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Comment by Reza7865 | Hacker News Reader

"Poverty is not just about a lack of money. It’s about the absence of the resources the poor need to realize their potential."

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Sounds nice but poverty persist when governments do not respect private property rights. For many of these countries a strong and partial judicial system will be needed.

Paul Graham would disagree with you on that definition of Poverty. In his world poor people can wake up one fine day and start a business.

  Aaron : What drove the decision to go start a business?

  Paul : Poverty.

  Aaron : Poverty.

  Paul : I was tired of being poor. I was working as a    freelance programmer, and it was this sort of boom/bust thing where I would get money and then I would run out of money, and then it would be a disaster, and I just got tired of it. And then I thought, “I’m just going to work until I won’t run out of money.”

Thats not what I think of when I think of poverty.

Paul got tired of being broke. When you're tired of being broke, but you're educated, young, healthy, and/or from a privileged class-- you go to school, open a business, hustle, whatever.

People living in poverty live the lives they do for various reasons-- born into poverty, low education, mental illness, substance abuse, poor health, elderly, single mothers raising children, or some political or historical context (e.g. slavery, discrimination, unequal access to education/healthcare, language/cultural barriers, recent migration).

Poverty (in my mind) means you are stuck on an island where every nation around has guns pointed at you so you cant leave and there are only dirty cookies to eat.

Its scary how a gatekeeper like PG doesn't even have the basic understanding of poverty.

He used "poverty" instead of "broke". What's the drama?

One is a systemic condition that requires changes from society, the other is a temporary condition caused mostly by factors under your control. Confusing the two encourages ineffective 'solutions' for poverty to be created like 'we just have to make it embarrassing/uncomfortable/illegal to be in that condition'. These rely on motivating the poor person to fix themselves, instead of attempting to fix the surroundings that are the actual cause and address the symptoms that the poor person is unable to fix on their own, and then dismissing the ones that don't bootstrap themselves out as lazy and undeserving.

   > Poverty (in my mind) means you are stuck on an island where every nation around has guns pointed at you so you cant leave and there are only dirty cookies to eat.

I think your mind is the only one that has that definition.

When an engine idles, it is burning fuel & venting exhaust without creating any force. It is consuming itself & providing no value. What is worse is that it's polluting while it's doing nothing.

Idle thought is when a human spends time thinking to no end purpose.

This thread is about Bill & Melinda Gates' opinions on how to fix things. You're here speculating on Paul Graham's opinions & then slamming your carefully constructed strawman. It is thought pollution.

You (and some of the children of this thread) should scrutinize your personal values and evaluate just what you think you are hoping to achieve by proposing up this kind of unsubstantiated tangent.

gp quoted a definition of poverty from the article. I am contrasting it with how it differs from how (some?) rich and powerful people like PG have a different definition of poverty.

Its neither a strawman nor an unsubstantiated tangent.

I don't care about your free advice about my personal values.. You should examine your own narcissistic Holier-than-thou messiah complex that makes you think that you go around giving random strangers advice about "personal values". You are nobody to me to give me advice, isn't that just common sense? Has nobody mentioned it to you ever?

Paul Graham's job is now something very similar to providing "the resources the poor need to realize their potential".

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