Subject: Re: Qualities for success
I am quite willing to say that people are poor because they are lazy, stupid or lacking the skills needed to work in a modern society because their culture doesn't promote personal virtues needed by workers.

The difficulty is that all of these statements ("people are poor because....") are always going to be inaccurate.

Some people are lazy and are poor because they are lazy. Some people are very hardworking and are still poor despite being hardworking. Some people are unlucky, or below average intelligence, or have a negative incident that wasn't their fault - and end up being poor because of it. Some people are unlucky, or below average intelligence, or have a negative incident that wasn't their fault - and still end up not being poor. Some people are lazy and poor - and would have been poor even if they hadn't been lazy. Some people are hardworking and rich - but would have been rich even if they hadn't been hardworking.

Some people are poor and they made bad choices (got addicted to drugs, dropped out of school, and the like). Some of those people would have been poor even without those bad choices - and some could have been not poor, and it was their bad choices that changed their life. And the same is true of people who are wealthy - some people are wealthy even though they made bad choices.

Ideally, as a society we would want to help people who are lacking certain things that are necessary for a successful life where those deficiencies are through no fault of their own - to make sure everyone has a chance to avoid poverty. Some of the things people lack, though, are not material. It's much harder to form a consensus on whether we (as a society) should make up for that. They might lack capabilities or intelligence, or they may lack a role model or someone to serve as a governing influence in their young life. They might lack self-control or decision-making skills relative to their peer group. They might also lack judgment or drive or ambition.

I think Brooks is correct on his factual assessment - the "what is" questions, rather than the "what should be" question. There's a large and pretty solid body of evidence that providing material resources to poor people in rich countries doesn't do much to improve their life outcomes. Largely that's because poor people in rich countries are in a different situation than poor people in poor countries. In poor countries, there are plenty of people that are poor that wouldn't have been if they had been in a country with better resources or opportunities or what have you - they've got all the non-material things they need for success, they just lack a context to be successful in. But in rich countries, people like that are often not-poor (not all of them, but a lot of them). So when you provide material assistance to the poor in a rich country, you don't get much beneficial change in life outcomes.

The key dilemma is how to get people the non-material things they need. We, as a society, probably can't even agree on the vector for getting people non-material things they need - let alone what those things should be.