Absolutely.

And just think, there are 6.8 billion people who do not live in poverty. That in itself is a great thing.

I disagree sbyvl, There are a lot of smart poor people in North Korea where intelligence does you no good unless you are connected to the dictator. The same can be said for nation states all over the world. It can also be said for cities in the United States like Detroit. Anywhere the government can take property and incarcerate people without due process you will have intelligent people living in poverty.

If they were smart, they would leave North Korea.
If Detroit is doing that, they should leave Detroit. This is America, after all

By the way, the Federal Reserve has got to go as well.

Diogenes, Thoreau, Gandhi, and Buddha from the ascetic tradition. But of course we are talking about forced poverty, not voluntary.

How about Tesla, Gutenberg, or Poe?

And besides, should it surprise us that poor people are forgotten by history? That their ideas and intelligence goes unacknowledged? As much was said of the intellect of women until the last 150 years, to our peril.

As Stephen Jay Gould has said:

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

What point are you trying so very hard to make?

"If they were smart, they would leave North Korea."

You must be fucking out of your mind.

Anyway, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen of the forum. Sbyvl our esteemed economist, political scientists, and cultural theorist has proclaimed that all 1.2 billion poor people living today are lazy.

They are poor because they are lazy, in all 1,200,000,000 cases.

I rest my case. My battery's dying, so I'm out.

Bye Commie.

C'mon Sbyvl, you know it is virtually impossible to leave North Korea. Hell people couldn't hardly get out of the vast Soviet Union back in the day. Government can impoverish people and those governments are either socialist or despotic in nature. Limited government, like we once had at the federal level in the United States reduces poverty.
You are right when it comes to a free nation like the United States. Intelligent people can move around and escape poverty, but what about a poor person stuck taking care of someone old or frail who can't move in a state with horrendous government like California. They are intelligent, but government destroys their ability to rise based on their intelligence. That's my argument.

sbyvl, argue over exact wording as you want, but you can't honestly say that some people aren't born with more intellectual potential than others. and emac, yes they are, but those things are hard to avoid, and someone that has to fight these things will not be able to go as far as someone that is born with a silver spoon. and there are plenty of smart poor people Sbyvl, and i dare say there are stupid rich people too.

Thucy, Ive had enough is this liberal bullshit, along with bible quotes, failing to realize a major point. Yes, we as people should try to solve poverty, and as good Christians help to solve it, but you want state intervention, and with that, the voluntary, or involuntary participation of its citizens through taxes and new laws. You quote the bible, but fail to realize that God made us Humans free to choose whether to follow him or not. If i donate to the poor, it its because of my own free will, and because i choose to follow Gods commands, i don't do it because a person or government orders me to. The state should never be involved in charity and redistribution of wealth, that is up to its citizens to do it voluntarily.

And many poor people are poor because of government liberal policies, take for example corn subsidies which are aimed to protect american farmers and provide a decent lifestyle for them, sounds good for you lefties right? Well what about the thousands of African corn farms who are unable to compete with the subsidized american corn farmers and fall into poverty?

Just enough juice to see this last post by ILN.

I am completely against those farm subsidies.

You assume too much about my politics - I came to this thread to talk about ethics.

If I ran the country removing those subsidies would be my first agenda item - they have caused incalculable suffering in the world.

People with the silver spoon lose their money all the time. Who do you think Bernie Madoff took money from, not the poor. He ripped off people with money who I think one could easily argue weren't as "intelligent" as they thought.

Hear! Hear ILN
I was just in corn country ILN, Lincoln Illinois. The people getting the massive subsidies are filthy rich. In the Lincoln area the guy who gets massive federal subsidies farms 20,000 acres and has three different implement dealerships with easily a $100 million in farm equipment sitting on them. All the while the government gives this filthy rich individual "subsides."

@SD Typical "I was proven wrong, but..." response.
@Emac Then they should rise up against the N. Korean regime and demand a free market. Eastern Europe did it, why can't they?

North Koreans are too indoctrinated, the only change that can come from north Korea now is from the leader, not the people, the new young leader of N Korea will soon want change as he sees the rest of the world progress and his country stay the same. It will come how change in Russia came from Gorbachev, not the people

@sbyvl - how so

You said that that people are born smart. Then I showed that "being smart" is by having intelligence, which is acquired. Therefore, by definition, one cannot be "born smart".

Being from Eastern Europe, eastern Europe did it because they hanged on to their old values, their religion and their customs, not only that but it wasn't so strict, for example in Romania, you could go to the library and read National geographic magazines and buy coca cola (or Pepsi-Cola as itw as called) the evil capitalist imperialist drink :P, how many other soviet bloc countries can boast about that. The Serbians which were more relaxed usually transmitted pirate radio shows over the border which people tuned in to

Sybyvl, because it would be suicide to rebel. Rebellions take time. We differ in opinion on how easy it is to rebel against established government power structures. You think it is easier than I do.

Exactly. People educated themselves about capitalism, and rose up demanding it. Now Eastern Europe is prospering.

Emac, yes they take time, but they've already had 60 years to plan it. Whats the hold up?

I just watched the Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu with the scenes of Nixon visiting Romania.

In North Korea the hold up is constant surveillance that prevents organizing, no weapons at all, and instant execution without trial. How do you revolt in North Korea?

Don't even bring up Nixon. He gave credibility to the Maoist regime, which murdered 78,000,000 of its own people.

sbyvl - be serious my point was that people can be born with different intelectual capacities, i thought smart was a way of saying that, and intellectual capacities was the point i wanted to make, if the only arguments you can make are pedantic ones, refrain from making any.

Sbyvl, its not really prospering, the same communists in power 20 years ago are in power now, right during the revolution they all betrayed their party and claimed to be National Liberals and be pro right wing pro democracy pro markey economy, 20 years after, its the same people in power, the same dirty communists, corruption is widespread, and the middle aged population is more and more nostalgic of communist times because of the (there isn't any other word) damn right retarded administration, parties are in name only, in what other country do you have the social democrats ally with the national liberals lmao

Sybyvl, I believe in the politics of national interest not moral diplomacy. Diplomacy based on human rights and the realities of national interest rarely coincide. We are straying away from the economic question though.