How We Gonna Help the Poor? - Is it even possible?
Actually written OCTOBER 1, 2005 -
In answer to the question that is this writing’s title, I must claim that I really don’t know. I don’t know how “we” are gonna help the poor. Nor do I know whether the poor can actually be helped.
That being said, I would, however, like to share some tentative thoughts about the issue. I do have such thoughts, and I guess I’m using the process of writing to explore them.
My approach to thinking about it is non-moralistic. Instead of pondering how we “should” treat the poor, I focus on how people are likely to, or actually do, treat the poor. Then I try to figure out if there’s any way to help the poor given that people will only treat them a certain way. For example, explore the possibility that, if people are basically selfish (no matter their stated morality), then perhaps their selfishness can be “harnessed” in some way that helps the poor.
The rich have plenty of resources. Thats’s what it means to be rich. The poor have near zero resources. That's what it means to be poor. Resource inequity: why does it happen?
Now we’re into theories of resources. The political Left and Right have very different resource theories that deserve examining here.
The Left believe there already exists enough resources to satisfy everyone alive – and then some. This idea seems to have two main variants, often mixed together. The first variant claims resources are plentiful because they are provided in abundance by the Earth as it is. No need to go digging for gold or oil. All we need is right here in front of us if we would just “Live Simply, so Others May Simply Live”. On this claim, the rich are so rich because they hoard the Earth’s bounty, taking way more than what would satisfy their “simple” needs – taking what the Earth would have otherwise given to all. The rich take other people's share. Hence the rich create the poor. The second variant acknowledges that at least some of the rich don’t really hoard, but actually do create vital resources not otherwise provided by the natural Earth. Some rich folk do create what others need, and do so prolifically. But in this variant, the rich must be made slaves to serve the poor. Precisely because these producers are so prolific, their productivity must serve those who need. The productive must “give it away” with little or no compensation for themselves. One twisted way of looking at this is that the productive folk are themselves part of the Earth's great bounty. Productive people are just more resources that all may share. Any gifted farmer, inventor or industrialist owes their services to all who need them. This view especially comes to fruition on the holistic notion that we all “belong” to the Earth and to each other. We, as part of the Earth, are but resources for one another, provided by the Earth.
The Right believe resources are scarce. The Earth does not provide enough for everyone. The Earth provides damn little, in fact, and our very survival is a struggle to create additional resources out of what little the Earth manages to give. At the mercy of the Earth, we are all poor. At the mercy of the Earth, we all starve, get sick and die. Hence, to live, we all must be producers to some degree. And the degree to which we produce is the degree of our wealth. It is an unfortunate fact that many will simply not produce enough to live, and will instead die, to spite their best efforts. Others will produce prolifically, trade freely with other producers, and enjoy the fruits of great wealth. Yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, on this view, productive folk are not just more resources to serve all who need. In fact, if we attempt to enslave them for everyone’s benefit, these producers will stop producing. See, producers don’t do so well as slaves. They work much better when they expect the rewards of great personal wealth. Take away that expectation, and they stop. Our best bet in using producers to support the poor, claims this view, is to let producers generate great personal wealth and hope for a maximum “trickle down effect”. Trickle Down: that’s when productive rich people offer jobs and charity to the poor, thus making the poor better off than otherwise. And that’s the point here: the trickle down is better than what you’d get if you enslaved the producers. So leave the productive rich alone and hope for the best.
Here in the United States we go for a mix of both the Left and the Right – the “mixed economy”. The “free-est nation on Earth” invites prolific producers to “make a killing” at their greedy heart’s content. But hold on. It’s not totally free. Producers must pay taxes to fund welfare programs to help the poor – virtual slavery to some degree. Well, everyone pays these taxes, of course. But producers pay their share – sort of. So you see, chances are that our government, in its “efforts to help the poor”, is trying to walk a fine line between the benefits of enslaving the productive rich and the trickle down effect. Governing bodies must ask themselves “How much enslavement can we get away with before removing the incentives for prolific production and trickle down vanishes?” (Metaphorically, I like to think of this as “walking the Laffer curve tightrope”.)
