5 ms·

The article is reiterating a dictum of Marx: being determines consciousness. Your mental state is determined by your physical being (generally your economic cir

by slibhb 5y ago

The article is reiterating a dictum of Marx: being determines consciousness. Your mental state is determined by your physical being (generally your economic circumstances) and therefore cannot be responsible for your physical being. I'm sympathetic to the argument that it's not easy for the poor to simply adopt "healthy mindsets" and behavior patterns. I also doubt giving people money is going to be much help. We don't have good strategies to help people out of "intergenerational poverty traps". Also, I find the argument against "victim blaming" silly. Whether or not your the circumstances of your life are your fault, they are your repsonsibility. Who else should be responsible for your life?

multjoy 5y ago
>I also doubt giving people money is going to be much help. Except the research shows that this is the easiest and quickest way to alleviate poverty.
- slibhb 5y ago
  If you measure poverty by "how much money someone has," this is obviously true. I'm not convinced giving people money alleviates "intergenerational poverty traps". I'm not against welfare. Giving people money alleviates their suffering, I just don't think it will solve the fundamental problem.
  - quacked 5y ago
    I believe you are completely correct; one often remarked-upon example is lottery winners, who receive a massive lump sum and often end up broke anyway. This is not due to the nature of the lottery cash, but the nature of the people who buy lottery tickets. I don't know what the parent commenter's life is like so I hesitate to cast too much doubt, but I have found that people who mentally model "the poor" as "essentially like the rich, but without access to resources" have never spent a great deal of time interacting with or relying on poor people (or rich people, for that matter.) [1] In general, there is a far greater poverty of culture and spirit among the "wealthy-country poor" than any middle-class or rich person who hasn't experienced it can imagine. These are people whose great-grandparents were robbed of societal status through offshoring or legal mayhem, and whose subsequent offspring lived in derelict, unprincipled circumstances for decades as the country crumbled around them, and that doesn't even touch the trouble of drugs. There are many poor people for whom hard cash would transform their lives and the lives of future generations, but by and large these are not the poor people committing the majority of crime and decay visible to the upper classes. For the majority of the "troublesome poor", you could stick them in mansions with bank accounts stocked for six generations, and in two years you'd still have trashed, overgrown real estate and overdraft fees. [2] [1] = This is specifically restricted to the poor in wealthy nations; poverty in the form of "living poor in the wild country of my ancestors" is different than poverty in the form of "living poor in a wealthy city", which is why dirt-poor immigrants to the US often succeed immediately--their principles and convictions are set up for success, they just needed access to easy money. [2] = The analogy I most like to use is the bathrooms at my old high school; due to a series of naive clerical decisions, the advanced classes took place on the highest floor of the school, and the basic, remedial classes on the ground floor of the school. The bathrooms on the third floor were mostly clean and working, while the bathrooms on the first floor were perpetually filthy, broken, and covered in graffiti. They were each cleaned at the same rate, but the users of the first floor bathrooms grew up with expectations of trash and graffiti, and thus perpetuated their own dispiriting environment. Money or access to cleaner bathrooms wouldn't have changed their behavior; only a deliberate and manual restructuring of their value systems would, and that is not a hands-off task.
    - multjoy 5y ago
      This is possibly the most condescending piece of nonsense I've ever read on HN, and that's saying something.
      - quacked 5y ago
        I am astonished to see that you apparently work for a police force. Do you seriously believe that endemic poverty in England can be remediated by regular direct cash payments?
        zozbot234 5y ago
        Direct cash payments plus "no broken windows" social policy would be a good start. That's how you can reasonably kickstart widespread social trust and social capital formation.
        multjoy 5y ago
        Yes. Because poverty != criminality.
bassetian 5y ago
sethammons 5y ago
> Also, I find the argument against "victim blaming" silly. Whether or not your the circumstances of your life are your fault, they are your repsonsibility. Who else should be responsible for your life? This stands out to me too. I've always told my kids that they are responsible for everything that happens to them, including by chance. I get downvotes for that view a lot. It baffles me.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  How are they responsible for what happens by chance? Do you worry your kids will grow up to idolize lottery winners? How do you think this attitude helps them?
  - NateEag 5y ago
    It teaches them independence and agency. As far as I can tell, my choices for dealing with injustices and terrible coincidences in life are: 1) to assume someone else is responsible to solve the problems for me, or 2) to assume I am responsible to solve my problems. The former winds up leaving me bitter and angry with others in my life for not doing their job and taking care of my problems. The latter helps me develop a sense of agency and helps me cope better with injustices and uncontrollable hardships in my life. In this perspective, "fault" means "who caused this problem?", while "responsibility" means "who should try to solve the problem?" Thus, taking responsibility for your problems doesn't mean assuming guilt for their existence. This also applies in an inverse way to fortunate coincidences - in your lottery example, this mindset would say "I did not earn this money, so I'm not going to take pride in having won it, but I am responsible to use this money well." This attitude also doesn't mean absolving wrongdoers of the harm they've done. Taking responsibility for healing the hurts others have done you may often include telling third parties about the harm and seeking help in repairing the injustice and preventing similar ones for potential future victims. As that implies, "taking responsibility" for your problems also doesn't mean solving your problems solo. If help is offered, take it! If you need help, ask for it! Just don't sit around waiting for someone else to deal with the hardships and problems for you, because that leads to despondency, disempowerment, and hopelessness. That's how this has worked in my life, anyway. I really wish I'd been raised with this idea - I didn't encounter it until my mid-thirties, and it was a significant discovery for me.
faeriechangling 5y ago
Money is practically the only thing that does help, not that people won’t find some way to reallocate that money into their own pockets in a hurry. Most poverty reduction schemes are a way for the privileged to put themselves inbetween the poor and the money on the grounds that the poor would spend all their money on drugs or something.
VictorPath 5y ago
> dictum of Marx Marx's studies show that the existence of unemployment in those not disabled was a category created when the capitalist ruling class displaced the feudal ruling class ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour ). One purpose of it is as a wedge in the "lutte" of a worker creating wealth - between the worker keeping the wealth they created in wages, or it being sent as a dividend of profit to an heir. More importantly, Marx noted what is quite obvious, but not in the quotidian hegemonic discourse - that the idea that a mine worker is poor as he does not own the mine he creates wealth in, whereas the heir is rich, as he does own the mine the worker creates wealth in, is fetishism. The focus on ownership of objects as opposed to human relationships is fetishism. There is a relationship between the worker and the heir, there is an expropriation of the surplus labor time of the worker by the heir. This focus on various objects is fetishism. It begins to reach its zenith in the modern age with concepts like intellectual property. So this discussion is in this context. There are those in the poverty class, and those in the class of heirs, and a professional/managerial class and a semi-skilled working class, and these classes have relations to one another. The class mindset of the various classes flows from their relationship to one another in the context of the means of production.

