Oddbean new post about login | logout Poverty is very simply just having the wrong ideas in your head. You can replace the ideas and lift yourself out of poverty. The problem is most people don’t know, don’t care and don’t care to know.
Poverty is an undisciplined habit!
Have you seen Americans living in poverty? There's a lot more going on there than just bad ideas. It's bad health, dependence, illiteracy, addiction, unemployment, broken homes...This was warfare on them, and they lost.
I feel especially bad for the people that would have to leave their families completely behind to have a shot
The thing is, the war on the people has intensified to the point where most of those living in entrenched poverty have children who have no hope. The last thing will be for the state to send them off to a hot war to die.
I feel like if we could put new ideas in those peoples heads then they wouldn’t have bad health or addiction or dependence or unemployment or illiteracy.
Many of us are trying (I have 13,000 students in two states), but our country is full of people who have been decimated by 75 years of govt policy. If we can protect the children, we might have a chance, but it's gotten really difficult to do so in too many places.
Always a victim mentality. And yet foreigners come here with nothing, can’t even speak the language at first, and thrive.
There has been an intentional assault on the American people for the past 100 years to weaken them. The US is the last principled nation. At its core, it is anti-elite. Since the Wilson administration, the bureaucratic state has been at war against the Constitution and the people who stand by it. Poverty has been an intended outcome to ensure the people never have the ability to revolt against the national govt again. At least half of the country is in this state, and the other half is in debt slavery. Both have been effective tools to subdue the population.
Always complaining. No one is going to save you in this country. It’s up to you. We aren’t socialists
What? We have to save each other. That is the point of building community and finding ways to overcome the debt pressure the educated deal with and the hopelessness the impoverished experienced. The war is real and only the awake are prepared to deal with it. I broke out of the grasp of debt slavery by going all in on bitcoin, but I didn't do it alone. There were many people involved in helping me understand how bitcoin could help. In addition, and more importantly, Christ's mercy allows me to trust in something other than human institutions. But that came through divine intervention and not by changing my ideas (which did come in time, but not before).
Europe is probably better for ppl that think like you lol
Tell me more.
Sounds like an idea coming from the WEF All good until this "putting ideas in other peoples heads" becomes actually possible. There must be incentive to learn and to be free what to learn. Otherwise, where is freedom of choice? You can blame people for being poor all you want, but you can find out that the source of one's poverty is likely due to government and bank action and/or psychological damage (due to improper or no treatment for example) Read about how IMF and World Bank lies (sounding like good intentions) fucked whole countries into continuous poverty. After reading the following book blame the people in poverty for having the wrong ideas again https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Repression-Exploitation-Development-Gladstein/dp/B0C1JK6MG7
ISN’T THE PROBLEM MORE THAT THE INCENTIVES TO CHANGE AND TEACH PEOPLE HOW TO CHANGE ARE MISSING? MEANING WHEN YOU HEAR A GOOD IDEA AND IT IS OVERSHADOWED BY THE OR RESULTS OF THOSE WHO HAVE COME BEFORE US…OUR INCENTIVE TO TRY SOMETHING SIMILAR SLOWLY GETS ERODED AWAY? IT’S ONE OF THOSE 2ND OR 3RD ORDER EFFECTS OF THE VIBRATION OF OUR MONETARY SYSTEM BEING OUT OF TUNE
poverty can na caused by a failed system too.
Agreed, but don't "fight the system." Find a new system. For me, that was bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
Poverty can be more than just willful disregard for opportunities: it’s sometimes a lifetime of tertiary layers of soul-crushing decisions, bad breaks, compounding consequences, blinding self-defeating inner dialogue that few have the self awareness and strength to overcome. I know people like that and it’s heartbreaking. I’ll never be able to “orange pill” them as it’s impossible for them to see beyond their circumstances. “Lost your wife/job/truck/house/license/wallet & phone while in jail bro? Fuck man, how can I even send you some money now? Shit bro!“
please share these great poverty erasing ideas.
1. Compounding 2. Opportunity cost 3. Broad market investing
Lolwut? Privileged much. How about: 1. Learning marketable skills 2. Prudent planning 3. Willingness to leave toxic people, communities and situations.
And at the root of all of those is valuing yourself in the future. Very hard to ever aquire anything of value in the future if you do not first see yourself as having any value.
You don’t need to have a marketable skill to get rich. You could be a janitor who understands compounding and still end up as a multi-millionaire.
Not impossible, but still very unlikely. Your janitor would be better served by upgrading his marketable skills first.
Poverty breeds poverty, the paradigm shift to get out once that is your matrix, is probably larger and more difficult to overcome in the current system than a pleb discovering #Bitcoin.
Some people, some places, can invest in skills and gain opportunities to work themselves out of poverty. I was very impressed with a young man I met once who lived in public housing, on welfare, caring for his heavily-medicated wife, their two young children, and his retarded younger brother. The system tried very hard to prevent Pauly from bettering himself - effective tax rate on ~70% on any paid work he did. So he started learning bicycle repair from YouTube and started his own bicycle repair business, cash in hand, rather than be helplessly dependent. He didn't make a lot, it was against the terms and conditions of public housing, and society denounces such entrepreneurs in adversity as "welfare cheats", but I regard him as a working-class hero. #Bitcoin is for these people.
In Greece he wouldn't afford the taxes for such a business. If he run the business unoficially someone with such an official business would imform the authorities. You don't have much hope in countries administrated by corrupted oligarchs because it effects everything
but at some point realize their poverty and call you "lucky"
Poverty is s state of consciousness. When you live in survival mode and see the World through fight or flight, you naturally create conditions of lack because that is what you are holding in mind. That is 85% of the global population.
most people are not fully conscious and not fully in control of what ideas enter their mind, even if they become as such, the new challenge is filtering those ideas, acting like all of this is some cake walk reeks of fakeness
What about people living in “developing nations” and living under dictatorships? Is it just a mindset? I suppose even then you could choose be grateful for what you have even when it’s so little and can be taken away at any time.
Hodl is ridiculous sometimes. It's just like his assertion that all you need to do to fix your depression is go to the gym. People commit suicide because of depression but they could have saved themselves if they'd gone to the gym. He has also insisted that bitcoin will hit $1 million this bull run but his prediction for the last bull run was $300k. We havent even hit $75k yet. I like Hodl he means well but he isn't to be taken seriously.
That makes sense.
You can fix depression without drugs. True. I’m not sure why that triggers you so much.
I’m only directing this at privileged westerners, but that said people make their way to areas of the world with more opportunities and freedom all the time and make something of themselves. Where there’s a will there’s a way.
True, there are many who’ve escaped totalitarian regimes so there is a chance if an effort is made but no one said it’d be easy. Whereas I wholeheartedly agree when this thought is leveled at westerners especially living under the dollar. I’m grateful bitcoin is allowing people born under totalitarian regimes or in abject poverty to “bloom where they’re planted” so to speak. Anywho, I still think you’re a bit of a cock but I like you anyway 😉