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What Is Poverty?

What are the root causes of poverty?

  • Hi people, could you please brainstorm for a while and write down the root causes of poverty? Let me share what I initially think.. To me, the main cause is Ignorance (as opposed to illiteracy). The other factors/dimensions I could think of are: hunger, illiteracy, malnutrition, high infant mortality rate, high birth rate/population problem, poor health/sanitation/pure drinking water, unproductivity, unemployment.... blah blah... I can go on and on.. These are all sort of causes and effects of poverty. It is so vast and loose ended that it could go anywhere you want to take it to.. For instance when I was thinking about poverty, I was thinking about basic needs and human rights so the ideas of democracy, governance and accountability jumped into my mind. But again, these are so fluid so I needed to pull myself back to the question: what are the root causes? I know there are lots and lots but if you are told to come up with the most significant ones_ what are those? I am trying to understand it. Rather than reading hundreds of articles, I want to know what general people think about poverty and may be you can share your thoughts about what measures can be effective in order to eradicate poverty. Please share your thoughts. Thanks!

  • Answer:

    The root cause of poverty is ... not enough wealth. While that may seem obvious, the fact is, poverty is the original and universal condition of mankind. We spent hundreds of thousands of years like that, and it is only very recently that we have accumulated wealth to take us above the simplest level. So the first thing to understand is that poverty is normal; it's wealth which is unusual. If we had no capital, we would make everything with our bare hands. Therefore the basis of *all* wealth, above the level of an animal existence, is *capital*. Why? Because capital increases our productivity, in other words, our outputs per unit of inputs. What is capital? Capital is the produced means of production. It's something that has been produced in the past that, instead of going straight to consumption, has been put aside and devoted to further production in the future. The scarcity of capital, and the root cause of poverty, *is the same thing*. Why is capital scarce? A number of reasons. Firstly capital, by definition, requires *delayed gratification*. You have to not consume wealth now for instant gratification, and instead devote it to producing something in the future. This goes against the grain, because *all* human beings desire satisfaction of a given want sooner rather than later. Also, because we are mortal, we may die before the future use of the capital ever happens. And the longer into the future we delay our use of our property, the more likely it is that we will *never* get the satisfaction from using it. So that's one reason why capital is naturally scarce. Secondly, we cannot accumulate capital if other people have a right to take what we have saved up, and consume it for themselves. That is why both traditional societies, and socialist societies, are poor. In traditional societies, if you save up, your cousins and uncles and relatives all have a right to come and consume your savings. And in socialist societies, the government has a "right" to use force to take anything you have produced, and give it away to others. What needs to be done to eliminate poverty is well-known. The reason governments don't do them is because governments, being based on the violation of property rights and the consumption of capital, are in their very nature directly opposed to the private property rights and accumulation of capital that makes the elimination of poverty possible. The wealth of modern democratic societies is *despite* democratic government, not *because of* it. The idea that poverty is eliminated by government programs, is in other words, that poverty is eliminated by taking from A and giving to B. This process actually *consumes* capital - the opposite of eliminating poverty. What is needed to eradicate poverty is: - secure private property rights - free markets - little or no taxation - stable money (not constantly inflated) - governments to stop trying to centrally plan the economy and society, and stop trying to provide goods and services, when they cannot satisfy the consumers wants as well as the market can. If they could, there'd be no need for taxation - a forced taking - would there? By far the single biggest cause of poverty, disease and hunger in the modern world is government. The nutty idea of the socialists, that capitalism causes poverty, has been responsible for over 100 million deaths in the last century.

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I think the root cause of poverty is a mismatch between the accessible resources in the immediate environment and the number of people who are trying to access those resources. How does a mismatch occur? Lots of ways. Let's look at three scenarios: Low level of natural resources. An arid or mountainous terrain or an area polluted or otherwise harmed so that it is very difficult to grow food, raise domestic animals, hunt, gather or otherwise provide food and water to an average population density. Normally only enough people would occupy this land to be able to extract a living from it, but as wars or conflicts or disasters occur in other regions, people may migrate here out of necessity and cause a reduced standard of living or worse. If they are blocked from leaving the area by denial of passage to other places or natural barriers, they may be forced to endure starvation until their numbers thin to a level where the environment can once again sustain them. Sometimes overpopulation can take a natural area that could have sustained a smaller population and render it unable to sustain any significant population by stripping it of all the naturally growing plants and animals and inhibiting the success of new propagation. Average natural resources. If the political system imposes an inefficient economic system, or warlords take over these areas, even average populations in average areas can be subjected to poverty through the extraction of wealth producing assets through a punishing system of taxation. This was common in the middle ages and is about where we are headed again under the corporate oligopolies the right seems so intent on restoring as quickly as possible. Plentiful natural resources A political system that imposes severe restrictions on the ability of one or more groups of people in its society to learn and achieve a level of productivity can cause poverty in event the most lush and verdant environments with a wealth of resources. If one or more people in an area of limited resources may have much more power than the other people and may appropriate more of the resources

John M

It's EXPLOITATION, all the things you mention can only happen if someone controls, and diverts those services, and goods away from poor people. Poor people are always the play-ball of 2, or more factions, that use the control over these things, to keep them from developing. Hunger for instance, there's 10 times more food produced in the World, than is eaten, most wealthy countries, have cold storage factories, that hold enough food to feed the entire World for a month. The food we produce in wealthy-countries gets subsidized/tax-exemptions in a lot of cases, which is why african sugar-farmers can't compete(their original production cost is lower, but with tax-cuts, and subisidies, our farmers can sell 'em below cost, while making a double-profit). And it just goes on, and on. Education, that's often a problem on the domestic front, dictators, and war-lords, don't like educated people, because they might want a solution, and not absolute power for them. Basically the World has rigged the game, so the poor won't escape poverty, and the rich get richer. The fundamental issue is exploitation though.

Neil

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