The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central Food Stamps benefits cut

My argument still is:

1. War on drugs is costly and pointless (we agree here)
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2. Poverty isn't self-inflicted condition and escaping it isn't the question of "hard work".
3. Elevated levels of poverty is linked to increased crime levels
4. Reducing poverty via social programs is a cost-effective way to reduce crime
5. #4 is not linear relationship and does hit diminishing returns, it is possible to have overly-generous social system that no longer cost-effective at reducing crime
6. #5 US is nowhere near that point. Perhaps Sweden is.

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Points I will grant you:

Re: #4 Cost of social programs has negative impact on overall productivity...

...but so does crime. Frictionless society is not possible.

I dispute #2 , but will say there are also other factors. Knowing what to work towards, how to work towards it, and actually putting out the work are all important. So #2 is important, but not not enough on its own.

At the bottom, we have people who will work, but not work efficiently (towards a financial goal in this context - they might be extremely efficient at toilet swabbing) who never make a dime. At the very top we have trust fund babies who never work a day and have riches. Hard work in itself is obviously not a sole factor.. but it still serves as an important catalyst.

People can and do work their way out of poverty all the time. Often times poverty is self inflicted. But not all the time. Too many people want to make it a black and white issue, which precludes doing the real work of actually figuring out how to deal with it in reality as opposed to dealing with it in campaign slogans.

#2. I have told you this before, I have seen this first hand growing up. People(not all but some) stay on welfare because it is easier then working. I was told by one woman it is easier to have another kid and get more money then get a job. I tell you this from experience and yet you say it isn't a self inflicted condition. BTW after she was to old to have kids and the welfare checks stopped coming she didn't have a hard time finding a job.
On the other side I watched a woman with one kid get help through the welfare system with housing and training and became a nurse. She WORKED HARD to get out of poverty.
Your continuing refusal to believe that hard work cannot get you out of poverty once again you show your ignorance.

I do not deny your experiences. No matter what, there will be people abusing the system. It doesn't mean the system is fatally flawed.

Think of it as a speed limit. If it is set appropriately (adequate welfare system), some people will still speed and break the law. If it is set too low (overly generous welfare system) then a lot of people break the law.

Again, there will never be any perfect system. There always be abuses.



Again, you misunderstand me. Take away everything I own, throw me out on the street. Take away my credentials. I still won't stay poor for long. Why? I am capable of escaping poverty. Not everyone is.

Think of poverty as a marathon without an end. People at the front are rich, people at the back are poor. Some people are good runners and they tend to end up at the front. Some are not and lag behind. Some have hard time running and need wheelchairs that has to be pushed by the group. You take a person at the front, put him or her in the back and very soon that person will catch up to the middle of the pack.

Are you familiar with time preference concept? Have you read any of the Intelligence-Poverty studies? What about studies demonstrating high degree of intelligence heritability? Do you understand the concept of human biodiversity?



I don't think anyone chooses poverty, so please define self-inflicted in your statement.



Agree. I think there is too much focus on Why/How and not enough on Who.

Big question that puzzles me is, by advocating for robust social safety net system (because it is humane thing to do), do I also advocate for propagating deleterious alleles within human population?

Pardon for awkward language, I am sure you will be able to understand what I mean.

Yes I understand what you mean and am more than passing familiar with those concepts, and unless I am reading you wrong we are on the same page. Even our analogies did not differ overmuch. I was simply not discounting hard work, and hark work can be implanted both culturally and probably genetically. I do and did acknowledge that hard work is not everything. Your original statement struck me as too black and white, but I also acknowledge that someone with an IQ of 90 is not going to make 6 figures by designing aircraft components, calculating risks for an investment bank or insurer, or telling MegaGrocer to put the baby diapers by the beer.

As far as breeding bad traits, thats something that I do worry about... but its difficult enough to hold a discussion on the issue of poverty, and even bring culture - which is nurture - into the discussion without it getting sidetracked and confused with race or other "nature" issues without bringing genetics and breeding directly into the conversation.

The breeding issue also factors into a lot of other thought experiments I have, in areas ranging from nutrition to antibiotics. Its quite a worry, and I think a good case can be made for advancement of artificial intervention but any eugenics is also potentially dangerous for a variety of reasons.

Potentially dangerous is understatement. It opens the door for arbitrary standards applied to such far-reaching practices. Are you familiar with works of science fiction writer Stanislav Lem? He explored the idea of disastrous consequences on misapplying eugenics in his SF works.

When I read 'hard work' I associate it with 'strong backs and soft minds'. After our lengthy discussions on automation, I hope you are familiar with my stance on this?

I reached conclusion that 'hard work' is about to, or already have, translated into one of the following: a) unnecessary invented work b) demeaning and status-lowering activities exchanged for money. Plus we have very harmful c) use cheap labor to suppress the need for innovation.

a) can be boiled down to digging and filling the trenches and b) can be boiled down to demeaning. Neither produces any amount of 'greater good'. c) is unknown amount of net negative 'greater good'.

This leads to an observation that we have a lot of unnecessary and incapable people. What to do with them? Cheap labor isn't what society needs more of right now and is unlikely to change in the future.

I recently read an article on fake debt collection schemes operated from third-world locations. These "organizations" run cheap call centers that attempt to harass first-world citizens to surrender money to satisfy made-up outstanding debts. Such fundamentally wasteful activity is only possible because of abundance of cheap labor. Implications for US, where we continue through with ever-increasing wealth inequality, is that similar problems can 'come home'. I hope this is not the kind of 'new economic activities' you had in mind when we discussed this problem in automation thread.

You're not really getting your "what happens when we wander down the eugenics road" information from science fiction are you? There's a great example from the late 1930's in Europe.