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Comment by slibhb | Hacker News Reader

...or we just assume that, on average, good works, reason, and virtue are a good strategy in the long run whether or not they necessarily lead to success (or are a prerequisite for it).

> People are allergic to material, systemic, biological explanations of poverty because it messes with a lot of moral assumptions and thus we're stuck in this therapeutic discourse.

Really? Because I hear a lot of people talking about systemic explanations for everything. Doesn't seem to help anyone. Score one for the Christians as far as I'm concerned.

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> I hear a lot of people talking about systemic explanations for everything. Doesn't seem to help anyone.

Those supporting a systematic approach raised the child tax credit in the US, lifting over 3 million children out of poverty last year. It helped them.

That's just a fine example of trying to get the best bang for the buck. Thinking you can even have a "systematic approach" to either explaining or mitigating something as complex as poverty, deprivation and marginalization can only be described as the highest sort of arrogance.

The word you're looking for is hubris.

The systematic mind looks for the systematic approach. It doesn't help to fault them (policy-makers and their constituents) for it, at least if you're trying to bring them to Jesus. They're going to pull on the levers they can reach, eh?

Somewhere in this subthread, confusion has arisen between "systemic" (arising from, or affecting, a system as a whole) and "systematic" (methodical, using a fixed procedure, consistent).

Saying that the causes of poverty are systemic (i.e., it's not so much that some people have character or habits or whatever that make them poor, as that our society is structured in a way that ensures that a lot of people will be poor) has nothing to do with saying that it should be attacked in a systematic way (i.e., that we should apply some consistent procedure to deal with poverty when we find it).

I think we all meant "systemic" (I know I did, I just didn't want to switch back because I thought it might add to the confusion) but I'm glad you brought it up and clarified the point.

Well, if zozbot234 meant "systemic" then I have no idea how

> Thinking you can even have a "systematic approach" to either explaining or mitigating something as complex as poverty, deprivation and marginalization can only be described as the highest sort of arrogance.

makes sense; I can understand how someone might think that looking for a systematic approach to something very complex is arrogant, but not how they would think the same about a systemic approach.

I'll gladly take your word for it that you did mean "systemic" but I confess that I'm then not sure what a "systemic mind" would be that "takes a [systemic] approach".

(My guess, for what it's worth, had been that fineIllregister probably meant "systemic" even though they wrote "systematic", that zozbot234 followed fineIllregister in writing "systematic" but also meant "systematic", and that since you were responding to zozbot234 you probably meant "systematic" too.)

For the record, I fully agree that a lot of poverty out there is systemic. Look at North Korea, maybe contrast it to South Korea then try to tell me that they don't have widespread systemic poverty. Look at the latest garden-variety tin-pot dictatorship in Africa or elsewhere and try to tell me the same thing. The individual alone explains pretty much zilch; every single one of us in the developed West is living in an incredibly complex society featuring a huge variety of institutional arrangements of all kinds.

There's no reason to think that these institutional factors don't affect social and economic outcomes; indeed, there's plenty of evidence to the contrary! (And it would be just as arrogant to think that the institutional arrangements prevailing in a random Western country as of 02022 are already "optimized" in any sense. So yes, there is room for some meaningful improvement.)

Actually the solution to poverty is quite simple! You directly give everyone the base resources necessary to lead a dignified life. Some people instead prefer to create narrowly-targeted means-tested programs incentivizing hypothesized third-order economic effects to improve some abstract wellness metric twenty years in the future. The reason why they do this is because it’s cheaper, of course, but someone trying to change the course of a stream with the perfectly-placed stone will always believe the task is impossibly complicated.

> Actually the solution to poverty is quite simple! You directly give everyone the base resources necessary to lead a dignified life.

I guess even the most complex, difficult things can be accomplished, if only we just do them. Becoming a millionaire is simple, just have someone give you a million dollars. Being a CEO is quite simple, just get hired as one and make smart decisions that are good for the company.

I mean there’s a lot more involved, not just in robbing the non-poor to give freebies to the poor, but also all of the societal and economical and all sorts of other consequences they could have that, non-real-world studies that prove nothing aside (countless times we are told something will be so, but then it’s not - we do, however, have centuries of failed socialist and communist history giving us red flags), are quite likely to happen.

There were 37.2 million people living below the poverty line in the USA in 2020[1]. The 2021 budget for the US military was 705.4 billion dollars[2]. Let's be anomalously generous to the military industrial complex and only cut that in half, to $352.7 billion dollars - about matching the combined military spending of both China and Russia (combined population 1.5 billion people). We can direct the other $352.7 billion dollars toward those people in poverty, giving them around $10k/person/year every year.

I challenge you to come up with a reason not to do this that is not psychopathic.

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-27...

[2] https://www.defense.gov/Spotlights/FY2021-Defense-Budget/

Agreed. I now have clear path in front of me to be neurosurgeon, mathematicians, astronaut and so on.

> something as complex as poverty

What is complex about poverty? They just need money. Just give them money and there is no more poverty. What is holding us back from doing this? Is it fear that people will become lazy and just "take" from others and contribute nothing?

Most of you have not idea what it is like living in Poverty. Real poverty. The depression and lack of motivation comes from people not caring about you. You have no idea the energy you get when you feel like a society cares about you.

I have no idea how to parse "score one for the Christians" Christians are a large group that cover a lot of mutually exclusive beliefs. Heck, some Christian sects believe that material prosperity is a direct reflection of how good you are, and others that voluntary poverty is the highest virtue.

You hear academics talk about systemic problems but 90% of politicians openly deny the existence of systemic problems.

It's obvious why it's not helping anyone.

Your comment reads like that meme of Obama awarding himself an award.

> I hear a lot of people talking about systemic explanations for everything

I agree. All anyone does is talk. So many YouTubes and Podcasts talking but nothing changing. The time for talking is over.

And I agree, Christians are one group of people who tend to act instead of talk. The Franciscans are a good example.

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