On poverty

Introduction

This page is intended to, over time, gather various thoughts on and around poverty.

Unless otherwise stated, or otherwise clear from context, I use poverty in a broadly absolute sense. I do not go as far as to require that someone would have constant trouble with, say, keeping the children clothed and fed, but I do reject the intellectually dishonest propaganda trick of “relative poverty”. Nevertheless much of what is said below applies to “relative poverty” too, which very considerably reduces the problems that arise when others use the word with an unclear implication (as with the Harris voter below).

(And words like “poor” and “rich” are to be understood in economic terms. More abstract meanings, or meanings that point to other fields, might well be more important, but are off topic.)

The time of first publication was January, 2025, and phrasings like “modern” should be seen relative that baseline. (However, typically, much the same applies going back for decades and, I suspect, will apply going forward for decades.)

Causes

Introduction

At some point during the 2024 POTUS campaigns, I read about someone who wanted to vote for Harris, because Harris would understand what caused poverty. While similar sentiments are not uncommon on the Left (with the person or party of supposed understanding varying), they tend to be very, very wrong—as demonstrated by the supposed causes and the cures suggested. Note e.g. how little actual success LBJ’s “war on poverty” has actually had.

Likewise, it is not uncommon for works of fiction to have hyper-naive takes, say, that the poverty of the one would be a pre-requisite for the wealth of another. (Why this is hyper-naive will follow from the below discussion. Note the significant difference from the claim that an uneven distribution of wealth would be a pre-requisite, which, depending on definitions, can be partially true.)

Below, I will give some big-picture thoughts on real causes of poverty, with a broad division into the society-wide and the individual. (Similar principles will apply when we look at e.g. different and somewhat permanent sub-populations, different regions of a country, and different industries/vocations/whatnot.)

Society

Poverty is strongly related to a lack of wealth in the society at hand. Such lack of wealth was the original state everywhere (if we go back far enough in time) and can arise to various degrees even in a previously wealthy country through negative developments (e.g. a devastating war).

However, the main cause of long-term lack of wealth is a lack of economic growth, which, in turn, usually goes back to unsound economic policies, a suppression of free markets, a removal of incentives to build individual wealth, and similar. Contrast e.g. North and South Korea, East and West Germany, and the USSR and the USA at various points in time, or look at how various countries have fared when policies have changed for the worse or the better (a very notable recent case is the economic destruction in Venezuela under the Maduro and Chavez regimes). Economic growth (or, even absent growth, economic level) also often goes hand in hand with technological progress/level, with secondary implications like the importance of such progress, the benefits of channelling good minds into science and technology, etc. (However, the purpose of this text is not to give a detailed view of how to achieve economic growth, and I will leave other factors and details out.)

Of particular note is that those who are or want to be individually rich, if behaving rationally, have little interest in keeping others poor. For instance, if someone produces and sells some good, it is in his best interest that (after adjustment for the purchasing power of the currency) customers buy as much as possible at as high a markup as possible. If they have less money, his chances are the worse; if they have more money, his chances are the better. He might well benefit from keeping his own costs, including wages, down, which can reduce the wealth of others, but (a) the more he earns, the less his incentives to do so, (b) the more the economy flowers, the greater both the competition for workers and the upwards pressure on wages, (c) if wages were kept down everywhere, customers at large would have less money, leading to exactly that worsening of his own chances.

With an eye at the Left, a common historical position is that the economy is a zero-sum game—what there is to go around today is what there will be to go around tomorrow and the best that we can do is to change who gets what within those limits. Worse, many naive (and/or intellectually dishonest) Leftists make similar claims even today, make policy suggestions that base on at least approximately this world-view, etc. As a quick test: are policies more about getting the economy to grow or more about redistribution?

The severe hitch with such Leftist policies is that they hinder growth, thereby preventing the increase in wealth that would truly have been of benefit.

Individuals

Given a certain level of societal wealth, what can make some individual poor?

Well, first we have the observation that a too poor society can make poverty almost inevitable or, say, make a move from poverty to non-poverty very much harder. At an extreme, even the “relatively wealthy” (as a mirror to today’s “relatively poor”) might seem poor by today’s standards—and even at less extreme levels it might be that they, without seeming poor, still have to forsake much of what even the “relatively poor” of a modern Western country might take for granted, simply because of a low technological, scientific, medical, whatnot development.

