At the end of the 'Enlightened' Eighteenth Century, Condorcet put forward a Utopian scheme for a Democratic Republic which would resemble what we call a 'Welfare State'. Malthus rebutted him by using an argument that became central to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Even if a Utopia is achieved, it is vulnerable to invasion, immigration or run-away population growth on the part of the least productive. Condorcet became a victim of the very revolution which he had supported. Malthus and his class continued to prosper by pursuing what Maynard Smith would later term 'bourgeois strategies'. Sadly, some 'scholars' (i.e. useless pedagogues) still side with Condorcet even though it was Malthus and Darwin who prevailed.
Public Policy concerns Collective Action problems, more particularly those where there is a 'free-rider' or 'incentive compatibility' problem. Moreover, crazy or corrupt people will advance paranoid or plain silly ideologies so as to gain 'interessement' and 'obligatory passage point status' permitting them to extract a rent. This is what two American Public Policy professors, one from India, the other of German extraction, are attempting to do by telling stupid lies.
Anirudh Krishna & Dirk Philipsen write in Aeon
the first myth about poverty is that it has always been with us and always will be.
What is not a myth is that poverty no longer means malnourishment and the risk of starvation in most places and for most people. This is because productivity (of a utilitarian sort) has risen greatly. In the remote past, everyone who wasn't dying wasn't poor because there was no fucking wealth to be had. Still, some enjoyed much greater reproductive success than others. The guy who was better at hunting was seen as a better provider and thus fathered more children. The more attractive woman was the favoured wife and thus spent less time foraging and thus had more babies. This is Darwin's theory of evolution. You are welcome to deny it for religious reasons. But, if you are an atheist, you are simply stupid if you ignore its implications.
For roughly the first 200,000 years, or about 95 per cent, of human history, there was less technological sophistication and material wealth. There was also, usually, far less inequality.
There were also no Professors of Public Policy. Clearly, not having virtue signalling cunts of that sort was correlated with less inequality.
Importantly, while humans experienced hardships both prior to and after the emergence of so-called ‘civilisation’, the evidence that is available relating to early Indigenous cultures on every continent indicates they had not experienced, nor would have been able to recognise, ‘poverty’.
They recognized starvation well enough. Populations which went instinct because they starved to death were 'poor'.
Poverty emerges when social stratification increases, leading to exclusion and restricted access to Earth’s resources.
No. Poverty is a function of the productivity of factors of production including one's own physical or mental labour. It has nothing to do with 'social stratification'. The upper caste may be as poor as fuck while the lower caste may be rolling in wealth. As for 'the Earth's resources', the poor's access to them is just as restricted as that of the giraffe or the dolphin. Indeed, the reason so many animals and birds exhibit signs of poverty and social deprivation is because Society denies them proper educational and vocational opportunities. It is this 'broken ladder' which prevents goats from securing jobs as actuarial scientists. Anirudh, in his last book, interviews several goats and some bats whose career progression in the Software industry has stalled, or never gotten off the ground, because of systemic Social stigmatization and denial of access to the resources of the Milky Way.
This exclusion worsens when money
rather than sex
becomes the primary prerequisite for obtaining essential goods and services.
Goats were previously able to obtain essential goods and services by offering blow jobs. The introduction of the Cash Nexus severely disadvantages goats because they tend to eat any banknotes that come their way.
Denying growing numbers of people
and animals
direct access to food, shelter, trust and other vital resources makes them dependent on money to meet their basic needs and desires.
Please don't deny growing numbers of people and animals access to your rectum just because they can't pay you money in return for your letting them fuck you in the ass. Grant all beings direct access to any food, shelter or vital resources you have. Don't demand money in return for any work you may do for others. Also you should trust people, or animals, who say they won't fuck you in the ass even if that is what they keep doing.
Property enables and enriches those who own it as much as it excludes and impoverishes those without.
Life enables and enriches those who are alive just as much as it excludes and impoverishes dead people. By banning Property and putting an end to Life, we will get rid of the invidious distinction between rich living people and poor dead animals of various types.
Accounts from ancient history through to the 21st century tell of people made poor by the greed of others.
No. They tell of the weak being fucked over by the strong. I may be very greedy but I can't fuck over Mike Tyson and deprive him of all his money.
In England, the Enclosure Acts of the 17th to 20th centuries privatised common lands, leaving peasants without means to sustain themselves.
Because those peasants were weak and shit at fighting. The guys doing the enclosing had muscular warriors working for them.
Across the Atlantic, enslaved Africans were violently uprooted,
by Africans who were stronger than them
their labour extracted in brutal conditions to fuel the wealth of colonial empires.
African slaves fuelled the wealth of African slavers and slave-traders. After that, if their new masters could force them to perform labour, then and only then did 'Colonial empires' prosper. What mattered was who was strong and who was weak. The strong exploited the weak when they didn't simply exterminate them.
Indigenous peoples across the Americas, Australia and Africa,
not to mention Europe and Asia
meanwhile, were subjected to genocidal wars, forcibly displaced,
Anirudh was snatched from Delhi University by evil slave traders who transported him to America where he was forced to pluck cotton under the lash
and stripped of their ancestral lands by colonising powers.
Just as those 'indigenous people' had stripped the Neanderthals or Denisovans or whatever of their ancestral land.
Behind every tale of dispossession lies
a lie. The strong don't get dispossessed. The weak do. Pretending this is about greed is silly. Everybody is greedy. But some are strong- i.e. highly productive in offensive or defensive conflict. Others are weak and may prefer enslavement to a strong master to having to fend for themselves.
a choice – by governments, corporations and elites – to prioritise power and profit over people and the planet.
Anirudh is always prioritizing 'people and the planet'. That is why he turned down tenure in America so as to work with Gujarati goats and Bhopali bats so as to fix the 'broken ladder' preventing all sentient beings gaining access to the Earth's resources and, if judged to be sufficiently stupid and useless, securing tenure at Duke University.
Woody Guthrie’s words ring true: ‘Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.’
No they don't. Guns can kill you. Fountain pens can't. True, a guy who has a fountain pen can also employ a whole bunch of mean hombres with six-guns, but it is the guns you need to worry about, not the fountain pen. Anyway, the point about Guthrie is that he was highly productive. Getting out of dirt-farming into the Entertainment industry was a sound move because scope for 'value addition' was much higher in the latter field.
In today’s digital age, he might add: And some with a keystroke.
No. Guthrie had talent. Fountain pen is poetic. Keystroke is not.
Predatory lending, financial manipulation and the unchecked power of multinational corporations continue to deepen global inequality.
