I wonder to myself, what Pinker, the arch-anti Trumphian, now thinks of his Democrats who turn over the streets of the US to anarchists, as an anything goes strategy to unseat the King.

Dan

Got an email yesterday where a bloke in the US put Trump stickers onto anti Trump protesters' cars & then sat back & watched how they destroyed each others cars !

"Things are getting better from a reduction in violence to workplace accidents to an increase in life expectancy and education."

I would have thought that there was much more violence now; that education is rubbish, and that keeping people alive longer his bad for the environment, the economy and the old people being forced to endure miserable, useless existences just because money-hungry drug companies keep finding ways to prolong the misery, until the poor old buggers finally succumb to the China virus in horrible not-much-care factories also making a fortune for big business.

Agree with most of Pinker's conclusions. And note that poverty has contributed to the current global pandemic, as folks too poor to take a day off, let alone two weeks, keep working and if Asymptomatic, like around 45% of carriers, could have spread covid-19 far and wide, before the detection system kicked in.

We need to get the blood test rolled out and operating at all border crossings/shopping malls etc. So we can use the more rapid 45 minute conclusion test time, plus tracking, to further limit the spread.

After that we need to address endemic generational poverty. As opposed to building walls to protect unearned privilege and parasitic paper shufflers who do no productive work for their income, which in every case, has to be earned for them by the productive enterprise and endeavour of others.

And has to include fully franked dividends, tax practice/avoidance, negative geared returns, etc-etc-etc!

How we currently finance infrastructure rollouts via borrowing, is the most problematic and comes with generations still paying interest on money their Great-Great Grandparents may have borrowed.

Especially when we can accomplish the same outcome with money we create as the banks do now, then charge us interest for the amount lent! They can and we who create all the nation's wealth, can't. Go figure?
Alan B.

'Are critics right when they note arguments that people on more than $1.90 per day are not in extreme poverty seems a little too optimistic, shall we say.'

the fact that we even recognise poverty shows we have a moral conscience. It certainly did not evolve from an ape.

Individual

Yeah I saw that utube or facebook of where a bloke in the US'S put Trump stickers onto anti Trump protesters' cars & then sat back & watched how they destroyed each others cars ! '

Speaking of justice and moral conscience what a classic!

Runner,

Strange notion of morality.

And if anti-Trump people put anti-Trump stickers on hicks' and red-necks' cars ? I don't think that would be very moral, or right, either.

But to each his own. If it takes your sort of morals to get into heaven, I think I might prefer the other place; it would have more congenial companions for the long haul :)

As for Pinker and 'Enlightenment Now', yes, the Enlightenment was/is never complete, never perfect, always uncertain in its outcomes. And that's how it ought to be, a constant life-struggle for the best world we can make.

i.e. THIS world, Runner. I really don't give a toss about the 'next'.

Joe