Assuming, however, a sufficient degree of societal wealth and some other criteria (partially discussed below), adult poverty becomes or can be made mostly a matter of the individual himself. (Whereas poverty as a child will depend more on the parents or whoever otherwise “provides”.) Those who work hard, are thrifty, do not have more children than they can afford, etc., can normally avoid poverty, even if not very bright and even absent government help (which, next, raises the question why modern societies put such enormous amounts of money to exactly such purposes).

Unfortunately, there is no perfect guarantee, even for the bright/industrious/whatnot, because sometimes things go wrong for reasons that we cannot control. For instance, a crippling accident can leave someone willing to work unable to do so. (Also note an excursion on governmental misprioritization.) For instance, a good business idea might fail through sheer bad luck.

A particular complication in (at least) modern Western countries is that an apparent lack of money (e.g. in form of buffers; as opposed to the much rarer true poverty) often goes back equally or more to undue spending than to lack of income. For instance, many of low income nevertheless spend great amounts on entertainment electronics, drinking in bars, vacations abroad, and similar—and not just “great amounts” relative their own income but even relative many who earn better. Some low-earners even seem to live “paycheck to paycheck” because they have a mentality of “what comes in this month is the spending money for this month”—not because the paycheck is so small that they have no choice. (High-earners who make the same mistake seem to be rarer and, by dint of their higher earnings, often have a greater ability to adapt from month to month, should the need arise. However, they too can be flattened, e.g. if fired while having no savings to draw upon.) Likewise, a “can I afford to X” is often measured solely by what money is in the bank (or, worse, how much credit is still available on the credit cards), rather than sober thoughts about whether a certain purchase is a good use of money relative other potential uses, including basic necessities, investments, and use as a buffer for unexpected expenses (say, a broken refrigerator).

Credit cards and other types of temporary credits are an interesting example, in that buying something on credit can be much more expensive than buying it with ready money. Yes, the product/service can be had “now” instead of “later”, but a habitual use of credit does not only bring a cost—it can also lead to the same delays in the long term, because the credit is used up or the cost of meeting payments/interest reduces spending power. If the option exists to delay purchases in the early phases, the long-term net result will then be better.

Now, to look at factors that can keep someone born into poverty back, e.g. by preventing a career in “the professions”, most factors in today’s Western world are rooted in the individual, e.g. through laziness, stupidity, poor life choices, and a general “bad attitude”. (I use the last phrase with some hesitation, as it often amounts to nothing more than a kid’s unwillingness to comply with arbitrary adult impositions; however, there are very legitimate cases of a “bad attitude” resulting in self-sabotage or missed chances, e.g. because someone prefers to “look tough” and hang around at street corners over going to the library and risking the label of “nerd”.) Here, it is important not to blame society, “structures”, “discrimination”, whatnot, in a blanket manner, but to actually look at own actions and demand own responsibility. (A point where the Left almost invariably goes wrong.)

Elsewhere and in older versions of the Western world, other rules can/could apply, including the presence of obstacles that prevent even the smart and industrious from achieving even remotely what they otherwise would. Examples of such include caste systems, a lack of educational opportunities (be it in general, for members of the “wrong” group, or for those without existing wealth), and even family obligations and long or expensive travel. (A bright farmer’s boy might have been able to make his fortune in the big city, but if he had two weeks’ travel to even reach the city and his work was needed on the farm, he would be far less likely to go than a typical modern farmer’s boy.)

Looking more in detail, this division is not as clear as it might superficially seem. It is, for instance, still often the case that someone with rich parents has an easier road to own success, e.g. through better contacts, more easily affordable education, and the knowledge that if he founds a company fresh out of college and fails, he can still fall back on his parents in another manner than someone from a low-earning/-asset family. However, for most, own characteristics will dominate, and many who were born in such a family have grown outright rich through their own efforts—and very, very many have made it to a quite comfortable life, while falling short of being rich. (Vice versa, many a “rich kid” has ended up broke through laziness, wastefulness, and irresponsibility.) Likewise, there are a great many cases of governmental mechanisms that hold the individual back, including high taxes that take away the fruit of his labors, or, paradoxically, wasteful and enforced schooling—the bright can usually learn far better outside school, and school is then something of a negative educational opportunity.

Poverty and the welfare state

An obvious observation is that countries with a welfare state tend to (a) be rich on the societal level and (b) see few cases of individual poverty.