Nope. It is increasing divergence in productivity which drives inequality.
Land grabs in the Global South, where foreign investors displace small farmers, echo the enclosures of centuries past.
No they don't. Enclosures moved subsistence farmers to more productive occupations. It is not clear that anything of the sort happens when big corporations lease vast quantities of land for cash crop cultivation.
Whether the initial dispossession took place via war, theft, genocide, decree or the rule of law, it is not, however, where humans started.
Humans started by replacing other types of hominids. The authors may have heard of a guy named Charles Darwin.
On the contrary, humans were born to an immense abundance naturally existing on our planet.
No. They were born to Mummies who breast fed them. But those Mummies didn't always get enough to eat. Also, some of the time, they got eaten by other animals.
This fountain of natural wealth
could only be tapped by killing those who wanted to kill you. Also, tapping fountains tends to involve back-breaking labour. Defeating and enslaving other tribes was the way to live large.
first had to be parcelled out, fenced in, codified, privatised and licensed, before those not on the receiving end of the bounty could be made into ‘the poor’.
No. Fencing and parcelling and licensing happened after productivity had risen to a point where slavery was not economic. But what made people into the 'poor' was getting beaten, robbed, or- if the stationary bandit provided Law & Order- declining in relative productivity by reason of illness, stupidity, or being drunk or stoned.
As the historian R H Tawney concluded in 1913: ‘what thoughtful people call the problem of poverty, thoughtful poor people call … a problem of riches.’
Fuck off! Tawney was rich enough. Thoughtful poor people from India (which is where Tawney was born)- like Lala Harkishen Lal, who got a scholarship to study Math at Cambridge- concentrated on the problem of how to get rich by raising the productivity of their own people. This involved setting up banks and insurance companies and acting as an arbitrageur or 'market maker'.
Is poverty always going to be with us?
If two poor people have a baby with little prospect of becoming relatively productive- the answer is yes.
That will depend upon what we do about the conditions that lead to people becoming poor.
Low productivity. Help poor peeps get out of Malthusian shitholes, or inner city crack-houses, into high paying vocations- e.g. delivering blow-jobs
Poverty is not a natural state but the result of deliberate systems and policies.
Like the system and the policy of letting poor peeps breed like rabbits. No country has gotten rid of absolute poverty without 'demographic transition' featuring plummeting fertility levels for the majority community.
The second myth about poverty is that it is about lack of money.
Did you know that many beggars have billions in Swiss Bank Accounts?
Only when the accumulation of wealth became the operating logic of modern societies did our collective journey become all about money and capital.
The accumulation of military power is important. Economic productivity is conducive to this. Marx and other such nutters were fools to bang on about 'money and capital' at a time when those Whites who had better guns and ships were rising in affluence very far above those whose territories they conquered. The current operating logic of modern societies is that if you don't have nukes, or aren't under a Super-power nuclear umbrella, then- like the Ukrainians- you have to be ready to fight to keep your own land. Money and capital can buy weapons and mercs. But being able to fight is still very important.
We are schooled to envy those racing along in their expensive Tesla SUVs,
Fuck off! We envy people who can run really fast. A guy driving a Tesla may be an Uber driver. On the other hand, it may be that these two cretins were brainwashed, at Grad Skool, into feeling envy for those with nice cars. Their professors would point at them and say 'look at that cretin! He is too fucking stupid to get a well paid job. That's why he will end up teaching nonsense and driving a shitty car. His wife will despise him. His kids will call him a loser.'
and variously to pity, ignore or ‘aid’ those who struggle along in hoopties, rickshaws or simply on foot.
Aniruddh often aids those who are walking by giving them a helpful push.
Regardless of ideological values, most people assume that ‘lifting up’ everyone to the standards of the (mostly white, male, capitalist, money-rich) Tesla driver is the primary goal.
These guys teach in Amerika. Whom do they teach? Chipmunks? Do such Chipmunks believe that Krishna is trying to turn the malnourished Indian woman into a white, male, owner of a Tesla? Perhaps. Chipmunks have tiny brains.
A few alternative voices on the sidelines warn about running out of land to pave over, air and water to pollute, and humans to exploit.
Which is why we must turn our attention to the Chipmunks- more particularly those who inhabit the rings of Uranus.
However, most remain busy trying to keep up with the flow of traffic, eager to pass those in our way.
Everybody can become an Uber driver. Chipmunks should aspire to something better.
Notably, some stretches of highway (the Scandinavian parts, for instance) provide more protections – speed limits, guard rails, better emergency services.
e.g. deportation of asylum seekers who, it turns out, hate homosexuals and enjoy gang-raping the local kids.
Other parts still resemble the caricatures of the 19th-century ‘Wild West’ of North America, with barefoot travellers pushed to the side or simply ignored and run over.
This did not happen in the American West. I pity the Chipmunks taught by these two ignoramuses.
Yet, whether the highway runs relatively safely and slowly through Costa Rica, chaotically and dangerously through Nigeria, or is channelled with authoritarian efficiency through China, its logic and direction follow the same rules.
Did you know that people use roads to reach their destinations? That's totes evil. Destinations should come to you. Capitalism is forcing you to make journeys so as to turn a big profit for the so called 'Transport' industry.
Even a casual observer from another world could not help but notice some odd features of this worldwide race.
Only a crazy observer from another world would notice stupid shit which these two cunts think highly significant.
People seem forever frantically busy – yet neither the purpose nor the destination of the journey are discussed.
Yes they are. Your boss/wife/Mummy says 'go to such and such place and pick up such and such item. If you don't you will be sacked/raped/given tight slap.'
The pervasive assumption simply seems to be that more is better. But this is a highway to nowhere.
Which is why we should pray to God and go somewhere really nice after death. These two cunts are taking over a religious argument but to no good purpose.
Above all, the nature of poverty cannot be reduced to a dollar value.
Thinks no poor person anywhere. Give them enough dollars and they won't be poor.
If it were that easy, eradicating poverty would be a trivial matter of transferring funds.
It really is that easy. The only reason there is little poverty in affluent countries is because of massive 'transfers'. The problem is that, as tech improves, the bureaucratic cost of transfers falls. That's why 'the Swamp' got behind DIE. It is easy to transfer money without the aid of Civil Servants and useless academics. That's why pretending lack of money isn't the cause of poverty attracts bureaucratic cunts and their virtue signalling academic enablers.
But in truth poverty is a web of deprivations that extend beyond a person’s bank account.
No. Poverty is nothing but lack of money. It isn't the case that a millionaire dying of cancer is poor. He is rich but very sick.
