I posted this answer:
It is actually government intervention that creates a poverty cycle. When the welfare state subsidizes the poor, then removes the subsidies if their incomes rise, it disincentivizes work and upward mobility and incentivizes the breakup-up of families, leading to a low-income trap of handouts, stagnation, and/or idleness—the poverty cycle.
In a fully free—that is, Capitalist—society, there is no “poverty cycle.” Poverty is the natural state of man. Nothing man requires to live, survive, and thrive is provided by nature. Everything must be created by the productive work of individuals, together with teamwork and trade—but always starting with the efforts of individual initiative.
How does anyone rise from poverty? Through self-responsibility and self-respect, she takes it upon herself to become productive. The great fairness of capitalism is that it leaves people free to work, trade, and earn property, and then protects the rights of people to keep and use the product of their work as they judge best. Capitalism clears the political way for and protects people who rise from poverty by their own efforts. It is the Enlightenment values of individualism, freedom, and limited rights-protecting government that capitalism embodies. The result; after thousands of years of grinding, stagnant poverty, the impediments on the common individual were swept away. They’re rights to act secured, upward mobility became the watchword, clearing the way for anyone willing to try. The resulting industrial/technological/economic explosion—The Great Enrichment—in turn opened up vast new opportunities for each new generation to rise farther and farther above poverty, thus establishing a cycle of prosperity based on “You can’t stop progress.”
And the fountainhead of this enrichment is individual initiative, enabled by liberty and the universal practice of individual rights, and motivated by the pursuit of personal happiness.
There are basically only two ways to achieve a life up from poverty. The first and honorable way up is to take responsibility for one’s own life and work one’s way up. Not everyone is willing to try, though. These are the people who choose the path of taking control of productive people’s lives and to seize the product of their labor. The question above can only be asked by the second type of person—the parasite who believes the world owes him a living, and thus turns to government intervention into the economy—and their political cronies who champion the myth that “the poor” are too lazy and incompetent to make it on their own effort in a social setting of voluntarism and trade.
It is sad to say that the anti-freedom policies of the socialist/regulatory welfare state interventionists are slowly reestablishing the lid on upward mobility that capitalism abolished, eroding the cycle of prosperity. But to the extent we have capitalism, there is no one to stop, or disincentivize, any poor person from rising as far as his own efforts will carry him. People starting out in life do not need to shackle people who have already made something of their lives. If they’re willing to try for success, they only need the government’s non-discriminatory, universal protection of their individual rights to freedom of production and trade and property rights. They don’t need government impediments placed on others. We need government, not government intervention. That’s what defines a fair system.
Related Reading:
A "Liberal" Newspaper Acknowledges the Welfare State Dilemma
Pre-Medicaid ‘System’ Points to the Moral Alternative to Medicaid: A Free Market Safety Net
America Before the Entitlement State—Yaron Brook and Don Watkin
The Moral—and Ultimately Real—Chains of the Welfare State
On ‘Rugged Individualism’ and the Welfare State
From Middle Class to Welfare Class
A New Textbook of Americanism — edited by Jonathan Hoenig
5 comments:
I haven't read this posting yet, but here's my answer right now.
It seems the questioner thinks pro-capitalists think "the system" is fair. What system? Capitalism? Or the system we have now? The system we have now is not fair, and it is not capitalism. In the system we have now, people on all levels, from the bottom on up, are becoming more upwardly immobile. Those at the bottom can't be expected to break their poverty. Governments have closed off too many markets for that. They have already intervened, with that result. That's why those at the bottom can't raise themselves up.
The questioner also seems to think MORE government intervention of some sort is needed to get those at the bottom out of poverty. What sort of intervention? Intervention into what, capitalism, the destruction of MORE markets? That would only create more of the unfair system we already have. MORE intervention must be into the unfair system we already have, not into capitalism. Such more intervention must be the opening up of ALL markets, meaning, of capitalism. This will eliminate the unfairness so the bottom can rise by markets. But intervention to keep and extend the present unfair system by eliminating more markets only increases the unfairness, and people will become even more upwardly immobile.
