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Comment by solson | Hacker News Reader

Having been poor (not 3rd world poor, poor by American standards) I found the most difficult thing is leaving the poverty stricken network. You don't feel like you've made it until you reject the entire mindset. Until then, you feel like you've sold out. My mother still makes me feel guilty and shames me every time I see her. Until you've had a parent who shames you for doing better than they did, you'll never understand the trap. I tell my upper middle class neighbors about this and they can't imagine parents who wouldn't want their children to do better than them. While I still talk to my parents I've dumped the rest of the network. I protect myself and my family from my old network. Their whole way of thinking is poison. With many of them you risk violence, drugs, abuse, sexual abuse, racism, etc. Even if you trust one or two of them you can never trust who they will bring you or your family in contact with. No amount of mentoring or example setting has helped, it just breeds resentment. Their world view traps them right where they are and their rejection, resentment, and hostility to a better way of life creates their poverty and isolation. Sending them to Harvard isn't going to make a damn bit of difference. Well, MAYBE if you sent one or two, but if you sent enough, they'd just ruin Harvard.

I came to the conclusion many years ago that in America poverty is a contagious mindset, nothing more. But I do understand that it is a difficult mindset to escape due to social issues. In all honesty, in most cases the middle class and rich have good reason not to network with the poor.

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I have had a sort of reverse experience, but which has led me to believe that poverty is a "contagious mindset, nothing more" as well: My family were academics, so our bank accounts were mostly empty, our clothes were pretty old, etc, but we grew in upper middle class New York. I pretended to be blue collar in my twenties, thinking I would be the next great socialist author. However, when I got sick of, well, being poor, I just started taking classes at the community college, schmoozing my teachers and my bosses, and voila, I am a solidly middle class data hacker 15 years later. I don't have the bank account I would have had if I went to college earlier and started investing, but whatever, I am so not poor. For the blue collar people I worked with before the transition, however, the idea of getting a bunch of education and then becoming a manager was inconceivable and frankly immoral; they have probably not done as well as I in the last 15 years.

I hope God appreciates humor, because if I say grace, it always includes something like "and thanks for giving me an upper middle class cultural background", because, well, I would be f*ed with out it (as are LOTS AND LOTS of people in the US).

Also -- note that I have not mentioned race. I think it has become largely irrelevant to the dynamics of poverty, thank god, but only because my experience shows me that you can be totally screwed by the above culture of poverty and be of the same british isle/ german descent as my upper middle NYC friends.

EDIT: And I think we should be throwing our weight into fixing this massive cultural problem, along with the wasted human potential it causes (really expensive to hire prison guards and social workers). However, the left says "there is no cultural problem" and the right says "screw em, its their own damn fault", even while the US rots from the inside.

> For the blue collar people ... the idea of getting a bunch of education and then becoming a manager was inconceivable and frankly immoral

Not for all of them, but for disturbingly many. The problem is exacerbated by peer pressure: as soon as one tries to change something, one is booed and labeled a social climber. Because many people base their morals on what their surrounding group believes to be right, becoming rich starts being perceived as immoral.

> However, the left says "there is no cultural problem" and the right says "screw em, its their own damn fault"

Far left says there is no cultural problem because it is infatuated with the culture of poverty itself. There is this belief among many leftists that being poor is "moral" while being rich is not. So the left considers the culture of the poor to be superior and more "authentic". Similarly, in a perverse twist, the far right believes that being rich is almost equal to being moral (because wealth is God's gift to men or some other such nonsense). Basically people like to imagine their corresponding social groups as being the most moral of all.

And everyone in the West agrees that nobody should get in and really muck around with the personality internals without permission, even if the person giving/ refusing permission is, like, five years old. And even though it happens anyway.

I am under the impression that other cultural traditions don't have the same value on the "transcendent subject" -- it is easier for them to support training regimes that internalize outside values. Both viewpoints -- ok, not ok -- have their pluses and minuses. We can eradicate cultures and personal viewpoints with enough training, but it is hard to decide when a culture or personality should be eradicated or not. And the left knee-jerks to don't eradicate, period (protecting some really wacked criminal shit along with that). The right knee-jerks to there is only one correct, traditional way, screwing over those who disagree (train alternative viewpoints out of them, or kill/ marginalize them).

