5 ms·

This article alludes to the "bee sting" theory of poverty (see http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/the_sting_of_poverty/?page=full http:

This article alludes to the "bee sting" theory of poverty (see http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/the_sting_of_poverty/?page=full http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/... ). That brings up an interesting question: in historical terms, the subject of this story is quite well-off; he's not always physically at risk, he has ready access to probably non-toxic food, he has shelter, etc. Over a long enough timeline, his life is pretty good. Even his home situation--mom is a prostitute, but he can't tell anyone lest the authorities separate them--is in all likelihood less common than it might have been centuries ago. So if these conditions are so awful that we can't possibly expect people to improve without fixing said conditions, how do we explain historical economic growth. We're descended from people who had really miserable lives: sleep in a cave, hope you can hunt or gather enough food to stay alive, go to sleep hungry more often than not, risk death by infection every time you get a cut that's more than skin deep, and reproduce through what any modern person would call serial rape. Beings that were physiologically human (basically us, but probably lactose intolerant) had to deal with all of those circumstances, and managed to bequeath to the next generation some slightly less miserable circumstances. It comes back to the anthropic principle: if misery is a strong disincentive for progress, how did we progress to the point that we have leisure time to discuss this? (I've asked the same question on Quora here: http://www.quora.com/How-do-adherents-to-the-bee-sting-theory-of-poverty-explain-historical-economic-growth http://www.quora.com/How-do-adherents-to-the-bee-sting-theor... . I am very interested in the answers.)

fferen 15y ago
I think it comes down to being relatively worse off versus absolutely worse off. Although people today are not worse off absolutely, what normally counts when one determines problems in life is one's relative situation.
vacri 15y ago
We're descended from people who had really miserable lives: sleep in a cave, hope you can hunt or gather enough food to stay alive, go to sleep hungry more often than not This is pure conjecture. risk death by infection every time you get a cut that's more than skin deep Reasonable point, but nothing to hang your hat on - it's the same for many poor people today that have poor access to medicine and reproduce through what any modern person would call serial rape. And we're back to just making stuff up again to make it sound like people in poverty have it easy. The poor black kid in the story doesn't have access to self-sufficiency that your hunter-gatherers had. Where are the animals he can hunt? Where is the food he can simply gather? He has markedly different restrictions on his life, but you're ignoring all that to try and paint him as wealthy compared to "ye olde ignorant savage"
- white_devil 15y ago
  I believe his point was that it should be possible for <hardship-experiencing-people> to gradually improve their living conditions even despite their hardships.
  - triclosan 15y ago
    I think he(and maybe you) underestimate how bad it is. Just because your shitty situation gradually improves, it doesn't make it a good situation, it makes it a slightly better shitty situation.
    - white_devil 15y ago
      Yes, but the gradual improvement might have been happening over a long period already, and as a result, the situation wouldn't be bad anymore.
      - triclosan 15y ago
        again, underestimating how shitty things are. going from property to turning tricks is a huge step up.
- meric 15y ago
  >>>> We're descended from people who had really miserable >>>> lives: sleep in a cave, hope you can hunt or gather enough >>>> food to stay alive, go to sleep hungry more often than >>>> not >> This is pure conjecture. When my grandmother was young, she ate 1 bowl of rice a day (max), and had to spend her entire salary on food. Though she did sometimes get a few drops of pig fat to eat with her rice. Her job was carrying sand and rocks away from where the hill was demolished. When my mother was young, she ate 2 bowl of rice, and vegetables, plus chicken on chinese new years. Her job was nursing. Today, I eat cereal in the morning, rice and meat and vegetables for lunch and dinner. I'm a student. Anecdotes are anecdotes but it is not a pure conjecture.
rictic 15y ago
I think your premise is flawed. As I understand the bee sting theory, it is not that self-improvement and community-improvement are halted by the effect, just that they are slowed. Reversing your premise, if you were to take a population of ancestral humans and greatly reduce the stressors on the population (illness, malnutrition, war, etc.) then would you not expect that they would tend to improve their lives at a much faster rate then their contemporaries? Ancient progress was agonizingly slow by modern standards. Perhaps the bee sting effect is part of the reason why.
andrewfelix 15y ago
On the one hand you're discussing improvements in living conditions of the human race over 40,000 years and on the other you're discussing a minority that has been systematically oppressed up until a few decades ago. Two completely separate discussions.
zasz 15y ago
Hunter gatherers had much better lives than people give them credit for: http://www.mnforsustain.org/food_ag_worst_mistake_diamond_j.htm http://www.mnforsustain.org/food_ag_worst_mistake_diamond_j.... Your paragraph is pure conjecture.
nickolai 15y ago
That's a very intersting quote article you quote there. Just one thing : the article seems to claim that not caring to solve one's problems stems from the impossibility to solve them all in a forseeable future. Hence the problems create a "why bother ?" attitude, which in turn creates more problems. This pretty much nails the issue to me. But then the author goes on "The core of the problem has not been self-discipline or a lack of opportunity, my argument is that the cause of poverty has been poverty." This is where I'm lost - isnt a "why bother?" attitute a textbook definition of lack of self-discipline? I do agree with everything else in the article, especially with the idea of removing problems and roadblocks instead of simply throwing money at the issue. So In my opinion there is a self discipline issue. Trouble is, the more you assist people in solving their problems, the more incline they will be to let their problems rot until you come and solve them again. The ultimate goal theere is to find a way to reliably restart the problem-solving circuit, once the people have been pulled back up to the surface. AFAIK, no one has found a reliable way yet and unfortunately there is not much of a proposal in the article either.
- Anderkent 15y ago
  It would be a self-discipline problem if the affected people were showing less self-discipline than others. The author is saying that a rich person (that does not currently have the self-discipline problem) put into this situation would behave similarly. Thus the core issue is not with the poor people having less self-discipline, but instead with how poverty affects our self-discipline.
- ranit8 15y ago
  > the more you assist people in solving their problems, the more incline they will be to let their problems rot until you come and solve them again. I disagree, most people given a chance will try to improve their condition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsa_Fam%C3%ADlia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsa_Fam%C3%ADlia
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
yummyfajitas 15y ago
An alternative to the "bee sting" theory of poverty is a much simpler one. The poor, much like the rich, are rational utility maximizers. But unlike the rich, working for money does not improve consumption significantly for the poor. Therefore, the poor choose not to work. http://crazybear.posterous.com/why-the-poor-dont-work http://crazybear.posterous.com/why-the-poor-dont-work Note that this explanation doesn't require complicated utility functions, it merely requires that the utility function be nondecreasing.
yelsgib 15y ago
You mention physical security, food availability, and shelter as this little boy's three major boons in life. But does he have access to an intellectual tradition? Does he have access to any figure who can teach him anything? Does he have hope? Does he have freedom? Your caricature of a person with a "really" miserable life crucially forgets that in many ways this person might have had a much more rich than someone living in poverty in the inner city. Namely, in terms of freedom, in terms of connection to his family and community, and in terms of his independence. People (not just the impoverished) living in cities with high population density have a fairly unique set of psychological stresses, historically speaking. This set of stresses seems to be particularly crushing, for whatever reason. I mean, what I really don't understand about your comment is the tone of it. That somehow this child has all of these benefits, but still fails? What are you proposing? Can you really not see that the child must ALSO have some deficits that cause him to fail? Are you proposing that he's a bad person? I just really don't get it. What's your answer? What's your idea? That he's just not "trying" hard enough? What's the difference between a person who tries hard enough and one who doesn't? It feels to me that underlying your comment is a deep blindness to crucial elements of human psychology. You somehow draw an equivalence between humans existing in superficially similar circumstances and then throw your hands up in the air and say "I don't get it!"

