EPTBut still, so baller bill.. Kick some ass Kwark, always liked your deep insights
Bill Gates donates 10 billion for vaccination - Page 8
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Licmyobelisk
Philippines3682 Posts
But still, so baller bill.. Kick some ass Kwark, always liked your deep insights | ||
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3clipse
Canada2555 Posts
On February 03 2010 22:49 KwarK wrote: What it does do is make the population very high in the unproductive areas (the young and the sick) who consume the resources (and for the young the investment) of the productive while the productive part of the population remains stable in numbers. You may see a brief population boom as an entire generation reaches adulthood but that should self correct if the resources don't exist to sustain that higher population. But the point of combatting disease isn't to create increased labour (although I conceed that is a short term result), it's to increase productivity. It's to stop the wasted investment in children who get hundreds of dollars in skill training throughout their brief lifetime and then die because they didn't get a series of shots worth only cents. Those resources can then be allocated elsewhere. I started going through your response and making my rebuttal, but when I read over the end a couple times I realized that you had a damn good point. I'm still weary of the short term population growth, but the benefits do seem to outweigh the disadvantages. I concede the argument. But I'm still going to post all the shit I wrote up because of the time I invested in typing it.  + Show Spoiler + On February 03 2010 22:49 KwarK wrote: There's no lack of resources in the third world. Look at DRC, it's basically a layer of gold covered with a layer of diamonds covered with a layer of coal covered with a layer of coltan buried under highly fertile jungle. Even if this were true in every case, the state of their economies and infrastructure are too undeveloped at this point to take advantage of it. They lack trade infrastructure, extraction infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, and many even lack the state of urban development to support a higher population in anything other than shanty-towns. There's quite a transition period between agrarian farming and industrialization. On February 03 2010 22:49 KwarK wrote: If you deal with the high mortality rates in children through something like vaccination (which costs very little per child) then the birth rates should go down. Children are expensive, if they don't die half the time you'd end up with way more than you can afford. So you are basically stating that fertility should fall in line with infant mortality to maintain a stable population? This almost sounds reasonable, but you are relying on many assumptions: 1. That some families would not produce offspring indefinitely. You stated yourself in a previous post that the underlying logic of large families is often to support the mother and father through old age. Classic prisoner's dilemma; even though this is detrimental to the country as a whole, the individual units of the mother and father will usually benefit from another child. 2. That, if they do not wish to inflate the size of their family further, the populous behaves rationally and instantly adjusts their mating practices in light of the vaccines they are getting. Seems dubious in light of the lack of basic education, which brings me to my next point. 3. You must omit the number or births due to rape or simple recreational sex resulting in unplanned pregnancies. Sex education and contraceptives are sorely lacking in many of these regions, and decreased infant mortality rates should have no effect at all on these pregnancies. Even if all of these factors are satisfied, you would still likely see a small, short term population jump. On February 03 2010 22:49 KwarK wrote: Education rates should go up because it makes more sense for a government to invest in education when the guy they're teaching won't die of curable diseases I think this assumption is a bit of a stretch, but I can agree to the underlying logic if the country in question is not run by an absurdly corrupt administration (this excludes a many). On February 03 2010 22:49 KwarK wrote: and correspondingly the amount of competiton between children for education should go down (simply as a result of the lower birth rate). wait, wait, wait... Please explain your rationale here. The argument for the population stabilizing I can at least understand, but why would the population decrease without the influence of any other social or economic shifts? The utility-maximizing behavior of large peasant families would still exist. | ||
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Zexion
Sweden971 Posts
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Sapraedon
United Kingdom142 Posts
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MuffinDude
United States3837 Posts
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jhNz
Germany2762 Posts
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lokiM
United States3407 Posts
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Storm704
United States114 Posts
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Armathai
1023 Posts
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Jyvblamo
Canada13788 Posts
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toastybunz
