Kate Herrick ([info]1144) wrote,
@ 2006-01-20 12:33:00
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Are YOU Excited About Private Charity?
New "social entrepreneurs" focus on the success of individuals rather than subsidizing "the poor."

Please contribute constructive thought on the subject of diagnosing and solving poverty. However, I will not delete your trash, should you choose to present yourself poorly.

On third thought, let's just let this entry be a lesson as to what not to do next time we try to discuss poverty. I'm going to use that comment freeze function. I'll bring it up again later, and input some thoughts and arguments of my own. [info]unnamed525, would you please not attend.

(15 comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]kali_kali
2006-01-20 10:28 am UTC (link)
I am excited. One of these days I'm going to make a donation to a microloan/microgrant charity.

These sorts of programs genuinely help people out of poverty. Left-thinking charity doesn't help people really - it keeps them where they are, continuing to get help rather than becoming independent, because if economically-left people get everybody out of poverty, who are they going to "help" then? Their systems are aimed at keeping people in poverty, lest they make themselves useless.

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Where shall we begin?
[info]booksoverbombs
2006-01-20 12:04 pm UTC (link)
If you'd like to support your claims with appeals to emotional pathology instead of evidence, that's fine—so long as you understand that your audience isn't obligated to entertain them.

If you're curious about the causal factors of poverty, the data's readily available. The last effort to mitigate these through education, scholarships, job training, housing, health care, malnutrition* &c. cut the poverty rate in half before its constitutive programs were dismantled. I shouldn't have to remind that all of these measures are necessary preconditions of a society that would claim any meaningful standard of equal opportunity.

In order to reconcile this with your assertion that "left-thinking charity doesn't help people", you might rely on an idea of left-thinking charity that would exclude the Great Society initiatives. Or perhaps a definition of "left-thinking" more amenable to a global milieu, in which case the US looks like a third-world nightmare. So what did you mean?


*I won't rehearse the prevalence of malnutrition in the US again, as I've debated it elsewhere on [info]1144's journal. It should suffice to say that more die each year from malnutrition than from terrorist attacks in any year.

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Re: Where shall we begin?
[info]1144
2006-01-20 12:39 pm UTC (link)
Sooo... you're not excited about private charity, sounds like.

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Are you actually capable of valid argumentation?
[info]unnamed525
2006-01-20 03:15 pm UTC (link)
Apparently not.

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Re: Where shall we begin?
[info]1144
2006-01-20 12:49 pm UTC (link)
I never understand how pointing out the existence of poverty (and quite obviously, effects that have more to do with irresponsibility, such as malnutrition) is supposed to weigh for any particular approach to solving the problem.

If I may answer your question with a request: Tell us about the causes of poverty.

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Re: Where shall we begin?
[info]airstrip
2006-01-20 02:46 pm UTC (link)
That's not a good response, it's just baiting and I suspect that you don't know enough about the causes of poverty to write a meaningful prescription--something I say because no one knows enough about poverty or growth to write meaningful prescriptions at the micro- level.

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Re: Where shall we begin?
[info]1144
2006-01-20 02:58 pm UTC (link)
Speaking of baiting ... I don't think I'll be talking to you this round.

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Re: Where shall we begin?
[info]unnamed525
2006-01-20 03:34 pm UTC (link)
Disliking an argument doesn't make it fallacious.

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Re: Where shall we begin?
[info]1144
2006-01-20 03:44 pm UTC (link)
Well, I guess your bluff is called, then. There are no arguments here as of now about causes of or solutions to poverty. All the logic lessons in the world don't count for anything if you're going to allow fundamentally subjective motivations.

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Re: Where shall we begin?
[info]1144
2006-01-20 03:18 pm UTC (link)
In fact, that's not enough. I want you to sit this round out, too. Decorum is of the utmost importance in discussing something so controversial. You give no sign of being capable that people with different ideas may be sincere in wanting to solve poverty, certainly in practice. Your extreme negativity is not welcome.

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Re: Where shall we begin?
[info]airstrip
2006-01-20 03:27 pm UTC (link)
The sincerity of people is not adequate. You can't eat sincerity, you can't prosper on sincerity and sincerely held beliefs can be seriously fallacious.

But all the same, it is your journal. Ciao.

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Re: Where shall we begin?
[info]airstrip
2006-01-20 02:53 pm UTC (link)
Not having exes that can buy you a house. That's a good start for a cause to poverty.

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Re: Where shall we begin?
[info]airstrip
2006-01-20 02:48 pm UTC (link)
As if we could be sure what she meant by "left-thinking" to begin with. More than likely, most of the poverty reduction programs she supports are run by left-thinking individuals and hold to a liberal line not to be confused with simplistic ideologies.

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Re: Where shall we begin?
[info]airstrip
2006-01-20 03:07 pm UTC (link)
A note on the debate. Reason's correlation is flatly fallacious, of course, but there is more reason to doubt it because economists have long known that welfare is neutral with respect to economic growth. More than likely the increase since Giuliani is attributable to the growing interest Americans have in the cities as opposed to the suburbs. New York became cool again starting in the 1980s and this has continued, producing gains for the city. If Giuliani contributed anything to economic growth, it was through crime reduction. Further, city payrolls ought to drop as poverty declines in an area because there will less demand for government services.

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[info]airstrip
2006-01-20 02:43 pm UTC (link)
Your linky no worky.

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