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Nanani comments on AndrewH's observation and opportunity costs - Less Wrong
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Comments (56)
..."Making them poor?"
Poverty is the default condition of most of humanity for most of history. It would be more accurate to say they have a lack of the conditions for becoming wealthy. Not to say that war, oppression, etc don't prevent the necessary conditions from forming.
Only if poverty is very poorly-defined. Poverty is a relative term.
It's also an absolute term. I believe <2USD/day is a common figure, with <1USD/day for Extreme poverty.
Relative poverty is by definition intractable. That is not the case with absolute poverty. Is there another term that can be used to differentiate the two with a single word, as opposed to these adjectives?
It's a moving target. As soon as you've "solved poverty", "absolute poverty" will be defined as <4USD/day. It's probably best to specify the threshold you mean, if you're thinking of a particular threshold. This will also make it less confusing to readers a thousand years from now.
What counts as a threshold if not monetary values?
Lack of access to things like running water and antibiotics is a mark of poverty in 2009. The pharoahs of course had neither thing because they didn't exist, but this does not mean they were poor.
Readers a thousand year from now will inevitably regard all of us as incredibly poor, if they are reading this at all.
The pharaohs may have been richer than Egyptian peasants in strictly monetary terms, but they were definitely poor in an absolute sense. Since poverty is the default human condition, this shouldn't be surprising.
I was not suggesting using something other than monetary values as a threshold (though they are of course something of a placeholder). Rather, I'm suggesting that you specify exactly what threshold you mean when you use one. Rather than "absolute poverty" you could say "living on <2USD a day", or perhaps define "poverty" stipulatively as "living on <2USD a day".