A naive explanation (and one often suggested by Leftist propagandists) is that having a welfare state is what causes (a) and (b). In reality, the main causalities go in another direction, with a great risk that a welfare state actually hampers the wealth and welfare of the nation. (But note that “main” does not imply totality and that constellations might be findable where this naive explanation does hold to some degree and/or for some time.)

Consider e.g. what happens if someone tries to impose a welfare state on too poor a country and/or make a welfare state grow beyond some dependent-on-wealth limit: Those forced to pay for the welfare state would to too great a part be found among those who cannot afford to pay, which could lead to too great protests and block the attempts. In a richer nation, in contrast, more can afford to pay, are less likely to protest that loudly, and might even be easy targets for propaganda about “sharing”, “giving back”, whatnot, over the tax bill (as opposed to private charity on an individual basis, donations to charitable organizations, whatnot; and as opposed to spending for one’s own benefit, which can make others better off in other ways). Or consider if we have taxes at some fix level of, say, average GNP and how a growing/stagnant/shrinking economy will change government income and ability to spend. (Note that governments are more likely to increase spending than to decrease taxes in case of a surplus, while they might be more prone to increase taxes than reduce spending in case of a deficit.)

Both the relative rarity of the poor and the negative consequences of a welfare state on further improvements follow from the prior discussion of causes of poverty. Had it not been for the prior wealth needed, it might have been justified to speak of a “wealth-fail state”; however, even as is, future economic growth and future wealth improvements are hampered by welfare states.

In a next step, we have the paradox that any purported benefits from a welfare state will be smaller in a richer nation than in a poorer one, because there will typically be fewer truly poor around, fewer who cannot build personal wealth if they apply themselves, and similar. This is likely one of the motivations behind the fiction of “relative poverty”, which can create an illusion of poverty where none is present or create or exacerbate a sense of jealousy, because it is no longer enough to live in a good apartment and have a plenitude of food—no, the “poor” kids must be dressed in Nikes and allowed to travel abroad at the same rates as the middle-class kids. These flawed perceptions can then be used to give a pseudo-justification for a further increase of the size of the welfare state. (Also note prior remarks on propaganda.)

Excursion on relative wealth

Introduction and meta-information

In the main text and an original side-note, I casually mentioned an idea of “relative wealth”, as a saner counter-part to “relative poverty”, implying e.g. that a medieval king might be wealthy in some regards but not (by modern standards) all.

With the discovery of some ideas about poverty on Wikipedia that would make a medieval king outright poor, I added this excursion to incorporate the contents of the original side-note (unedited, for now) and a discussion of these newly discovered ideas.

Original side-note

Technology (etc.) is in so far a confounding factor that it can make comparisons misleading and shows that wealth is not everything, even when we restrict ourselves to the “material” aspects of life. To claim that someone “relatively poor” with modern electronic equipment and access to the Internet would be richer than a medieval king, who lacked such equipment, might be absurd. However, in some regards he does have options that the medieval king did not—just like the king had options that he does not. (And an alternate claim of “I would rather be a low earner in modern day Sweden than a medieval king of (proto-)Sweden” is far from absurd.)

Here, we might have to use entirely different measures than wealth, e.g. quality of life (which often is more a matter of how we live our lives than what money and technology we have) or measures that pick specific criteria independent of each other, say, life expectancy and levels of physical pain. (Toothache, e.g., appears to have been a severe and chronic issue for many in the past—kings included.)

As much as I dislike the term and, to a lesser degree, the concept of “relative poverty” in the now, a retrospective application of “relative wealth” might actually have some value. To this, note two important differences: Firstly, the “relatively poor” are not poor by any reasonable standard (unless also “absolutely poor”, in which case “relative poverty” adds no further value as a concept), while the “relatively wealthy” were wealthy but simply lacked in e.g. technology and healthcare relative the modern world in a manner that potentially makes their wealth seem hollow (for want of a better word). Secondly, my introduction of “relative wealth” aims at reducing a problem of comparison, while the introduction of “relative poverty” aims at scoring cheap political points by creating a flawed view of the world among voters.

(In as far as there is an additional benefit to the concept of relative poverty, e.g. when comparing social aspects of degree of wealth, this does not justify the choice of term. I have no prior thought on what to use instead, but, off the top of my head, it might be reasonable to just speak in terms of abstract categories, which cover certain population groups, with correspondingly abstract names, without any positive or negative connotations. This could, for instance, result in five categories with names like “Category [1/I/A]” through “Category [5/V/E]”.)

