Left-Leaning Bias
I think bias is an important thing to take note of, as it results in cherry-picking facts and using loaded language, but it doesn't actually mean that the site gets the facts wrong.
For example, Influence Watch (the website this page is on) is rated by MBFC as right-biased but factually accurate, so I generally trust it as much as I do Vox, which is left-biased but also factually accurate.
ControversiesConflicts of Interest
These are all valid concerns.
Their contract with Vox Media, which was approved in June 2019 after a one-day strike took the Vox.com site “dark,” commits Vox to manage its employees in conformity with left-wing social causes. [11] [12] These include requirements that the company interview specified percentages of job applicants “from underrepresented backgrounds,” that it “honor preferred gender pronouns and provide access to gender-neutral bathrooms” and that it provide the union with a $50,000 annual budget for a committee “devoted to improving diversity and equity at the company.”
These barely count as "left-wing social causes", they are standard workplace policies at this point.
Despite evidence that American journalists are significantly more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party,[35] reports that 96 percent of journalists’ political donations in 2016 went to Hillary Clinton, [36] and the fact that media companies donate far more to Democratic candidates than Republican candidates,[37] Vox cofounder and editor at large Matt Yglesias has nonetheless argued that “television news loves Republicans” and that mainstream TV news has a bias toward Republican guests and airing speeches by Republican politicians.
This may have been a misguided statement by Yglesias, but to be fair, he says "television news" in this quote, and the evidence brought up here was about media in general.
A few days later, on July 6, Vox published a book review from Rensin titled, “Baffled by Trump and American right-wing populism? Read Steve Fraser’s The Limousine Liberal.” In it, he wrote, “The nation has never been so ripe for tyranny. But restoring the elites is not the answer. Liberalism is not working. The left has no time to celebrate. Its task, more urgent than ever, is to grow.”
This quote is evidence against the "Democratic establishment bias" that Vox is accused of throughout this page.
In addition, Vox publishes plenty of content that is critical of the Democratic establishment and the liberal status quo from a left-wing perspective, especially in Ian Millhiser's pieces against the Supreme Court, Dylan Matthews' explanations of left-wing arguments against philanthropy and capitalism, and its publishing of videos by Carlos Maza who self-identifies as a socialist.
(all people exist, by the way)
???
Way to completely miss Dylan's point.
But in some ways, Hickel’s response reflects the crux of the dispute between him and Roser. Roser — like most economic historians — does not view poverty as created but as the original state of humankind from its inception until the Industrial Revolution. It is a policy failure insofar as we finally have the tools to end it now and have not done so yet, but what we’re attempting to do is escape humanity’s natural, brutal conditions. Hickel sees things differently.
I agree with Dylan that this is the crux of the debate.
Personally, as I think more and more about the human condition, I find myself leaning heavily towards the "poverty is the natural state of existence" mindset, not the "poverty was created by wealthy people" mindset.
The only people who I ever see romanticizing hunter-gatherer societies and the like are people who have a strong political agenda against "Western society", "capitalism", "liberalism", or however they'd describe the current socio-economic structure. I also see this tendency in people who are sympathetic to anarcho-primitivist ideology.
Dylan talks about this further in the colonialism section of this article.
Using absolute numbers risks confusing reducing poverty with preventing poor people from existing. The latter is a much weirder and frankly more disturbing goal.
This is a really interesting point that isn't called out enough in the Pinker-adjacent circles.
See also: The repugnant conclusion
“What is really frustrating about it is that [Hickel] publicly gives the impression we don’t really know, which given all I said … and economic historians said in hundreds of great research publications is absolutely not true,” he wrote to me. “That’s not fair to us I feel, it is not fair at all to the research that is out there, it just really misinforms the readers. The Guardian article that says ‘it’s all wrong’ will stick.”
This is an unfortunate trend I've noticed in economic discussions: people make critiques of economic research, not realizing (or perhaps, purposefully ignoring) that the research itself has already acknowledged those critiques.
Scott Alexander talks about this in the beginning of his piece Yes, We Have Noticed the Skulls.
These perceived political stakes are the main reason this fight has gotten so heated. But if we narrow in on the actual numbers that people across the debate can agree on, there’s less disagreement than one might think. Just about everyone agrees life expectancy is up, education is more common, and poverty rates are down over the past three or four decades regardless of where you set the poverty line. And just about everyone agrees we have a lot further to go.