by slibhb 5y ago

multjoy 5y ago

>I also doubt giving people money is going to be much help. Except the research shows that this is the easiest and quickest way to alleviate poverty.

slibhb 5y ago
If you measure poverty by "how much money someone has," this is obviously true. I'm not convinced giving people money alleviates "intergenerational poverty traps". I'm not against welfare. Giving people money alleviates their suffering, I just don't think it will solve the fundamental problem.
- quacked 5y ago
  I believe you are completely correct; one often remarked-upon example is lottery winners, who receive a massive lump sum and often end up broke anyway. This is not due to the nature of the lottery cash, but the nature of the people who buy lottery tickets. I don't know what the parent commenter's life is like so I hesitate to cast too much doubt, but I have found that people who mentally model "the poor" as "essentially like the rich, but without access to resources" have never spent a great deal of time interacting with or relying on poor people (or rich people, for that matter.) [1] In general, there is a far greater poverty of culture and spirit among the "wealthy-country poor" than any middle-class or rich person who hasn't experienced it can imagine. These are people whose great-grandparents were robbed of societal status through offshoring or legal mayhem, and whose subsequent offspring lived in derelict, unprincipled circumstances for decades as the country crumbled around them, and that doesn't even touch the trouble of drugs. There are many poor people for whom hard cash would transform their lives and the lives of future generations, but by and large these are not the poor people committing the majority of crime and decay visible to the upper classes. For the majority of the "troublesome poor", you could stick them in mansions with bank accounts stocked for six generations, and in two years you'd still have trashed, overgrown real estate and overdraft fees. [2] [1] = This is specifically restricted to the poor in wealthy nations; poverty in the form of "living poor in the wild country of my ancestors" is different than poverty in the form of "living poor in a wealthy city", which is why dirt-poor immigrants to the US often succeed immediately--their principles and convictions are set up for success, they just needed access to easy money. [2] = The analogy I most like to use is the bathrooms at my old high school; due to a series of naive clerical decisions, the advanced classes took place on the highest floor of the school, and the basic, remedial classes on the ground floor of the school. The bathrooms on the third floor were mostly clean and working, while the bathrooms on the first floor were perpetually filthy, broken, and covered in graffiti. They were each cleaned at the same rate, but the users of the first floor bathrooms grew up with expectations of trash and graffiti, and thus perpetuated their own dispiriting environment. Money or access to cleaner bathrooms wouldn't have changed their behavior; only a deliberate and manual restructuring of their value systems would, and that is not a hands-off task.
  - multjoy 5y ago
    This is possibly the most condescending piece of nonsense I've ever read on HN, and that's saying something.
    - quacked 5y ago
      I am astonished to see that you apparently work for a police force. Do you seriously believe that endemic poverty in England can be remediated by regular direct cash payments?
      - zozbot234 5y ago
        Direct cash payments plus "no broken windows" social policy would be a good start. That's how you can reasonably kickstart widespread social trust and social capital formation.
      - multjoy 5y ago
        Yes. Because poverty != criminality.