fferen 15y ago

I think it comes down to being relatively worse off versus absolutely worse off. Although people today are not worse off absolutely, what normally counts when one determines problems in life is one's relative situation.

vacri 15y ago

We're descended from people who had really miserable lives: sleep in a cave, hope you can hunt or gather enough food to stay alive, go to sleep hungry more often than not This is pure conjecture. risk death by infection every time you get a cut that's more than skin deep Reasonable point, but nothing to hang your hat on - it's the same for many poor people today that have poor access to medicine and reproduce through what any modern person would call serial rape. And we're back to just making stuff up again to make it sound like people in poverty have it easy. The poor black kid in the story doesn't have access to self-sufficiency that your hunter-gatherers had. Where are the animals he can hunt? Where is the food he can simply gather? He has markedly different restrictions on his life, but you're ignoring all that to try and paint him as wealthy compared to "ye olde ignorant savage"

white_devil 15y ago
I believe his point was that it should be possible for <hardship-experiencing-people> to gradually improve their living conditions even despite their hardships.
- triclosan 15y ago
  I think he(and maybe you) underestimate how bad it is. Just because your shitty situation gradually improves, it doesn't make it a good situation, it makes it a slightly better shitty situation.
  - white_devil 15y ago
    Yes, but the gradual improvement might have been happening over a long period already, and as a result, the situation wouldn't be bad anymore.
    - triclosan 15y ago
      again, underestimating how shitty things are. going from property to turning tricks is a huge step up.
meric 15y ago
>>>> We're descended from people who had really miserable >>>> lives: sleep in a cave, hope you can hunt or gather enough >>>> food to stay alive, go to sleep hungry more often than >>>> not >> This is pure conjecture. When my grandmother was young, she ate 1 bowl of rice a day (max), and had to spend her entire salary on food. Though she did sometimes get a few drops of pig fat to eat with her rice. Her job was carrying sand and rocks away from where the hill was demolished. When my mother was young, she ate 2 bowl of rice, and vegetables, plus chicken on chinese new years. Her job was nursing. Today, I eat cereal in the morning, rice and meat and vegetables for lunch and dinner. I'm a student. Anecdotes are anecdotes but it is not a pure conjecture.

