Solving poverty even cooler than rocket science
I’m going to pull together ideas from 3 places today, to try and convince you that solving world hunger not only is likely possible, but is as cool and awesome as putting rockets into space, and if taken on at scale might even be profitable, because it certainly would improve world wide productivity. Put aside for a second everything you know about this topic, all the politics, all the stuff you've read, watched and heard, just for the length of this post and try to put these 3 ideas together.
First there’s Joe Rogan from his conversation with fellow comedian Bridget Phetasy, where they are discussing the importance being open to ideas from both sides of the political devide [11:31]:
And the only people that make any sense are the ones that aren’t on either team. [...] There’s a bunch of things that you probably believe but don’t put yourself in a fucking group, because there is probably a bunch of stuff that the left agrees with that you would probably agree with too. And you can’t be resistent to those ideas simply because they are attached to people that you have decided are the enemy, because they might be right.
That’s an important point. A lot of these topics are maximumly politicised, but they don’t all need to be. Some are just obvious no matter which side of the political divide you stand.
He goes on:
They might be right about wellfare, they might be right...hey maybe kids shouldn’t ever be fucking starving. As a group, as a group of humans that live together on this one patch of dirt called America, maybe we should agree that since we have this gigantic amount of money, that NO kids should be hungry. How about that? And since we got that done, how about regular people? How about no people should FUCKING starve?
Reguardless of whether or not you think that people are lazy or this and that, how much could we solve if noone could possibly starve? We set up free restaurants or free kitchens, massive ones, like for real. Food should be free...for a lot of people. If we are this rich as a country?
So let’s have no babies starve, no babies malnurished, nobody starve to death, health care, yeah. But you would need to revamp the whole thing. The real nitty gritty. Why are you prescribing this? Who’s making money off of this? How did this happen? How many adds did you guys run? What did the add say? What are the studies? Not just the ones you submitted, but ALL fhe studies? What’s the actual data instead of just the data that’s reviewed by the pharmaceutical companies and THEN given to the scientists, in the report when they do their peer review?
When I heard that, I was like you guys are making too much money, you are getting crazy, this is what it is. You went above and beyond the rules, you have too much power and influence. But also you do great stuff.
I think it’s great that Joe is talkng about this stuff. Sure it’s two comedians talking about serious stuff, but actually sometimes, and especially for the difficult subjects, comedians do a great job of pulling apart the topic, saying the things folks are afraid to say, really getting into some of the crevaces.
That brings me to my second idea source, from a blog post writen by me last year about money, liquidity and hunger:
We have the technology to make food on an enormous scale, there’s more than enough for everyone, but money isn’t making it to lots and lots of people, and so neither is food. Many people are starving and thirsty, and that’s unacceptable.
So what we need to do if we want to fix this is first estimate what’s possible:
Just price out 3 healthy microwave meals per person per day. You just want to have the minimum worst case. Is that amount, larger or smaller than current total money liquidity? Is it even possible? Remember to multiply by the total population of earth, I guess that's currently around 7 billion.
It should then be obvious how much people and institutions can hoard before starvation shortages occur.
Then the problem becomes tractable:
When you know the answers to these questions, then it should be easier to figure out how to get that money into the hands of people, whether it’s jobs, UBI or something else, first figure out what’s possible, set targets and make a solution that fits.
My thesis is that a healthy society would be orders of magnitude easier and cheaper to run.
When hunger is solved, many of the world’s problems start to disappear as they are often self inflicted, because hunger is used as a weapon of control, but really it’s a massive escalating humanity foot gun that will at some point affect us all.
Yes it would require big changes to society. Lots of patterns of behaviour and incentive structures would need to be updated, but the key point is to figure out first if it’s even possible mathematically.
Which brings us to the 3rd and final idea, taken from a recent Daily Show episode, where John Stuart chats with Reverand Doctor William Barber about poverty in America. The very well spoken and knowledgeable reverend is endearingly religious, polite and pretty funny too.
The numbers speak for themselves, 41% of Americans are poor and low wage people, that’s 135 million people, shockingly over 50% of children. It’s not even a race thing, 60% are white. These numbers are at least double what I had assumed was the case.
The reverand goes into some detail [4:19]:
295000 people a year are dying from poverty and low wages. That’s 800 people a day, are DYING, from poverty. Poverty is the 4th leading cause of death in the country. Higher than respiratory disease, higher than gun violence.
It’s unbelievably shocking that this is happening in the richest country on the planet. It’s a great interview that will let you see how bad the situation really is. It’s a bit strange to hear all this on a comedy channel, but it’s no joke. I think the humour helps us hear and see the size of the problem without our brains shutting it out.
IMO this isn’t a partisan issue, both sides should make this a priority. Trump showed us that he spoke to regular folks that are getting screwed by the system, and the Democrats have historically been the party that championed and stood behind the poor.
The reality is poverty will only get worse if it isn’t addressed, and that ultimately affects everyone. The sad thing is that there is technically plenty for everyone. Put aside your political views for a few minutes and listen to this short episode. It will be worth it.
As Stuart points out in his interview, we need to reframe the whole thing [12:45]:
And doesn’t it weaken the system as a whole? You could almost make the case that if the system is requiring a permanent entrenched underclass then it makes itself ripe for instability. And I’m wondering is there a way to change the mindset. Because the mindset in America is there is a moocher class. "These poor people are moochers and they are taking resources from me, I work hard, poor people get health care, they get food, they get whatever they need, I don’t get it". Is there a way to change the mentality, to view them not as entitlements but as investments?
I like his idea to reframe how we think about poverty. There no question that the way people generally view poverty is a massive impediment. But I think the reframing needs to be much more ambitious. The very act of fixing poverty, this huge endeavour, needs to be as cool as building rockets and sending people into space. We need the next generation of people like Elon Musk to take up the challenge.
It might seem like a very difficult reframing, but when you stop to think how beneficial it would be for our societies to be built on much more solid foundations, you start to realise that maybe solving poverty might in fact be necessary to truely be in a strong position as a civilisation to go out and explore the solar system and beyond. Remember the internet will lead to a 10X renaissance, it’s already happening. That’s a huge wave we will be able to ride. We should think big. Think very big.
Solving hunger is a choice, and would put out societies on much stronger foundations. That’s something we are going to need if we want to become a multiplanetary species.
