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How poverty changes your mindset

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Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#541

Post by RandomCSGeek »

rickyyean wrote: post #485
dizzystar wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I totally get this. I have no idea why people want stuff. I have one computer, one phone, one guitar, and so on. If I could own just one set of clothing, I'd be happy with that. It isn't frugality for me, it's just that I can't stand clutter and really, what I consider. I think I missed whatever the definition of having things means.

Maybe you're just conditioned to not want things from your childhood. I remember wanting to have nice sneakers in school because all the other kids had nice sneakers and they'd make fun of you if you don't. I'd spend time in footlocker just looking at the stuff they had or sift through my eastbay catalogs but never buy anything. I wasn't happy that we couldn't afford them but after seeing that we had to take out loan…

This is what happened to me. At some point, I realised that asking for something puts more pressure on my already stressed parents. I actually regretted having demanded few things. At first I forcibly stopped myself from wanting to have things, and eventually the desire simply vanished.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#542

Post by baby »

fastball wrote: post #540
baby wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you never been to London? There are homeless literally everywhere I live in London currently. There are almost no homeless people. What are you talking about? It's one of the largest city I've been to where I've seen the least amount of poverty. I'll also say that London is super safe, you'll almost never see crazy people in the streets or public transport. I regularly take the bus or the subway at late hours…

I live in London too. You don't get out much. Walk on any high street and you will see plenty of homeless people.

wat. Troll?

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#543

Post by razorunreal »

Clanan wrote: post #530
mrep wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The poor and destitute simply need help. Upvote for the story but "simply need help" is not a policy a government can use to solve the problem. Granted, solving this problem for everyone is nigh impossible but maybe you can give us an example of a policy that would have helped out your individual family to give us some ideas?

This response unintentionally demonstrates what I think is a huge part of this puzzle: that government is the default "fixer" of this problem. That's an easy assumption to make, because it removes all personal responsibility while assuaging one's conscience. The Bystander effect in full force. What if we instead start assuming it is -our- responsibility to help the helpless? Many comments in this thread mention the d…

This is the kind of thing that needs an institution (government or not) because otherwise the money goes to the most convincingly miserable looking people, not the ones in need. It's hard to prove, but it seems like most of the "homeless" on the NYC subway are just doing an act like the rest of the buskers. There's money to be had, and they've made a job of figuring out how to get it. If you can be sure that the problem is competently handled by the government, you can ignore people asking for handouts and not encourage that behavior.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#544

Post by Clanan »

razorunreal wrote: post #543
Clanan wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This response unintentionally demonstrates what I think is a huge part of this puzzle: that government is the default "fixer" of this problem. That's an easy assumption to make, because it removes all personal responsibility while assuaging one's conscience. The Bystander effect in full force. What if we instead start assuming it is -our- responsibility to help the helpless? Many comments in this thread mention the d…

This is the kind of thing that needs an institution (government or not) because otherwise the money goes to the most convincingly miserable looking people, not the ones in need. It's hard to prove, but it seems like most of the "homeless" on the NYC subway are just doing an act like the rest of the buskers. There's money to be had, and they've made a job of figuring out how to get it. If you can be sure that the prob…

I'm not just advocating for everyone to give money away on the street. Some of the worst poverty in the U.S. is in places with huge amounts of brain power (like SF). I'm sure those big brains could come up with better solutions than handouts. Like the countless charities out there that are far more efficient than government.

Do you think the problem is, or can be, competently handled by government? I think government can get results by brute-forcing with massive amounts of money, but history shows that it's still terrible at it (hello War on Poverty). Now, I don't mean to say government should have no role/do nothing. I'm saying that it should not be the -default- entity to take care of things because it allows the citizenry to absolve themselves of all responsibility. Government isn't some wise entity - it's just people. And oftentimes those people are thousands of miles away, working with incentive structures poorly aligned with the issue at hand.

One benefit of transforming this issue into a matter of personal responsibility is that the incentives are much stronger - if it's MY money being used, I'm far more likely to strive for efficiency. If your charity gobbles up my donation with admin costs, I'm "shopping elsewhere". A somewhat-related example of this strategy was a method used in Africa to combat elephant poaching. I can't find the reference now, but basically the government decided to "give" land areas to citizens, who would be responsible for poaching issues. It ended up working much better than when the government sought to directly reduce poaching.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#545

Post by vageli »

OkGoDoIt wrote: post #536
pm90 wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really... so you wouldn't take out a mortgage to buy your house?

I’m not entirely sure, maybe I will do that someday, but I’m certainly not comfortable with the idea. And I find it interesting how normal that is and how people don’t seem to think it’s a big deal.

I can afford to buy a car outright, but why would I? Most new cars have terms of zero interest for several years. If I can invest my money elsewhere while taking advantage of a zero-percent loan, why wouldn't I?

