The Truth About Poverty

[FriendlyHacker]

You can take your data about poverty in rich countries, and it might be representative there, but if you have ever seen poverty in third world countries, you would consider those "poor" people rich.

 

You can talk about your lack of education during childhood, but you did mention ability with language and seems to not understand how different your future might have been if your parents were illiterate.

 

You know what it means to be below poverty line in Brazil? It might mean living in a cardboard box inside a landfill and picking your food directly out of garbage. And if you don't believe this, please don't try to find the data for it, come here and see it for yourself.

 

The most privileged people in society have a hard time to understand their own privileges, because they always had it and know nothing different from it.

[Lians]

If we're going to rely on anecdotal evidence, I grew up in Eastern Europe right after the fall of the USSR. There was very little food and blackouts were a frequent occurrence. Criminality hit an all-time high right after the communist regime fell. I have only a few memories of this since I was very young, but I had to adapt to the aftermath of all the madness.

 

What Stefan said in that video really stung the vestiges of the communist propaganda within me, but he was right. Adults were complaining about their situation all the time, but the hell-hole they were pointing at was of their own making. Having your children work before the age of 18 was almost universally frowned upon. They're supposed to be in school, learning how to be good citizens! Letting them handle money was considered irresponsible. Business was a dirty word. The word negotiation doesn't even have a direct equivalent in my native language. All businessmen were exploitive capitalists. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Economic ignorance was woven into the cultural fabric of society and everyone paid the cost. I can tell you right now that the main problem with the Brazilian economy is Brazilian culture.

 

I chose to reject culture while other people didn't. A lot of my friends chose allegiance to culture over me, but that didn't stop me. I'm not saying that people have it easy, but to deny them their choice and responsibility is to assume that they're animals. It's incredibly condescending.

[FriendlyHacker]

What kind of education people get in Canada or in Eastern Europe, compared to public school in Brazil? Do you know what functional illiteracy means? Do you know there are many people here coming out of primary school who are functionally illiterate?

 

My parents have 5 degrees combined and I can read in 7 languages, while there are people picking rotten food from garbage, and taking pills they have no idea what are for, simply because that's only access to meds they have.

 

I would not fucking dare to say that those eating from trash are there because they want to, or because they are lazy, or because they missed their opportunities, or because they are out of luck. When you start off with a rigged dice, there is no such thing as luck.

 

Please let me know, how many hours someone in a Chinese iPhone assembly line needs to work in order to buy an iPhone. And let me know how that compares to your high paying cushy job, and I will tell you who is the lazy one.

 

I'm highly educated and only need to work a few days a month to make ends meet, and let me tell you, I'm the one who is fucking lazy. You don't enjoy complaining? How about you stop complaining about people being lazy, and actually take a look outside your own belly button?

[dsayers]

If "rigged dice" were causal, then nobody would be able to "win" with them. Appealing to emotion won't change this.

[Lians]

And you speak on behalf of these people because your education somehow gave you the experience of living a life of poverty? You see, the economic destruction of Eastern Europe was brought about by intellectuals who claimed they understood the poor and wanted to save them. If you're so concerned about them, what are you doing to improve their situation? Are you translating FDR content into Portuguese? Are you going around handing out books? Are you starting charities? It's very easy to rant about social injustice on the internet, but appealing to emotion won't change a thing.

 

Finally, if Stefan wanted to address people who eat out of rubbish bins, he wouldn't be making YouTube videos. His message was directed at people like you and me. People with opportunities who sit around and make excuses for their inaction.

[FriendlyHacker]

I only speak in behalf of myself and I do realize I have no solutions, the very nature of the problem dwarfs me.

 

I have never mentioned communism, or having solutions or anything of the matter. The whole point of this topic is to show what it really means to be poor, and that the video entitled "The Truth About Poverty" is a lie.

If "rigged dice" were causal, then nobody would be able to "win" with them. Appealing to emotion won't change this.

