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I've watched this a couple of times now and had discussions about it. I actually intend to look into it more deeply for a class I'm helping with, so first I'll ask the questions and maybe later I'll come back here and answer some of them.
First of all, it's an excellent visual presentation of enormous amounts of data on the two measures that are probably most often cited as representing quality of life and national development.
It's 120,000 data points because
200 years
x 200 countries
x 3 data points for each year/country (population, income, longevity)
=120,000.
All due praise given, let's get to the inevitable caveats:
1) Not Rosling's fault necessarily, but what the fuck is wrong with television? It's like the BBC is trying actively to prevent you from following the presentation. What editing logic is at work? Is it supposed to help us identify with him, thus get more "into it"? In that case, it fails. Imagine how much better and more illuminating this would be without the music, one wide shot, no close-ups of him but just the animation projected on a big screen behind him while he uses a pointer and speaks in a normal fucking voice.
1a) Sorry about 1, it is admittedly of no relevance to the presentation itself, but damn it if the "monoform" does not annoy and distract and, really, devalue.
2) Concerns about data gathering and construction. Construction is the right word for almost anything prior to 1890, and for the non-developed countries prior to 1950 or 1960. Many questions arise, let start with territories: These 200 countries did not exist in 1810 (the biggest, China did, at least for the 95% Han Chinese population in the eastern half, where they still are today). Is he going by the territories according to present borders? How does he handle a case like the US, which was still east of the Mississippi (Louisiana purchase notwithstanding)?
3) So, assuming territories are clear: Data fidelity questions. Who was counting income and longevity in what would become the western US, and is this added to the Eastern US? What about Peru, or Ghana, and by what methodology? What's in the data base? You still had the Spanish empire, was there rich data that could be isolated for each of the future countries that emerged from it? How good was the later French West Africa administration in gathering usable central figures for any given unit that later became a country (did they even care about the Africans?) and what if the administrative units for which data was gathered ran across the current borders? Etc. etc.
4) What goes into the income measure? He's expressing it in today-dollars. Today such comparisons between countries have relatively high viability, assuming careful examinations and exchange rate fluctuations notwithstanding. What's "$4000" in 1810 Ghana, or 1901 Saudi? How does this match up to consumption, wealth, or quality of life in pre-market economies?
5) The teleology, meaning the idea that all will or should end up in the "rich & healthy" box and then history ends, we stay there forever. Of course, history goes on longer than that, and it's not doomsaying or bad, merely scientifically objective, to say that the inevitable final state of all variables is 0 countries with 0 population, 0 lifespan and 0 income. That may be in a hundred, a million, or a billion years. The proper scientific view should not be to extrapolate (if at all) on the basis of the curve so far, but on the basis of what variables you think caused its motions and how these will go and relate in the future.
6) Related to that: bypassing sustainability as a question. Again, no doomsaying, but if you're going to present 200 years, you should mention that it IS a question. This general motion on the map toward the upper right box is largely based on increased energy consumption and strain on ecological carrying capacity.
7) The lifespan figures are probably more accurate and reliable and comparable across countries than the income figures. It's easier to say whether someone is alive or dead at a given age than what an income of 400 Egyptian pounds for someone living in Alexandria in 1961 is if expressed in Chinese yuan in Guangzhou in 2008, let alone figuring out what the "income" is of Kashmiri peasants in 1810 who never left their village and make everything themselves, or other places using barter or gold (which itself is going to have enormously different values and meanings at different times).
8 ) It would be incumbent on him to note that the major change affecting longevity figures in almost all places over this period is the general drop in childhood mortality, produced by a number of factors (understanding of disease vectors, public sanitation, clean(er) water, diet, the development of medical preventions, interventions and cures). If you were 10 years old in 1810, anywhere, then your odds of reaching 40, 50, 60 were great even in a country where the average lifespan was 25. Very elementary point. Soon after you become self-aware, your odds of living into late middle age turn excellent. I don't mean to suggest the value of infant lives is less than that of older children or adults, or to downgrade the awful effect common childhood death must have had on everyone's quality of life. (Fatalism, a reluctance to attach to children before they're older, very likely more detached or even brutal parenting with consequences throughout individual lives and to the society.) But it was normal that people were having a lot of babies, that many or most of the babies would die before they were 5, and that past that age most societies not in the middle of an acute disaster tended to have a lot of older people too, stable populations with roles and labors occupied by the same people over generations, etc.
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ONE OF THE COMMENTS ON YOUTUBE MAKES AN IMPORTANT POINT:
Using a logarithmic scale in this instance skews the chart towards the presenter's pre-determined conclusion. If the axes were equal you would see that a lot more wealth is required at the top of the scale for incremental increases of life expectancy. The chart should curve more, adding less weight to the presenter's rosy hypothesis. I am saying the presenter had a bias and chose a logarithmic scale in order to bias the chart to his view. I still applaud his presentation methods.
eXcommunicate1979 4 days ago
eXcommunicate means a logarithmic scale for the income measure, i.e., that 4000 is the midway point between 0 and 40,000. In addition, the age axis starts with about 24 years at 0, which similarly skews the chart in the way the commenter argues, toward the presenter's predetermined conclusion. This is also a function of making a much clearer presentation, which is what the goddamn TV wants. Starting age at 0 and having an incremental scale for income would create something like three vertical quadrants and four across, for a total of 12, with most of the action in the top eight, and everything seeming more crowded. Things would not stand out as much, but they'd be more accurate and true.
Or would they? Another commenter pointed out that the use of logarithmic is truer to the question of change and growth. Which is to say, growth from $4000 in small increments is greater proportionately than it is from $20,000. I'd have to see the thing run on an incremental scale and compare to start figuring out which version skews worse and how.
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bizarrely, this is also in the comments -- showing that on the Internet, you're never very far from goldbugs (with guns?_ claiming the law does not require them to pay taxes. No matter how off-topic.
@corymcneil It still points out the FACT that a FEDERAL JUDGE held a part of INCOME TAX collection, was unconstitutional. Furthermore, I spoke with a friend who is a tax expert (head of his department in a big four accounting firm) and he said that the judge should have never overturned his original finding.
You are smearing the truth, the judge overturned his own ruling after leadership in Washington DC forced him to. Strong arming judges doesn't make this law constitutional.
bynddrvn5 1 day ago