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#546

Post by tjr225 »

skookumchuck wrote: post #510
tjr225 wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Karl Marx is right about a lot things, I think Adam Smith is right about a lot of things- I think our(The US, Global Economy) current system must be incredibly flawed for so much wealth to be concentrated in such a way that a shockingly small group of individuals hold a useless amount of wealth. Redistribution in the form of systems that improve everyone's quality of life is the only thing that makes sense...…

> useless What do you think wealthy people do with their money? > the only thing that makes sense If you want to end human progress. Me, I'm excited about Musk's progress in space exploration, for one example.

The idea that human progress only happens under a free market is totally detached from reality and most of human history. I'm resisting inserting a joke about libertarianism here for fear being a bit too on the nose.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#547

Post by dfgdsfgsd »

conanbatt wrote: post #499
dfgdsfgsd wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debunked by economists who are the joke of the Nobel laureates. Even the Peace prize is more respectable. 100 years in human history? Nothing. The Roman Empire took half a millennium to decay. The Malthusian argument is a thermodynamic argument. If we grow without bound (either by number or per capita consumption) we will run out of resources like any other biological system. The only thing that allows us to escape t…

Right, because food today is more expensive than food yesterday, since we are growing so much outside our means, we are clearly consuming all the natural resources and devouring each other for that last piece of corn. Human behavior is not thermodynamics. To the very least, the day were all the resources in the universe have been consumed by its living beings is so far away that it is absolutely irrelevant and inappl…

Sorry, what's the point of the universe? We're bound to Earth by any rational understanding of physics and physiology.

"Right, because food today is more expensive than food yesterday" Love the sarcasm, not the shallow argument (I appreciate that food is, seemingly, cheaper than yesterday).

Human behavior is not thermodynamics. Agriculture is. Food is cheaper today because:

1) N2 fixation thanks to Dr. Haber 2) Large scale potash mining and shipping. 3) Unsustainable use of other necessary agricultural inputs

Point 1) is fairly stable in the medium term (i.e. my daughter's potential children's life span ~ next 100 years to 400 years) because energy is cheap and effectively getting cheaper. Population won't grow too fast as to run out of energy, if it did we're really f.ed, and global energy use has stabilized and might decline.

Point 2), however, is a nasty one. Run out of potash, then you run out of K and therefore food production above carrying capacity. You can turn to (say) oceans to mine K, but that's expensive.

I appreciate the econ argument that "you can't run out of resources because the price goes up until you don't want to use them" but that ultimately trash. You won't go hungry, because you might afford a doubling in price of your groceries. It's the Ethiopian kids whose lives balance everything out.

Point 3) Acquirers are running out so, for example, California's agricultural production is in peril.

See... thermo!

Are there alternatives that are more "sustainable"? Sure. But they all come with (an unknown to me) maximum carrying capacity.

As to human behavior not being modeled by thermo... that's irrelevant. People will shift preferences to eat lower quality, higher yield crops due to prices changes and all.

Of course those prices changes are (partly) due to... thermodynamics!

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#548

Post by frandroid »

kraig911 wrote: post #69

I hate seeing people's comments on stories around this topic. I grew up in poverty and food stamps from time to time. My dad was a roughneck and when the oil bust happened in the 80's there was a time we lived out of our car -- my whole family. here was literally nothing to do in the oil patch during that bust. There was literally no work. But people don't understand true hopelessness. My dad did everything he could…

> I don't know why I'm saying all this the solution is simple but the problem is hard to acknowledge. The poor and destitute simply need help. We live in a society though that thinks someone else is going to take care of the problems. When we do finally give help it's so conditional and shamed that the hole of guilt someone fell in is practically inescapable.

I really don't understand why this is so controversial in North America. The 'Fuck You All, I've Got Mine' mentality is a sign of a morally dead society.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#549

Post by kwhitefoot »

dizzystar wrote: post #258
mrep wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The poor and destitute simply need help. Upvote for the story but "simply need help" is not a policy a government can use to solve the problem. Granted, solving this problem for everyone is nigh impossible but maybe you can give us an example of a policy that would have helped out your individual family to give us some ideas?

Studies have shown that it would be cheaper to simply house people than the wild hoops they have to jump through. Helping the poor is big business, which creates a backwards incentive structure. No one is willing to press these companies to the wall, but hey, they can have rewards ceremonies and drive nice cars. They must be doing something great with all those accolades even though more dead bodies are dumped in the…

Didn't a US city try that and confirm that you are correct? I mean, it's not just studies but also real world experience. Or to put it another way: the studies were studying real world interventions, for instance this one

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10737824

examined a program that ran for five years with a high success rate.

There is a readable article on this at https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/housing-first-s...

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#550

Post by thomastjeffery »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #529
thomastjeffery wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aspiration and hopelessness are not mutually exclusive.

They're equally irrelevant, though. Poverty is when you don't have enough money. It's not a state of mind. I thought some more about part of your earlier post: > If you are really feeling hopeless you don't turn to HN for news on the latest programming frameworks. This really doesn't make sense. I've known at least one desperately poor and depressed person who found escape and satisfaction in scavenging and programmi…

> I thought some more about part of your earlier post

Maybe you should double-check those usernames.

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