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The assertion implicit in the headline ("poverty exists because it's profitable") is the article's assertion, not the book's. This is quite silly. Through all

by enoch_r 10y ago

The assertion implicit in the headline ("poverty exists because it's profitable") is the article's assertion, not the book's. This is quite silly. Through all of human history the vast majority of people have been miserably poor, and it's only recently that a slice of humanity has managed to claw their way out of poverty. Poverty should be considered the natural state of humanity, not an anomaly that needs explanation.

skylan_q 10y ago
Poverty should be considered the natural state of humanity, not an anomaly that needs explanation. This is the truth. But for clarification that's not to say that we shouldn't fight it.
danharaj 10y ago
> miserably poor Poor as in not wealthy, sure. But miserable? No, I doubt that. Yes, if you compare wealth between different time periods many people have more wealth today than they did yesterday, but that's not important. Poverty is a measure of economic relationships: What matters is differentials in access to resources and means of production and how those differentials shape the structure of our society today. Even if an impoverished family in Appalachia today has more wealth than hunter gatherers several thousand years ago, their poverty marginalizes them, immiserates them, and drives the decay of the social structures around them. The issue is social relationships, not absolute wealth. It's about the dynamics of our society and how class structures form around economic relationships. Comparing wealth between time periods is always a red herring in discussions about poverty. Poverty certainly does exist because it's profitable because poverty is about class and economic relationships today, not the relative wealth between, say, a vagrant in San Francisco and a vagrant in Rome circa 50 CE.
rpmcmurphy 10y ago
I have first hand experience with this. After being swindled badly in the sale of a small business, I was forced into foreclosure and chapter 13 bankruptcy. For roughly 8 years, I was trapped in a situation where I had crippling debt, and had lost my primary source of income. This started in 2008 so finding a job that paid well enough to stop the bleeding was out of the question. What happens when you get in a situation like this? Every dirtbag on the planet who has an idea about how to profit off it will appear. This was especially true of real estate agents, as well as people peddling legit sounding loan restructuring programs. It is a huge pile on and it really wears you down (besides the stress of not knowing from week to week if you home is going to be auctioned off at the courthouse, not being able to pay for luxuries like basic dental care, and so on). If you have not been there, you have no idea at all how difficult it is to get out of that trap once you are in it.
SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
I took the claim to be that they're poorer than they might've been because it's profitable for people to extract wealth from them -- that is, it's possible to extract more wealth than you return in value by leveraging social structures. Further, that this profitability in modern times is trapping people in poverty, when otherwise people might not be "poor". You've done nothing to address this claim, at all.
cookiecaper 10y ago
Isn't poverty a inherently relative term? It means you're impoverished relative to the contemporary living standard. To be impoverished is to be very poor, to be poor is to have less, and you have to be comparing against something to define a quantity against it. So yes, relative to today's average first-world citizen, even the wealthiest humans from the past have been impoverished. But I don't think that's a useful framing. The default state of humanity is to be a hunter-gatherer in a tribe. It's to spend the day walking/running long distances to find food and coming home at night to eat it and sleep, or to spend the day preparing the food and living quarters for eating/sleeping at night and making sure the children are safe. Within this context, the only poverty that exists is the bounty of the land which one happens to inhabit. Our tribal past is often skimmed over, but I think it's instructive as to what systems and processes work well and allow the species to evolve and flourish. Psychology is a thin veneer atop biology. We should be careful to ensure that our conduct, both personal and systemic, is biologically compatible.
ue_ 10y ago
But it's clear that the drive for profit is a contributor to poverty; arguably a lot of it today exists because of the profit motive. Furthermore, many people can't "claw their way out of poverty". I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make here; the elimination of poverty is a goal that is to be strived for, even if it cannot be reached.
- enoch_r 10y ago
  I absolutely agree that we should strive for the elimination of poverty, and that many people can't "claw their way out of poverty." My point is just that we shouldn't start from the false premise that prosperity is the natural state and poverty must be explained, because you may end up blaming symptoms (in this case, landlords--in other cases, it's check cashing companies[0], or sweatshops[1], or the "profit motive") and implement a "treatment" that makes the poor even worse off. [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/check-cashing-stores-good-deal-upenn-professor-2017-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/check-cashing-stores-good-dea... [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/1997/03/in_praise_of_cheap_labor.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/19...