Paradoxical ideas on poverty

Reading a Wikipedia text on the idea of a “poverty threshold”^w (oldid=1311722485), I found a portion that implied very odd (even by today’s standards) ideas about poverty, from a paper by one David Gordon—ones that would have made virtually all the high and mighty from before some date “absolutely poor” (no, not “relatively poor”) as a necessary consequence of the standards of their respective age. By this take, those “relatively wealthy” by my take would simultaneously be “absolutely poor”. Similar remarks apply to many outside the Western world, even today.

When reading on, I would encourage the reader to consider how, e.g. and respectively, a modern day nomad of wealth/status/power/whatnot in his own circles, a rich man from the 18th century, a medieval king or a basileios from Ancient Greece, and a stone-age tribal leader might fair. This, in particular, with an eye at only two (!) failures being needed to fall into the category of absolute poverty.

(The text is quoted with minor changes to formatting and removal of page-internal references and an image. Square brackets indicate/delimit my comments.)

David Gordon’s paper, “Indicators of Poverty and Hunger”, for the United Nations, further defines absolute poverty as the absence of any two of the following eight basic needs:

• Food: Body mass index must be above 16.

  [
  While this is very likely a sign of undernourishment, it is not a given that it goes back to poverty. Note cases of anorexia and other eating disorders that have flowered in affluent modern Western countries.

  Other potential reasons for such a BMI exist, including cancer and AIDS.

  More generally, BMI is a very blunt tool and should be taken with a grain of salt. (The more so for high BMIs, however.) In particular, someone small, e.g. a young child or an adult from a “pygmy” population, could have a misleadingly low BMI through the reliance on height squared, which underestimates the effect of size considerably. While the exact power of height to use is debatable (and does appear to fall short of the “obvious” answer of 3) this really makes a difference. Assume, for the sake of argument, that the correct power is 2.5 and that someone at 1.80 m has a “fair” BMI of 19.5 (well above that 16, if low for, say, modern Germany). Scale this person down to 1.20 m, and the BMI would suddenly drop to 15.9, with no further implications of e.g. undernourishment. (Multiply 20 by the square root of 1.20/1.80, or go through longer calculations to find the original weight, scale the weight down for the new height, and recalculate BMI.) Clearly, then, a BMI of X at height 1.8 m and at 1.2 m has very different implications.
  ]

• Safe drinking water: Water must not come solely from rivers and ponds, and must be available nearby (fewer than 15 minutes’ walk each way).

  [
  That water comes from a river or a pond does not automatically make it unsafe. This the more so in areas with a low human population, for rapidly moving rivers, where water is taken close to an underground source, in cold climates, and, likely, with some other factors that do not occur to me off the top of my head. (And an equalization of rivers with ponds might be problematic, as ponds are far more likely to have stagnant water.)

  To boot, water that is unsafe can often be made safe simply by boiling, which has been a very common practice even among the rich in past times—to the point that medieval beer consumption is often attributed to exactly problems with water quality, which, for high and low, made beer a safer bet. (Filtering is also a means of making water safe, but I am uncertain how common this might have been historically and it is inherently a bit trickier that boiling.) To this, I note that the claim is about specifically safe drinking water, which excludes water used for cooking—possibly, because the author has factored in the effects of boiling. (The elaboration speaks of just water, but it does so with a “not [...] solely”, which, likely, reflects a difference in purpose between drinking and other water; however, the formulation is sufficiently poor that something else could be intended.)

  A “15 minutes’ walk” is not that remarkable and not a sign of poverty. We might have something as simple as a village sharing a good, safe, abundant well used for drinking water, with e.g. river water used for other purposes than drinking, and a bit of a walk for those more distant from the well. For someone rich, such a distance might be immaterial, because he might simply have a servant or two fetch all the drinking water that the household needs once a day.

  ---

  Side-note:

  The “15 minutes’ walk” is also an illustration of other weaknesses in the text, as it fails to consider e.g. the health of the person at hand. Here someone could turn poor merely through being a bit older and taking a little longer to walk a certain distance than in the past. And what if that walk can be replaced with a “2 minute’s drive” in a car? Is the car owner still poor? And what about a “5 minute’s bike ride”?

