Uncharted Territory in Anti-Poverty
Primary tabs
To suppress resource scarcity in all of society, would be to eradicate poverty. Since the inception of anti-poverty in 1964, when former President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty in his state of the union address, no organization has documented findings proven to eradicate poverty. Yet, the only answer to the question, “Can poverty be eradicated?” are, “It's always been around,” or, “It's human nature,” but never any positive analysis. In order for all of society to live with an insufficient level of scarcity to allow poverty to subsist, some invention or new technology must be produced. Could poverty eradication be a technology? Technology does come in the form of methods and systems as well as machines and gadgets. Wouldn't it be safe to say that research and development is the next step to take in order to achieve the technological breakthrough that is poverty eradication?
What must we research in order to eradicate poverty? The simple answer is economics. There are theories for poverty eradication and existing systemic barriers that can be explored by applying the scientific method. For example, the Profit Theory, which provides that one party’s profit comes at the cost of another party’s economic mobility. Another is the scarcity suppression theory which provides that poverty cant subsist if scarcity of goods and services to everyone in society is suppressed. Last but not least, the Commerce Theory, which provides that scarcity justifies the use of commercial exchange and without scarcity, commerce is irrelevant. So, why aren’t anti-poverty organizations working in this regard?
Some of us have come to believe that poverty will always exist due to religious ties like that of the Holy Bible, in the Book of Matthew, chapter 26, verse 11, in which, Jesus is quoted saying, “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.” Take it any way you want but Christians have interpreted this dialog as the Lord Jesus Christ prophesying poverty to be an ever existing factor of life outside of Heaven. This interpretation may seem harmless but in the case of anti-poverty, it fuels pessimism against inquiring the possibility of permanently ending poverty.
Commerce is also a reason many of us believe that poverty will always exist; being the preferred system of resource distribution and fulfillment in the American culture. Our economy, culture, and values, are shaped around the buying and selling of scarce resources. If all services and goods were abundant, buying and selling would be counterproductive, in that, commerce would introduce scarcity to an abundant situation. We would revert away from commerce which includes business, wage labor, profit, money, banks, insurance, life as we know it; raising the question, “What would people do?” So, instead of inquiring the possibility of suppressing scarcity and fine tuning cultural design thereafter, we indirectly dismiss the opportunity of progressing in the war on poverty.
My favorite belief rests on the idea that technology has some sort of foreseeable limit that prohibits the permanent suppression of scarcity in society. It’s reasonable to conclude that poverty eradication would require science-fiction like advancements but it is incorrect to assume these advancements are unobtainable. For example, as long as service is based on human labor, it will contain a level of scarcity that conflicts with the eradication. So, there needs to be some sort of invention or breakthrough to succeed human service which many believe is impossible regardless of the constant progression of automation.
Despite all the strong arguments against this path in anti-poverty, neither has the backing to render it impossible which is why this uncharted territory deserves a shot at wide scale exploration. The government has the R&D resources in their $135-billion-dollar annual budget split between defense and non-defense. This is clearly a non-defense project but considering the behavior influenced by the environmental conditions of finite resources scarce to many and abundant to a few, the defense budget should be in question of splitting resources for the eradication of poverty as well.
Related: Bookchin's Post Scarcity Anarchism | A Trickle-Up Economy | Why we're not protesting the economic collapse like the rest of the world, or What's Next? 'Inverted Totalitarianism' | American Harvest: a superficial, patronizing, and smug film