rictic 15y ago

I think your premise is flawed. As I understand the bee sting theory, it is not that self-improvement and community-improvement are halted by the effect, just that they are slowed. Reversing your premise, if you were to take a population of ancestral humans and greatly reduce the stressors on the population (illness, malnutrition, war, etc.) then would you not expect that they would tend to improve their lives at a much faster rate then their contemporaries? Ancient progress was agonizingly slow by modern standards. Perhaps the bee sting effect is part of the reason why.

andrewfelix 15y ago

On the one hand you're discussing improvements in living conditions of the human race over 40,000 years and on the other you're discussing a minority that has been systematically oppressed up until a few decades ago. Two completely separate discussions.

zasz 15y ago

Hunter gatherers had much better lives than people give them credit for: http://www.mnforsustain.org/food_ag_worst_mistake_diamond_j.htm http://www.mnforsustain.org/food_ag_worst_mistake_diamond_j.... Your paragraph is pure conjecture.

nickolai 15y ago

That's a very intersting quote article you quote there. Just one thing : the article seems to claim that not caring to solve one's problems stems from the impossibility to solve them all in a forseeable future. Hence the problems create a "why bother ?" attitude, which in turn creates more problems. This pretty much nails the issue to me. But then the author goes on "The core of the problem has not been self-discipline or a lack of opportunity, my argument is that the cause of poverty has been poverty." This is where I'm lost - isnt a "why bother?" attitute a textbook definition of lack of self-discipline? I do agree with everything else in the article, especially with the idea of removing problems and roadblocks instead of simply throwing money at the issue. So In my opinion there is a self discipline issue. Trouble is, the more you assist people in solving their problems, the more incline they will be to let their problems rot until you come and solve them again. The ultimate goal theere is to find a way to reliably restart the problem-solving circuit, once the people have been pulled back up to the surface. AFAIK, no one has found a reliable way yet and unfortunately there is not much of a proposal in the article either.

Anderkent 15y ago
It would be a self-discipline problem if the affected people were showing less self-discipline than others. The author is saying that a rich person (that does not currently have the self-discipline problem) put into this situation would behave similarly. Thus the core issue is not with the poor people having less self-discipline, but instead with how poverty affects our self-discipline.
ranit8 15y ago
> the more you assist people in solving their problems, the more incline they will be to let their problems rot until you come and solve them again. I disagree, most people given a chance will try to improve their condition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsa_Fam%C3%ADlia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsa_Fam%C3%ADlia

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

yummyfajitas 15y ago

An alternative to the "bee sting" theory of poverty is a much simpler one. The poor, much like the rich, are rational utility maximizers. But unlike the rich, working for money does not improve consumption significantly for the poor. Therefore, the poor choose not to work. http://crazybear.posterous.com/why-the-poor-dont-work http://crazybear.posterous.com/why-the-poor-dont-work Note that this explanation doesn't require complicated utility functions, it merely requires that the utility function be nondecreasing.

yelsgib 15y ago

You mention physical security, food availability, and shelter as this little boy's three major boons in life. But does he have access to an intellectual tradition? Does he have access to any figure who can teach him anything? Does he have hope? Does he have freedom? Your caricature of a person with a "really" miserable life crucially forgets that in many ways this person might have had a much more rich than someone living in poverty in the inner city. Namely, in terms of freedom, in terms of connection to his family and community, and in terms of his independence. People (not just the impoverished) living in cities with high population density have a fairly unique set of psychological stresses, historically speaking. This set of stresses seems to be particularly crushing, for whatever reason. I mean, what I really don't understand about your comment is the tone of it. That somehow this child has all of these benefits, but still fails? What are you proposing? Can you really not see that the child must ALSO have some deficits that cause him to fail? Are you proposing that he's a bad person? I just really don't get it. What's your answer? What's your idea? That he's just not "trying" hard enough? What's the difference between a person who tries hard enough and one who doesn't? It feels to me that underlying your comment is a deep blindness to crucial elements of human psychology. You somehow draw an equivalence between humans existing in superficially similar circumstances and then throw your hands up in the air and say "I don't get it!"