I'm glad Dylan tries to bring people together on these last few points. I'm not sure how effective it'll be, given the political stakes that he describes just before this. The question of whether capitalism has done good for society is extremely important if you identify as an anti-capitalist (although, ideally one could recognize the immense strengths of the current system while still advocating for something better).
A wide-ranging back-and-forth ensued, with Harvard psychologist (and firm believer in a global progress narrative) Pinker responding to Hickel, Hickel firing back, Joe Hasell and Roser at Our World in Data defending their methodology, Hickel redoubling his critique of it, and Branko Milanovic, a CUNY economist and arguably the dean of global inequality studies, weighing in as well.
These were all really fascinating reads.
Still, let’s take the argument at its best case.
The thing I like most about this article is the way that it's organized. The author treated this article like a dialogue, knowing what the obvious response to each part would be and then responding to it. It also points out the motte-and-bailey that occurs when people talk about this issue:
See also: Against Against Billionaire Philanthropy
It is possible to sell some shares – Bezos already does this, in large part for philanthropic ends.
"He has [...] earmarked additional capital for the Day One Fund, the organization he launched in September 2018 to provide education in low-income communities and combat homelessness."
Second, and more directly important, selling his shares would not convert their full value to spendable dollars. There is a limited market for Amazon shares and trying to sell them all off would reduce their price. That’s not to mention that if Bezos suddenly began unloading shares, people might assume that there is something wrong with Amazon, prompting a market panic and driving their price still lower. This is exacerbated by the fact if Bezos were to lose control of Amazon, consumer confidence in the company would probably decrease, further bleeding share value.
This is a point that I hadn't even considered before reading this article. Selling massive amounts of shares has an impact on the value of those shares. It seems obvious now that I'm aware of it.
We’ve made a lot of headway on pressing social ills – but much more must be done. As John F. Kennedy said, the world is at war with the common enemies of man – tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.
Great quote.
At the risk of sounding deeply patronizing, it is very easy to create a villain and blame the ills of the world on them and their inaction. For one thing, doing that justifies the coronation of a sainted hero to take the fight to the enemy.
I think this is a good explanation of why these grand narratives of rich people being to blame for the world's problems are so popular. It takes away any responsibility that we as citizens have to do better, instead giving us an easy scapegoat that makes us feel good.
The United States has spent in excess of $133 billion dollars on nation-building in Afghanistan. Yet Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries on Earth, with over a third of its population chronically food insecure. Why? Because there is a raft of structural problems that complicate development programs. Dropping money from a helicopter won’t do the trick. For example, guaranteeing security is critical in ensuring that development assistance isn’t destroyed or co-opted. The strongest military in the history of the world failed to provide that level of security in Afghanistan. Private donors are unlikely to succeed where the Pentagon failed.
One of my friends is of the opinion that this is a gross mischaracterization of the War in Afghanistan. I don't know much about the issue, so I don't have a strong opinion on it. However, the overall concept makes sense to me, that when there is more money given to these developing nations, there is more opportunity for bad actors to intercept it. This makes foreign aid difficult regardless of whether you're a government, a nonprofit org, an individual, or a worldwide anarchist mutual aid collective.
But the researchers critiquing the paper found that middle-income Americans and rich Americans actually agree on an overwhelming majority of topics. Out of the 1,779 bills in the Gilens/Page data set, majorities of the rich and middle class agree on 1,594; there are 616 bills both groups oppose and 978 bills both groups favor. That means the groups agree on 89.6 percent of bills.
This is such an important point that people often don't consider. Wealthy Americans are not as conservative as people think they are. Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates openly support much higher taxes on themselves as well as progressive social policies.
The more that what people want is nonstuff, other people’s time, other people’s respect, you know, things that you can’t produce out of a factory, the harder it gets to actually really progress.
I've never thought of it this way! This makes sense as to why "economic growth" doesn't always equal happiness.
While I think there are a lot of individuals on this planet who’ve done incredible things to invent new stuff or create in a particular way, most of the story of progress isn’t about that. It is about large communities coming together to act often through the market, sometimes not through the market.
Very interesting point!
Yet minimum wages have a way of screwing with economic intuition, and complicating the simple logic of supply and demand. The benefits of a $15 minimum would greatly outweigh the costs.
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