That’s why more nuanced metrics, like the United Nations Human Development Index, attempt to capture the multifaceted nature of poverty by incorporating factors like education and healthcare alongside income.
Education and healthcare cost money. If both poor and rich get either equally, then there is a 'transfer' in the shape of 'cross-subsidization'.
Even these measures, however, fall short of conveying the ways in which poverty disempowers individuals and communities, depriving them of opportunity, stripping them of agency, and stifling their potential.
In which case we could say that wealth disempowers because rich people get cancer. In other words, the stupid virtue signalling shite these two cunts are shovelling provides an argument for giving money to billionaires. Did you know that by spending ten trillion dollars we could prolong the life of Warren Buffet and get him to retrain as a Japanese Geisha girl?
Poverty is a lived experience.
As is Masturbation.
As the antipoverty organisation Five Talents poignantly describes, poverty is ‘an unmet need and an unfulfilled longing’.
Like Masturbation.
It is the lack of food, shelter and security.
Which is what I experience when I go for a walk and feel hungry just as it begins to rain. Also, there are some pretty girls in the Park. What if they take turns raping me? I feel unsafe. Government should send a military helicopter to evacuate me.
It is being sick but unable to see a doctor,
because you were foolish enough to go hiking and then you ate what you thought was an edible mushroom. You now feel very sick but are unable to see a doctor because you are lost in the middle of the woods.
or losing a child to a preventable disease.
So far as we know, all diseases are preventable. Rich people lose kids just like poor people.
It is wearing clothes that don’t fit,
Which is what happens to rich women who think they are slim and buy their clothes accordingly even though they are as fat as fuck.
drinking water that isn’t safe.
Because you are a millionaire holidaying in an exotic location. Poor people go to Butlins where the water is perfectly safe.
Poverty is the vulnerability that makes people susceptible to lies,
Rich people are never lied to. The Boss's jokes are genuinely funny. That's why we piss ourselves laughing when he tells one.
schemes and exploitation.
Madoff cheated plenty of rich peeps.
It is an empty refrigerator,
Anirudh comes from a country where seventy percent of the population don't have a fucking refrigerator.
a home without electricity, a single toilet shared by a hundred neighbours.
Did you know that every cave in the Stone Age was equipped with electricity, hot and cold running water, flush toilets and other mod cons? Sadly rich peeps deprived poor people of these free gifts of nature.
It is stress; it is shame; it is pain.
Rich people are immune to such things- right?
At its core, in short, poverty stems from
low productivity
systemic barriers: the denial of access to resources and opportunities that human society and the planet provide in abundance.
Neanderthals had full refrigerators provided by Mother Nature. Sadly, evil rich peeps deprived them of electricity and so the food in their refrigerators got spoiled leading to mass starvation and the extinction of the species.
Inequality is perpetuated by
big differences in productivity.
policymakers’ failure – or unwillingness – to adopt measures that reduce risk and lower precarity.
Policymakers can make everybody better off by encouraging more inequality based on greater differences in productivity. This generates Tardean mimetic effects such that the less productive have an incentive to imitate the more successful. Precarity is a good thing. It motivates people to acquire skills which are in high demand and thus which provide secure livelihoods.
Poverty thrives not simply because people lack money but because the risks to their wellbeing remain unchecked,
The risks to the Rich- e.g. getting cancer- remain unchecked.
and the pathways to flourishing remain blocked.
by death. Policymakers should abolish death.
Athird myth about poverty is that it is self-inflicted.
Because poor people who have kids aren't making a choice which will ensure there are more poor people.
Such familiar refrains around wealth and poverty are pervasive. ‘People deserve to be rich’ and ‘The poor just need to work harder’ are little more than lazy thinking,
These cunts are lazy. They are incapable of thinking.
unsupported by evidence and unmoored from logic.
Did you know that poor people die? That proves the rich are killing them!
The reality is that a complex array of factors, from systemic inequalities to economic structures, shape wealth and poverty and, mostly, decide who is rich and who is poor.
Nope. Speaking generally, poverty is genetically transmitted. True there are some rich kids who become poor because they do stupid shit. But Mummy and Daddy could have set up a 'spendthrift trust' for them.
Platitudes about individualism are woefully inadequate to understand how any of this works.
These two cunts understand fuck all.
Take the birth lottery, for instance.
Did you know that when two rich peeps get married and have a baby, there is a good chance the baby will be born poor?
Imagine an eight-year-old girl and let’s play through different scenarios of her birth and life. If born in Finland,
her parents are likely to be Finnish. They are a hardworking, highly intelligent and highly productive people.
she would be likely to have parents enrolling her in a good school, with access to universal healthcare.
Just as, if she were born in India to wealthy and educated parents, she is likely to go to good schools and enjoy great healthcare.
She would live, by global standards, in immense safety and comfort,
because the Finns worked hard and defended their country. Still, it must be said, by permitting a big famine in the 1860s which killed off the less productive, Finland was better able to advance politically and economically.
with the prospect of many professional opportunities, international travel, and life expectancy to her mid-80s. If born in Afghanistan, however,
her parents, if smart, would try to emigrate to Finland or Germany or other such Christian countries.
she would likely be denied a quality education,
by the Taliban
rarely have access to a competent and well-equipped doctor, go through her day navigating hidden landmines
Nope. The Taliban wants her to stay at home and not go out.
and violent police, with the prospect of utter dependence, desperately few chances of escape, and a life expectancy around 60.
Which is why smart peeps run the fuck away from Islamist shitholes.
What is true across nations (Finland and Afghanistan) is also true within them.
I suppose there are Afghan origin asylum seekers in Finland who don't want their daughters to go to school.
The accidents of birth shape people’s life opportunities in essential ways.
Birth is not an accident. It isn't the case that Daddy accidentally bumped into Mummy and his dick accidentally got into her vagina and jizzed there. I suppose these two cunts think it is wholly a matter of happenstance that Christian Finland decided to do smart things while Islamist Afghanistan decided to double down on doing stupid, evil, shit.
In the US, social amenities vary greatly by locality. More than any other single factor,
a low 'coloured' population correlates with higher affluence
one’s postal code determines one’s opportunities – the quality of schools, the safety of neighbourhoods, the availability of jobs.
These two cunts don't know that people can move from one 'post-code' to another.
Growing up in a rural area – with lower-quality schools and clinics, erratic electricity, slower roads, patchy internet connection – is a significant liability in many countries, compared with living in the capital city.
if productivity is low in the rural area- sure.