  Generally, I do not go into all problems with the text/ideas, because I keep discovering more of them, e.g., immediately prior to writing this paragraph, the question whether drinking water is necessarily that important. Yes, it very often is—but not always and especially not for the rich, who might spend less time being active and sweating and have greater access to e.g. milk, juice, and that beer. Yes, these alternatives are ultimately mostly water, but they do not fall into categories like “potable” and not “potable” water. Does it then matter whether someone has access to non-river, non-pond water by less than a “15 minutes’ walk”—or does it matter whether he can stay hydrated with a reasonable effort and without endangering his health? Say, for the sake of argument, that the tap water in a given modern Western city is deemed unfit for human consumption: This would be a potentially major inconvenience, but it would not make the inhabitants poor, not even those who have more than a “15 minutes’ walk” to the nearest grocery store. Indeed, there are many who go with bottled water as a matter of course, even when the tap water is perfectly drinkable. (An “unfit for human baths and showers” could actually be a bigger problem.)

  ---

  ]

• Sanitation facilities: Toilets or latrines must be accessible in or near the home.

  [
  Here, I might need to look into exact definitions used by Gordon to understand his intent. A word like “latrine[s]”, in particular, could, at an extreme, be seen as hole in the ground, to be dug and covered again, every now and then, and would have little need for wealth. (Also note the vagueness of “near”; “in” has certainly been an exception, if “home” is taken to refer to the actual building in which someone lives.)

  However, the level of plumbing (in the literal or the euphemistic sense) has often less reflected individual wealth and more how “advanced” the local society was.
  ]

• Health: Treatment must be received for serious illnesses and pregnancy.

  [
  This is rife with problems, beginning with a complete neglect of whether the treatment was effective—and medical treatments have had a very spotty record even in rich and advanced countries and even among the rich in those countries. This in particular for serious illnesses.

  Not everyone who has treatment available also makes use of it, contrary to “must be received”, e.g. for religious reasons.

  Combining these two objections, something like “Can afford effective treatment [...]” or “Can afford typical treatment [...]” would be better. (But not perfect: Even today, treatment is often not effective, making the former too strict, while the latter could be satisfied with quackery, if quackery is the typical treatment. In both cases, objections around testing for the state of society instead of the state of the individual still apply.)

  Specifically giving birth (which is the likely implication of “pregnancy”) might often require help, but even that is usually something that a woman can manage on her own or (especially, for first timers) with a hand to hold and reassurances from someone who has been through it before. The issue is what happens when something goes wrong, and (until historically recent times) external helpers have had a coin-toss record in such cases, be it with threats against the mother or the child. Hygiene can be quite important, but was not properly understood until, again, historically recent times. In many cases, it cannot be ruled out that the helpers made things worse.

  As for actual pregnancy, there were comparatively few dangers, fewer yet that could be detected, and virtually nothing that could be done. Even most modern pregnancies see very little intervention. Today differs through an ability to often detect and intervene in the rare cases when it is needed. (And, of course, feelgood moments around ultrasound images and the ability to find out the sex of the baby in advance.)

  (Reservation: Proofreading, I have some fear that the “treatment” in case of pregnancy is a euphemism for abortion. Here too, however, the historical record is quite poor in terms of the risk to the potential mother. Certainly, there is no true “rich vs. poor” aspect to it. Certainly, there is no medical, as opposed to political, reason to single it out.)
  ]

• Shelter: Homes must have fewer than four people living in each room. Floors must not be made of soil, mud, or clay.

  [
  The number of “people” per room is often very secondary to the number per area, as when a house only has one room or when one room dominates the house. In the case of small children (and e.g. a two parents, two toddlers constellation) four per room might not be very remarkable. (Besides, how are “room” and “living” coordinated? Is e.g. a one kitchen + one bedroom setup counted as one or two rooms for such purposes?) This the more so, when the waking hours are spent outdoors or otherwise out-of-house to begin with.

  As for material of floors, many rich and wealthy of their day have had such floors, be it because of limitations in technology or because of e.g. a nomadic lifestyle that made greater efforts pointless. There is a great ambiguity about at least clay. (Are we talking just “raw” clay? Clay burnt to bricks? Something else?) Generally, how does a “soil, mud, or clay” floor count if covered by, say, tree branches? Even e.g. a soil floor (even uncovered) could conceivably be a quality product, if made and treated in the right manner—and need not automatically be inferior to e.g. a crude wooden floor.

