After getting the first part of writing the about the technological singularity out of my head – there is more coming – I’ll drift here to other matters of humanity.

Since there’s one thing that ties humanity together despite itself, I’ll start with the economy, and to start with the economy I’ll have to start with global poverty.

Global poverty, according to this article, has gone down from 1.8 million people living on less than $2/day in 1990 to 600 million people at the time of writing (4 Mar 2020).

Sounds pretty good. So let’s go a little higher and look at the global economic disparity, based on an article done the same year.

Global inequalities are in bad shape and mostly do not appear to be getting better. Disparities today are about the same as they were in the early 20th century, and the pandemic continues to make things worse. The recently released World Inequality Report 2022 sheds light on this problem. With two traditional measures and two new ones, the study adds much to our knowledge of inequality.

“Global Inequalities: The big picture on wealth, income, ecological, and gender inequality looks bad“, Andrew Stanley, International Money Fund (IMF) Finance and Development, March 2022.

So, while global poverty decreased since the 1990s, global economic disparity is quite noticeable. In fact, in 2003 the New York Times had something to say about it within the United States – that it started in the 1990s. It’s peculiar how global poverty is claimed to have gone down while economic disparity is claimed to have gone up, at least in the United States.

This graph, which changes from the 1820s to 2020, shows how economic disparity has changed in a nice fluid way. Go ahead, take a look, and watch how those making under 2 Euros a day stays pretty static, and the economies went up. What changed? Maybe what that money could buy. That’s called inflation.

I’m not very good at economics, so I don’t know that I’m correct – take that pinch of salt – but how else can we explain that the global poverty is down while economic disparity is up? Did the definition of what global poverty is change from the 1990s to now? Not that I could find.

If that’s correct, then that would indicate that we’re not measuring global poverty adjusted with buying power of the currency. I’d be disappointed and surprised to find out that this is true, but looking at what is available…

Poverty and inequality are different notions, but they are intertwined. Poverty is often understood in absolute terms, but is better viewed as failure to reach some minimum standard of living, set in the light of the possibilities and priorities of the society in question. In this sense, poverty is relative, and but one
aspect of social and economic inequality. Inequality in turn has many facets, involving not only differences in income and wealth, but also disparities in status, access and opportunity. Poverty is only one of the many consequences of inequality, but unequal societies are more vulnerable to poverty.

Although interconnected, these two concepts have followed different trajectories in the history of the International Labour Review (ILR). In some sense, a concern with inequality underlies much of the ILO’s work. After all, the unequal distribution of value between capital and labour lay behind the social movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and, in their wake, the creation of the ILO. A fairer distribution of the benefits of work is a central element in the overriding goal of social justice…

Introduction: Changing perspectives on poverty and inequality: The contributions of the International Labour Review (PDF), International Labour Review, Centenary Collection (2021), No. 7, International Labour Organization, Gerry Rodgers

Well, it seems I am on the right track though I am admittedly fumbling around on this one aspect of humanity – more so than I would have thought.

There are other aspects, too, we should probably be worried about more, like the overall health of the planet supporting humanity – we think that is it’s sole purpose – and other things as well that maybe should take precedence over a technological singularity, and may well impact Ray Kurzweil’s predictions.

As it stands, how far away from irreversible change in anything? A technologist perspective alone is not what we need to consider.