Short 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 questio

Short 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 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.