[aksss]

Are we failing "miserably"? I mean, global poverty is down, down, down.[0] Famine mortality is down, down, down (in spite of population going up, up, up). [1] Not everyone gets an Escalade and a 5k square-foot home, but arguably they shouldn't be using those anyway. But it seems like in terms of what people "need" (food, shelter, clothing), globally humans are enjoying unprecedented prosperity, despite the enormous gaps that can and will exist - the mean seems higher. I'd call that improvement, not failure in the immediate sense, though of course this is all coming at a price to the environment whose balance due is only starting to be realized.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/size-poverty-gap-world [1] https://sites.tufts.edu/wpf/files/2017/08/famine-mortality-b...

[lucasmullens]

We're improving rapidly, but I think we need to set our expectations higher. According to givewell.org, it only costs between $3000 and $5000 to save a life. There's a lot of people who could give that amount and don't, so there's a lot of lives that could be saved that aren't. And that's a pretty miserable failure to me.

[aksss]

We can always do better, that's for sure. Charitable giving is massively high in the US as a percentage of GDP though[1]. Individual giving is the highest source of that money[2]. That's a testament to something good, I think. That more people could give more and don't is a failure at an individual level, but systemically the globe is reducing poverty on its current track.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charitabl...

[2] https://givingusa.org/giving-usa-2020-charitable-giving-show...

[bpodgursky]

Well, a few decades ago, it took maybe $200 to save a life. We're certainly trending right.

[aksss]

That's fascinating.. so human lives are worth more, or there's more friction to intervention these days? Hoping it's the former. But curious what you think the explanation is for this. Just a reflection in standard of living, and so the cost to save has a higher standard?

[bpodgursky]

A few decades ago, mass famine was still a thing, and all it took to keep people alive was food aid. Ex, the famine in Ethiopia which killed a million+: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%931985_famine_in_Et...

Food insecurity is still a thing, but the only mass starvation is driven by conflict in hard-to-reach places like Yemen, where you can't just easily ship food and save a million lives.

Now, the most effective aid interventions are campaigns like de-worming and Malaria; but those are more of a QALY calculation, where you de-worm 100 kids to prevent serious disease in some subset of them. Which overall drives the cost up, but is actually a good trend.

[boring_twenties]

I think it's more that the lowest hanging fruit have already been picked. In other words, all the lives that could be saved for $200 have already been saved. If I'm right about that it would seem to be an unambiguously good thing.