Convincing people that their problems are outside of their control and that the only way to solve them is to vote a certain way is also a form of authoritarianism. If you aren't to blame for your own life that implies you have no control over it.
Saying that problems are completely outside of someone's control or completely their own fault is a false dichotomy. Reality is usually somewhere in the middle, especially in studies like this one on teenagers. Everyone's situation is shaped by a mix of personal choices and the world around them. It's not just about blaming people or the system; it’s about seeing how both play a role. Voting is one way to make a difference, but it’s not the only way—people have a lot of ways to shape their lives.
> Convincing people that their problems are outside of their control and that the only way to solve them is to vote a certain way is also a form of authoritarianism
Yes, systemic poverty can only be solved politically. That is just the nature of a systemic problem. I am pretty sure encouraging people to be active in the political process of which voting is a small but important part is the opposite of authoritarianism.
> If you aren't to blame for your own life that implies you have no control over it.
Yes. Bitter pill to swallow but that is the reality. We are mostly defined by nature and nurture and we can't choose with which genetics we are born with or our upbringing and if we will have adverse childhood experiences.
The circle of influence most people have over their own life is very tiny, especially the lower they are on the ladder.
The ideology of personal responsibility is propagated to justify the current status quo and block political change that would help poor people.
I would say that the circle of influence people have is by far the most impactful on their happiness and that of their family. The individual choice to try meth or not will vastly outweigh any genetic or environmental factor on personal outcome. Beating ones children is much more influential than your socioeconomic class.
No a mount of political action can compensate for dissolution of individual responsibilities.
Ideally, they are complementary, but they can easily be antagonists.
Teach a generation of juveniles that they have no agency, and their individual efforts and work, and they will never succeed.
> I would say that the circle of influence people have is by far the most impactful on their happiness and that of their family.
This is factually wrong. Otherwise there wouldn't be such a strong correlation between socioeconomic class and later success in life.
> The individual choice to try meth or not will vastly outweigh any genetic or environmental factor on personal outcome.
Drug use and poverty wouldn't be so strongly linked if that were a free choice.
Maybe you should tell all the drug addicts to just not do drugs. Problem solved.
Are you telling people with depression to "just snap out of it" as well? Drug addiction is a serious medical illness. It requires a whole support network of people to cure in most cases.
> Teach a generation of juveniles that they have no agency, and their individual efforts and work, and they will never succeed.
You empower them by teaching them that it a systemic issue, that it is NOT their fault. That they can organize together and lift each other up. Individuals are weak, groups are strong.
Individual responsibility only works for the rich. Collective responsibility is what breaks the cycle of violence of poverty. It takes a village to raise a kid after all.
You may see correlations between socioeconomic class, but they are still by far weaker than correlations with Individual behavior and choice, which is my point.
Telling someone not to be born poor isn't actionable advice. Telling them their chance of success is 1000% better if they don't do drugs IS actionable advice. Telling them to live in misery and wait for the collective to solve a social problem in decades isn't actionable or useful advice either.
>You empower them by teaching them that it a systemic issue, that it is NOT their fault.
It is a big difference between a higher statistical risk factor isn't your fault, and telling them their choices and behavior have no impact.
Individual responsibility and effort is the foundation of collective responsibility. You can't have collective action with personal action. It isn't one or the other. The boat won't move if there is individual responsibility to paddle.
Everyone and their dog knows not to do drugs. Still people do. This is not actionable advice.
Knowing about the effects of poverty means knowing more about yourself. Understanding yourself leads to being able to take more effective actions increasing the control you have over your life.
You seem to think it is about victim mindset vs whatever you toxic middle-class self help "individual responsibility" thing is. Real change can only happen once you understand and accept yourself, including being a victim of circumstance and birth. After that there can there be healing and proper action.
> Telling them to live in misery and wait for the collective to solve a social problem in decades isn't actionable or useful advice either.
That is not the point. The point is for them to educate themselves on the issues they are facing, to politically organize, to organize in the neighborhood, to help each other out and ideally become leaders and role-models in their community. It starts with seeking help and community, not trying to lift yourself up by your bootstraps which often is not realistic.
> Individual responsibility and effort is the foundation of collective responsibility. You can't have collective action with personal action. It isn't one or the other. The boat won't move if there is individual responsibility to paddle.
Yes, obviously collective responsibility includes a form of individual responsibility. They only work together when your are poor.
It seems like we actually agree on more than it seems, even if we disagree on the value of a victim mindset and the necessity of adopting victim in-group identity.
Of course I agree with having ones eyes open to their personal circumstance and challenges, as well as the value of giving and receiving help to others. However, I do think it is ironic that you think people have the agency to help others more and become leaders, but not have the agency to help themselves.
