Do people fail because they lack opportunity or because they aren’t capable of success?December 30, 2007
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that successful parents are more likely to raise successful children, but rarely do socialists look for any reason to explain this correlation outside the conventional market bashing anti-capitalist rhetoric. The reality is that standard of living is related to your income, college graduates tend to earn more money, people with higher IQ’s are more likely to graduate from college, and studies have shown that environmental factors have about zero influence on an individual’s IQ post adolescence. There are many people who succeed without any formal education or training but I don’t think many of them would ever be classified as average. As I see it, many people who are successful would likely have been successful regardless of their environmental conditions, except at the extreme. That points to something other than social engineering as the key ingredient driving success for those who are actually successful. The ideology that every individual has equal innate potential to succeed in any career of their choice should they only be given — fill in the blank — without regard for insignificant things like cost, accounting and economic, is total nonsense. You can’t nurture an idiot through law school. Of course we all wish that wasn’t the case, but we can’t organize our society around policies that make us feel good to the exclusion of all reason. There will always be those who have ability and could benefit from help. As a society we should do what we can to help them, but as we look for policies to achieve those ends we can not ignore the costs to those who are forced to abdicate their own earnings against their will. Especially without consideration for how much benefit that money could have yielded for society should it have remained with those who earned it.
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what if belief creates reality? those raised with money, believe it is there, and it is… those raised poor, believe that they are poor, and have none… is there any truth to the idea, change your mind to change your life?
Not sure I follow the question, are you saying the reason people are poor is because they expect to be poor? Of course if someone has that mindset, that will be the result. Only those who actually strive for something more will ever benefit from aide, regardless of what kind of aide and how the funding is collected and spent.
yes, point, that is it precisely, and poverty is not lack of money, poverty is a mindset… one implication, it doesnt take money to change a mindset… another, given that there are billions of impoverished, one can assume that they don’t know that life can be any different than it is…
so capability is not part of this, leaving opportunity, and this is a tricky one based on the idea of scarcity, held by both those “above” and those “below”…
my conclusion is change of mindset should take priority, aide very often acts to perpetrate the mindset (i can develop this, maybe you already know it)…
it is not money that is needed, it is awareness… focusing on that helps to suggest what actions to take
Yes, I agree that mindset is important. That’s why I say some people will never benefit from any help and others will. That’s why it doesn’t make sense to give uniform aide to people with many different degrees of many different issues. That’s why government is typically not the appropriate place for such aide to be organized. In my post I only emphasize one factor that tends to differentiate between two camps, but of course I understand in the real world nothing is that simple.
If you can change peoples’ mindsets, that would be fantastic and I would support such an effort. But first I need to be convinced that it can work and that it would make more sense to spend time and money on that effort then other things, like on the people who already have the better mindset.
thanks for the courtesy of your reply…
to your last paragraph, yes, this is the way the world works, i think the bible says it well, to them that hath, all will be given, to them that hath not, all will be taken away…
this will only accelerate, digital divide, income disparity, opportunity, healthcare, all differences are accelerating… i have read speculation that two distinct races will be the result…
what we call education seems to be the need, but disease eradication gets the focus for famous charities…
thanks for you blog, i will follow your work for awhile, and read the archives..
enjoy, gregory