Saturday, April 4, 2015

Understand and so take care of the small things in life, and try to keep principles

Odakyu-sen (1,225 comments) says: 

My experience of poor people in a free society such as Japan or New Zealand is that they are usually poor because of the poor life choices they make. (Exceptions being poverty as a result of physical or mental disabilities.)
There are no “evil oppressors” out there who somehow manage to find the time to individually frustrate the lives of poor people. Inventing such bad guys simply teaches the poor to be more helpless and dependent on the State.
I think a couple of traits hold the “poor” back (I use “won’t” instead of “can’t” as “can’t” would imply that it’s not their fault.)
– Won’t defer gratitude (gotta have it now)
– Won’t think of consequences of actions in advance
– Take comfort in the knowledge that the State will coddle them (in NZ)
– Fear change (don’t want to move out of “da hood”)
Many call the poor “lazy” but I think a lot of this is that they don’t think very far into the future. They don’t think “if I do this (don’t do this) then what will probably happen?”
I remember a story from my childhood. I had a friend who lived with his father. One day his dad brought him a brand new bicycle. My friend didn’t look after his bicycle and left it out in the rain. A month later, the chain was rusted and the paint was peeling. Some time later he threw it into the canal.
I had another friend who father ran a printing company. He wanted a bicycle, so his father gave him his own father’s old bike (that my friend’s grandfather could no longer ride). His father taught him how to repair the old bicycle and how to maintain it properly. A year later, my friend sold the bike, added money he had saved from his part-time job, and bought a brand new bicycle.


Odakyu-sen (1,226 comments) says: 

hj @ 10:30
“So how do you explain government policy. Or should we be talking about relatively poor? Governments often make poor choices (often on behalf of vested interests – that’s my point)”
I tend to ignore government policies as they are very blunt tools prepared in Wellington (or Tokyo). My comments today relate to the grass-roots day-to-day decision-making that poor people make.
One of the steps in liberating oneself from poverty is to turn one’s attention away from Big Government and towards oneself (the individual). What can YOU do to get YOURSELF out of your state of poverty? (And ideally, this thinking process should begin before adolescence.) (Every child should ask themselves: “Do I want an easy life than gets harder or a hard life that gets easier?”) (See my comment about deferred gratification.)
From the perspective of Government and of Vested Interests, the individual is invisible. Government and Vested Interests respond to constructs; not to the individual. These constructs are groups; not individuals. The individual is almost always small enough to be below the radar or nimble enough to slip through the net.
hj (7,809 comments) says: 
Odakyu-sen (1,226 comments) says
I hear your point that individuals make poor choices and finish up at the bottom of the heap but IQ is bell-shaped and some individuals will always make the right choices. My concern is public policy and hands on the steering wheel (power) of vested interests and ideological blindness.
It isn’t just IQ either, it is learnt reaction to the world “you can’t put an old head on young shoulders”. E.G a good parent. A good parent is the adult grown up, looking back saying ” I wish I could have taught myself that when I was young”

Odakyu-sen (1,227 comments) says: 

hj
“My concern is public policy and hands on the steering wheel (power) of vested interests and ideological blindness.”
A “vested interest” is a construct. You can’t see or touch or interact with a vested interest. (You can interact with people who you believe to be members of that vested interest.)
We like to use the word “vested interest” when we don’t have sufficient knowledge of how the system works and who the players in it are. But, the word is a cop-out. Powerless people/lazy people tend to use the word.
It’s like that word “Asians” that I hate. There are no Asians. There are Koreans, Japanese, mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong Chinese, etc. They are all different.
If you want to make progress in life, you have to deal with people; not worry about constructs.

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