  (In terms of suitability as a criterion, as opposed to evaluation of a criterion relative factors like rich vs. poor, further issues can be raised, e.g. that nothing is said about a roof, let alone a waterproof roof.)
  ]

• Education: Everyone must attend school or otherwise learn to read.

  [
  (Why writing finds no mention is unclear. While the skills needed are not identical with those for reading, I will largely consider writing included. The use of “Everyone” here and in the next item is puzzling and yet another pointer to a comparison between societies.)

  Historically, great illiteracy and no school has been the norm. Many past kings seem to have preferred to hire scribes over learning to read and write for themselves—and even the existence of writing systems cannot be guaranteed at too early times or in the wrong places. Indeed, whether there has been any benefit to the ability to read has varied greatly with the surrounding society. Today, it is the key to learning and, often, communication, but it might have been of no use to a medieval farmer who need not ever have seen books beyond the Bible and other religious texts, let alone owned some.

  To boot, school often does more harm than good, through being a poor way of gaining an education, and neither school nor education should be limited to reading.
  ]

• Information: Everyone must have access to newspapers, radios, televisions, computers, or telephones at home.

  [
  None of these have been relevant until historically recently, with reservations for what might be classified as a newspaper—and even a very wide definition of newspaper will cut out most of the past and most of past humanity.

  Tying them to “at home” is too restrictive. What, e.g., if the one drops by a library after the end of work to read a daily paper, while another subscribes? (And neither of them have radios and whatnots. Note that “or” is used.) It might well be that the former is the wealthier through having more disposable income without that subscription...

  ---

  Side-note:

  This example is also a good illustration of how some of the defects with this list could be fixed by switching from absolute to relative poverty (to the degree that relative poverty is seen as legitimate). Consider an alternate formulation based on “must have access to the information sources and communication channels normally expected in the society at hand”.

  As for “and communication channels”, computers and telephones can be used to “send” to others; however, because the other three cannot (or only in a more limiting manner, as with an advert or a letter-to-the-editor; and with the reservation that I take “radio” to imply “radio receiver”), it might be that Gordon had his eyes only on “receiving”. If so, just “information sources” would cover enough land. A deeper discussion would need clarifications of such points.

  Here we can also see a danger of moving goalposts and failing to consider the state of society particularly clearly, e.g. in that a similar text written today/2025 might specify a “smartphone” and one written in 2055 something that not even the rich of today/2025 have—just like even the rich of 1995 did not have smartphones, the rich of 1965 did not have computers in their homes, etc.

  ---

  ]

• Access to services: This item is undefined by Gordon, but normally is used to indicate the complete panoply of education, health, legal, social, and financial (credit) services.

  [
  (Note that “This item [...]” is part of the quoted text, not a remark by me.)

  This again runs into a historical issue of what services existed when, and is not necessarily relevant to e.g. being rich or poor even in today’s world on an everyday level. Further comments are tricky without more specific claims, be it by Gordon or by Wikipedia, but I do point to risks around “social” (especially) that it might try to force some variation of a “welfare” society as prerequisite for not being poor, which is absurd. Also note past discussions on other pages. (Notably, on the UN on human rights, which could also shed some light on portions of the other items.) I also point to issues like the hypothetical inclusion of “education” and “health” potentially making earlier items redundant or (especially, with “education”) potentially exceeding them very considerably, which raises some doubts as the correctness of the Wikipedia interpretation.
  ]

Excursion on Leftist ideas that work better when reversed

(Contents have been moved to a dedicated page and extended.)

Excursion on social mobility and governmental/collectivist hindrances

A key observation is that a lack of social mobility is often contingent on interference by the government or other powerful institutions and/or a strong collectivist streak in society—something that should be a warning to those pushing for Leftist ideologies in the name of equality.

At an extreme, we have the take of some (notably, Swedish) Leftists that it matters less how much we have than that we all have the same, which, taken to its logical conclusion, would make social mobility non-existing, because individuals would be stuck where they are relative society. (While any society-wide improvements, irrelevant to social mobility, would also be at severe risk.) Ditto e.g. a society based on ‘to everyone according to his need; from everyone according to his ability”, and similar constellations. (In all cases, with the possibility of an anti-individual “some are more equal than others” and/or of special treatment for, say, party functionaries.)

