Technological progress: better hearing than normal hearing

DeafBadger said:
Prosperity is linked to productivity. If people produce things, they can trade them to others for the things they want. Today, we trade our productivity for money, which we use to trade for the things we want.

Disease affects prosperity in that it exacts a cost in productivity. A sick person cannot produce as much and contribute as much to their own prosperity. A dead person also cannot.

Some diseases are so vicious, that it requires the productive output of a whole family (or more) to treat. If it is a disease that afflicts a lot of people, then it affects the productive output of whole regions, even countries. This means there is less to spend on necessities and lifestyle.

The treatment of disease redirects the productive output to things that don't pull people out of poverty.

For example, if a family spends most of their productive output (or money) on treating disease in their family, that means that they might not be able to buy an air conditioner, a car, their own house instead of renting, better clothes, better food, etc. In this sense, disease takes away from their productive wealth and contributes to poverty.

This is how disease is a cause poverty (not the only cause). If people spend all their production on disease, there's little to nothing left to spend on the things they need or want that are markers of prosperity.

If cancer was suddenly and totally cured, forever, all those billions (trillions?) of dollars in research right now would go somewhere else. We would all experience greater prosperity because of it. There would be that much less poverty.

Part of the solution to poverty is in reducing the costs of living relative to our productivity. We don't need as much to live a good life on, if the costs are lower. Diseases are extremely expensive. Thus their impact on the lives of people in poverty is greater because they are working with a much smaller margin. But what if diseases were largely eradicated? Even people with a smaller margin could live a relatively comfortable and prosperous life, which is largely a question of lifestyle than actual numbers in the bank. Numbers in the bank matter only in proportion to what the costs of living are.

That's how I understand it anyway....
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Unelss it affects it to the degree that the prosperous become poverty ridden, disease still does not create poverty. Poverty creates disease.
 
jillio said:
Unelss it affects it to the degree that the prosperous become poverty ridden, disease still does not create poverty. Poverty creates disease.
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If that was always the case, then Steve Jobs would not have died of cancer. He had more than enough productive output to pay for a cure. He had the best access to the very best medical care in the world. He still died of a disease.

Poverty did not cause his cancer. Prosperity did not cure his cancer.

To clarify, I did not say that disease *causes* poverty. Poverty is a complex, multifaceted problem. Disease will strike no matter the person's standard of living. What poverty affects is the degree of access to medical care, good food, and other things linked to good health. But these things will not keep disease at bay forever. Steve Jobs found that out.
 
DeafBadger said:
If that was always the case, then Steve Jobs would not have died of cancer. He had more than enough productive output to pay for a cure. He had the best access to the very best medical care in the world. He still died of a disease.

Poverty did not cause his cancer. Prosperity did not cure his cancer.

To clarify, I did not say that disease *causes* poverty. Poverty is a complex, multifaceted problem. Disease will strike no matter the person's standard of living. What poverty affects is the degree of access to medical care, good food, and other things linked to good health. But these things will not keep disease at bay forever. Steve Jobs found that out.
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Fallicious comparison. No one says that wealthy people don't get sick. But poverty creates a several times greater risk for all sorts of chronic disease.

You might want to examine the areas of chronic stress in Steve Jobs life.
 
Isn't "disease" a condition of human existence? Are we not "born to die"? Not to be philosophical.

Implanted A B Harmony activated Aug/07
 
jillio said:
Fallicious comparison. No one says that wealthy people don't get sick. But poverty creates a several times greater risk for all sorts of chronic disease.

You might want to examine the areas of chronic stress in Steve Jobs life.
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And disease, particularly endemic disease, creates a several times greater risk of poverty.

It's all a vicious circle in many respects.
 
Beach girl said:
And disease, particularly endemic disease, creates a several times greater risk of poverty.

It's all a vicious circle in many respects.
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It doesn't create poverty. It perpetuates that which already existed. Even the epidemiologists will disagree with you on this one.
 
Bottesini said:
AIDS, Other Diseases Create Poverty Trap in Africa : NPR
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Creates poverty trap. The poverty was already there. That is the reason that the disease has spread as rapidly and as predominantly as it has. Once the disease process is present, there is no chance of creating conditions to lift the poverty.