Everywhere, the intergenerational transmission of privilege is more flagrant in situations of greater inequality.
But those 'privileges' increasingly look like shit. Why be considered a great lord in a shithole where nobody, including you, gets enough to eat? Better to move to New York and become a cab driver.
If poverty is inflicted, it is done by society, not any individual
These two cunts don't seem to understand that you can run away from a society with low productivity to one where it is high. Yet Anirudh has done precisely that.
Neither the eight-year-old in Finland or the one in Afghanistan, nor the little girl in wealthy Presidio Heights in San Francisco or the one in impoverished Riverdale in Detroit deserve these circumstances.
Baby does not deserve to have a poor Mummy and Daddy. Policymakers must ensure that every person who has a baby is immediately given ten million dollars.
They have picked their parents no more than they picked their life chances.
They also didn't even to get to pick their species or the planet or Galaxy where they were born. How is that fair? Policy makers should ensure that every baby is given the choice of becoming a mermaid on the water Planet X-G45 which is located in a Galaxy far far away.
Overall, people rarely become poor or remain poor for faults of their own.
Nor is it their fault they are born on this crummy planet. Did you know rich peeps are cruelly refusing to let me turn into a mermaid on the water planet X-G45? Fuck you Elon Musk! Fuck you very much!
On the contrary, poverty follows a distinct pathway.
involving not having money
Tracing the life stories of those forced to live in poverty lays bare how, even as they work very hard and expect no handouts, powerful forces are stacked against them and precariousness almost always defeats individual qualities.
What is that force? Productivity. If these two cunts knew how to raise it, they wouldn't have to teach nonsense to imbeciles.
To the extent that poverty is inflicted, it is done by society, not any individual.
Society should abolish death. Fuck you Society! Fuck you very much!
Systems and policies sustain the conditions that keep people trapped in poverty – systems that amplify risks while offering few opportunities for upward mobility.
Anirudh emigrated from Socialist India to Capitalist Amerika. He may talk bollocks, but he is shrewd enough.
These structures generate vulnerabilities and perpetuate inequality, making it exceedingly difficult for individuals to escape poverty’s grip.
Unless they emigrate to Amerika. Sadly, Trump is deporting lots of Indians who sought to emulate Anirudh.
So, to sum up, if poverty is not natural, has not always been with us, cannot be reduced to a number or monetary value, and is not self-inflicted, what is it?
For Indians who want to become as affluent as Anirudh but whom Trump has deported, poverty is not natural but rather a function of the immigration policies of affluent countries.
What makes one poor or not poor?
Productivity.
And what should we do about it?
Raise productivity. This involves imitating what the more successful are doing or have done.
To answer such questions turns out to be surprisingly difficult.
It is easy. Raise productivity. If you can do this, you will be well rewarded.
Poverty is a lived experience
Which experience is not lived?
defined by the crippling social reality of not being able to meet one’s basic needs.
No. I can meet my basic needs but am still as poor as fuck. This is because I am not productive- i.e. I don't make anything other people find very valuable. If I could write code with as much facility as I write verse, I would be a wealthy man.
It is not, however, a condition that allows for a neat separation between the poor, the near poor, and the not poor. Instead of a clear dividing line with black on one side and white on the other, poverty is better represented in bands of grey.
Why represent it? Why not raise productivity and thus reduce it?
It requires a moving picture and not a snapshot to visualise accurately the conditions of poverty.
Just watch some Youtube videos of starving people. You'll get the picture quickly enough.
While hundreds of millions of people spend their lives in dire need of essentials,
while having lots of babies who will be in equally dire need
a possibly equal number move in and out of poverty, mostly in response to circumstances outside their control. Calamity can come in many forms – a child’s illness requiring doctor’s fees and medicines and unpaid time off;
unless you just let it die.
the sudden closure of one’s workplace;
because its productivity was low
eviction from a rented property;
Rich peeps get evicted from rented property- or even suites at the Dorchester- if they hold wild parties and wipe their arses on the curtains.
the death of a loved one;
Elon Musk is preventing Trump from abolishing Death. Fuck you Musk Fuck you very much!
a drought, flood, theft or lawsuit. For the poor or near poor, any incident is enough to bring disaster.
The rich face disaster if they hand over their wealth to a Madoff. On the other hand, they are immune to floods and theft and law suits.
Many others live in an inbetween state: never far from the precipice, a vast precariat.
All life on earth is precarious. There is an asteroid strike predicted for 2032. Hopefully, President Musk will blow it up.
Most of those who get routinely counted as ‘middle class’ live in the permanent shadow of poverty – one job, one illness and often one nudge away from no longer being able to meet basic needs.
We are all one nudge away from going under the wheels of a bus.
It is this constantly changing nature of poverty that lies at its essence:
In which case we can do nothing about it. Thankfully, these cunts are wrong. Poverty is about productivity. Raise it and there can be 'transfers' such that everybody is better off and 'absolute poverty' ceases to exist. Look at China. Under Chairman Xi, peoples who had lived in caves for thousands of years got to move into luxurious apartment blocks.
even as many formerly poor people escape poverty, others in the same neighbourhoods and communities fall into it. Nearly two-thirds of those who are currently poor were not born poor but fell into chronic poverty.
Not globally. As for the US, immigration and drugs have certainly taken their toll on the indigenous working class. But the answer is to raise productivity- which includes guys going to rehab and swearing off drugs and gangsta culture.
Reducing poverty effectively requires mounting a series of public programmes of increasing complexity.
and uselessness. Rossi's metallic laws apply. The one thing we can safely predict of any such program is that its net effect will be zero or negative. Still, it is vitally important that poor people receive proper counselling on gender reassignment surgery and the pernicious effects of believing in God or reading the Bible. USAID was promoting atheism in Nepal. Why not in Nebraska?
Scholars have long understood that personal income or wealth is a flawed metric for measuring the quality of life.
Shit scholars- yes. Smart peeps know only productivity matters. If you can raise it, you will be well rewarded. People won't call you a 'scholar'. They will say 'that's one smart dude'.
Nearly every aspect of individual wealth relies on a broader public good for its value.
Public goods cost money. Guess who pays for them? Is it the starving drug addict? No. It is highly productive people who end up with lots of wealth.
To return to the highway analogy: my sleek Tesla is of little use on a road that is full of deep potholes, or too crowded, or unprotected from desperate thieves or corrupt bureaucrats.
These two 'scholars' are promoting the diversion of funds from fixing potholes to 'corrupt bureaucrats'. Also 'desperate thieves' are being released early from under-funded Jails.
