4 ms·
That story ignores so many of the issues related to growing up in poverty. If poverty is all you've ever been around, it's never as simple as just "working hard
by ssharp 15y ago
That story ignores so many of the issues related to growing up in poverty. If poverty is all you've ever been around, it's never as simple as just "working hard and making good decisions".
- tomjen3 15y agoAndrew Carnegie would disagree. He didn't start out rich, but he ended up (very) rich.
- chromatic 15y agoNot everyone is Andrew Carnegie. Perhaps other mechanisms to reduce poverty will be more effective.
- temphn 15y agoCapitalism reduced the poverty of Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam, Chile, and Estonia (to name a few). What country was built from foreign aid?
- chromatic 15y agoPerhaps changing the subject from Andrew Carnegie will express my discomfort with the implicit syllogism more effectively. Cory Doctorow gives his books away for free. Cory Doctorow has achieved great financial and literary success. Therefore, everyone who gives books away for free will achieve great financial and literary success.
- tomjen3 15y agoI don't really buy that argument (you could take any property they shared, no matter how irrelevant, and make the same argument, i.e. they both had two feet): Cory Doctorow makes money because he has spent a large amount of time to create an audience, because he writes interesting books and because he is constantly on the lookout for new ways to monitize them. And yeah, most people who pull that of would properly experience success.
- chromatic 15y agoAnd yeah, most people who pull that of would properly experience success. Agreed, but too few of the discussions I've encountered leave out that part and focus on the "Why don't you just give your books away for free?"
- ebiester 15y agoSouth Korea was build heavily from foreign aid, both military and otherwise. How about Japan and the Marshall plan?
- wisty 15y agoJapan was quite rich before the war. They were powerful enough to take on the US in the sea and air, and China on the ground, at once; and bounced back after the bombs stopped falling.
- arethuza 15y agoYou could argue that most of Western Europe and indeed Japan was only able to recover as quickly from WW2 because of aid from the United States (e.g. the Marshall Plan in Europe) - and both areas seem to have done quite well. Isn't it also arguable that present day countries that started as colonies also benefited from a degree of aid/investment from the countries doing the colonizing? Setting up colonies was an expensive and risky business, indeed the country I am in was forced to unite with our larger and richer neighbor to the south largely because of a failed attempt to establish such colonies: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/civil_war_revolution/scotland_darien_01.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/civil_war_revolution/sc...
- temphn 15y agoThe Western European nations were developed before the Marshall Plan. The Plan did not build the countries in the first place. Re: colonialism, our fundamental difference may be that you may not believe wealth can be created (or destroyed), only redistributed. Is that a fair guess? No blame intended, the distinction between money (zero sum) and wealth (nonzero sum) is not trivial.
- varjag 15y agoEstonia wasn't really poverty-stricken.