I’ve lived in my recent “community” about 3 years … a little more … it doesn’t matter. I’ve learned a few things about THIS PLACE that leave me crestfallen and despondent. The future is going to need leaders that can escape the trap of violence and bullying, but this place is filled with bullies; that’s not what I want to talk about right now, though it is related.
I’ve been on the front lines of poverty, in America, since I started working here in 2023. I won’t give you the gruesome details, nor can I, but I will say in the process I’ve spoken with others, people in the community committed to helping the poor. Different levels, different aspects of support for those less fortunate. I think I’ve gathered a solid perspective, anecdotal as it is, concerning this issue. You don’t have to agree with me, but I would caution you against ignoring what I have to say.
These observations are MINE ALONE, though others may have similar opinions:
- At the base level where work gets done there is the normal-curve or Bell-curve of competence, but with leadership this could change. I say normal-curve, that’s being generous. Things are skewed towards a lover level of professional and emotional competence than would be possible if there were better leaders, in the world of poverty, than there are now. Because of this, about 50% (my own estimate, anecdotal) of workers at the base level are incompetent and cause more problems than they solve.
- Money is not generally wasted at the base level – despite all the right wing propaganda. Yes, see point 1 above, there is incompetence, but it’s not the base level incompetence that’s expensive. Money is DEFINITELY WASTED at the leadership level, in terms of salaries, the number of “generals”, and their predilection for inefficiency and terrible non-starter type solutions. We need fewer “generals” in this project of poverty reduction, we need more “sergeants”. We need our “sergeants” to be capable and trained.
- For families with disabled children? – things are even worse. The resources required to support these young people is often squandered, misappropriated, and in some cases (this is my opinion) stolen. There is an at risk population in every town/city in America, and this population of poor and homeless families with disabled children is a big problem that many just want to hide on the margins.
- Enough people in America have turned their hearts to stone. Not all, but enough. I think enough people would just assume drown the homeless at this point – fun fact, they are, figuratively speaking, drowning.
- The fear of the poor “rising up” is quite absurd. The homeless are a broken mass, those that are not disabled or on drugs are in a constant state of fight or flight. They are tired and malnourished. THEY are not going to rise up. The working poor are spending most of their days just surviving, and their children are in the same predicament. No doubt there is and will be sporadic violence, but the FEAR of some great uprising of the American lower classes is not based on reality. Reality – almost all Americans, of all income levels, are managing illnesses, taking drugs, coping with cancers, and autism, and a host of “wounded on the battlefield” phenomena. Add in the various real estate and stock market mind fucks – and I’d say no one is building pyramids, or armies, with these folks any time soon.
- The most likely outcome for the poor in America, right now, assuming the system stays in tact: a slow extinction, a miserable death, a nation of phone-watchers walking by as former neighbors sink into the abyss. No revolution. No uprising. Just a lot of dead and dying that are ignored and marginalized to whatever property the departments of transportation want to herd them into, little movable concentration camps.
This is what I think.
These are some rough notes.
I am not hopeful for the state of poverty in America, assuming the system continues to function. I am fearful that we will start “tossing people from the boat” once the economic conditions weaken further. I don’t think any of this will be reformed, nor will voting help. We may have to start from scratch again, and before that happens a great deal of suffering will likely occur.
It’s hard – at some point you might say “Dan, it’s my family or their family”, and to this I add my own agreement: you are right. However, humans are social creatures and we SURVIVE by solving problems, cooperatively, non-coercively, as a team. It’s as a team of free people that we improve ourselves and our community, and it’s how we will make it. I don’t know if people understand this, or realize that there’s a HUGE DIFFERENCE between kindness and communism. Kindness is how we will survive, communism is where we will dig only graves.
Good luck.
