You Get What You Want

A great deal of 0's and 1's have been wasted in politically correct intellectual gymnastics attempting to explain why certain groups don't prosper economically. In response, conservatives have had to come up with myriad studies showing that the traditional explanations for poverty remain statistically valid.

LaShawn Barber cites one such study among poor blacks. Though not a statistical study, it comes to the conclusion that those who are willing to accept such conclusions come to: parents who place a premium on education and working out of poverty end up succeeding.

So are we saying that irresponsible parents (in this case) are a failure? Or, in other examples, that Africans or Latin Americans are a failure because they haven't paralleled the economic development of Asian countries? No. I would argue that precisely the opposite is true: they are succesful. However, they are succesful at something else (in each case different), and in many cases the effects are quite undesirable.

Bad parents want kids who will stay out of their hair and want to get by without working hard (at parenting or anything else). And they get what they want. And, by and large, it sucks. It's not that they aren't succeeding - it's that they're succeeding at the wrong thing. In Africa and Latin America, more emphasis is placed on family, leisure, and social enjoyment and less on work and material success relative to Asia; should it surprise us that cultures get results corresponding to the ideas they value?

Many development economists spend a lifetime denying this blatant reality and looking for ways that people who don't care (as much) about education and money can get as educated and as rich as those who do. And they have failed again and again. The best that the politicians and economists can do is (1) remove legal barriers to success, (2) make clear what causes and effects different pursuits have, and (3) let individuals take over their own destiny.

And in some cases, maybe we shouldn't judge people by our standards. The standard measure of a society's quality has traditionally been its per-person GDP. Maybe we should look at a variety of other indicators: crime rate, birth rate (this is considered the sign of success for many cultures), and "general happiness". In exchange, those who have placed less value on material things should stop demanding an unfairly large share of the pie.