Why are people poor?

[patrickhenry]

Watch the documentary "The end to poverty?" Directed by Philippe Diaz. Pretty much sums it up.

[Guest]

As you can probably infer from my last post, I prefer to err on the side of caution, protecting people from exploitation in supposed voluntary trades, because I don't believe it's ethical to call a trade off voluntary when you could easily get the person to make a DIFFERENT choice merely by presenting an unknown piece of information. I also believe that people in power typically make concerted efforts to prevent others from making informed decisions.

So "something" needs to "protect" people? That's what government claims to do. But that's power, and you yourself believe that powerful people try to "exploit" others. So you are arguing that government should help us, but it's impossible for this to happen? Well, that's about right. If I had a magic wand that cured the imperfect information problem, that would be great. But since every transaction occurs under this fact of reality, then you believe that no trade can ever be TRULY ethical. If that's the case, then what do you suggest the world should look like? I'm guessing you'd say we should all be swallowed into the depths of hell for oppressing the humans that we voluntarily cooperate with?

that everyone actually KNOWS what's best for them and doesn't need any kind of informative intervention to prevent them from shooting themselves in the foot

This is also a typical argument that people use FOR the existence of the state. The problem is that if the person doesn't know what's best for himself, then no one could. The fact that someone makes a decision means that it was the best one given the amount of information they had (revealed preference). And if humans don't know what's best for themselves, then monarchy is the only tenable system, because we'd need the "most wise" of us to rule us all to protect ourselves from ourselves. Ridiculousness.

I say it was never voluntary because, due to your wealth, you were able to beat me to being the entrepreneur who is reaping most of the benefits of having the "idea", even though I may have had the same exact idea two weeks before you.

How did I get that wealth? You would say I exploited someone. Well how did I get the capital with which to exploit them? Oh yeah, I'm the one who built the da*n machine. Call it unfair if you like. It comes down to jealousy. Anyone who has ever made anything on thier own in their lives recognizes that they are the only rightful owner

Yes, all the people on this forum, ended up on the shitty end of the coin, or however you phrased it. Instead of figuring out what happened, you just b*tch and moan about how it's not fair.

I beg you all to read some economics. I beg you all to think about what you are saying when you argue that property is theft (I'll help here...then everything you've ever done is theft. Everything you have ever consumed is theft because it belonged to "everyone." And you took it without asking.)

This discussion was good for a while, but now it's just repeating itself, and I'm done.
If you seriously want to continue it, create a posting over at dailyanarchist forums, we'll start fresh, and be much more analytic about it. I'm not a fan of 50 line paragraphs (:

[raylene86]

So "something" needs to "protect" people? That's what government claims to do. But that's power, and you yourself believe that powerful people try to "exploit" others. So you are arguing that government should help us, but it's impossible for this to happen? Well, that's about right. If I had a magic wand that cured the imperfect information problem, that would be great. But since every transaction occurs under this fact of reality, then you believe that no trade can ever be TRULY ethical. If that's the case, then what do you suggest the world should look like? I'm guessing you'd say we should all be swallowed into the depths of hell for oppressing the humans that we voluntarily cooperate with?

What I'm saying is that in capitalist transactions, "informed consent" doesn't really matter, hence I don't agree with it. In my mind, if everyone did their own thing and shared goods, there's little room for any particular person to gain an upper hand aside from the one lucky person who happens to be so cunning that they can fool every last person (in which case they'd likely face repercussions unless people were convinced they didn't lose out). Not very relevant, but I don't believe in a hell in that sense. Hell is on earth created by humans who don't give a crap about each other. Your comments generally don't speak much to my assumption that while, yes, people are best able to make their own decisions, no, they are not usually informed to make their decisions, hence it's in the best interests of everyone to look out for each other and be willing to share knowledge (and goods) to avoid the need for exploitative means of having one's needs met. Obviously, you disagree, and I don't expect you to change your mind; I just am answering your question of why I'm biased against capitalism. I can have legitimate reasons for my bias, even if those reasons are rooted in values. Say all you want that people whine about it being unfair, but guess what? I figured out how it happened, and I realized that for me to get on the "good side" of the probability, I'd have to treat OTHER people shitty, just like I "whined" about other people doing to me. Clearly, I decided that divisions like racism and sexism are good reasons to be skeptical of the belief that you can really ever crap on every last other person without having it come back to bite you in the ass, particularly if you are/become a minority. I still agree that property is theft, and yepper, if you participate in this system, you're also a culprit. I never said I was clean handed! I only said I know how to wash the dirt off my hands and everyone else's.

[raylene86]

This discussion was good for a while, but now it's just repeating itself, and I'm done.
If you seriously want to continue it, create a posting over at dailyanarchist forums, we'll start fresh, and be much more analytic about it. I'm not a fan of 50 line paragraphs (:

Since you hate long-ass posts, let me break it up for you with a final thought: Don't bring that "why don't you read (insert all-knowing correct theory here)" bull without at LEAST thinking about what I might just say to that. Like I said, I have Super Capitalist whoevers coming to me constantly about how economics supposedly works. Uh, in case you missed the memo, EVEN ECONOMISTS recognize that their theories are rooted in ASSUMPTIONS that MUST be true for the theory to hold. And SURPRISE, SURPRISE, I think the assumptions are FALSE. Hell, maybe you missed the second memo, too, where they wrote in fine print that they can't be held accountable for the fact that economics is a SOCIAL SCIENCE (read: VALUE-LADEN), so their assumptions ARE value-contingent (e.g. informed consent isn't necessary for voluntary trade). Sure, the data have some truth and what not, but you can't pretend you've fully explained something when you fail to consider alternative explanations that haven't been dealt with.