Special Guest Blog: Toward a New Definition of Poverty

Not a very long entry this time. A new thought came to me this morning. We’ve all been defining “poverty” incorrectly for a very long time. Poverty isn’t lack of money. Sure, that’s part of poverty, but it isn’t the whole thing.

Poverty is the lack of methods by which one can alter one’s society.

Three main methods for societal alteration exist:

1. Bribery (includes campaign contributions). 2. Violence. 3. Voting.

The rich use all three. The middle class uses #3 mostly, with some of #1 and a very little of #2. The poor use very little of all three: they don’t have any money, when they’re violent they’re processed into a system that renders them damaged for the rest of their lives, and they’ve given up on the premise of voting doing anything — a condition that the middle class is coming to believe more and more as well.

However, it is early morning, so I may be missing something. …