 2010, 1990 - 2012, and 1980-2012 (not all data available for all periods, though the 2000 - 2010 data are complete for all nations analyzed). While there&#x27;s some sign of very weak decoupling of energy and GDP growth, principally in Japan and the USA, for global GDP growth, there&#x27;s a very strong relationship between GDP and energy usage, and both have been increasing. With limited exceptions, global per capita energy use has also been increasing.<p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1vlksg/economic_decoupling_the_recent_relationship/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;dredmorbius&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1vlksg&#x2F;economic...</a><p>As I write this, I&#x27;m listening to a news story that the IEA has announced that US oil consumption, flat for years, is up 2%<p><a href="http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/rising-demand-oil-growth-easy-when-youve-been-pits" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.marketplace.org&#x2F;topics&#x2F;world&#x2F;rising-demand-oil-gr...</a><p>2. The second major problem is that the so-called Demographic Transition which Gates and Hans Rosling like to trumpet is little more than a largely unexplained phenomenon observed in some but not all data series. Tom &quot;Do the Math&quot; Murphy, UCSD physics professor, has specifically looked at this with regards to oil states, and makes the observation that &quot;surplus energy makes babies&quot;[2]. This is significant for two reasons: it means that the demographic transition isn&#x27;t being observed in all countries, and it means that population growth, and hence domestic energy consumption growth, is highest in the major oil exporting nations. Growing domestic consumption means reduced availability of energy for export markets -- a phenomenon known as the &quot;export lands model&quot;. Other research suggests that the causality link between development rates and birth rates is less clear than popularly portrayed[3].<p>I could bore (or terrify) you with numerous other challenges: flat or falling agricultural productivity, EROEI deficiencies in virtually every non-fossil energy alternative, pandemics risks. There&#x27;s a reason I don&#x27;t get invited to parties much .... But I think these two will do. While I have respect for some of Bill Gates&#x27;s work (and I&#x27;m by no means an uncritical fan of his), his optimism here seems misplaced and founded on a very incomplete portrayal of the situation.<p>____________________________<p>Notes:<p>1. Sources: <a href="http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;minerals.usgs.gov&#x2F;ds&#x2F;2005&#x2F;140&#x2F;</a> and <a href="http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/597/2/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.culturechange.org&#x2F;cms&#x2F;content&#x2F;view&#x2F;597&#x2F;2&#x2F;</a><p>2. &quot;The Real Population Problem&quot; <a href="http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2013/09/the-real-population-problem/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;physics.ucsd.edu&#x2F;do-the-math&#x2F;2013&#x2F;09&#x2F;the-real-populat...</a><p>3. &quot;Revisiting demographic transition: correlation and causation in the rate of development and fertility decline.&quot; <a href="http://www.iussp.org/sites/default/files/event_call_for_papers/OSullivan_IUSSP27_DemographicTransition_FullPaper.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iussp.org&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;event_call_for_pape...</a>

Never mind the fact that the divide between the rich and the poor is growing, and only<p>growing.

Some major ground has been covered in the article, and sparked a few more pointers. I come from a country receiving substantial aid, and yet I see that a lot of new initiatives could be kickstarted by the wealthy citizens themselves. Covering the reasons why the middle-class and the rich hesitate to lean in philanthropy would also instigate more people to contribute.

I appreciated the fractal poetry in including the story of Sadi Seyni&#x27;s village well (an example of the need for spreading accurate information to our fellow villagers), which is itself wrapped in a letter which calls on the reader to spread accurate information on the myths being presented.

Too bad Gates doesn&#x27;t think the Internet helps progress in countries, because technology and the Internet are huge factors in the progress and conditions of living in a country.

His third point, &quot;Saving lives leads to overpopulation,&quot; is a weird straw man. I&#x27;ve never heard of anyone ever suggesting letting suffering children die as some way to keep the population low. He brings up Malthus as another straw man.<p>I&#x27;m not sure the point he&#x27;s trying to make. To stop people from stopping people from saving people&#x27;s lives? I <i>think</i> he&#x27;s trying to suggest that the planet has too many people on it but that shouldn&#x27;t stop us from saving people&#x27;s lives. I know a lot of people who consider the planet overpopulated and I&#x27;ve never heard of anyone suggesting letting babies die would help, let alone consider it remotely human.<p>He seems to conclude educating women and making birth control available helps most. Why not just make that point? I feel like he&#x27;s trying to imply those who disagree with him or agree with Malthus are tantamount to baby-killers.<p>On another (lighter) note, since dromedaries are camels too, calling the &quot;camel world&quot; a &quot;bactrian world&quot; would be more clear. The fun mnemonic for camel names is that the Dromedary has one hump and the Bactrian has two, like the first letters of their names, &#x27;D&#x27; and &#x27;B&#x27;, turned sideways.<p>EDIT: Moreover, these statements are at odds, or at least need more explanation to connect them.<p>&quot;It may be counterintuitive, but the countries with the most deaths have among the fastest-growing populations in the world. This is because the women in these countries tend to have the most births, too.&quot;<p>and<p>&quot;Human beings are not machines. We don’t reproduce mindlessly. We make decisions based on the circumstances we face.&quot;<p>The first point suggests people have extra babies in anticipation of some of them dying before adulthood. The second implies they would target a certain number to reach adulthood, which would not itself lead to overpopulation. What would lead to overpopulation on a broad scale would be individuals benefiting from more children than the planet would, which is more like a tragedy of the commons.<p>If people decide based on circumstances, then they wouldn&#x27;t have too many children for whatever their values decide, independent of child mortality. They&#x27;d have the right number. If they are having the right number for themselves, then food and medicine wouldn&#x27;t affect their target number of children.<p>Bringing up food and medicine is a red herring. There may be a myth (which they don&#x27;t establish), but it&#x27;s irrelevant to the point made in that section: increase education and birth control. It confuses unrelated issues and paints people concerned with population as ignorant and cruel.<p>It&#x27;s not clear to me where their logic suggests I should contribute resources. Should I favor food causes over education causes, the other way around, a mix, or neither?

best line in the letter: &quot;As public knowledge goes up, corruption goes down, and more money goes where it’s supposed to.&quot;<p>This means you NSA and US black budget. Computers and robots have no need for money. Our black budget goes to paying PEOPLE off and keeping secrets.

Breaks back button...

ignore... testing saved articles.

Darn, I was hoping that he was talking about the domestic poor.