 

Statistically, you can win with a rigged dice, does not make it less rigged.

[ThomasDoubts]

The truth about poverty is that it's relative.

 

 

You know what it means to be below poverty line in Brazil? It might mean living in a cardboard box inside a landfill and picking your food directly out of garbage.

 

  This is universally true; try replacing Brazil with any other country.  What is the upper bound of poverty in Brazil?  Who sets the thresholds for poverty, and what makes those thresholds appropriate?  Do you know what level of income puts you in poverty?  Do you know what level of income takes you out of poverty?  I sure as hell don't.

 

   I fully appreciate how different my life might have been if I'd been born with HIV in some war-torn village hut in Africa.  I can't build everyone a house for free without starving myself.  All I can do is advocate the State not fucking with everyone's right to make a better life.

 

   Rigged die represent an inequality of opportunity.  Inequalities of opportunity do exist, and I won't deny that.  The solution is to either redistribute everything equally by force and continue to do so everytime equilibrium is broken, or allow entirely free exchange.  Anything else is just a muddled mixture of the two.

[FriendlyHacker]

The truth about poverty is that it's relative.

 

 

 

  This is universally true; try replacing Brazil with any other country.  What is the upper bound of poverty in Brazil?  Who sets the thresholds for poverty, and what makes those thresholds appropriate?  Do you know what level of income puts you in poverty?  Do you know what level of income takes you out of poverty?  I sure as hell don't.

 

   I fully appreciate how different my life might have been if I'd been born with HIV in some war-torn village hut in Africa.  I can't build everyone a house for free without starving myself.  All I can do is advocate the State not fucking with everyone's right to make a better life.

 

   Rigged die represent an inequality of opportunity.  Inequalities of opportunity do exist, and I won't deny that.  The solution is to either redistribute everything equally by force and continue to do so everytime equilibrium is broken, or allow entirely free exchange.  Anything else is just a muddled mixture of the two.

 

Agree with everything you said there.

 

I notice a repeated pattern in this philosophical conversation though, of people not realizing how much extra effort it takes to be poor, and this strange idea of everyone having equal opportunities, everyone who is not mentally disabled has equal potential, but equal opportunity is a whole different deal.

 

Bill Gates has a patent lawyer dad, this is something he was entitled to for simply being born, and also the reason Microsoft managed to surprise IBM and become insanely rich.

[dsayers]

I notice a repeated pattern in this philosophical conversation though, of people not realizing how much extra effort it takes to be poor

 

If this were true, then you'd be making the case for poor being preferable, at which point no sympathy or special consideration would be required. Going from poor to middle class would be the path of least resistance and the poor would vanish within a generation.

[ThomasDoubts]

I notice a repeated pattern in this philosophical conversation though, of people not realizing how much extra effort it takes to be poor, and this strange idea of everyone having equal opportunities, everyone who is not mentally disabled has equal potential, but equal opportunity is a whole different deal.

 

I'm not sure how effort is measured.  Bill Gates didn't have to hunt wild game in the jungle to survive, and as a result he had the opportunity to tinker with electronics and computers or whatever.  Both required a great deal of effort.  I don't know how to compare the two.  Some people prefer to be self sufficient in the wilderness somewhere.  That requires a great deal of effort, but I don't know how to compare it to earning a biochemistry degree.  These are different kinds of effort.

 

I disagree that individuals have equal potential.  I'm not even sure what equal potential means; potential to do what?  A man with an IQ of 180 has more potential to be a computer scientist than a man with an IQ of 80.  The same man with an IQ of 80, who happens to be 7'2" has more potential to play professional basketball than the man with an IQ of 180, who happens to be 4'10".

 

Equal opportunity doesn't mean that these two men have an equal chance/potential/opportunity to play in the NBA or be a computer scientist.  It just means that nobody will stop either from pursuing it.  Without the patent system, which is fundementally about errecting barriers to competition, Bill Gates' father would have been less relevant.  We might have had all the open-source technology much sooner, and he wouldn't have been as fantastically wealthy (not that that's necessarily a bad thing). 