People in poverty ridden conditions, here and elsewhere in the world, are more susceptible to not just contagious diseases, but systemic disease processes as well, simply by virtue of the lifestyle they must live. Once the disease process is in action, by virtue of the poverty ridden conditions, one cannot rise above the poverty ridden conditions because illness created by the poverty prevents it.
 
Cannot a wealthy community become so overburdened by a new disease and the cost of fighting it that the entire community become trapped in poverty?

It just seems to be very possible to be so overwhelmed with medical bills that a person or family becomes financially devastated and slips into poverty.

Hasn't both of these happened not just once but many times?
 
It's not just the medical bills (although of course those are important to individual families). It's taking large numbers of people out of what should be the most productive years of their lives. That's the big tragedy of AIDS in Africa. It's destroying a generation that would otherwise be contributing to society.
 
Cheetah said:
Cannot a wealthy community become so overburdened by a new disease and the cost of fighting it that the entire community become trapped in poverty?

It just seems to be very possible to be so overwhelmed with medical bills that a person or family becomes financially devastated and slips into poverty.

Hasn't both of these happened not just once but many times?
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Not on a sociological and systematic basis. On an individual basis, yes.
 
I'm thinking of collective conditions - again relating to who is empowered in society - vs. individual conditions. All of the examples given here happen, but the sociological processes around them are different
 
dogmom said:
I'm thinking of collective conditions - again relating to who is empowered in society - vs. individual conditions. All of the examples given here happen, but the sociological processes around them are different
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Exactly. Societal poverty creates the conditions that allow disease to spread, and the segment of society that is poor suffers disproportionately from that spread, keeping them locked, generationally, in a cycle of poverty.
 
Cheetah said:
Cannot a wealthy community become so overburdened by a new disease and the cost of fighting it that the entire community become trapped in poverty?

It just seems to be very possible to be so overwhelmed with medical bills that a person or family becomes financially devastated and slips into poverty.

Hasn't both of these happened not just once but many times?
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I don't think that any modern country ever has collapsed because of an increase in disease. Surely, it can happen at the individual level like Jillio pointed out. What happens in poor countries is that they cannot escape from poverty.
 
HH scientist said:
I don't think that any modern country ever has collapsed because of an increase in disease. Surely, it can happen at the individual level like Jillio pointed out. What happens in poor countries is that they cannot escape from poverty.
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I wasn't thinking specifically of a country. More of a village that might be struck by Malaria or Ebola or some other disease. I guess It's more likely that said village would be wiped out and would probably already be under the poverty line before the epidemic.

I am slowly starting to see Jillio's point. Though I admit, this is not an area I have much experience in.
 
I didn't mean to say that disease is the sole cause of poverty. By itself, it doesn't, except perhaps on a local level. (Village, tribe, etc.)

Poverty is extremely complex. Lack of education, skills, productivity problems, food sourcing problems, technology, sources of water, sanitation, disease, lack of trading opportunities, even economic and social oppression, lack of law enforcement, lack of courts, bad laws that don't allow proper contract enforcement, political corruption, broken families, or etc, etc.

Have too much of this going on at once, and it's a hell of problem to solve.

But, I think it is important to remember that it is solvable. Heck, the rest of the world's prosperity wouldn't be where it is if it didn't solve some of their poverty problems. They've made progress over the centuries. That gives me hope that this can be figured out.
 
HH scientist said:
I don't think that any modern country ever has collapsed because of an increase in disease. Surely, it can happen at the individual level like Jillio pointed out. What happens in poor countries is that they cannot escape from poverty.
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Not a modern country in modern times, no. But it has happened before in the past in ancient societies or less advanced societies.

Black plague in Europe (devastated whole areas of Europe, caused massive social and political upheaval), small pox in American Indian societies, etc.
 
HH scientist said:
Everyday is an Olympic event for me: Trying to survive in a world run by people are quite different from me. I would like to hear at least a little bit better than I do now (50% hearing in one ear only).
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Seriously? You consider life that challenging simply because you can't hear? It's actually a struggle for you to even survive? Good grief. You need to have a long talk with the many happy and successful Deaf people in the world because your perspective is pretty screwed up.
 
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