Ya, if you ever wonder, as you seethe in anger, why the government doesn’t tax the rich more to help the poor, you may find that it’s more than just lobbyist kick-backs to greedy politicians. Even the most honest and compassionate politicians recognize that producers can’t really be enslaved via heavy taxes. Tax producers too much and they’ll stop producing what we all need. Tax them too much and you’ll cut off the tickle down. At least that’s what the lessons of failed Communism are supposed to teach us. So we gotta tax them just right – just enough to get the maximum service from them while maintaining maximum possible trickle down.
When we’ve got something going that seems to work at least a little bit, and people’s lives depend on it, it’s hard to consider fucking with it. Even so, I’ve often wondered what would happen if we got rid of tax-enslavement altogether to maximize the trickle down effect: Laissez Faire Capitalism. Would the trickle down increase to a level that benefits the poor even more than does our current mixed approach? I know many libertarians would claim so. But as for me, I don’t know. I don’t know how to contrast an actual against a hypothetical like that. (Contrasting two actuals is difficult enough!) Also, even if Free-Market Capitalism would increase benefits to the poor, I fear many would die in the transition. (I think this problem is called something like “Engles’ delay / gap”.) Take people off welfare and wait for the increased trickle down to save them, and most will die while waiting. (As a person on welfare, this personally scares me. I kinda want to live.) Still, the question can be put in a most provocative way: “Are more poor folk suffering and dying by this mixed approach than would be on Free-Trade Capitalism?” Provocative though it is, again I can’t answer ‘cause I’m not good at contrasting actuals against hypotheticals.
Here’s another thing I’ve wondered about. It stinks of “too much faith in technology”, but in all objectivity, I must entertain it. What if the super-rich, super-productive, super-resourceful folk manage to advance technology to a point that wipes out poverty for everyone? [Fully Automated Luxury Communism] Some say “nano-technology” is a likely candidate for this. But I mean, whatever it is, it is some kind of super-technology that gives us cheap, yet fantastic control over our environment.
OK, so you’re thinking everyone would just use it to make super-weapons for killing anyone who even mildly annoys them. Are we all really that malevolent?
Consider, if all your material desires are granted at the push of a button, is your fuse really gonna be so short that you kill someone for being annoying? Maybe. More hypotheticals, I know. But that’s why this is just speculation.
But, oh, to live like gods. Eat what you want when you want. Have the body you want whenever you want. Live where you want when you want. Find just the right fellow gods with whom to party, when you want. (And if you think this would become boring, just try subsistence poverty for a year or so. You’ll learn the true meaning of boredom soon enough.)
Ya, the deeper speculation here is whether such super-technology would calm us down so much that we love each other more genuinely, or at least hate one another more trivially.
And humanity may indeed reach an age of super-technology. And so what I wonder is, would we reach it faster if we went full-tilt Free-Market Capitalism? Ya. If we bust open the doors and let the super-rich chase after super-technology, would they achieve it? And would they feel so unthreatened by the rest of us (now that they live in orgy-like pleasure 24-7, immune from all harm), that they’d give it to us for free?
Speculation, smeculation. I’ll leave that one alone for a while.
The devil is in the details and the details are often in the thresholds. At what threshold in technological progress do we become able to feed everyone without destroying the means of resource production? How much help do we need to give a crack addicted welfare single parent before they stop destroying themselves and their many hungry children? How much help before no more help is needed?
