a few thoughts on poverty from an Actual Poor Person:
getting some responses along the lines of "if you really considered property life you wouldn't ALLOW people to be poor or homeless" the underlying idea is that these are helpless victims not in charge of their own destiny
getting some responses along the lines of "if you really considered property life you wouldn't ALLOW people to be poor or homeless" the underlying idea is that these are helpless victims not in charge of their own destiny
The word "allow" implies a strong component of force. By not "allowing" people to stay poor or homeless you are basically calling for a person's life choices to be policed by others. Forced to work, forced to live in a house, forced to be sober, forced to make "better choices"
I am not, to a factor of a million, saying that poor/homeless people choose and therefore deserve their destiny or that we shouldn't extend charity to them. I am pointing out that there is some measure of force involved in preventing poverty and homelessness that is glossed over
I have, in my life, made countless decisions others disliked that directly led to me being poor here and now. I didn't finish college. I had children young. I stayed home rather than work. Spent money on the wrong things (still do). For a while I had a drinking problem.
"Not allowing" people to be poor or homeless is not only or even mostly forcing employers to hire them or landlords to rent to them. Nor is it about UBI. It entails a huge measure of coercion in making people live a certain way that brings about a particular outcome
Some would say I should have finished school, not had children I couldn't afford, worked more consistently, etc. But I wanted my life a certain way and was willing to compromise some financial security long term to get that. May have been quite stupid, but it was my call.
Pretending that poverty and homelessness is all a result of evil mustache twirling capitalist bad guys removes all semblance of agency from people who choose to march to a different drummer. Many people choose to make riskier choices to have greater freedom. That is ok!
It's kinda what a free country is all about. We aren't all responsible for other's choices, and because of that, no one can say anything to you when you make different choices than them. Even if your choice leads to a less desirable (as seen by some) outcome.
It is a half step from "no one should be poor, we need to help them" to "no one should be poor, we need to force them to make smarter choices" because there is a huge component of free will involved in people ending up where they do, even if that involves being poor.
Many, many people thru history have chosen freedom and self-expression over a steady paycheck and respectability. Even if it ended in persecution and death, living on one's own terms even if it meant you were worse off for it was not so long ago celebrated.
When everyone is responsible for what another person does - being their brother's keeper, as it were - you invite those who would police self-determination. This is entirely an illiberal position to hold and runs counter to much of what liberalism is meant to stand for.
There will always be people who make less than ideal choices across the socioeconomic strata. We have that right. We make our choices and take our lumps and learn, or we may even decide it was worth the pain in exchange for the freedom or the experience.
Don't enable the worst in authoritarian busybodies by saying things like "we cannot allow homelessness" because it cannot coexist alongside the fundamental precepts of liberalism - that individuals have a basic right to live their life as they see fit.
...to clarify this point, not about UBI because many people will take the money and do the exact same thing they were already doing. Throwing money at a person in crisis does not magically fix the crisis because they will continue making the choices some deem less than ideal.
