When I think about what is most important in the world, I find that personal efficacy is the most compelling value. We tend to think that the rich have the easiest time of it. The reality however is that the poor and destitute have the greatest prospects of being successful than the rich. The reason is that a poor person has no where to go but up. If you are starving, you are going to invest all your effort into personal advancement. People do not develop because they don't know how, they don't develop because people assume the responsibility that they should have borne.
Some people develop despite their comfortable lives. Many millionaires develop not because of necessity but because of good habits. This person may have been a success with our without limbs. People will look at this handicapped mother and think she is special because she is raising a child despite being handicapped, but such is the 'mother of invention'. If you have a sense of personal efficacy. We can have that modelled for us, but if we are poor, we are unlikely to have developed that skill, so we need some destitution in order to develop it.
The reason the poor are poor and will stay poor, is not because people didn't care enough to help them; not because no one gave them a chance, but because people did. People survive because of others, but they excel without them. The only thing you give others is validation. When you give them charity you deny them opportunity and in the process you peddle a false sense of value which can only hinder their development.
Think about that when you vote on the expansion of the welfare state in this coming election, and the call for more taxes. Saving grace or tyranny.
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Author
Andrew Sheldon
