> > Surprisingly, giving money to poor people makes them not-poor.
> For a while at least. In many cases, they just spend that money and go back to being poor. It's not universal though.
You missed the point, though I have to admit that it is a subtle one and not well known. So let me continue playing devil's advocate.
The not-poor are only not-poor because they receive money through some already existing mechanism of distribution. If that mechanism ceases to operate, they will likely become poor by spending all their money.
So, yes, if you make the currently poor not-poor by changing the existing mechanisms of distributions, and then change those same mechanisms back to how they are today, then quite likely many of them will revert to being poor.
That is not an interesting point, yet somehow people think it is. Why?
Probably they think so because they have an unconscious and implicit belief that the currently existing mechanisms of distribution are somehow "natural". Frankly, that is a bizarre proposition.
Just consider how many laws affect the distribution of wealth in society, many of them largely arbitrary. This holds for laws of commerce, laws governing corporations, it holds for a lot of regulation, it certainly holds for things like patent law and copyright law.
> The not-poor are only not-poor because they receive money through some already existing mechanism of distribution. If that mechanism ceases to operate, they will likely become poor by spending all their money.
> Probably they think so because they have an unconscious and implicit belief that the currently existing mechanisms of distribution are somehow "natural". Frankly, that is a bizarre proposition.
That strikes me as an un-natural way of looking at things. If a farmer grows potatoes and sells them for money, he's not "receiving" money, he's trading for it (he's receiving money as much as the other guy is "receiving" potatoes"). That seems very natural to me (you give something, you get something).
Even in situations where this trade is illegal, it still happens; for example, drug dealers. They sell you heroin/cocaine/marijuana, you give them money. That transaction is highly illegal, yet it still happens because addicts want drugs and dealers want money (that they then use to buy other stuff with).
On the other side of the spectrum, you have the completely legal and moral transactions, like the potato example I gave. Laws have some impact on the basic natural tendency of people to trade for what they need, but they can't make trade go away (look at alcohol prohibition for another example).
I think the main cause of poverty is that poor people don't have much to trade (skills, labor, resources, even ideas or art). In other situations, trade is simply made difficult (for example, if you live in a warzone, it's pretty hard to be a hairdresser or grow potatoes).
> For a while at least. In many cases, they just spend that money and go back to being poor. It's not universal though.
You missed the point, though I have to admit that it is a subtle one and not well known. So let me continue playing devil's advocate.
The not-poor are only not-poor because they receive money through some already existing mechanism of distribution. If that mechanism ceases to operate, they will likely become poor by spending all their money.
So, yes, if you make the currently poor not-poor by changing the existing mechanisms of distributions, and then change those same mechanisms back to how they are today, then quite likely many of them will revert to being poor.
That is not an interesting point, yet somehow people think it is. Why?
Probably they think so because they have an unconscious and implicit belief that the currently existing mechanisms of distribution are somehow "natural". Frankly, that is a bizarre proposition.
Just consider how many laws affect the distribution of wealth in society, many of them largely arbitrary. This holds for laws of commerce, laws governing corporations, it holds for a lot of regulation, it certainly holds for things like patent law and copyright law.