bassetian 5y ago

sethammons 5y ago

> Also, I find the argument against "victim blaming" silly. Whether or not your the circumstances of your life are your fault, they are your repsonsibility. Who else should be responsible for your life? This stands out to me too. I've always told my kids that they are responsible for everything that happens to them, including by chance. I get downvotes for that view a lot. It baffles me.

HWR_14 5y ago
How are they responsible for what happens by chance? Do you worry your kids will grow up to idolize lottery winners? How do you think this attitude helps them?
- NateEag 5y ago
  It teaches them independence and agency. As far as I can tell, my choices for dealing with injustices and terrible coincidences in life are: 1) to assume someone else is responsible to solve the problems for me, or 2) to assume I am responsible to solve my problems. The former winds up leaving me bitter and angry with others in my life for not doing their job and taking care of my problems. The latter helps me develop a sense of agency and helps me cope better with injustices and uncontrollable hardships in my life. In this perspective, "fault" means "who caused this problem?", while "responsibility" means "who should try to solve the problem?" Thus, taking responsibility for your problems doesn't mean assuming guilt for their existence. This also applies in an inverse way to fortunate coincidences - in your lottery example, this mindset would say "I did not earn this money, so I'm not going to take pride in having won it, but I am responsible to use this money well." This attitude also doesn't mean absolving wrongdoers of the harm they've done. Taking responsibility for healing the hurts others have done you may often include telling third parties about the harm and seeking help in repairing the injustice and preventing similar ones for potential future victims. As that implies, "taking responsibility" for your problems also doesn't mean solving your problems solo. If help is offered, take it! If you need help, ask for it! Just don't sit around waiting for someone else to deal with the hardships and problems for you, because that leads to despondency, disempowerment, and hopelessness. That's how this has worked in my life, anyway. I really wish I'd been raised with this idea - I didn't encounter it until my mid-thirties, and it was a significant discovery for me.

faeriechangling 5y ago

Money is practically the only thing that does help, not that people won’t find some way to reallocate that money into their own pockets in a hurry. Most poverty reduction schemes are a way for the privileged to put themselves inbetween the poor and the money on the grounds that the poor would spend all their money on drugs or something.

VictorPath 5y ago

> dictum of Marx Marx's studies show that the existence of unemployment in those not disabled was a category created when the capitalist ruling class displaced the feudal ruling class ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour ). One purpose of it is as a wedge in the "lutte" of a worker creating wealth - between the worker keeping the wealth they created in wages, or it being sent as a dividend of profit to an heir. More importantly, Marx noted what is quite obvious, but not in the quotidian hegemonic discourse - that the idea that a mine worker is poor as he does not own the mine he creates wealth in, whereas the heir is rich, as he does own the mine the worker creates wealth in, is fetishism. The focus on ownership of objects as opposed to human relationships is fetishism. There is a relationship between the worker and the heir, there is an expropriation of the surplus labor time of the worker by the heir. This focus on various objects is fetishism. It begins to reach its zenith in the modern age with concepts like intellectual property. So this discussion is in this context. There are those in the poverty class, and those in the class of heirs, and a professional/managerial class and a semi-skilled working class, and these classes have relations to one another. The class mindset of the various classes flows from their relationship to one another in the context of the means of production.