We learn to fly by looking up, not down. Cheetahs cannot teach us about flight. Only birds can.
We can know everything about ground travel and remain clueless about flight.
If we want to defy gravity, we must study those who defy gravity. We must copy them; adopt their mannerisms; mirror their environment.
We cannot achieve prosperity by studying the destitute. We might learn what not to do, but that is not enough. Experts on poverty cannot teach prosperity.
Poverty as Disease
Medical doctors who study poverty examine it like a disease. Every disease has a cause. Find the cause; cure the disease.
Understanding disease process leads to treatment aimed at cure. This approach has produced tremendous success for medicine.
Health promoters still criticize doctors for emphasizing diagnosis and treatment. Patients can be disease-free but unhealthy. Doctors now promote health, too, but it required a change in focus.
Anti-poverty activists seem to think that expertise about poverty will fix poverty. They start in the wrong spot. They see poverty as an abnormal state arising from some noxious cause or disordered process.
Wealth, in a middle class sense, is common in North America. But it is not normal.
Hobbes said our natural state is “No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
All of human history supports Hobbes. Wealth, freedom, and prosperity are aberrant – modern miracles.
We want everyone to participate in the miracle of wealth, but calling it natural or normal guarantees failure.
Social Determinants of Wealth
Our natural state can teach us many things, but it will never teach us about wealth. We must study wealth to help people achieve it.
Why does one sibling do well and the other bomb out?
What minimum requirements must people adopt to join the middle class?
What can we learn from the Millionaire Next Door?
Some say we already know what causes prosperity: unearned privilege, theft, oppression, and prejudice.
Chance or corruption creates wealth. If chance, then wealth is undeserved, if corruption, then immoral. Either way, the wealthy have no right to their riches, and society has every right to repossess. Indeed, it is immoral to not reclaim stolen goods.
This explains prosperity and explains too much. It is pure Marx: prosperity proves oppression.
Other -isms also explain everything and contradict each other at the same time. They cannot all be true. Freud used sex to explain everything. Darwin used survival. One view might be correct. But if so, then all the others need qualification and compromise. Ideologies cannot tolerate contradiction.
Help People or ‘Fix’ Society
Most people support practical aid for those in need. Practical help focuses on immediate needs. Anti-poverty activism focuses on changing society to make amelioration unnecessary.
Each of us is a moment away from poverty, disease, and destitution. Misfortune shows no favour. We help those in need because it could be us tomorrow, not because we seek a grand scheme to fix society’s oldest problems.
Some people will remain poor and diseased until death. We can help them. We can reverse causes where possible. But the poor will be with us always.
Most people can escape poverty. They need help. It takes more than just expertise on poverty or political plans to change the world.
We need to become experts on the social determinants of wealth to help people fly.
Photo credit: Pexels. com
Hard work,average intelligence,and opportunity.
The last is given(in North America),the second is innate,and the first is learned.
Agreed that there will always be poverty …. it cannot be eradicated.We must not let it pull back down to the ground those that continue to strive to fly.
Great post Shawn …. lots of messaging.
Thanks Ramunas. And great comment also. I like how you captured effort, intellect, and opportunity; will, genetics, social structure.
North America is the most free, equal, and prosperous zone in all of human history. It is a miracle that we should understand, not an oppressive regime we should unravel.
Sure appreciate you reading and posting a comment!
Cheers
I worked for a guy in the US several years that made it/lost it several times. He said if you take all the money away from the rich and equally distribute it through the population, the rich will get it back again because they think about making money and the rest think about spending it. Just saying.
So true.
Poverty, truly miserable and brutal poverty, has been ( and still is in the third world) , the natural state for mankind…with subsistence living , weight loss, starvation and ultimately death as the final conclusion…this modern era of global mass prosperity generated by free markets and capitalism , may well be a historical aberration that could reverse overnight as Venezuelans are discovering.
It is a testament to the wealth creation of modern day capitalism that today’s first world poor are becoming obese with all of its health care sequelae.
Overnight , as in Venezuela, the well nourished poor of a prosperous oil rich society , rich in agricultural goods can find themselves starving in the dark, losing weight and drinking water out of polluted ditches
Winston had it right “ some see capitalism, private enterprise, as a predator to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, few see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon”…..also “ the inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries”.
Persecution and execution, “ shooting”, of the top 10% to provide for the 90% is no solution as demonstrated in Communist dictatorships….milking the top 10% ( as they withhold feed ) till the teats run dry is no solution either as demonstrated in socialist societies…treating the the top 10% as sturdy Clydesdales to pull the wagon is the practical solution.
It seems , however, that the citizenry of wealthy capitalistic / mixed economy societies , such as ours, cannot stand prosperity for too long , envy being generated by those resentful of the more successful, resulting in the attempt to “level” society to make it “more fair”…the attempt to equalize the unequal inevitably resulting in disaster.
How to look after the bottom 10% I Q wise ( below 85) who cannot do productive work ( not to mention the ill and disabled) without disrupting the productivity of the top 10% wealth generators would take great skill.
One cannot have a rich society without rich people and one cannot raise the poor by dragging down the rich.
Thanks so much for taking time to write, Andris! Always popular and provocative.
I really liked this paragraph:
“Winston had it right “ some see capitalism, private enterprise, as a predator to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, few see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon”…..also “ the inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries”.”
While this post is about wealth, I framed it at one tiny corner of the whole Social Determinants of Health movement. SDOH seems most interested in describing suffering and blaming society.
Thanks again for posting!
Cheers
Great insight Shawn, wealth is the true miracle!
I’d just like to remind that 60 Canadian richest families own ~30% of national wealth, and their share is INCREASING over years, so eventually the poor get poorer, and the middle class erodes.
Still, the official propaganda & moral from one hand, makes all the efforts to confuse: e.g.
– lumps these 0.00002% to “1-percenters”, with all the confusing conclusions, including taxation
– create the misconception of “rich” based on ~200$K annual income (without so much needed detailing)
– misconception of “privilege”, when the really privileged people who don’t have to work to maintain their super-high living standards are confused with people working 60+ hours/week to keep at relative comfort, or downgrade the “privilege” to the point of belonging to a certain ethnicity or being able-bodied
– determine “middle-class” not by the real costs of living (50$K per year per person), but from the existing situation/income median (~25$K)
– misusing the terminology such as “income sprinkling”, when a person sharing income with the spouse is equalized to the “Bahama paper” – tax fraudsters
– create the legitimate/emotionally-acceptable image of the rich, such as celebrities & charity-donors
& from the other hand, the same propaganda & moral (controlled by the interests of super-rich few) saturate people with the confusing & distracting ideas, so instead of challenging the outrageous state of economical/financial affairs, people attack each other: young against the old, female against male, atheists vs religious… Ethnicity, sexuality, global warming controversy – everything to shift people’s attention from the real problem of sinking deeper into the model of raging inequality.
And, eventually, the confused younger generations are being indoctrinated (with the help of unscrupulous educators) into beliefs that the Government, bureaucracy & regulations is the only solution to every problem, so they happily surrender their self-determination & indulge into the cheap pleasures & distracting activities , turning into dependant universal-welfare recipients, while their future is being taken away.
Eventually it is drifting from the “American dream”/middle-class of 20th century-standards to the more common model of human society where the rich few own everything & the absolute majority has almost nothing…
Excellent, Alexey!
Please do not interpret my delay in responding nor the brevity of my response as a reflection of my impression of your comments! I’m in transit on March break with my family…very little time to get on here. Sure appreciate you taking time to pull together such a thoughtful comment. You have packed enough points into one comment to fuel 2 or 3 blog posts!
Thanks again!