[jasode]

>I don't think anyone's saying that the solution to poverty is for landlords et al to start losing money.

And I'm not claiming anyone is saying that or pushing it as a realistic policy. Instead, I'm asking readers to think about it as a thought experiment to test the economic validity of what the journalist is saying.

>It doesn't posit a specific solution

Can you explain from a logical standpoint why taking the opposite of what the journalist said is not an _implied_ solution that's worth testing?

[Bartweiss]

That's not a valid thought experiment, though.

First, because the truth of (A -> B) doesn't determine the truth of (!A -> !B), which is what your title inversion did. And second, because (A -> B) does imply (!B -> !A), but you haven't established (A -> B).

If something causes a problem, that doesn't imply that inverting the thing will solve the problem. "Poverty is widespread because people profit from it" does not imply "poverty would disappear if people lost money when it happened". So you haven't actually said anything about the headline by mocking its inverse.

[jasode]

>does not imply "poverty would disappear if people lost money when it happened".

That's true but that's also not what I wrote. Your derived hypothetical has a vastly different meaning than "not profiting in transactions is the solution to poverty".

>First, because the truth of (A -> B)

Using strict math logic is not applicable to this. Instead, we're talking about the "logic" of human choices and how to parse English sentences.

>If something causes a problem, that doesn't imply that inverting the thing will solve the problem.

If we claim that "the problem of a child dozing off in class is that he works late at night" then yes, we are implying that the child should not be forced to work at night and instead get a full night's rest. This is how we normally parse things when proposing prescriptive recommendations.

(Yes, if we attempt to use a strict math logic framework, we could say that !B->!A == "he's not working at night therefore he's not dozing in class" which can't be 100% true since there isn't enough information. Therefore, valid negations in abstract math don't perfectly carry over to negating English sentences.)

In any case, do you really think "the problem of poverty is that it's profitable" is a meaningful and insightful statement? (I actually lived in poverty as a child and I find it ridiculous.) The journalist isn't just suggesting that "_a_ problem of poverty is profits" but provoking readers with "_the_ problem of poverty is profits".