Hacker News Reader

Poverty is a consequence of a specific type of liberty: economic liberalism. Few poor people are where they are because of simply having made bad deals. Mostly they were just dealt a bad hand in life and are being exploited by those who were dealt a much better one.

View on HN

In a liberal economy, pretty much all poor people are where they are from having made bad deals. That does not mean that they had good deals available to them. One of the other (unfortunate) consequences of liberalism is that people are free to setup the deals they offer to other people such that all deals available are bad deals.

My comment is not intended to be a value judgment on either poor people or rich people, just a description of why things are the way they are.

Basically a zugzwang in chess

Reply on news.ycombinator.com