To help poor people, give them money • Hacker News Board

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#21

Post by PythonicAlpha » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 9:49 PM UTC

ianferrel wrote: post #13

The best way to help poor people who make reasonably good decisions is to give them money. People who make bad decisions often end up poor. Giving them money will not help them make better decisions, and may make them worse off. How you think those two effects interact, and how much you value efficiency of donation vs. enabling people with poor decision making skills to waste probably determines where you stand on th…

> People who make bad decisions often end up poor. Giving them money will not help them make better decisions, and may make them worse off.

But there are also many people who started poor and stayed poor, because they did not have the possibilities of the rich.

Or is your argument, that somebody whose parents where rich, will stay rich, because he made all the good decisions himself? There are so many rich, that make bad decisions and stay rich, because they have so much, they always will stay afloat.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#22

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 9:51 PM UTC

thedevil wrote: post #10

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And logically, if the poor as a group were good with money, they wouldn't be poor. I am sorry, just this statement alone, disqualifies your whole argumentation. It is just a barroom cliche of the rich.

Sometimes cliches are cliches because they're accurate. And who cares if you think my argument should automatically be "disqualified" because it doesn't match your politics.

[deleted]

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#23

Post by shadowfiend » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

walsh-cloonagh wrote: post #5

It is possible to save a life for $3,340 by donating to the Against Malaria Foundation [1]. Helping desperately poor people is a surely virtuous thing to do and helping them efficiently by giving them money via GiveDirectly, as suggested in this article and the linked 2003 NYT article, is all the better. But, right now there are worse things to be than desperately poor: like being a kid in Africa who dies of malaria…

GiveWell has also named GiveDirectly one of their top charities (alongside the Against Malaria Foundation), with their detailed reasoning here: http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/give-dir... , for what it's worth. The reasoning is a bit different from AMF, but it's still strong reasoning.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#24

Post by charlesdm » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #21

ianferrel wrote: post #13

The best way to help poor people who make reasonably good decisions is to give them money. People who make bad decisions often end up poor. Giving them money will not help them make better decisions, and may make them worse off. How you think those two effects interact, and how much you value efficiency of donation vs. enabling people with poor decision making skills to waste probably determines where you stand on th…

> People who make bad decisions often end up poor. Giving them money will not help them make better decisions, and may make them worse off. But there are also many people who started poor and stayed poor, because they did not have the possibilities of the rich. Or is your argument, that somebody whose parents where rich, will stay rich, because he made all the good decisions himself? There are so many rich, that make…

There are plenty of wealthy people (mainly inherited) who became poor after bad investments.

But, obviously if you have significant amounts of capital, it's harder to lose it all.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#25

Post by JoeAltmaier » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 9:53 PM UTC

Mikeb85 wrote: post #20

walsh-cloonagh wrote: post #5

It is possible to save a life for $3,340 by donating to the Against Malaria Foundation [1]. Helping desperately poor people is a surely virtuous thing to do and helping them efficiently by giving them money via GiveDirectly, as suggested in this article and the linked 2003 NYT article, is all the better. But, right now there are worse things to be than desperately poor: like being a kid in Africa who dies of malaria…

Malaria generally kills only the young and weak. It's like the flu over here. The problem is malnutrition. Hence why a large amount of mosquito nets are never used to sleep under, but rather as fishing nets. I know people who have had malaria (family that lives in a tropical 3rd world country). All survived. Giving out mosquito nets to conquer malaria makes as much sense as giving out medical masks to conquer the flu…

Confused: you can't 'have had' malaria, its a lifetime affliction isn't it?

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#26

Post by blacksmith_tb » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 9:53 PM UTC

thedevil wrote: post #18

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as logical as saying that if the wheelchair-bound were better at walking, they wouldn't be in wheelchairs. Poor people are often living anxiously one emergency from total bankruptcy, eating cheap, non-nutritious foods, living in uncomfortable or dangerous housing, etc. They'd need to be more than just good with money, they'd need to be brilliant.

"Just as logical as saying that if the wheelchair-bound were better at walking, they wouldn't be in wheelchairs." Yeah, that's a good analogy to show my point. You don't throw someone on a wheelchair on their feet and hope it goes well. Just like you don't give a poor person a wad of money and hope it goes well.

No, the analogy was intended to compare a condition (poverty) with another (paralysis), not a tool (money) with another (wheelchair).

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#27

Post by taurath » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 9:53 PM UTC

ianferrel wrote: post #13

The best way to help poor people who make reasonably good decisions is to give them money. People who make bad decisions often end up poor. Giving them money will not help them make better decisions, and may make them worse off. How you think those two effects interact, and how much you value efficiency of donation vs. enabling people with poor decision making skills to waste probably determines where you stand on th…

Poor decision making skills? I don't think you understand what it is to be poor. People are more rational than you think - when people experience long term problems and generally a very inconsistent world (food/money/resources come by sporadically), they make decisions that help them in the short term, because to their experience there is unlikely to be a long term.

If someone below the poverty line wins $10,0000 in the lottery they'll buy a few luxuries, spend a lot of money on short term things for a little while and then go right back to being poor. If you tell them they'll get $10,000 for the next 4 years no matter what they do, I'll bet their attitudes change. What people need to make rational decisions is to be able to develop confidence that tomorrow will not be another disaster - of course, that is a much more difficult thing.

As long as we continue this meme that people that are poor have poor character poverty will be allowed to continue and fester.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#28

Post by pa5tabear » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 9:55 PM UTC

thedevil wrote: post #4

This article seems naive, at best. Time after time, when I've helped family members with cash, it winds up getting wasted horribly and helping them less than it hurt me to give it to them. When I help them with what they need, their situation improves. And logically, if the poor as a group were good with money, they wouldn't be poor. Yet the article asks me to abandon reason and experience because there's some "a gro…

>>>And logically, if the poor as a group were good with money, they wouldn't be poor.

Give poor people a reward/goal within reach and then see how they do.

I know working on long projects can be very draining because weeks can pass by and I'm still very far away from the goal of project completion.

Poor people's lives are like that. They have to jump through more hoops and exert much more discipline for their life to get better.

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#29

Post by PythonicAlpha » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 9:57 PM UTC

charlesdm wrote: post #24

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who make bad decisions often end up poor. Giving them money will not help them make better decisions, and may make them worse off. But there are also many people who started poor and stayed poor, because they did not have the possibilities of the rich. Or is your argument, that somebody whose parents where rich, will stay rich, because he made all the good decisions himself? There are so many rich, that make…

There are plenty of wealthy people (mainly inherited) who became poor after bad investments. But, obviously if you have significant amounts of capital, it's harder to lose it all.

You can always find examples for all sides.

But it is just a statistical fact, that moving up from being really poor today has become much more difficult than it was decades before, maybe with the exemption of being a computer scientists (but also there it is not so easy for a normally gifted person to finish studies and so on without help from the parents).

Re: To help poor people, give them money

#30

Post by Mikeb85 » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 9:57 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #25

Mikeb85 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Malaria generally kills only the young and weak. It's like the flu over here. The problem is malnutrition. Hence why a large amount of mosquito nets are never used to sleep under, but rather as fishing nets. I know people who have had malaria (family that lives in a tropical 3rd world country). All survived. Giving out mosquito nets to conquer malaria makes as much sense as giving out medical masks to conquer the flu…

Confused: you can't 'have had' malaria, its a lifetime affliction isn't it?

It can recur, and you can get it multiple times, but no, not a lifetime affliction.