This truth extends far beyond transportation. Personal wellbeing is inextricably linked to social wellbeing – on access to safe public spaces, good healthcare, potable water and untainted foods, a functioning economy, an educated citizenry, a supportive community and, notably, essentials like peace or a resilient environment.
Which is why wealthy peeps from shithole countries spend a lot of money to get their kids settled in affluent countries with high productivity and thus the ability to finance public good provision.
Without public goods, private goods are rendered largely useless. A significant portion of poverty reduction hinges on improved public provisioning and public institutions.
But if productivity does not rise that provision will collapse. The country will go off a fiscal cliff.
An effective agenda of poverty elimination is not radical, it is commonsensical.
Raise productivity. This involves better mechanism design- i.e. incentives to be productive. It does not involve talking bollocks.
It comes with short-term, intermediate-term and longer-term components.
Which are shit.
In the short term, the principal focus needs to be on poverty prevention.
i.e. preventing useless people from being sacked because then they would become poor
To bring people experiencing poverty out from under the abyss and to secure for them a less shaky foundation on which to build the future, societies have a responsibility to make people’s lives less risky and more predictable.
Did you know that some innocent people are getting fired from their jobs just because they keep raping or killing their colleagues? No one should ever be sacked. Also every company should be legally obligated to hire any and every job applicant. Even this won't be enough. Did you know that the basic need of disabled paedophiles are not being met? Every Mummy should be legally obligated to take her kids to the homes of such people so that they can sate their lust.
Three kinds of risks bear thinking about. The first and biggest source of volatility in poor people’s lives arises from the manner of their incorporation into the global economy.
Ban international trade! Actually, Trump might actually achieve that.
To put it simply, the informal sector is the devil’s workshop.
Idleness is the devil's workshop. People in the informal sector aren't idle. India needs to scrap its paternalistic labour laws so that more and more workers are incorporated into the formal sector.
What can be the employers’ wildest dream-come-true – an almost endless supply of cheap, pliant and instantly hired-and-fired labour –
with low skills and high turn-over. Big employers in India want to get rid of stupid labour laws which prevent them firing employees who do no work while 'contract workers', who get paid a lot less, do everything. But this prevents proper skill development and leads to bottlenecks. Employers want 'efficiency wages'. The Nobel Prize winning economist who created this theory says he got the idea while working in India.
is often the workers’ worst nightmare, an endless source of risk, indignities and insecurities.
Cunts like Anirudh created this nightmare. India said 'we must protect our workers'. But this meant preventing them from getting good jobs.
According to the International Labor Organization, more than two-thirds of the workforce in Sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia, and in parts of Central and South America, is composed of informal workers
because of paternalistic labour laws.
– those who have no contract, no regularity of employment, few (if any) legal protections, no healthcare or old-age provision. All of them are liable to be dismissed at a moment’s notice, and carry on in this way from day to day, ad infinitum. The proportion of informal workers is nearly 90 per cent in India and approximately 95 per cent in Chad and Mozambique.
see above.
The constant fear of losing their jobs
arose because big firms couldn't sack workers who do no work. A British Social Anthropologist noted that when a strike was called in a particular PSU in India, attendance rose! Why? Those who never came to work showed up because the Enterprise would dock the pay of strikers. Naturally, all enterprises preferred to use contract workers from another state who were in the grip of vicious gang-masters.
gives rise to the spectre of the wolf at the door and the consequent inability to plan and invest meaningfully for the longer term. It’s not just that there is very little surplus; any that exists must be squirreled away for the inevitable rainy days.
Rich people, too, have precautionary balances.
Fixing the informal sector is imperative but that is hardly simple since powerful people benefit from access to cheap, plentiful labourers.
But Industrialists don't want cheap labour. They want skilled labour. But why train a chap who will do no work because he can't be sacked?
Yet it is not a demand that requires the overthrow of capitalism. Rather, it is a question of choosing a better capitalism – written contracts, pensions and healthcare, protections against arbitrary dismissal, and access to conflict-resolution mechanisms.
and workers who do no fucking work.
Two other aspects of informality significantly increase risks and make people’s lives unbearably uncertain: informal housing, commonly referred to as slums and shanties, and the lack of formal identity papers. Without formal titles or legal recognition of ownership, people cannot secure business loans,
Unless they actually have a business. Sadly, that's how business loans work.
neighbourhoods are excluded from municipal services,
Why do people who pay no taxes not get municipal services? Is it because money does not grow on trees? Policy makers should scold trees and bushes for their callousness in this regard.
and homes remain vulnerable to demolition, adding another source of anxiety and volatility. In addition, many who come into cities from rural areas lack urban identity papers and remain unrecognised by officials and politicians, adding a deeper dimension (and another consequence) of informality. Their children cannot access public health and education. World Bank and UN-Habitat data indicate that as many as 1 billion people could be living in this kind of ‘triple informality’.
There are plenty of 'undocumented' people in the US who are in this plight.
Successfully addressing these elements of poverty requires several steps, including granting legal recognition to homes and land ownership,
Very true. If I set up a tent in your garden, I should get legal title to it.
and enabling access to loans,
I should get a billion dollar loan to expand my Beyonce impersonation business.
utilities and municipal services.
All of which don't cost money. They are provided for free by Mummy Nature.
It also involves providing identity documents that ensure access to public health systems, education and legal protections.
In which case those systems will turn to shit. China used its internal passport system to prevent this outcome. India did not. The result is that some of India's Cities have become unliveable. On the other hand, it appears that illegal migrants have no problem getting identity documents and voting in elections.
By transforming informal jobs and homes into reliable sources of stability rather than anxiety, people living near the poverty line are less likely to fall deeper into poverty.
No. The informal sector will collapse. Slum-lords will use muscle-power to force out the poor and redevelop the land profitably. If Governments do stupid, virtue signalling, shit, they are disintermediated. Cartels take over.
With reduced uncertainty and fear of losing what little they have, they are also more likely to make long-term investments in education, skills and their families’ futures, paving the way toward economic and social mobility.
Nope. They are fucked. Either they join a gang and rise by killing lots of people, or they live as slaves.
Second, health risks constitute another reason why people, no matter if they work in informal or formal positions, are vulnerable to being impoverished.
Sickness lowers productivity. That's why enterprises have an incentive to keep the productive healthy. The unproductive are welcome to take a lot of drugs and die young.
Our team interviewed thousands of people around the world who routinely succumb to what researchers recognise as the medical poverty trap.
Why not interview dead people so as to confirm that death is a leading cause of loss of income? Also, it can result in social exclusion. Many dead people are miffed that they don't get invited to parties.