Some say helping the poor makes them more needy (or makes them more plentiful – “feed a monster and it will grow”). Again, the issue lay in thresholds. Because the poor don’t see a life worth planning for, subsistence level help won’t inspire them to plan or help themselves further. If you give them only enough to live on, they’ll carelessly reproduce (sex to relieve misery and boredom – beyond the natural desire to have children) and create more poor like themselves. Too little help just increases the need for help generally. On the other hand, no help at all, while stopping poverty’s rise, will only do so by letting the poor die of poverty. And finally, on the other, other hand, giving the poor enough to really make a difference means enslaving the productive rich to the point of strangling the trickle down – then we got nothing to give anyway. Shit. No help just lets the fire burn steadily. Too little just fuels the fire. And adequate quantities are impossible. I don't think this bind of thresholds has any solution.
So maybe we try inspiring the productive rich to help more than they do. Inspiration is not enslavement. By “inspire” here, I mean to instill in them the desire to help, and to do so without threats or force. And once again, I have no real idea how to do this. I mean, we’ve got your basic charity dinners and celebrity fund-raiser concerts and all. We’ve got world-views that make it seem like we all belong to one another and should therefore take care of our “brothers and sisters”. But this shit is never enough. It’s just never enough.
And morality. Oh shit, the morality of altruism. While I don't believe in morality myself, I do recognize that 99% of humans do believe in morality. Seems to me morality could be used as a device for behavior modification. That seems to me how authorities use it anyway. With morality, we are told to do something whether we want to or not. And it works without any guns! Amazing! The problem is, what we are told to do usually “just happens” to coincide with what the authorities want us to do. Fine then. To command the moral masses, we must command the moral authorities. Bitch-slap them! Tell them to tell us “We must help the poor.” Bitch-slap those authorities and tell them to preach altruism more than ever before. That’s the moral message, plain and simple.
Ugh. But chances are, if morality is just an illusion, it is just a servant of desire anyway. And if that’s true, then people will always find ways to shape morality to their desires, no matter what some authorities preach. Loopholes and exceptions will excuse us from helping the poor when most convenient. Shit. Bitch-slap us all!
The end, the final analysis for me, is … there’s no way to help the poor in any lasting way. We can only do what we already do. We tax the productive as much as they’ll let us. We go do social work ourselves. We attend charity concerts and dinners. We watch the poor die in wars and floods and cry about it. We dream of some future material paradise made possible by the best minds of today. And, if you’re on welfare like myself, you hope the socialist well won’t run dry. Some of us on welfare know that if that well dries up for us, depression’s suicide will probably be our only way out. It would be for me anyway.
Or is this really the end analysis? Speaking of socialism… speaking of failed Communism…
Has Communism really failed?
My 3-year-old nephew has such a cutting understanding of Communism. To his 3-year-old mind, Communism is when everyone is forced to share even when we don’t want to. I’ll buy that. But the real idea is that force shall be temporary. Force will merely teach us that sharing is what we all truly want to do. Sometimes we need to be forced into doing what we truly want to do, just long enough for us to realize that, yep, that’s what we truly wanted to do. After the state has forced us to share for a while, we’ll learn to love it, then the state can “wither away”. All this, I must admit, sounds plausible. But again, heed the thresholds. How much force, for how long? The threshold bugger here is this: if any Communist experiment fails, we can always say we didn’t force it enough. See, for example, the “World Socialist Movement” who claim that Socialism won’t work unless we do it globally – all or nothing – all force or don’t even bother. (Hmmm. Kill all opportunities to escape the force, then we’ll finally embrace our true desire to share everything.) And shit, talk about contrasting actuals with hypotheticals! Are we, under Communism, really being led to our “natural” desires? Or are we being eternally forced to “just pretend” or else get punished? My opinion is that we can’t tell which is the case, and it’s too risky (for benevolent people) to try it and be wrong about what everyone truly wants.
[Cue: Bruce Cockburn - Grim Travelers]
Ya, I don't know. What are we gonna do about the poor? A little of everything but not enough of anything? Dare I say … “hope” – useless, played out, evidence-void hope? We’re in deep shit.
[Cue: Melanie Safka - Lay Down]
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