[statuslover9000]

GDP has been growing fine, but life expectancy in the US has been in historic decline for the past decade, largely driven by alcoholism, drug overdose, and suicide. Meanwhile over 2 billion people worldwide are food insecure, and that number is rising.

Technology has certainly improved the standard of living of many many people over the last couple centuries, but there is no guarantee that it will continue to do so. Perhaps instead of a blind focus on “growing the pie”, at this point in history we should be asking ourselves “what pie?” and “did everyone get a slice?”

Edit: Updated “malnourished” to “food insecure”, my mistake for using the wrong terminology. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, there were 2.37 billion food insecure people in 2020, a number which has been steadily rising since 2014 with a larger jump since the start of the pandemic: https://www.fao.org/3/cb4474en/online/cb4474en.html

[eatmyshorts]

I think your data is a little old. The undernourished, defined as fewer than 1800 calories per day, has steadily declined from 2000 until 2019, and then risen very slightly as a result of Covid. There's about 660 million that meet this threshold. Global malnutrition really has gotten significantly better over the past few decades. https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment

[luis_cho]

Sadly we will know in the next years how fragile is the current food production system. High centralised food system based mainly on fossil fuels gives high yields until it doesn't.

Every time I listen to Steven Pinker I think that he would learn a lot with Nassim Taleb books.

[bergenty]

Your 2 billion number is incorrect. It was 500 million until 2020 and then slightly rose given the pandemic. That number has been dropping precipitously for decades. At this rate (ignoring 2021), there should be almost no malnutrition by 2030.

[floxy]

>life expectancy in the US has been in historic decline for the past decade

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/life-expectancy/life-ex...

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data-visualization/mortality-trends...

[bergenty]

Your 2 billion number is incorrect. It was 500 million until 2020 and then slightly rose given the pandemic. That number has been dropping precipitously for decades.

[ChadNauseam]

> and why must a normal person give a damn about the misfortunes of junkies and alcoholics?

You don't have to give a damn about anyone, but I'm friends and family with junkies and alcoholics, so I care. And even if you don't know any junkies or alcoholics and never will, can you not have sympathy for a person you've never met, even if some of their problems are to some degree their own fault?

I know alcoholics who were binge-drinking at the age of 13 because their parents were alcoholics too and encouraged it. I have cousins that often threw up when they were toddlers years old because their parents gave them too much to drink. If you were in these circumstances, how sure are you that you wouldn't end up a junkie or an alcoholic yourself?

[Barrin92]

>and why must a normal person give a damn about the misfortunes of junkies and alcoholics?

for starters because they're also normal people. If you think there's no drug users or alcoholics even among all the people you know you'd be very surprised. It takes a lot of callousness to think that people who struggle with addiction or really any other thing aren't exactly what 'normal' people are like.

What I wonder about is when it became normal to put that much lack of empathy and compassion proudly on public display.

[gilmore606]

> and why must a normal person give a damn about the misfortunes of junkies and alcoholics?

I give a damn about living in a society suffering from a surfeit of junkies and alcoholics. That affects me.

[nonrandomstring]

> and why must a normal person give a damn about the misfortunes of junkies and alcoholics?

Try giving up your smartphone for whole one day, and then get back to us on "junkies". :)

[avgcorrection]

So your theory is that poor people in poor countries just keep having babies when they have less and less to feed them. And that’s it. What a genius you are.

[BenoitP]

I have a very grim outlook on the future.

> “did everyone get a slice?”

I don't believe so, but it makes sense: we've always been at (economic) war with Eastasia/Oceania

[drekipus]

I'm from Australia and I agree! give me pie!