This problem is particularly severe in countries where the bulk of the population is not covered either by public healthcare or by private/public health insurance. The share of medical expenditure that is paid ‘out-of-pocket’ (OOP) is less than 5 per cent in Botswana
which exports diamonds. If diamond prices crash, the country will go off a fiscal cliff
and around 9 per cent in Mozambique (as in France),
You don't have 'out-of-pocket' expenses for medical care if there is no fucking medical care.
and only around 10 per cent in Thailand (and Cuba and the Netherlands),
funded by taxation. Thais are highly productive. Cuba defeated 'Baumol cost disease' by exporting health and pharma.
but rises alarmingly to almost 50 per cent in India
because public hospitals in some places are utterly shit. Beating and raping Doctors may be a fun way to pass the time but it does mean that only useless and corrupt Doctors show up for work.
and the Philippines, and to 65 per cent in oil-rich Azerbaijan, and an astonishing 76 per cent in oil-rich Nigeria. To take care of their loved one’s medical expenses, families need to come up with a 10 per cent co-pay in Thailand and a 75 per cent co-pay in Nigeria – and that can make the difference between staying afloat and falling into poverty. Families pile up debts and sell assets.
Or let sick people die- the Malthusian solution.
OOP expenses reflect policy choices rather than national wealth. Countries like Costa Rica, Denmark and Tunisia
with small relatively concentrated populations
have prioritised affordable healthcare to protect citizens,
Citizens are prepared to pay taxes for it, because they can see it works well enough for them.
while others, such as the US, Australia, Nigeria and Pakistan, have not.
they are big countries with much more dispersed populations. Still, there can be quite good local provision financed through local taxes.
In the US, where healthcare remains fragmented and expensive for many, the average child poverty rate between 2019-21 was 26.2 per cent, more than 6 percentage points higher than in 2012-14, and comparable to Greece or Chile.
Poor Americans have more kids. The middling sort have low fertility. Why? They don't want to be poor and to have kids who are bound to be poor.
Prioritising equitable healthcare access is essential to reducing poverty risks.
Healthcare costs money. If large swathes of your population are relatively unproductive, then there can't be 'equitable healthcare' unless trees and bushes start sprouting dollar bills instead of leaves.
Third, the vulnerabilities of both childhood and old age can overturn the best-laid plans of poorer families and communities.
No. If you have a well-laid life plan, they you have decided not to have too many kids and also you have saved up enough for your retirement. But if you are unproductive your plan can't be implemented.
Precarious living tends to be most pernicious at the earliest and latest stages of an individual’s life.
Baby is living very precariously. This is because babies tend not to be highly productive. The same is true of senile people- like President Biden.
Pension plans
i.e. compulsory saving schemes though this may entail 'cross-subsidization'. The problem here is that if the country goes off a fiscal cliff- e.g. Greece some ten years ago- then there is a 'haircut' for pensioners.
and early childhood interventions are especially powerful ways to counter the risks that push people into persistent poverty.
What works better is intervening to stop girls having babies like crazy. Don't let your boyfriend put his pee pee into your chee chee place. Just say no and keep your legs tightly closed. If this worked for me, it could work for you.
Prioritising the reduction of social risk and vulnerability will be assisted by instituting a different kind of competition among nations.
The gold medal for winning in this competition is getting conquered or suffering 'demographic replacement' by immigrants. The silver medal is going off a fiscal cliff.
Comparing the rate at which people fall into poverty
which is a function of differential fertility rates with the poorest having most kids. Previously, there was a Malthusian check on this.
– and not the total number in poverty – is a better way of evaluating the effectiveness of countries’ protective antipoverty policies.
Not having any such policy is what works best.
Nation-states should promote low, preferably zero, rates of people falling into poverty,
by forcibly sterilizing imbeciles- as Sweden used to- or punishing poor women who keep popping out babies.
as they do high GDPs. That would make for a laudable collective achievement – one that is eminently reachable over a relatively short period of 8-10 years.
China's draconian population policies were accompanied with the biggest and fastest transition, in world history, from poverty to relative affluence.
It isn't the case that only autocratic countries can achieve this. A democratic country which disintermediates virtue signalling cretins could do just as well.
The next transformative step is to promote and enable upward mobility, taking a medium-term perspective of 10-20 years. Talent – whether we call it ability or creativity – is randomly distributed at birth.
No. There is a high hereditary element and then a high 'early years' element. The kid of two Math Professors gets a head start over the sprog of two drug addled Prostitutes.
However, too many individuals draw the ‘wrong’ tickets in the birth lottery,
There is no such lottery. The fact is 'sexual selection' has resulted in more productive people demographically replacing less productive people. This may be artificially reversed in the short to medium term. Then the place turns into a Malthusian shit-hole from which smart peeps run the fuck away.
get surrounded by obstacles to self-advancement, and are unable to benefit from the talents they possess.
e.g. my talent for farting. Why am I not richer than Beyonce? I bet my farts are way smellier than hers.
The lucky few born to richer and more educated parents are better able to hone their inner potential. Most of the rest languish for want of opportunity. Consider the mathematics prodigy who ends up as a janitor because going to college is inaccessible.
There is no such prodigy. 'Good Will Hunting' was a work of fiction. Ramanujan didn't go to College but his talents were recognized and so he got to Cambridge as Professor Hardy's protege. Incidentally, Hardy's other protege, Vijayraghavan, didn't have a College degree but got a Professorship at AMU. His colleague was Andre Weil.
Or the gifted composer whose talent remains undiscovered because music is not any part of her school curriculum.
I bet I'd have been a very gifted composer if Music had been part of my curriculum. My Symphony for farts would have earned me billions in royalties. I recall telling Zubin Mehta this. Sadly, he ran away when I began farting. True, it wasn't Zubin Mehta, the great conductor, but Zubin Mehta, the Chartered Accountant, still I do feel life's lottery has been very unfair to me.
Yet examples also show what can happen when opportunities are deliberately cultivated. Take the girl from a Kampala slum who became a chess champion because an extraordinary schoolteacher
not a schoolteacher. Robert Katende is an engineer by profession and volunteers as a Chess and Soccer coach. He is highly productive and wants others to rise in productivity. This is quite usual amongst East African people.
decided to set up a chess club in the community, defying conventional expectations.
She got a scholarship to North Western and is now an analyst for Deloittes. In other words, she is determined to be highly productive and to help others become more productive.