I hope readers will understand that not everyone on either side ignores the complexity and relies and their reflexes, but, sadly, the term "knee-jerk" applies to most.

May I respectfully suggest that there are very different kinds of poverty, and that not all kinds of poverty are due to cultural choices.

I came to the conclusion many years ago that in America poverty is a contagious mindset, nothing more.

You are making very, very broad generalizations and stereotyping an entire socio-economic category of people.

My parents grew up in rural Minnesota in absolute poverty. My father didn't use a toilet or shower until he was 17 and moved to a "large" high school where they could shower after gym class. He worked his way through 3 Bachelor's degrees and a Master's degree in Education, and then chose a live of relative poverty to become a minister and work in Central America.

I've had to be financially independent since I was 17. I've worked a job to pay my own bills since I was 14. I grew up rarely buying clothes at a store, and wearing hand me downs.

None of that was a matter of contagious mindset.

I worked in the ghetto in Chicago as an ER and trauma nurse for years, and yes, there are definitely choices that people make that make them continue in poverty, but there are also systemic issues that make escaping poverty in the inner city extremely difficult.

In the inner city, it takes a lot more time to take a bus to the grocery store, purchase food and bring it back home and cook it. Groceries are _tons more expensive in large cities. Access to banking is more difficult because of similar reasons, so people use check cashing services, which cost exorbitant amounts. Transportation is much more difficult, because you end up having to take expensive public transportation back and forth to work.

Banks make Billions of dollars a year on bounced check fees and overdraft charges. That means that banking is much more expensive for those people that can least afford it. Credit card companies make Billions of dollars each year in over limit fees, and late fees. In fact, people who max out their credit cards are a creditor's best customer. These are systemic problems that keep people in poverty. That's not a cultural mindset.

Who would ever dream of commuting 2 hours a day for a minimum wage job. I worked with plenty of people at Walgreens on Rush and Division in Chicago that did just that. Those were the jobs available to them.

Yes, people make choices that keep them in poverty. Yes, there are mindsets that keep people in poverty. But, to ignore systemic, structural problems that keep people in poverty in America is just plain wrong.

Life is hard to live in a place where life is hard to live.

There is some push to discuss "food deserts" as a social problem subject to sociopolitical solutions. Thing is, a desert is what it is because there is little there to sustain life - and the prime way to deal with that, short of either imposing expensive infrastructure or accepting grinding bare-sustenance living, is MOVE: don't be there. Ditto these urban "food deserts" (or "banking deserts", or ...): the solution isn't trying to impose an infrastructure on a system which has a natural resistance thereto, and will require enormous costs with little payback, the solution is to recognize "this is a bad place to exist in" and get out. Yes, it can be hard to move for many reasons; which is cumulatively harder - leaving, or staying?

If you're going to commute 2 hours every day, you've already proven you can move. And people do! There are plenty of towns and cities (Detroit a good current example) where people finally realized "this isn't working, I'm outta here" and left, leaving the systemic structural problems behind.

My recurring conclusion on the issue: the problem isn't opportunity, the problem is people not acting on opportunity. You can't force them to, and if they won't then nothing will change for them.

Thing is, a desert is what it is because there is little there to sustain life - and the prime way to deal with that, short of either imposing expensive infrastructure or accepting grinding bare-sustenance living, is MOVE: don't be there.

I wanted to work in high-tech and eventually be a tech entrepreneur. I lived in rural East Bumfuck, NC, where the dominant industries were: tobacco farming, golf courses, shrimping, fishing, and logging. We had no broadband availability, no (or little) access to VC money, angel money, mentorship from experienced entrepreneurs, and a limited pool of technology aware people.

I could have stayed there, and moaned about how "we don't have broadband" or "I can't find any other techies to work with," etc. Instead, I packed up my stuff and moved to the RTP area which is an environment much more suited to the kind of life I wanted. (No, it's not silicon valley, but it's better than where I was).

I know some people don't like to hear "move" as an option, whether it's because of a sense of entitlement, lack of ambition, or just lack of resources to move. But it's simply true that - for many people - picking up and moving is exactly the right choice (maybe a necessary choice) if they want a different kind of life.

I know nothing about you in particular, but your post in whole suggests that you weren't raised by drug addicts and foster parents.