Substantiating these truths requires a longer work, probably a book, with all the facts and numbers.
I've read this posting now.
There is no natural state of poverty. A state of poverty is only man-made the creation of undue human relations, namely, by initiatory physical force, that is, by crime. The only reason poverty might be a cycle rather than a static state, is the criminals prop up some of the victims, then draw more from the produce of producers to prop up other victims while the already propped up fall back again, and while new victims are created by the continuing draw.
The only way in which poverty might be considered man's natural state is by reference to the fact that undue human relations have always prevailed over due human relations, namely, over mutually free associations chosen by all parties, since the beginning of the human specie. Given the needs of human life, its keeping and its improvement, and given man's nature of volition, undue human relations are contraventions of human nature and, therefore, of nature as such. Only humans can go against human nature and against nature as such, and humans can do it only by choice. When they so choose, they so choose whether they know it or not.
In history and in pre-history, undue human relations were centralized and made formal in thinking, in writing and in action, ensuring enough poverty to keep the crooks rich and safe as crooks can be. Attempts have been made to destroy this criminal regime and to formalize its opposite: mutually free associations chosen by all parties according to the principle of unalienable individual rights. This centralized formality recognizing and enforcing rights is government by law and due process. This is what facilitates, in short, capitalism.
All else is not a government by law and due process. All else is a criminal regime.
We must not merely attempt to destroy the criminal regime. We must do it all the way, to the finest detail we can find. There will always be more details, so we can never stop looking. But, we must hammer home the best we know, in action, and keep looking, because new details will forever spring up. This will be the fair system. Whoever understands, adheres and commits one's self to this can be a real capitalist and a pro-capitalist, knowing what one is talking about when one calls it fair.
There's a confusing typo in the first line at the beginning of my comment immediately above, a misplacement of the word "the". It should read, A state of poverty is only the man-made creation of undue human relations,... .
There is always poverty because of crime, and also by the mistakes and inability of individuals. Crime and mistakes are contraventions of nature by wrong choices. Inability might be natural for the individual who is unfortunately stuck with inability, which might be hard or impossible for the individual to work around. So, poverty, or worse, might be the natural state for such a person. But, such a person would likely (I believe) get enough help to stay alive, even if grudgingly, even in a collectivist criminal regime if that regime is not 100% radical like it would be under Stalin, Hitler or Mao (or maybe Pol Pot).
But, poverty is not the natural state of man, except for infrequent cases from inability. And poverty is only contextual. In the lower stone ages, the "rich" lived hardly better than animals. Today, the poverty stricken, without electricity and still living in pre-industrial conditions like the average conditions in the European middle ages, are actually rich compared to the "rich" of the lower stone ages. So, it's only for the unfortunately unable that poverty might be the natural state.
By "Poverty is the natural state of man," I mean that human beings arrive in a state of nature that provides very little ready-made values that they need to survive (let alone flourish). Everything man needs must be worked for. Without working to transform the the raw materials of nature, man exists in a state of perpetual poverty, because absent productive work that's all that he can expect from this deficient and dangerous world.
I see what you mean. It's also true that the very little ready-made values nature provides had to be known to stone age people, and so, had to be learned originally, probably without much effort as instincts were replaced by volitional thought. Then everything else has had to be discovered, invented and worked for, thus avoiding poverty. So, poverty is unnatural except possibly for the infrequent cases of inability when there is inadequate help.
Everything we need, and so much more, is here, in the "deficient" world of nature, as POTENTIALS. At least, that's the way I see it. The naturel world is completely sufficient, IF we unlock the potentials by discovery, invention and work, so we turn out the goods.
In the evolutionary process, if we had lost instincts without gaining volitional thought, then we'd've really been in a big fix. We'd've become so poverty stricken that we might have become extinct, and it would've been natural poverty alright. It would've been a poverty of consciousness outside our power to help. We'd've become naturally poverty stricken or extinct despite all the potential out there which could be potential only due to volitional thought.
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