Cross-posted from my blog here.
One of the greatest successes of mankind over the last few centuries has been the enormous amount of wealth that has been created. Once upon a time virtually everyone lived in grinding poverty; now, thanks to the forces of science, capitalism and total factor productivity, we produce enough to support a much larger population at a much higher standard of living.
EAs being a highly intellectual lot, our preferred form of ritual celebration is charts. The ordained chart for celebrating this triumph of our people is the Declining Share of People Living in Extreme Poverty Chart.
(Source)
However, as a heretic, I think this chart is a mistake. What is so great about reducing the share? We could achieve that by killing all the poor people, but that would not be a good thing! Life is good, and poverty is not death; it is simply better for it to be rich.
As such, I think this is a much better chart. Here we show the world population. Those in extreme poverty are in purple – not red, for their existence is not bad. Those who the wheels of progress have lifted into wealth unbeknownst to our ancestors, on the other hand, are depicted in blue, rising triumphantly.
Long may their rise continue.
Kind of? The point of the second plot is to show that we didn't get where we are in fractional terms by murdering the poor, which would be bad, I think, regardless of whether one holds that doubling the overall population is good or bad. And if we got where we are in fractional terms by adding rich people without actually cutting into the number of poor people, that would be bad too, though not as bad as murdering them.
Of course, the plots can't show that we didn't grow the rich population while also killing the poor, but, well, that's not what happened either.
I at one point phrased it "comes with a doubling of the (larger) rest of the population" to make it more clear, but deleted it for a reason I have no introspective access to.
It would, obviously, if there are better alternatives. In consequentialism, everything where you have better viable alternatives is bad to some extent. What I meant is: If the only way to ... (read more)