Dec 12 2008
How To End Poverty
It just occurred to me that it’s worth Googling this phrase.
The fact that this five-second act has a reasonable chance of turning up a representation of the most carefully argued opinions of large cross section of (admittedly English-speaking) humanity, including quite possibly the opinions of the people who might actually understand the problem best — I find that quite a testament to the progress of, you know, civilization. And that capability is only about a decade old.
Who says that the olden days were better?
Next up, an article about how the internet might still drastically fail to achieve its potential.
Well, it certainly turns up some of the most popular thoughts very quickly — I hope there’s some good overlap there with the best ideas and most carefully argued opinions. It’s also worth noting that the fact that we’re A. searching in English and B. searching online will lend a hand to primarily free-market based ideas (NB four of the top five results are by or about Jeffrey Sachs, and the other focuses on removing free trade barriers to Africa). I like the looks of http://www.endpoverty2015.org/, the first result that isn’t obviously in lockstep, which shows up at the top of page two.
In other words, do search, but also be sure to dig a little when you get the results. Popularity with Google != consensus.
Two points of clarification: http://www.endpoverty2015.org/ also appears to be directly connected to Sachs, and very little of what he talks about in the top links has much to do with economics directly.