Let's Eliminate Poverty Now

I have been studying poverty for the past 12 years, and experimenting with ways of ending it. There are thousands of other people engaged in this too, of course.

But what is exciting now is that we are actually nearing the tipping point. Read Malcolm Gladwell's book "The Tipping Point". It talks about how small actions can cause big changes. There are a number of conditions that have to be met before the situations "tips".

Would you like to help set up those conditions? Think about how the world was before Martin Luther King decided to champion civil rights. Or before Gandhi decided to get the British out of India. That's how the world is now, with respect to Poverty.

No one likes poverty, but we may feel like there is little we can do about it. Just like the average African American might have felt that there was little one individual could do about race discrimination in the 1960s.

This feeling of being unable to solve a problem is exactly the feeling people had about going to the moon in 1950. What changed? Thousands of smart people devoted lots of time and the government spent lots of money on putting a man on the moon. But way more smart people are spending way more time and money on eliminating poverty.

So why haven't we eliminated poverty yet?

The difference is tactics. Think of the battles where a handful of soldiers take on a much larger army and win. Like the American revolutionary war. General Washington wanted at many points to engage the British army in the open, like any courageous soldier would, but every time he did this he was trounced. So he changed tactics. He didn't confront the enemy, but used guerrilla warfare and played cat & mouse with the British until they finally got tired of it and gave up. In some sense that was a very unsatisfying way to win. But it was victory nonetheless, and Washington's first choice of tactics would have led to certain defeat.

This is the lesson. Our favorite ways of fighting poverty haven't worked! It's time to give them up and switch to tactics that work. Here is an outline of how to eliminate poverty very quickly.

A) Start with the easiest cases. Our charitable instinct is to start with the most desparate cases, like Mother Teresa did. That's admirable, but it does not solve poverty. Mother Teresa's calling was a personal one, to care for the poor and dying, which she did heroically. Her mission was not to eliminate poverty. To eliminate poverty, we need to shrink the problem. There are too many poor people for us to help them all. Instead of trying to help the most helpless, focus first on helping the most people! The more people we help out of poverty, the smaller the problem becomes, and the more new helpers we create.

For instance, start in the richest countries. It is folly to think we can solve the problems of Calcutta when we haven't solved those same problems in Phoenix, Arizona! Eliminate poverty in Phoenix (the easiest place at the moment); THEN go to the next easiest place.

B) Use trade to boost the economy. Do not rely on donations. People give billions of dollars each year to charity, but we spend trillions on entertainment. People donate dozens of hours each year volunteering, but they spend thousands of hours working at their jobs. Harness these bigger forces. Make eliminating poverty profitable and entertaining, rather than trying to increase the level of sacrifice and tithing people can tolerate.

C) Pay attention to all the psychological elements that cause people to do things, and develop tactics accordingly. Many of these factors are discussed in "The Tipping Point", and other books like "Gifts Differing", "The Sedona Method", "Change Your Life in 30 Days", "What to say when you talk to yourself", "NLP: The New Technology of Achievement", "Tony Robbins: Unlimited Power", "The Richest Man in Babylon", "Chester Carrass: Negotiating", "The Landmark Curriculum for Living", "Napoleon Hill: Think & Grow Rich", "Rich Dad Poor Dad", "Richard Carlson: You Can Be Happy No Matter What".

D) Join together in a coordinated effort. The American Revolution would have failed if the 13 colonies hadn't joined together. Right now there are hundreds of organisations working to eliminate poverty. When we all become one organisation, we will win.

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Crime and Prison

I really like the analysis of crime presented in "The Tippping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell.

This is my understanding of it:

1. Everyone has a different genetic disposition to crime. So there are people who are very likely to commit crimes (genetically defiant, rebellious people), those who are very unlikely (genetically docile, rule-following people), and everything in between.

2. Everyone has a different upbringing and history and culture, which tends to incline them more or less towards committing crimes.

3. BUT, the biggest factor in crime is neither of those two things. The biggest factor is the physical environment in the time and place where the crime is committed. The next biggest factor is the physical environment in all the places along the path the person took for the 24 hours before they committed the crime.

Our prison system locks up people who got caught doing a crime. We only lock up people after the crime is done, and new people are constantly being born, so this model isn't very good at preventing crime.

Whereas, the environmental model of crime says that everyone will be acted upon by the environment, and the worst environments will cause the most susceptible people to commit crimes. By altering the environments that cause crime, we can reduce crime without needing to lock anyone up.

Just like when you childproof your home you don't need to discipline your kids as much. Some kids are safe even in non-child-safe places. But all kids are safe in child-safe places. It's not that difficult to childproof a home, and it's not that difficult to crime-proof a city. In either case it's totally worth it!