What is Reddit's opinion of Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

This booktalks about that a bit. Typically those who are poor or struggling to make ends meet don’t have the psychological depth for making a priority long-term decisions. They are focused on making sure they can put food on the table that night, paying their bills for that month, and then also fulfilling any temporal emotional/physical needs that they may have which is often fulfilled by sex. It’s a pretty good read and definitely recommend it

https://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Having-Little-Means-Much-ebook/dp/B00BMKOO6S

Experiencing scarcity can actually trigger a cycle where it's cognitively difficult to manage the resource that's scarce. This is one of the reasons "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps" and the idea of practically limitless personal choice is unrealistic.

Two things -- state usury laws: that is why banks wrote the law that allowed them to base their credit card businesses in any state they want, to circumvent usury laws. [Someone smart once said that violence is the crime of the poor, white collar crime is the crime of the middle, and when you're rich, you don't need to commit crimes because you can write the laws to let you do what you want. I would love to know the source...]

Second, the psychology of scarcity (see the book https://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Having-Little-Means-Much-ebook/dp/B00BMKOO6S) makes it difficult to make good choices under conditions of scarcity. Not just money-wise, btw, but also affection (hence people behaving counter-productively needy when they're lonely, even though they may know on some level it is repellent).

link in english

I picked it up on Audible last year, it's a pretty good listen.

There's a very good book written about what you're saying. Scarcity gave me an eye-opening perspective about the hidden costs of worrying about survival

I agree with you: lifting people from poverty is good for the whole society: it leads to a more resilient economy and a more rational democracy.

I agree with others below: your call to "solve" poverty is betraying you.

You may find raising 50% of the population out of poverty is straightforward and a top priority. However, as you move the target to 70%, 80%, and beyond, the same strategies may have diminishing returns. In fact, I'm certain the difficulty and cost will increase as the bar moves because you're probably taking the fastest actions with the highest impact and lowest cost first.

In tune with u/Nobody_Expects_That, I think each country needs to prioritize their investment in reducing poverty highly alongside competing concerns. I agree with you that making an improvement is very valuable for everyone, not just the people lifted from poverty. However, as u/Afghanistanimation- explianed, I believe prioritizing 100% (solving) poverty above all competing concerns would be foolish.

In response u/Kingalthor's thoughtful response with a similar stance, you say...

>1- If it's not possible to take everyone, maybe the majority so we don't get corrupt populists in power. But middle-class+ and well-educated people may also vote for the populists, either because they benefit from the status quo, were deceived or because the simply don't care about these problems. !delta
>
>-you

I agree with u/DecaffGiraffe that it sounds like you're extrapolating from Maslow's hierarchy of needs :
People with basic needs like food and shelter are more likely to vote for whoever promises relief from their immediate problems. This gives anyone (including populists) a platform to grow support from regardless of their other policies. I think you believe this allows savvy populists to use this base to increase their political prospects, which leads to bad policies.

That sounds like a rational place to start. As others have pointed out, strategy for effective policy can be challenging. I think it's worth shifting your thinking from "what's wrong" to "how can we solve it". There are some nice comments below to get you started (See u/brennanquest).

There's a great book on this called Scarcity.

On an unrelated note, I think Jim Rohn specifically is very wrong about his model of successful behavior change I would refer you to the book Scarcity. It pairs well with any research from the last 30 years on social mobility patterns in America.