Circling back to drugs, this is akin to becoming a sobriety advocate, but not trying to get sober. You say everyone knows not to do drugs, but from what I know, hopelessness, self-hate, and self-delusion is a key difference between those who become addicts and those that dont.
I think that exaggerated messaging about statistical disadvantage does more harm than good if it is uncoupled from the message about statistical advantage of personal action (e.g. you may be 2x more likely to end up poor if born poor, but you are 10x more likely to escape if you stay sober and go to college). these numbers are obviously made up, but literature overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that personal behaviors have more impact than group statistics and environmental circumstances. Of course personal choices like staying in school or smoking meth have huge impacts on your personal life!
Incomplete messaging of this is harmful because people need to understand and believe there is an actionable path to a better life in order to try. Hopelessness and despair are real barriers that need to be acknowledged.
You brought up depression earlier, and while I dont tell people to "snap out of it", it is also true that almost nobody overcomes depression without the belief that their actions CAN have improve their depression, and that there is a path to improvement. It is central and fundamental to rehabilitation. Most of depression therapy boils down to convincing people improvement is possible, and teaching them how to do it. A therapist may be a crucial help that makes the difference, but the patient still has to do 99% of the work.
Statistically most people born into poverty stay there. Do you think most of them aren't trying? Conversely, do you thing most people born wealthy have to put as much effort into staying wealthy?
There are a number of systemic barriers, one of the big ones mentioned in this demonstration is education.
If we had equal baseline access to education, housing, healthcare, and food... then sure, if people stayed impoverished I might begin to agree with you.
We're not even close in our current state so "you're in control of your own life" is a completely ignorant argument.
>Statistically most people born into poverty stay there.
That simply isn't true. Look at the data on economic mobility, and the vast majority of people born in the bottom 20% leave the bottom 20%.
Outcomes obviously aren't random, but are far from deterministic.
For example, this article puts the number at 63% leaving the bottom 20%. 80% would require that there are no impacts whatsoever from every factor correlated with poverty
That data is paywalled, but I've got some conflicting sources:
> Rates of relative intergenerational mobility in the U.S. appear to have been flat for decades
> Most Americans born in 1940 ended up better off, in real terms, than their parents at the same age. Only half of those of those born in 1980 have surpassed their parent’s family income
Also worth mentioning that the mean income for the second quintile is only ~$40k — it's still ~$30k off from the middle quintile... so we're not talking anything close to the american dream here either way. We're talking multiple generations at best for a small percentage of the lower quintile to reach the middle.
>Only half of those of those born in 1980 have surpassed their parent’s family income
If you are talking about relative economic mobility, more than half of people cant end up in the top half by definition. Only 50 percent of people can improve in social class- and 50% of people have to go down in social class to make that happen. Of course I understand that the case is different if you are talking about nominal income. The biggest Issues there is that it is calculated using household income, and the number of adults/household has gone down quite a bit in the US. The last Issue I would point out is that these metrics rarely include transfer payments, which for the lowest quintile have gone up quite a bit.
There should be an Internet law for the phenomenon of taking systemic or statistical analyses personally and then dismissing them on that basis. It’s so common and always just results in a mess of people commenting past each other.
That it’s possible to work one’s way out of poverty or to maintain a healthy weight through willpower or what have you is simply irrelevant when talking policy. Its only possible role is to dismiss the problem or discourage action. The reverse is also true: that a system could hypothetically make it easier for one to succeed is irrelevant to the individual who’s trying to decide what to do to improve their life in the system that currently exists.
I guess all those guys that lost to Lance Armstrong over the years should have played their hands better? Being born wealthy is essentially economic doping.
I feel like when people start talking about money like this they're being intentionally illogical.
Being born into a situation where your problems are minor is a great way to be ignorant of how systemic issues affect people.
If a child shows up to school every day unfed for breakfast and without lunch money, right-wing states have decided that somehow their kid not having food is a motivational issue for the parent. And their solution for when a distracted, hungry student is unable to focus in class is to bring back corporal punishment and post religious texts in classrooms.
If it were merely a motivational issue for parents, then the child would already be fed. The political situation that made the most sense for the school district in which I grew up, which is a bright red area that is also a public education stronghold, was to dip into the budget to ensure that all kids got breakfast and lunch if they wanted it. That way it can't be framed as a political issue.
The issue was never about the benefit, it was about the race and class of people who received it.
Same thing with work. We have age-based workplace discrimination laws precisely because a class of workers who are over the age of 50 have been discriminated against due to their age and in lieu of other concerns. Those problems are outside of their control. Most people with 20+ year careers are unemployed for reasons that have nothing to do with performance, and they can't help what age they are.
This isn't authoritarianism. It's basic common sense.