United States47 Posts
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Tich
Mexico29 Posts
Sorry to hear that toasty. | ||
KwarK
United States44373 Posts
On February 04 2010 04:31 hey88 wrote: Bill gates has always been donating, he just writes if off on his taxes at the end of the year. But this time he actually paid 10 billion, man he's generous. It's surprising anyone that rich actually has to pay taxes. Usually they dodge out of that shit just because they can, even when they don't need the money. It takes a lot of integrity to choose to pay taxes, especially when your income has that many zeros on the end. Although he's so rich he won't notice a billion paid in tax that generally doesn't stop the endless greed of the superrich. | ||
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swat
Australia142 Posts
On February 04 2010 03:10 MuffinDude wrote: 10 billion, thats like 20% of his original net worth and like 100 times greater than any other donations made in the history. errr... no it isn't. Warren Buffett in 2006 pledged a then 37 billion dollars to the gates charitable foundation ... no idea how much it is worth now. Seriously though I am happy these people are giving away their money when they don't have to, but when you still have 10 billion dollars + at the end of the day after these donations you cannot really get all happy spastic that these people are great. A bum giving away half a sandwich to his mate is more generous. | ||
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KwarK
United States44373 Posts
On February 04 2010 16:15 swat wrote: errr... no it isn't. Warren Buffett in 2006 pledged a then 37 billion dollars to the gates charitable foundation ... no idea how much it is worth now. Seriously though I am happy these people are giving away their money when they don't have to, but when you still have 10 billion dollars + at the end of the day after these donations you cannot really get all happy spastic that these people are great. A bum giving away half a sandwich to his mate is more generous. In proportion to what he has, yes. In proportion to what he can attain, no. The bum could find food fairly easily elsewhere, or even steal it and not get into that much shit. $10b is slightly harder to come by, | ||
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Tippereth
United States252 Posts
Also: Biologist here, anti-vax cranks would be hilarious if they didn't cause deaths. Your ten minute Google University research is not a substitute for actually knowing what you're talking about, take off the tin foil hat and stop spreading dangerous ideas. | ||
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josemb40
Peru611 Posts
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GigelPintea
Romania47 Posts
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Jibba
United States22883 Posts
On February 05 2010 18:18 GigelPintea wrote: I just read now , hahaha , the latest thing poor and developing countries need is new vaccines against severe diarhea and pneumonia , not mentioning testing the "other promising vaccines currently in the development pipeline" . They should start vaccinate the people from Gaza , they are full of diseases and without everything ,even materials to build their houses. This is actually fairly true. What Gates does is fantastic, but the development model based on the sentiments of celebrity philanthropists is a terrible one that largely squanders money and in some senses can actually be harmful. http://www.nyu.edu/fas/institute/dri/Easterly/File/FT_oct09.pdf Easterly is a realist, and I don't agree with all of his points, but I think he's mostly right in his book and his basic point is as true today just as it was in the 1980s. AIDs pulls on our heart strings because of the way it's transmitted and how it destroys people - anyone can be susceptible to it - but it takes draws attention and funding away from bigger problems, especially ones that can be solved more easily. I don't normally lean towards utilitarianism, but I think it's important here. In the 1980s, after the ultraconservative/Reagan backlash died down, HIV research received huge amounts of attention when it still afflicted only a vast, vast minority of the population; breast cancer was still affecting 1/3 women. Today, most aid money goes towards treatment in Africa, where it actually isn't that effective and there are other problems to deal with. Sorry to say it, but there's often not enough infrastructure (for social, political, whatever reasons) in place to effectively administer treatment of the cocktails and partially administering it actually makes the problem worse. Even when they do, the medicine we have simply isn't that effective once someone has contracted AIDs - what we have is mostly based around extending the HIV period. More money for research is a good thing, but AIDs receives the vast majority of attention and money, over diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia, cholera, measles, etc. which also kill millions of people each year AND are easily treatable. We know how to deal with those, yet we don't. Bill Gates is a wonderful man, but he needs to prioritize how he uses his money if he wants to help the world as best he can. | ||
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ZidaneTribal
United States2800 Posts
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