My bigger point though, is to be very careful of people who say "I grew up in BFE, Kentucky" and then clarify that to say "really, on a farm, BFE was just the nearest town." Because the whole context changes when you find out they grew up on a Kentucky racehorse breeding farm.

In healthcare and the military, you find out that this whole thing about "moving" implies realizing that's an option. You're off in the toolshed telling your friends how other people would be better off shoveling snow with a sand shovel instead of a snow shovel. Meanwhile, our ancestors drawing animals in caves shepherded those genes to us through countless winters without ever knowing about the entire class called shovels. Never mind that shovels aren't very good for a lot hunting problems, berry-gathering problems, etc.

I understand that moving is legitimate way to recast your social network, but it's a long way from optimal for a lot of people.

> the solution isn't trying to impose an infrastructure on a system which has a natural resistance thereto, and will require enormous costs with little payback, the solution is to recognize "this is a bad place to exist in" and get out.

You're making it sound like these are two alternative solutions by setting them next to each other, but they aren't. No agent faces the dilemma of improving the desert infrastructure or moving someplace better.

City planners, legislators, etc. can choose to improve living conditions in deserts. Desert residents can choose to leave (of course, even if this does eventually better their situation, the short-term result will be a decrease in living standards).

As a teacher in a ghetto school, and as a child of parents who grew up poor (and of grandparents who survived the great depression), let me help him make some distinctions.

I have noticed two distinct types of poverty. The first is the OP type: generational poverty based on dependence and a mind-set of either victimization or unbreakable poor choice habits. They are stuck. Getting these kids out of the situation, is as he says, nigh impossible. I've taught 1000s of these kids, and their upbringing, the habits they learn, and don't learn, the role models they have, are difficult to escape and change. A handful of students out of each grade somehow leave - and never come back. The one characteristic they all seem to share is that somewhere along the line (genetics or personality) they have a work ethic or type A character. Even so, they do not have the social skills to advance very far in their careers past college and entry-level job.

The second type is the working poor. They don't really exist anymore as I know them in my parent's generation. They bust ass in 16 hour days of hard labor, save money and penny pinch, always planning for the future. Now days, this attitude is found in many middle class families. My uncle won't even collect his SS check because "he doesn't need it." My relatives would rather starve than take anything from the government or even their local church.

The first type learns how to do the opposite: game the welfare and social system for every penny and benefit and get, even if it requires dishonesty. These people coach their children on what to say at school to the adults to ensure they get all of the free benefits, and to ensure we don't call welfare for an inspection of their homes or income.

/rant off

IQ is an extremely important factor in success, but studies show that students obtain better outcomes if they think hard work is the most important factor.

Social and systemic factors play an extremely important role in an individual's momentary poverty, but I'd bet a lot that those who believe otherwise are far more likely to overcome it. Mainly, the folks I've known personally who blame their bad situations on social and systemic factors were losers.

People will defend their self-inflicted misery.

This is a big part of the dynamic of alcoholism, drug addiction, bad relationships, and stupid dogmatic ideologies.

I've always thought that hell would be a place where everyone burns for eternity, but there's a way to turn off the flames. They never do because they are afraid of change, and because burning for eternity is a part of their self-identity.

Just wanted to thank you for giving me an awesome tweet/quote/thing. Paraphrased as such: "Hell is a place where everyone burns for eternity, but doesn't put out the flames because they're afraid of change."

People will defend their self-inflicted misery.

This is a big part of the dynamic of alcoholism, drug addiction, bad relationships, and stupid dogmatic ideologies.

I bet it plays into working life and the various "geek scenes".

Of course it does. The "geek's" stereotypical problems with women is a prison of his own design. Same with all sorts of health and diet issues.

I just lost 14 pounds. However, the instincts around body homeostasis are very, very strong. I don't think it's reasonable to presume that it's all self sabotage.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ab/akrasia_and_shangrila/

Sure, but people manage to do it all the time. Like this girl on reddit today: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hlgtb/iama_24_yo_girl_...

Btw, I lost 20 pounds in the last 6 months, so I know what it's like. That said, once you make it a habit, it's not that bad. The hardest thing with food is avoiding "just one cigarette". Just takes a few days of crappy eating / not exercising for your old habits to take over again. You really have to watch out for that.