Reversing the injustices of the past
inflicted by Idi Amin, in the case of Uganda
requires a shift toward ensuring universal access to meaningful opportunities of diverse kinds corresponding to individuals’ different talents and proclivities.
No. There must be highly restricted access to 'meaningful opportunities'. I should not be given a scholarship to Juilliard so that I can develop my talent to fart melodiously. Only those who are highly likely to be extremely productive should get 'meaningful opportunities'. I do have the opportunity to fart melodiously while lying in bed but this opportunity is quite meaningless precisely because universal access to it is granted to anybody with a functioning asshole.
Traditional poverty policies have long focused on merely lifting people above the poverty line,
i.e. doing something useful.
neglecting the vast, untapped potential of millions.
i.e. getting me a scholarship to Juilliard so Zubin Mehta gets to smell my farts.
It’s time for a new approach – one that builds ‘ladders of opportunity’
by bleeding the Exchequer dry. After fiscal collapse, the country turns into a shithole. There are Snakes, but no ladders, in Condorcet's Eden.
to unlock individuals’ talents, giving them viable avenues of upward mobility.
e.g. my getting an Emmy for my Fart Symphony. Beyonce will be totes jelly.
Examples from around the world demonstrate this approach. Jamaica, for instance, has nurtured world-class runners,
because most Jamaicans have great genes. Also, 'competition' isn't a dirty word.
while Estonia has given rise to a flow of world-class tech enterprises;
because it pursued sensible economic policies- e.g. embracing austerity to shake out the less productive enterprises in the economy.
Venezuela produced a series of excellent classical musicians,Thanks to José Antonio Abreu who founded 'El Sistema' fifty years ago. Many believed he was a a saintly philanthropists plucking kids from the slums and turning them into global super-stars. The truth was quite different. Few poor kids were admitted (17 percent in a country where half of all kids are deemed poor). Discipline was fierce. I suppose you can say, excellence is produced in no other way. But sexual abuse is not a requisite. Also Abreu didn't actually have any educational qualifications. He was a charlatan not a Saint.
and smaller countries like Sweden have excelled in everything from high-tech information technology to furniture design.
they have a great work ethic. Shame they are as boring as fuck.
New ‘ladders of opportunity’ can be constructed everywhere,
by child molesters who claim to be Saints
unlocking human potential in the process
by sodomizing kids.
These success stories share common characteristics, such as open access with transparent standards, allowing anyone to participate and know what’s expected of them.
This is what TikTok does. It's not what Abreu did.
Role models and mentors have a crucial part to play in guiding individuals along the way,
If you have either of these two cunts as your mentor, you will end up a useless, virtue signalling, cunt. Currently nineteen year old computer programmers, working for DOGE, are taking an axe to the 'ladders of opportunity' bureaucrats created for themselves.
while intermediate rewards and alternative careers for those who fail to reach the top offer a safety net and encourage participation.
Even if my Fart Symphony doesn't get an Emmy, I should at least get tenure as a Professor of Ethno-Musicological Farting at Juilliard.
Decentralised administration, involving volunteers and civil society actors,
e.g. the Boy Scouts movement. We must ensure that Scout Masters are retrained as Atheistic pederasts so as to achieve Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity.
ensures that these initiatives are community-driven and responsive to local needs.
That describes my local Church. Sadly, the lady Vicar is not a Lesbian. We must ensure she undergoes appropriate conversion therapy. Also, how come she keeps banging on about some bloke named Jesus Christ? Why not Julia Chong? Is she racist as well as misogynist and homophobic? George Soros must take action.
By replicating these design principles, new ‘ladders of opportunity’ can be constructed everywhere,
with money taken from tax-payers. Sadly, they may rebel and vote for Trump and laugh heartily as DOGE drains the swamp.
unlocking human potential in the process. The truth is, when we connect human potential with commensurate opportunity, we elevate our collective wellbeing.
Everybody will be better off if they perform my Fart Symphony. Kindly send me a royalty check if you have been doing so.
The rise of automation poses a threat, echoing the enclosures that robbed people of livelihoods in past generations.
These stupid cunts don't get that Enclosures were good for the English people. They rose in productivity and thus became stronger and wealthier and able to enjoy more and more freedom.
Experts
i.e. shitheads
warn of a dystopian future where robots and AI displace workers, leading to widespread joblessness and technological polarisation.
Fuck that! What worries us is nano-bots which turn the entire Universe into 'gray goo'.
In this scenario, those who control the machines accumulate immense power and wealth, while those who get displaced are forced into poverty.
unless they find some different way to be productive
To prevent this bleak outcome, we must establish protections against economic insecurity
Universal Basic Income? Cool! Let immigrants do all the dirty jobs. True we may end up having to learn Spanish or Arabic or whatever, but that's a small price to pay.
and recognise the fundamental right of all individuals to share in the planet’s resources and benefits.
Which is why there should be no border controls. Also, how come some peeps lock their front doors? It's like they want to prevent strangers from coming in and helping themselves to all the nice shiny things they own.
The eradication of poverty is a pivotal challenge of our time.
When people become more productive they eradicate their own poverty. Through 'transfers' they also help those unable to work. But this 'pivotal challenge' has been around for four billion years. Darwin explained this.
As the international development scholar
i.e. brain-dead shithead
Duncan Green succinctly put it: ‘Fail, and future generations will not forgive us.
They won't exist. So long as there are future generations, a species has not failed.
Succeed, and they will wonder how the world could have tolerated such needless injustice and suffering for so long.’
Only if they are as stupid as shit.
This fight is not just about alleviating suffering, but also about creating a more just and equitable world for all.
by ensuring that everybody receives compulsory gender reassignment surgery at least once a week.
A serious and sustained focus on human wellbeing within existing planetary boundaries requires getting smarter.
Being more productive. Smart peeps may be as lazy as shit.
Instead of relentlessly pursuing more, humanity must learn to say enough,
The students of these two cunts should say 'enough!' and quit the academy to do something useful with their lives.
and build systems of collective prosperity that don’t rely on exponential growth.
But, as Malthus pointed out to Condorcet, 'collective prosperity' invites invaders or 'free-riding' immigrants. It will collapse soon enough. Those whose productivity grows faster end up controlling, one way or another, more and more desirable territory.
The plain fact is that if our species remains confined to this planet, then it won't last very long in cosmological terms. There has to be exponential growth in STEM subjects. But the shite taught by these two cretins should be defunded.
While there is enough for everyone to thrive, the planet will crumble under the weight of endless extraction and rampant consumerism.
There isn't enough for everyone to thrive as the composer of Fart Symphonies. But what these two cunts are doing is equally worthless. Indeed, the thing is a nuisance. Curb it by all means.
