Comment by gottorf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gottorf | Hacker News Reader

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> Drug abuse and mental illness are much more prevalent in those worst off economically. Poverty (in developed countries) is almost always a result of inequality

If the first half of your statement is true, then why do the billions of people subsisting on a few dollars a day around the world do not have society-wide problems with drug abuse and mental illness? Or are you implying that this causation only happens in developed countries?

What can you do to refute the idea that instead of drug abuse and mental illness being caused poverty, the same factors that predispose one to drug abuse and mental illness also predispose one to poverty?

> culture is also determined by lack of access to economic opportunities

Similarly, it's rather the other way around; lack of access to economic opportunities is caused by a culture that values human capital less. Of course, the two compound over time; but history is empirically full of examples of minority cultural groups that were discriminated against (whether legally, socially, or otherwise) but nevertheless succeeded economically due to the culture placing a high value on human capital[0].

[0]: Sowell, T. Discrimination and Disparities.

> then why do the billions of people subsisting on a few dollars a day around the world do not have society-wide problems with drug abuse and mental illness? Or are you implying that this causation only happens in developed countries?

As stupid as the idea that inequality in itself causes these problems is, it doesn't have trouble explaining why this would only happen in developed countries.

Historic levels of inequality, including urban "anyone can easily see that their downstairs neighbor is a hundred times richer than they are" inequality, were much greater than modern ones and involved a lot less social pathology; maybe look in that direction.

> What can you do to refute the idea that instead of drug abuse and mental illness being caused poverty, the same factors that predispose one to drug abuse and mental illness also predispose one to poverty?

Looking for a root cause seems unnecessary for this question; mental illness can easily just cause poverty directly.

> Historic levels of inequality, including urban "anyone can easily see that their downstairs neighbor is a hundred times richer than they are" inequality, were much greater than modern ones and involved a lot less social pathology; maybe look in that direction.

That one is absolutely not true.

Why do you think we no longer have servants?

Which part's not true, that inequality was lesser in the past, or that social pathology is more today?

Inequality was lesser in the past. Way less.

"Social pathology" is way too undefined a term for me to argue with.

You'll want to be careful about what you measure.

For example, we generally take Forbes as an authority on who's rich, but really rich people tend to be excluded from consideration, because Forbes can only measure certain kinds of wealth, and even when people's wealth mostly exists in that form, it can be hard to see.

Don't confuse a convenience metric with actual inequality.

> Inequality was lesser in the past. Way less.

I'm struggling to understand this one. Are you talking about the times of the cavemen, when I suppose everyone was equally materially poor? And yet you had other kinds of inequality back then, such as a bigger and stronger caveman being able to kill you and take your stuff, since there wasn't such a thing as a society or rule of law to protect you.

Or are you referring to the vast majority of people who for the vast majority of recorded history who lived in systems that elevated certain bloodlines above others, legally and culturally, and sometimes even to the status of gods? Certainly you cannot claim that, say, Queen Victoria and the common Englishman were more equal than King Charles is to his average subject, in every possible way.

Poverty can also cause mental illness.

This is pretty unlikely from a Darwinian perspective.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27157/w271...

What the fuck are you even talking about?

I think the direction of causality does bring into question what the expectations are for an egalitarian society is.

Is a society just if people with drug abuse, mental illness, and general dysfunction have equality of outcomes?

Of course, this simplistic debate belies the fact that all of these attributes have multifactorial causes, and most are in cyclical feedback with each other.

Dysfunction begets poverty begets dysfunction. No single intervention is socially curative outside of storybook logic.

Getting on my podium, I think that these factors are worse in developed societies than poor one (which often have greater inequality) for numerous reasons:

First would be the visibility of inequality. Next would be culture of material consumption. Next would be breakdown of social community (and the efficacy of social norms).

I think this explains why this types of behaviors are seen more in places like the US, which has a longstanding culture of materialism and individualism. I think it also explains why the behavior is more pronounced for outgroups and fractured broken communities.

This further explains why some groups within the US with strong social community have relatively low crime rates despite very poor economic conditions

>If the first half of your statement is true, then why do the billions of people subsisting on a few dollars a day around the world do not have society-wide problems with drug abuse and mental illness?

They don't live in societies with extreme inequality and precarity. Under capitalism, inequality is the problem, not merely poverty.

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