Goddamn, that last sentence is a profound statement. I see it happen around me over and over again. Very well said.

When I was like 12 or 13, my dad (an attorney) was doing some patent work for an MIT grad student who later went on to be a professor of CS. I was interested in computers at the time and trying to teach myself, and as a favor, my dad asked him to show me a few things.

He ended up teaching me Scheme, getting me to commit to an open-source 3D engine and work on computer vision stuff over the course of my early high school years. I ended getting into a top collegiate CS program with a very low high school GPA - primarily because the work I was doing outside of the classroom was pretty good. This degree opened the door to a masters degree and made finding a job much easier.

Today, I'm 23 and working full-time. My dad has started reminding me why I got to where I am, and that I need to give back and do what was done for me - find an aspiring kid who wants to learn, and teach them.

Maybe there are some problems with the mindset of the poor, but I think that part of the problem is that I am probably going to find this kid through my own middle-class network and continue to perpetuate a culture of mentorship that is often inaccessible to the poor.

So don't... make it a point to consciously seek out a way to connect with someone who wouldn't usually have a chance to work with someone like you. Find the poorest neighborhood near where you live, find out what high-school is there, call the principal and see if there's some way you can engage with them to do some kind of mentoring or whatever. Of course that's just an example, but hopefully you get the drift: if this point matters to you, do something specific to break that cycle and help someone poor.

Easier said than done. Unfortunately, as indicated elsewhere in the thread, being poor becomes a mindset. Regardless of how it got started, it ends up there and it's hard to break. Personally, I've tried to help 2 or 3 poor kids just recently. I showed them how easy it is to program, I explained to them why it is one of the few professions with low barrier to entry and literally no limits on potential and I showed them the fruits of my labor (i.e. my coolest and most expensive toys). The result? None of them took a single step on their own. I just couldn't get them interested. One still imagines he's going to get rich making music somehow (yes, I explained why that, frankly, isn't going to happen for him), the others didn't even bother with a plan.

People develop those bad attitudes, viewpoints, or whatever, in large part because they are poor. The contagion aspect, if it exists, is secondary. You are simply advocating the preservation of the elite by gating access to it. Of course if everyone had access to the same networks there would be no elite anymore. If it raises the prospects of the vast majority of Americans by, say, 5%, that would actually be great for the country, and maybe not having an elite wouldn't be so bad (to the extent this is even possible, of course there will always be some that are far ahead of the curve). But it would be bad-mouthed as socialism.

"People develop those bad attitudes, viewpoints, or whatever, in large part because they are poor. The contagion aspect, if it exists, is secondary."

I think this is the official leftist dogma, but I actually fail to see any obvious causality.

I think it assumes that structural lack of opportunity (ie you qualified to be a surgeon, but the y only job you can get is shoeshine boy because you are black) leads to resentment leads to bad behavior. And that there is no feedback from bad behavior to lack of opportunity. And that cultural diffusion just doesn't exist or doesn't matter.

Am I getting this right? Not a sarcastic question, I think there are massive amounts of assumption that creep in unnoticed in all these discussions, by me as much as anyone.

And just for the record, (1) I didn't downvote you, even though I think you are wrong, and wrong in a way that is holding the USA back, and (2) I would consider myself a socialist.

I just think socialism should get away from "fight the rich! bad rich people!" to working on how to enculturate and change the poor so the rich just go poof and disappear; OF COURSE there is the danger we go too far in this, and there is also the fact that we need to make careful and tentative value judgements about good versus bad behavior, something the left is, reasonably given history, loathe to do. (ramble, ramble, ... sorry...)

Official leftist dogma? Man, OK, I'll have to think about that. I'm not advocating a mindless "fight the rich" ideology, I'm not sure why you're getting that from my comment. The bit about preserving the elite wasn't meant in a way to suggest we need to eliminate the rich. I was primarily responding to this part in the parent comment: "Sending them to Harvard isn't going to make a damn bit of difference. Well, MAYBE if you sent one or two, but if you sent enough, they'd just ruin Harvard."

