@Eliezer Yudkowsky have you seen this paper?
- Following a barrage of down-votes and outright dismissal, I’ve decided to retract the rephrased outline of the paper.
- It’s hard for me to engage with anyone discussing poverty who isn’t cognizant of the historical context and the data issues that often get overlooked. That’s why I felt compelled to share this.
In this one there is plenty of archeological evidence as it is co-authored by D.Wengrow who is a Professor of Comparative Archaeology.
I believe Graeber could benefit from a more insistent editor. His writing sometimes seems like ‘stream of consciousness’ and outside of the constraints of academic distinction.
On the other hand, his work and ideas circulate well beyond the discipline or anthropology and well beyond academia which allowed him to write in his own way I guess.
I highly recommend the dawn of everything as well. It is probably the most recent, up to date book on stateless societies.
Why do you have a problem with ‘rigor’ side in his books?
Not sure how to gain insight by making such a comparison in the first place, twitter is… I agree that using the cost of labor is not the best way to calculate; however, there is an issue with the calculation of poverty for the period prior to 1981.
This paper finds that the $1.90/day (PPP) line is lower than the level of consumption of enslaved people in the United States in the 19th century.
That data on poverty is misleading.
For the period prior to 1981, the graph relies on estimates of GDP and income distribution from Bourguignon and Morrison.
Unlike household surveys, the B&M data does not provide information on people’s access to livelihoods or provisioning, and it does not adequately capture changes in non-commodity forms of household consumption (subsistence, vegetables, fish, game, foraging, commons etc). This becomes problematic because we know that during periods of enclosure and dispossession under colonialism and early industrialization, the livelihoods and provisioning of ordinary people was often severely constrained even in cases where GDP was rising. This violent history gets obscured by the graph. (For more on this problem, see here).
this paper demonstrates that using GDP data to assess poverty causes significant distortions, and sees that the only way to determine long-term trends is to use historical consumption data.
To that end, he creates a basic necessities poverty level that is roughly similar to the World Bank’s $1.90 limit, and calculates the proportion of people living below it in three main regions: U.S, U.K, India
His findings reveal a much different story than the graph above would have us believe.
There’s a final observation from Allen’s paper that’s worth pointing out. Allen finds that the $1.90/day (PPP) line is lower than the level of consumption of enslaved people in the United States in the 19th century. In other words, the poverty threshold the World Bank uses is below the level of enslavement. It is striking that anyone would accept this as a reasonable benchmark for “better” in a civilized society.
I rephrased it to provide a hint about the paper’s content, making it easier for others to locate and read the original work. I am very familiar with the paper and have studied it to some extent. I didn’t want to share ‘what I think,’ hoping smarter people can make more out of it by reading the whole thing, as I am not active here and don’t care about upvotes. However, I was uncertain about the legality of sharing the entire paper or any excerpts/data since I don’t hold the rights to it.
I find the reaction quite disappointing because the paper addresses very relevant ‘real-life’ versions of the points mentioned here through fiction and encourages a broader understanding of the history of poverty beyond Western perspectives, as we do here. I was curious if anyone here has actually read it; discussing poverty without examining its underlying principles and issues in the historical data, as the paper does, seems contradictory for this community.
Instead of engaging with the paper, my gpt-rephrasing to provide context was met with heavy downvotes, dismissal and ‘hidden comment’. I’m curious about the rationale behind this approach. Wouldn’t it be more valuable to keep the comment open and ensure that this important research remains accessible, even if it includes a rephrasing?
By downvoting and hiding my comment, the community risks overlooking significant insights that could contribute to our understanding of poverty. Isn’t it more beneficial to prioritize the research and promote such relevant work?