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Comment by mad44 | Hacker News Reader

Also fuck poverty. I hope we can wipe poverty off the earth soon.

I hope we can wipe poverty off the earth soon.

Most of the industrialized world can be said to have done that.

Western Europe, Japan, probably Canada too. It is easy* and requires only low levels of corruption, good law and order, combined with mostly free markets. Wealth in terms of natural resources is NOT a requirement, Switzerland is resource wise very poor. (Unless you count scenic views of the Alps as a resource.)

*When I say easy, I mean possible and requires only changes in human behavior - so super hard in fact.

I suspect it may also require the systematic exploitation of the remainder of the world through aggressive pursuit of unfair trade agreements and projection of military force abroad, but I may be wrong.

Also: the help of a larger, richer friend overseas who is much less concerned with equality.

It is true the OECD countries are currently bending the developing world over backwards. But this does not mean that the OECD needs that kind of advantage. We might not be as rich without it, but we would still be quite rich.

Also there's very little military projection from the Scandinavian countries for example.

And I am not sure how the overseas friend helps? If you look at median (not average) GDP per capita, the US is actually less wealthy than many European countries. Plus, in terms of trade with Europe, the US is as much a competitor and exporter as it is an importer.

So I'd say Western European or Scandinavian style prosperity is definitely possible without UK style ex-colonialism, or US style inequality and military projectionism.

You make some good points. I figured that US involvement probably has a hand in ensuring us a steady supply of fairly low priced oil, but you're right that other factors may counteract this.

Honestly, it seems so hard to imagine a 20th Century without US influence that it may not even be worth the effort.

Well the US military involvement does mean it gets some of the lowest priced oil. What's the price of a gallon of gasoline up to in Europe now, $9 or something? I think most of the time it is something like triple what the US pays.

And yet that has not crippled the European economies when it comes to trade with the US. European cars are more gasoline efficient, and Europeans live closer together (although this may largely also be due to historic reason long predating the automobile).

And I think the fear that oil might be radically more expensive for everyone, unless someone ensures it keeps flowing, is unfounded. If oil is valuable - people will look to sell it.

Didn't certain groups in Iraq partly fund themselves by exporting oil in pickup trucks? That's what I mean. Even if an oil exporting area turns to complete and utter chaos, strong men will arise and they will look to get rich by selling oil. And how long could the oil exporting states maintain their quality of life without massive oil exports?

I think you'd have to actively fight to prevent oil from trading rather than the other way around.

But it is also true that Europe might look radically different if the US had not pushed for democracy in the west.

That's what's really so depressing about the US and the rest of the world slowly sliding towards more and more authoritarianism. Who will be guiding beacon of freedom in the coming centuries? Switzerland is not big enough to strong arm anyone into being more democratic.

I'd argue that European gasoline is more expensive purely because European gasoline taxes are higher - the underlying commodity has a similar cost. European governments benefit from being able to charge higher taxes on fuel because US foreign policy helps keeps the oil price down. Thus, they're indebted to the US, which the US knows.

But yeah - I agree. Authoritarianism is definitely not the way to a prosperous world.

+1 great comment, but I think you meant "Eastern Europe".

since he included Canada and Japan, I'm assuming he meant Western Europe.

> Wealth in terms of natural resources is NOT a requirement, Switzerland is resource wise very poor.

Consider the "curse of oil." Abundant natural resources may make uplifting the wider society difficult. Compare the Middle East with Japan.

So that theory would imply that if we compare the Middle East with Japan before 1900 when oil became an important resource we should expect ... what?

> I hope we can wipe poverty off the earth soon.

Define poverty.

If you define it as having much less money than everyone else around you then it's impossible to ever get rid of it. Someone will always have less money. Someone will always have fewer skill and have the poorer jobs.

However, if you define poverty as not having the basics, then we are well on the way to getting rid of it already.

Another few doublings of our energy usage should do it. (Energy usage = resources available, which means everyone has those resources.)

There's something to be said for trying not necessarily to get rid of economic inequality completely, but at least significantly lower it: http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html

I agree with your cry of anguish (esp. reading about the older brother and seeing the pained expression on his mum's face). Yet, this may be impossible because of our humanity, as Agent Smith puts it:

"Have you ever stood and stared at it? Marveled at its beauty, its genius? Billions of people just living out their lives, oblivious. Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program, entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world, but I believe that as a species human beings define their reality through misery and suffering."

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