That and him being so hard on the attitudes of the poor, and all the talk of it holding him back. I'm not saying the poor can't also develop good habits (many learn to work really hard for little reward), but they clearly don't develop whatever attitude it is the parent commenter was looking for in order to not be held back. And that is probably largely related to not being around that particular mindset in the first place, because it's more of a mindset of the non-poor.

Yeah, I think it is official leftist dogma, which isn't really a bad thing (I prefer it to rightist dogma at least). But, as Nietzsche reminds us, every dogma exists to help effect a subconscious will to power, whether you're a social worker or a capitalist.

From your second paragraph (with "that is probably related to not being around that particular mindset"), I think we all agree on the value of enculturation in a person's success, though we are all different in our connotations. I think he is playing "let's call a spade a spade" in his post.

I also don't think you are advocating fight the rich, but I do think you are channeling arguments that others have made uncritically. It's ok, we all do it, all the time.

There's not many original ideas around regarding this stuff, and even fewer plausible explanations, I'm afraid most people will usually sound like they're repeating other peoples' ideas.

My point is more that people repeat other people ideas uncritically. Then we have lack of progress.

While I was criticizing you for it, in good faith, I do it myself all the time. It isn't that you should stop repeating other people's ideas, just that you (and I) should be in the habit of wondering "where did that come from? what does it imply that I might not be thinking of? who benefits by the propagation of that idea?" etc

In the case of the leftist dogma, I think there are incorrect assumptions about (1) resentment, (2) cultural diffusion, and (3) fault. Even if you don't share them when you examine it, that argument has a lot of baggage.

How do you know if I'm being uncritical about it? You're putting the cart before the horse.

advocating the preservation of the elite by gating access to it

This statement assumes that there is a fixed amount of wealth that must be protected; it's prevalent in socialist thinking, as well as in the thinking of the poor (it's part of the contagion).

It's also 100% incorrect. The creation of wealth is not a zero-sum game.

You are making assumptions about my thinking on this subject. All I'm saying is that the parent commenter is advocating gating access, so as not to "ruin Harvard". Maybe he believes there's a fixed amount of wealth.

My point (and the op's) is that there isn't a single network that needs to be accessed, there is a single network that needs to be disengaged from.

It's making the opposite point than the article does: You don't improve the lot of the poor by introducing them to some master network of elites, you improve it by removing them from the network that reinforces the bad behaviour.

Hey, if I'm being downvoted for my last sentence, then keep in mind that is the statement in my post actually most likely to be true.

This. I understand exactly what you are saying, but since it doesn't jive with many people's world view, there will be stiff objection.

The only cure for poverty (in western countries), ultimately, is the person that is poor. While there are many ways and unfortunate circumstances that one can find themselves poor - and as a society I believe it is incumbent on us to provide the assistance to lessen the occurrence and/or effects of such events - the ultimate recovery is in the hands of the individual.

They are actually hindered in this by the collective network of the permanently poor - supported by political movements on the far left that stem from this same collective belief system.

Programs should be tailored to address poverty in two ways: 1. Preventing new members of the network, by mitigating the circumstances that create poverty, and, however unpopular; 2. Disrupting the network itself, by purposely setting things up in a way that the person in poverty is isolated from other poor people and surrounded with a network that encourages them to adjust their thinking.

I'm not holding my breath, but I'd love to see some experiments along this line.

Wow, I hope this is not the first comment I see here because of upvotes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

I just got done reading this. It's admittedly not a scholarly work -- it's a set of interviews which paint a narrative about how it feels to move from the working class to the upper-middle class in America. Your statement about being shamed for doing better than your parents represents one of the book's themes.

http://www.amazon.com/Limbo-Blue-Collar-Roots-White-Collar-D...

I am an oddity. Although I grew up in a blue collar town and my dad was a factory worker/janitor, all four of my grandparents had college degrees. So, I identified with the book's stories in odd ways -- sometimes understanding the working class guy and sometimes understanding the upper middle class one.

[BTW, someone here on HN recommended this book. To that person, thanks!]

That's crazy! I thought that it was just my parents that did that. This past April, my dad told me that I didn't pay enough in taxes and that I should paying much more. Thanks, Dad!

I remember reading a quote from Bono where he talked about the crab mentality of his home town (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality). One of the reasons I avoid Facebook is that it is just an easier way for that network and the poison thinking that you mentioned to flourish.