Importantly, reducing poverty,
which can only happen if productivity rises in which case inequality rises so that there is a salutary Tardean mimetic effect
minimising inequality and creating more opportunities for everyone
e.g. getting me a scholarship to Juilliard.
benefits not just those who are currently disadvantaged but society as a whole.
No. Doing stupid shit in the name of DEI is bad for everyone. Indeed, the bureaucrats who went in for that shite now face the axe wielded by DOGE.
Societies with less inequality are
stone age societies. Sadly, if the territory they inhabit is valuable to more productive peoples, those egalitarian societies are exterminated.
healthier, safer and more stable, fostering greater trust, innovation and collective progress.
This is why North America is still ruled by the First Nations. Less than 3 percent of the US population is of European, African or Asian descent.
People around the globe are already working on practical plans to radically reduce and eradicate poverty.
China has been doing so since the Eighties. India could have done just as well by getting rid of paternalistic labour and land laws.
We do not have a particular preference among these alternative imaginings,
because we know, just as well as you do, that they are fairy tales
and we are agnostic about what to call such a newly fashioned reality – common-good society, post-growth economy, capitalism 3.0, or some other. Whatever the terminology, societies that foster wellbeing for all without violating planetary boundaries and resilience will be different from all previously existing, growth-centred and extractive systems, whether capitalism, communism or fascism. Why? Because they
won't fucking exist. They will just be fairy tales. The problem here is our inability to abolish death. This means that Religion always has a better fairy tale because nobody can prove that Heaven isn't really really nice. This is because you don't see angels seeking to immigrate to our country because God isn't paying them enough. By contrast, every time nutters pretended some particular place was a 'Worker's Paradise', people stopped believing them when they saw that workers were risking their lives to escape from such places.
will be designed to be in the service of all, not only the few, and they will include planning for future generations to thrive.
By climbing 'ladders of opportunity' into a virtue signalling Academy or Bureaucracy. But who will pay for either?
Instead of profit, growth or power, such a system prioritises the flourishing of individuals and larger communities, ecosystems and cultures, ensuring that decisions are made with long-term sustainability and the welfare of all life in mind.
Why does it not prioritize the abolition of death? How do you expect a corpse to flourish? It finds it difficult enough just to pop down the road to the pub. Unless death is abolished and affirmative action for corpses is introduced, many dead people will continue to face economic deprivation, social exclusion, and severe difficulties in exploring their sexuality or changing gender.
The moral foundation is simple: every individual has a fundamental right
not to get stabbed or shot. Yet this right is ineffective for many. The fact is a 'right' is ineffective unless it is tied to an incentive compatible remedy. But remedies cost money. If there is no money there is no right. Money is linked to productivity. That's why only productivity matters. Virtue signalling is a waste of scarce resources.
to access the basic necessities of life. Call it ‘dignity for all’. We can achieve this by taking human essentials out of the ever-encroaching marketplace.
Instead of buying food, the Government will deliver what it considers necessary for your proper nutrition. This means it will taste like shit.
Needs like housing, nutrition, community, education, healthcare and a protected environment should be provided by virtue of being human, not dependent on an individual financial transaction.
Also death should be abolished.
From land trusts like Vienna’s to publicly owned utilities like those in the US, from universal childcare like Sweden’s to walkable cities like Copenhagen,
Why is Anirudh only mentioning highly productive, technologically advanced, countries?
and from free public transportation to robust public services, we can build societies where everyone has access to what they need to flourish, regardless of their financial situation.
Why haven't these two cunts already done so if the thing is so easy? The answer is, it is difficult and expensive. Only by raising productivity can the resources be created to do difficult and expensive things.
While markets can efficiently produce and distribute non-essential consumer goods, they are fundamentally unsuited to ensuring equitable access to resources vital for a dignified life.
In which case we say 'fuck dignified life', we want tasty food and nice shiny things.
In market systems, goods and services are allocated not based on need, but merely on the ability to pay, which inherently excludes the poor from accessing basic necessities.
Worse yet, dead people are excluded from employment and thus lack ability to pay which is why you don't find a lot of corpses shopping at Waitrose. How is that fair?
To create a more just and equitable society, we need to de-financialise the provision of basic needs.
In other words, we should get rid of the pernicious notion that people should get paid for producing things. Once we say to the productive element in our society that they should stop demanding 'wages' or 'profits' and just work for free, then there will be no more poverty and no more inequality. Anybody who hasn't run away will have starved to death. That's why it is important to prioritize the abolition of death.
This means disconnecting essential goods and services from the market economy and recognising that people’s wellbeing is essential to the common good.
Nobody's Mummy or Daddy should die. It is essential for the common good that death be abolished.
In other words, we need to start seeing healthcare, education, housing and food as human rights, rather than commodities to be bought and sold.
Who will enforce those rights? I suppose, a guy with a gun can get the remedy to his right to any food you might have by threatening to shoot you.
Few think it is a good idea to deny one’s child opportunities to thrive.
It is also not a good idea to tell the little shit to stop raping Granny if he has a gun and an itchy trigger finger.
The components of a plan for eliminating poverty
by destroying society such that anybody who hasn't run away starves to death- unless the gangsters take over.
are clear – in the short term, reducing risks and curbing uncertainty;
by abolishing death
in the medium term, further developing an infrastructure of opportunity;
i.e. more and more useless civil servants constructing imaginary 'ladders of opportunity'
and over the longer term, achieving a richer and fuller vision of a good life.
One in which we can all levitate and poop on the heads of these two cunts.
How much longer, clinging to the highway to nowhere, must we abide the myth that poverty is inevitable for so many of Earth’s children?
Nobody abides by any such myth. It is obvious that if only highly productive people have kids and they raise those kids to be highly productive, then there will be no poverty. True, there may be disabled people but collective insurance can give them a 'social minimum'. Sadly, a Society of this sort will still need a powerful enough Army to defeat invaders and a sufficiently motivated police and justice system to catch and deport illegal immigrants. Malthus, not Condorcet, was right. We live in a Malthusian world not a virtue signaller's Utopia. This is because successive administrations, in the pay of the Funeral Industry, have scandalously failed in their duty to abolish death. Also, Zubin Mehta is still refusing to conduct my Fart Symphony. That's the only reason I remain so abjectly poor and don't get invited to Beyonce's birthday party. Today, more than ever, it is urgent that policy makers construct ladders of opportunity for me and my farts. Also just fucking abolish death already. I'm not getting any younger, you know.
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