[PatrickC]

You really can't do much about individual privilege. It's just a fact of life. What you can do of course is not stand in peoples way. In that way the poor have a lot more incentive to become rich, than those that wish to remain rich. You only have to look at India and see the vast amounts of the poor moving into the middle classes.

 

I left home at 16/17 and needed 3 jobs working upwards of 75 hours per week in order that I could pay my rent, buy food and clothes. That was a difficult time at first and there were occassions when I went without food. Some might call my experience privilege, whilst others might call it exploitation. To me, it was what I had to do in order to survive. Whether it was privilege or exploitation didn't much matter to me at the time. Thankfully for me, there was no minimum wage back then, that may have forced me to beg for food.

[FriendlyHacker]

Am mentioning intellectual work here, not sports, sports is such a silly thing to me I don't even consider it. There are about 60 million people in Brazil who play soccer, but only the top league ones are making money playing (about 2000 people).

 

As far as I can tell, if you have a normal brain, you have the potential to learn any intellectual job, given enough hours of practice.

 

There are people working 3 jobs and not making enough money, how exactly is doing intellectual work harder than repetitive/dangerous work?

[PatrickC]

There are people working 3 jobs and not making enough money, how exactly is doing intellectual work harder than repetitive/dangerous work?

 

If that was directed at me, I never said it was. However, regarding intellectual work. It does require a skill set that isn't always present in everyones character at the beginning of their work life. Social skills, empathy, negotiation etc. These were things I had to learn of course, whilst doing more menial/dangerous work beforehand.

 

The point here, is that enforced poverty is not caused by doing menial or dangerous tasks, it's caused by the state standing in peoples way and holding a gun to their heads. menial dangerous tasks often need to be performed. If that gives a 17 year old enough of an income to stand on his own two feet, then so be it. It is better than trash searching and begging by far.

[FriendlyHacker]

If that was directed at me

 

Not directed at you, Stefan has repeatedly stated his opinions on poverty, watch the mentioned video.

[ThomasDoubts]

Am mentioning intellectual work here, not sports, sports is such a silly thing to me I don't even consider it. There are about 60 million people in Brazil who play soccer, but only the top league ones are making money playing (about 2000 people).

 

As far as I can tell, if you have a normal brain, you have the potential to learn any intellectual job, given enough hours of practice.

 

There are people working 3 jobs and not making enough money, how exactly is doing intellectual work harder than repetitive/dangerous work?

 

I do repetitive dangerous work.  Granted, I'm not sifting through landfills for food, if that's the kind of thing you're talking about.  I find the repetitive dangerous work I do to be much easier than intellectual work.  I have to do minimal thinking or interacting.  I can be alone with my thoughts while doing my work.  If I were doing the "intellectual work" (white collar?) to which I'd be best suited, I'd be constantly worrying about x,y, and z, and finding it generally more difficult.  Among other reasons, that's why I don't do it.  Physical labor, for me, is second nature.  Wearing a suit and tie every day is completely foreign to me, and not something I have any desire to do.  Being a salesman, for example; I can't think of a job I'd hate more, unless I was selling something I really believed in, and such things are hard to come by.

 

Sports are silly but the fact is, because sports are a business, not everybody has the same earning potential .  Roughly 20% of the 7 footers on the planet between the ages of 20-40 play in the NBA.  The minimum annual salary is (I'm guessing) somewhere around a million dollars a year.  If you're 7 feet tall, you've got about a one and five chance of earning at least a million dollars a year.  If you are a big burly man-bear you've got greater potential as a physical laborer than a tiny, skinny, physically weak man.  The point I'm trying to make is that when you say everyone has the same potential, it begs the question; potential for what?  Beyond that, how would you even measure potential?