No offense, but you sound like a nouveau riche, on top of bad generalizations

"With many of them you risk violence, drugs, abuse, sexual abuse, racism, etc."

This modern bugbear of racism is getting ridiculous. Did you really just equate "racism" with sexual abuse? What does racism even mean anymore? Is it only institutional discrimination, e.g. the refusal of the publicly funded government to hire some races? That's where it started. Now, you can be a racist if you have a type you prefer to date that doesn't suit the whims of your accuser.

Way to not "risk racism."

The ridiculous part was picking one word out of a very thoughtful post (and one written as a first person account, not conjecture) and attacking that rather than the overall point. The first time I read his story I didn't even notice that he had mentioned racism in it, it was largely immaterial.

But quoting only that part makes it sound like he is blaming racism as the cause for poverty, which he clearly isn't.

If I had a penny for every time I heard something to the effect of 'if only poor people stopped complaining/blaming racism and started pulling themselves out of poverty, there would be no more poverty', I'd have enough to help people get out of poverty.

Although I guess there is no point in arguing with throw-away accounts.

It's as ridiculous as if he had casually tossed "overeating" into that list as well. Of course when something sticks out like a sore thumb, that individual part will get attention. Your point is that you can only reply holistically or something?

It's as ridiculous as if he had casually tossed "overeating" into that list as well.

Actually, overeating and obesity have been shown to have a social transmission component.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1919885,00.ht...

You're coming off as very confrontational. That's never a good sign. This would be a great time to stop, take a breather, and come back to the conversation with a fresh perspective. Otherwise you risk being downvoted into oblivion due to the tone you're taking.

You can reply any way you want, but it makes a whole lot more sense to respond to the main point of the parent comment.

If the word racism had not been in that post, would you have commented on it at all? Would you have still felt the need to make a throw-away account for the comment?

What does racism even mean anymore?

It's a form of bigotry which is also deeply aligned with hate, often violent hate. It's probably the same thing that sparks sectarian violence.

It can also reside, in a form without overt violent manifestation.

Now, you can be a racist if you have a type you prefer to date that doesn't suit the whims of your accuser.

I would admit that this isn't sufficient to label someone of racism. The question to ask would be: Does the vivid thought of a loved one (a parent or a child) dating a member of a given race cause a strong emotional reaction?

I'm not sure what racism is. I'm not sure academics have a good handle on all of the mechanisms by which it operates, but, in the words of the Penny Arcade guys, it is a thing. Its operation in the real world is undeniable. For many in the context of minority, it is very palpable.

EDIT: It's probably connected to some suite of group organization/defense instincts. It probably operates on the same level that religion operates on.

It's a form of bigotry which is also deeply aligned with hate, often violent hate.

Meh, the vast majority of practical racism isn't really about hate. The most common form of racism is the over-generalization type -- most of the people of race X that you meet or see in the street have characteristic P, so you form in your mind the idea that "Xs have characteristic P". This, even when statistically true, is unfair to the Xs out there who don't have characteristic P, especially when P is negative, so it's a trap we need to avoid.

For every racist who actively hates another race, there's fifty who don't hate 'em but merely have negative beliefs about 'em, the same way I have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about (but don't actually hate) people who wear Ed Hardy t-shirts.

For every racist who actively hates another race, there's fifty who don't hate 'em but merely have negative beliefs about 'em, the same way I have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about (but don't actually hate) people who wear Ed Hardy t-shirts.

I think both kinds you mention are actually part of the same mechanism. I'm beginning to suspect that the mechanisms of tribal organization (human social organization) are paramount for human psychology in the same way that pack organization is paramount for dog psychology.

http://www.hiiraan.com/2005/july/op/Abdishakur_Jawhar_PartFi...

Many organizations exploit tribal psychology for group cohesion and control. Marketing is clearly dominated by tribal psychology. I think programming language communities are organized on mechanisms for tribal cohesion.

Is it possible to hate someone and not "have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about" them? How common is it to "have negative and overgeneralized beliefs about" someone and not hate them? Interesting questions, I think.

Way to not "risk racism."

http://www.reddit.com/r/longtext/comments/ga51e/what_is_is_r...

http://www.alaindebenoist.com/pdf/what_is_racism.pdf

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