"There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."
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Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."
#2"If you want to experience poverty, just do nothing and it will come."
I know lots of people - the working poor - who are doing a hell of a lot more than nothing, and poverty still comes.
Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."
#3"If you want to experience poverty, just do nothing and it will come." I know lots of people - the working poor - who are doing a hell of a lot more than nothing, and poverty still comes.
Nod. If I start life tied to a load of bricks, and you start in a Ferrari, I can do a helluva lot more than you and still get nowhere. The history of slavery should be ample proof of that.
It's one thing to say that "We should ask what are the causes of wealth and try to recreate and reproduce them." It's another thing entirely to deny that there are no structural, sociological barriers to escaping poverty.
Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."
#4"If you want to experience poverty, just do nothing and it will come." I know lots of people - the working poor - who are doing a hell of a lot more than nothing, and poverty still comes.
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Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."
#5"If you want to experience poverty, just do nothing and it will come." I know lots of people - the working poor - who are doing a hell of a lot more than nothing, and poverty still comes.
I know lots of people
Just wondering--do you really know "lots of people" who are among the "working poor"?
I come from Appalachia and have known--genuinely, no bullshit here--lots of "working poor" and can't honestly say that there was some systematic conspiracy to hold them down, rough them up, prevent them from rising, etc.
Fact is: There are a lot of people living in the lap of luxury--luxury measured by creature comforts--who in any other age would be lucky, yes lucky, to spend 12 hours a day behind a horse's ass.
The real reason for people staying in the lower ranks is exactly what we already know: They have some dysfunction. Perhaps a lack of intelligence, or an excess of impulse, or simply a chronic inability to show up to work on time. The latter might suprise you, as it hardly matters if programmers get up at 8 or 9 or 10, but in low-end jobs, one of the big problems among "trouble employees" is simply their unwillingness to follow a schedule. Who's to blame?
Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."
#6"If you want to experience poverty, just do nothing and it will come." I know lots of people - the working poor - who are doing a hell of a lot more than nothing, and poverty still comes.
Nod. If I start life tied to a load of bricks, and you start in a Ferrari, I can do a helluva lot more than you and still get nowhere. The history of slavery should be ample proof of that. It's one thing to say that "We should ask what are the causes of wealth and try to recreate and reproduce them." It's another thing entirely to deny that there are no structural, sociological barriers to escaping poverty.
You'd be astonished at how many who start out with the Ferrari wreck it in short order and how many who start out with bricks become very strong because of it.
People who start out with wealth seldom create wealth. In the best cases, they usually just administer it. Its the people who start out with the bricks that seem to end up creating the wealth.
Slavery and poverty are different economic relationships altogether. Equating them is usually rhetorical hyperbole and if taken seriously, leads to some very wrong conclusions.
Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."
#7"If you want to experience poverty, just do nothing and it will come." I know lots of people - the working poor - who are doing a hell of a lot more than nothing, and poverty still comes.
I know lots of people Just wondering--do you really know "lots of people" who are among the "working poor"? I come from Appalachia and have known--genuinely, no bullshit here--lots of "working poor" and can't honestly say that there was some systematic conspiracy to hold them down, rough them up, prevent them from rising, etc. Fact is: There are a lot of people living in the lap of luxury--luxury measured by creature…
There are lots of examples of poor people who are hard working and still poor, and lots of examples of wealthy people who fell into it. There is no moral value to wealth and to say so not only insults our intelligence but attempts to justify terrible injustices.
Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know lots of people Just wondering--do you really know "lots of people" who are among the "working poor"? I come from Appalachia and have known--genuinely, no bullshit here--lots of "working poor" and can't honestly say that there was some systematic conspiracy to hold them down, rough them up, prevent them from rising, etc. Fact is: There are a lot of people living in the lap of luxury--luxury measured by creature…
There are lots of examples of poor people who are hard working and still poor, and lots of examples of wealthy people who fell into it. There is no moral value to wealth and to say so not only insults our intelligence but attempts to justify terrible injustices.
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Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."
#9Short blog entries on complex topics most often won't tell the entire story. There's more on getting out of poverty than not resting or asking the wrong questions. This is not about dumb wealth redistribution but social institutions and technical infrastructure.
Instead of such intellectual fast food better one reads something useful like the (free) first chapter of "The Birth of Plenty": http://www.efficientfrontier.com/ef/404/CH1.HTM
After that one should look for 'new institutional economics' and 'complex adaptive systems' to better understand how social institutions, path dependencies, and (general) environmental conditions drive or constrain a society and how that influences social stratification and mobility (and indirectly poverty).
This posting isn't meant to be an arrogant indoctrination. But saying "there are no causes of poverty" is simply (and sometimes fatally) wrong. But to understand this one should switch from polemics to empirics.
It even has some direct relevance to hackers: Being busy and producing something other people want is not enough to generate wealth. When you think a supporting social and technical environment has no influence on the probability of success, then go and try to run your startup in (obviously restful) North Korea.
Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."
#10If I were a criminal defense lawyer, murder would cease to be a crime. After all, there are no causes of death; it is the rest state, that which happens when you do nothing ...
In fact there are plenty of causes of poverty -- war, corruption, disease, overpopulation, debt, ecological destruction, etc.