[umvi]

That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that people should strive to be self-reliant. Not: "how can we meet people's needs?" but "how do we help people meet their own needs?". Like the old proverb about giving a man a fish vs. teaching a man to fish.

Everyone always shuts down that second question with "they can't help themselves until their basic needs are met" which is incredibly hand wavy and disingenuous, in my opinion. Half of being poor is in the mind. If poor people are to become middle class people, there needs to be a change in the mind. This change doesn't automatically happen "because money". Changing the mind needs to come from teachers and mentors and the poor person has to want to change and start thinking and acting differently.

If you get everyone reliant on a monolithic omnipotent government, then when said monolithic government fails all of helpless leeches will die (and that could be millions).

I think it's better if we strive for a minimalistic government where members of society strive to be self-reliant and in terms of "safety nets" the government's goal is to promote and encourage self-reliance.

[jshevek]

You are absolutely correct, but it can sound to a reader lacking nuance as if you were arguing that other factors (outside the mind) aren't important. Many people suffer from the prison of two ideas, and wrongly misinterpret this argument as a denial of important social, cultural, historical factors.

[_lqaf]

> If poor people are to become middle class people

If this is the goal, you need to be pushing to radically restructure the way society and the economy functions. You cannot have everyone employed at, say, $60K a year in the one we have.

Most of the time when people say this, they prefer to focus on individuals rather than systemic issues - "this one person pulled them self up by their own bootstraps - surely others can, too. And "others" can, and do. That leaves people who can't. Now what?

> I think it's better if we strive for a minimalistic government

The problem is capabilities. Libertarian fantasy-states work in frontiers and sometimes in low-population, high-homogeneity areas. As population increases, many public goods need management[1] and public management means the state necessarily takes on more functions. So you need to work on your plan to massively reduce population or get yourself a new planet if this is your goal.

Your desire to drive self-sufficiency by intentionally depriving those in need cannot work in our current world and simply results in performative cruelty.

> Half of being poor is in the mind

Have you been poor? I have have been very poor. I grew up that way. I know what you're talking about, and I suspect you honestly don't understand how condescending and insulting it is.

[1] Growing up in a very rural town in Tennessee, people used to routinely burn their trash. Try that in San Francisco.

[jshevek]

In this case, the insult is in how one chooses to perceive it. It's not present in the words themselves.