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Poverty



Why does Poverty Exist, and can it be Eliminated?

by Christopher Sunami, 12/2/04

Materialism and Poverty

The root of modern poverty lies in the consumer culture, as stemming from a Materialist worldview. In particular, it stems from the fact that one's own spending power is relative to the spending power of others. In modern American society, wealth, power, education, status and political control have all been united into one single package. It is increasingly true that you have one if and only if you have all the others.

Because of this fact, those with wealth can manipulate all the other factors, not only to ensure their continued dominance, but also to cause poverty --which is an advantage because it lowers the cost of labor.

In the end, there the likelihood of living in extreme poverty increases the more distanced one is from those living in extreme wealth. The two conditions are not, however, unlinked. One is directly dependent on the other. If you are poor black female child starving to death in Kenya, your misery is contingent on the Material advantages of a wealthy white middle-aged man living in America, and vice versa.

Are Solutions to Poverty Possible?

Our world suffers not from lack of resources, but rather from the waste, misuse and misdirection of resources, much of which is caused through the dysfunctional Mechanism of modern Materialism. In addition, the Malthusian prediction (that increased resources lead directly to increased populations consuming those resources) has proven to be avoidable by abandoning the traditional worldviews' equation of more children with more status.

So there are no insurmountable theoretical bars to ending poverty.

A Poverty-Ending Mechanism

French sociologist Marcel Mauss, among others, has pointed out the significant difference it makes to live in a society where status is based on what one gives to the society versus where status is based on what one retains for one's self. In a self-seeking status culture, the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider, and people are competitive, combative and mistrustful. In a gift-status culture, the gap between the wealthy stays small, people are cooperative, peaceful and generous.

So the solution to poverty is to create a society where status correlates with contributions to the society, and not with personal accumulations of wealth. Such a society may not eliminate poverty entirely. Once, however, the artificially inflated pockets of extreme wealth begin to disappear, the vast oceans of artificially exaggerated poverty should likewise vanish.

©2004 Christopher Sunami. All Rights Reserved.

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