by enoch_r 10y ago

skylan_q 10y ago

Poverty should be considered the natural state of humanity, not an anomaly that needs explanation. This is the truth. But for clarification that's not to say that we shouldn't fight it.

danharaj 10y ago

> miserably poor Poor as in not wealthy, sure. But miserable? No, I doubt that. Yes, if you compare wealth between different time periods many people have more wealth today than they did yesterday, but that's not important. Poverty is a measure of economic relationships: What matters is differentials in access to resources and means of production and how those differentials shape the structure of our society today. Even if an impoverished family in Appalachia today has more wealth than hunter gatherers several thousand years ago, their poverty marginalizes them, immiserates them, and drives the decay of the social structures around them. The issue is social relationships, not absolute wealth. It's about the dynamics of our society and how class structures form around economic relationships. Comparing wealth between time periods is always a red herring in discussions about poverty. Poverty certainly does exist because it's profitable because poverty is about class and economic relationships today, not the relative wealth between, say, a vagrant in San Francisco and a vagrant in Rome circa 50 CE.

rpmcmurphy 10y ago

I have first hand experience with this. After being swindled badly in the sale of a small business, I was forced into foreclosure and chapter 13 bankruptcy. For roughly 8 years, I was trapped in a situation where I had crippling debt, and had lost my primary source of income. This started in 2008 so finding a job that paid well enough to stop the bleeding was out of the question. What happens when you get in a situation like this? Every dirtbag on the planet who has an idea about how to profit off it will appear. This was especially true of real estate agents, as well as people peddling legit sounding loan restructuring programs. It is a huge pile on and it really wears you down (besides the stress of not knowing from week to week if you home is going to be auctioned off at the courthouse, not being able to pay for luxuries like basic dental care, and so on). If you have not been there, you have no idea at all how difficult it is to get out of that trap once you are in it.

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago

I took the claim to be that they're poorer than they might've been because it's profitable for people to extract wealth from them -- that is, it's possible to extract more wealth than you return in value by leveraging social structures. Further, that this profitability in modern times is trapping people in poverty, when otherwise people might not be "poor". You've done nothing to address this claim, at all.

cookiecaper 10y ago

Isn't poverty a inherently relative term? It means you're impoverished relative to the contemporary living standard. To be impoverished is to be very poor, to be poor is to have less, and you have to be comparing against something to define a quantity against it. So yes, relative to today's average first-world citizen, even the wealthiest humans from the past have been impoverished. But I don't think that's a useful framing. The default state of humanity is to be a hunter-gatherer in a tribe. It's to spend the day walking/running long distances to find food and coming home at night to eat it and sleep, or to spend the day preparing the food and living quarters for eating/sleeping at night and making sure the children are safe. Within this context, the only poverty that exists is the bounty of the land which one happens to inhabit. Our tribal past is often skimmed over, but I think it's instructive as to what systems and processes work well and allow the species to evolve and flourish. Psychology is a thin veneer atop biology. We should be careful to ensure that our conduct, both personal and systemic, is biologically compatible.

ue_ 10y ago

But it's clear that the drive for profit is a contributor to poverty; arguably a lot of it today exists because of the profit motive. Furthermore, many people can't "claw their way out of poverty". I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make here; the elimination of poverty is a goal that is to be strived for, even if it cannot be reached.

enoch_r 10y ago
I absolutely agree that we should strive for the elimination of poverty, and that many people can't "claw their way out of poverty." My point is just that we shouldn't start from the false premise that prosperity is the natural state and poverty must be explained, because you may end up blaming symptoms (in this case, landlords--in other cases, it's check cashing companies[0], or sweatshops[1], or the "profit motive") and implement a "treatment" that makes the poor even worse off. [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/check-cashing-stores-good-deal-upenn-professor-2017-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/check-cashing-stores-good-dea... [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/1997/03/in_praise_of_cheap_labor.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/19...