Even e.g. a “welfare” state often does much to hamper social mobility through mechanisms like high taxes on the successful, redistributions to the unsuccessful, skewed incentives, whatnot.

However, consider e.g. the type of system of powerful nobility-by-inheritance so wide-spread in historical Europe. This system did to some degree go back to who happened to have a castle and an armed force at his disposal, true, but the government (typically, in some monarchical form) was more important for its long-term preservation, through mechanisms like enforcing heritability (in general; often, primogeniture in particular), through deciding who was or was not awarded with a noble title, through deciding who was or was not allowed to build a castle and have an armed forced, through deciding who is or is not allowed access to “higher offices’, through providing a judiciary and/or granting judicial power to nobles, whatnot.

Or consider primogeniture more generally: If we, say, have a big farm and the law says that the eldest son inherits the whole farm upon the death of the father, he will (to some approximation) step into the shoes of the father in terms of wealth and social rank, and will preserve the distance to e.g. farm hands. (While the future of his brothers might entail becoming farm hands.) If the farm, instead, is divided into roughly equal parcels among brothers, they will each, initially, be short of their father, but they and others will have a greater chance of getting their hands on additional (or first, in the case of some “and others”) parcels of farm as time goes by, because such parcels are now both more plentiful and smaller (saving enough to buy a smaller parcel is easier than for a bigger parcel, all other factors equal). The result is a greater social mobility and a greater influence of factors like own competence and industriousness.

Or consider guilds and guild-like setups, which are often a source of problems—and the more so when they are government sanctioned, e.g. by the right to determine who is at all allowed to practice a particular trade/craft/profession/whatnot. Such setups typically limit free competition and the ability for the talented and industrious to set up business, including through making various rights dependent on having gone through long and wasteful formal programs, by giving sons of masters preference over outsiders/newcomers, and similar.

While guilds are somewhat collectivist (as are at least some cases of “estate” societies) on an insiders vs. outsiders basis, clearer cases can be found, based on e.g. race/ethnicity/religion. (Governmental “help” can further such collectivist takes, but is not strictly necessary.) A notable recurring case is Christians (historically) and Muslims (both now and then) vs. Jews. While the current U.S. is not an example, contrary to Leftist hate propaganda, portions of it might be, e.g. in some Muslim-dominated areas. The recurring homogenization of political opinion in some fields might also be seen as a special case (or, failing that, as something in an extended family), e.g. within many colleges and news media where non-Leftists are unwelcome and can be mistreated by their peers for not being Leftists.

Excursion on governmental misprioritization of the disabled vs. the unemployed

A sad twist on those who e.g. fall victim to a “crippling accident” is the issue of unemployment insurance vs. disability insurance in Germany. It used to be that the government handled both unemployment benefits and disability-that-prevents-work (“Arbeitsunfähigkeit”; no good “official” translation occurs to me) benefits.

The latter made great sense, as it fell into the highly unlikely, yet devastating, special circumstances where the government can do much good through help, where private insurance might be troublesome, and where even the cautious might decide against insurance on a cost–benefit basis. (A private insurer might, e.g., go to extreme lengths to find excuses not to pay even legitimate claims, as the payouts could go on for decades.)

The former did not make sense, as unemployment can easily be handled by private insurance, as many or most might not need unemployment insurance (say, because they have buffers to handle short-term unemployment), as the competent/professional/industrious/whatnot are far less likely to be laid off than the incompetent/unprofessional/lazy/whatnot, and as the type of unemployment insurance popular with governments (unlike private insurers) can give incentives to remain unemployed unnecessarily long or, even, to originally enter unnecessary unemployment.

In my early years in Germany (maybe, 2000), there was a sudden revision: The disability-that-prevents-work benefits were cut and the citizens told to get private insurance, should they have the wish for continued protection. The unemployment benefits were kept. In other words, the exact opposite change was made to what should have been made. The reason? The cut, to my vague recollection, was made to save money. Cutting unemployment benefits would have saved much more money, but might also have risked losing votes or got in the way of the redistributive effects that unemployment benefits had but disability-that-prevents-work benefits did not. (Various governmental benefits and insurance schemes very often have a strong redistributive aspect, in that the wealthy should pay for the unwealthy, the industrious for the lazy, the bright for the dull, etc. In this, they are an excellent example of Leftist abuse of government power and “hidden socialism”.)