You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Gunnar_Zarncke comments on The decline of violence as a lens for understanding effective altruism - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: alwhite 07 January 2015 05:16PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (33)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 07 January 2015 08:38:14PM 13 points [-]

$12,400 USD, which is just barely above the poverty line for an individual.

This depends very much on you (relative) living standards esp. compared to the surrounding society. I'd guess that with that amount you could live quite comfortably in a south american capital.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 07 January 2015 09:31:08PM 5 points [-]

My personal experience confirms that assertion.

Comment author: alwhite 08 January 2015 05:29:30PM 1 point [-]

The GWP is the summation of the GDP for each country. The GDP is then converted to USD for comparison sakes. GDP also is not average income, so it's not entirely accurate to assume that GWP per capita is the same as having $12,000 USD. The number is all about comparison and estimation.

I realize that this is a very crude number but I still think it is useful for recognizing that we do not yet produce enough to appease all basic needs equally.

Do you disagree with that statement? Are you suggesting that we do currently produce enough and all we need to do is redistribute?

Comment author: jkaufman 08 January 2015 08:16:06PM 11 points [-]

We do currently produce enough for everyone's basic needs, yes. But "all we need to do is redistribute" isn't it: when the state steps in and massively redistributes you screw up incentives and decrease production. We haven't yet figured out how to meet everyone's basic needs without disrupting the system that gives us the economic productivity that would make this possible.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 08 January 2015 08:33:39PM 1 point [-]

I very much agree with this statement.