Comment by roughly
4 years ago
> Poverty traps are emergent phenomena, not a conspiracy
Except that when everyone knows what a poverty trap is, how they form, how to spot them, and what to do about them, and none of that gets done, we start to fall on the opposite side of Hanlon’s razor. It’s not like that scholarship is new or controversial, so why is this still a problem?
Everyone knows what lightning is, when it forms, what to do about it (go inside), and why it's dangerous. Yet still, somehow, people get struck by lightning. It's not like this knowledge is new or controversial, so why is this still a problem?
Does this clarify things a bit? I'd like to find a better rhetorical method than just swapping out terms, but it really does highlight the point here. Can we conclude that government is trying to kill people just because some people still get struck by lightning? Alternatively, what would the government need to do to prevent anyone from ever getting struck? Now consider all the different ways people can end up poor, and project this infrastructure out to ensuring that that can never, ever happen. Should we have better methods to handle it when it does? Probably! Does the fact that poverty traps exist mean that people explicitly set them up? Probably not!
Many poverty traps exist because they can be a lucrative enterprise. People in poverty are generally the most vulnerable to begin with.
Curbing people's ability to leverage poverty traps for profit in a capitalist system would reduce how many people get stuck in them.
In general, government legislation can and does directly affect poverty rates as well as who is most likely to be affected.
People will argue about the effectiveness and intent of government actions to ameliorate/impose poverty. Claiming that it is outside of a government's influence is nonsense.