"Yep, taxes and regulations are the only barrier between poverty and prosperity. If you eliminate both, humans can prosper once again."
-I would concede that it is a force negatively acting on poverty, but probably not even the primary force.
-The inequality of traits and the variability of people expresses to spread people across the entire range of capability and productivity. Poverty is a somewhat arbitrary threshold on that curve below which we call people poor. Education can positively affect a subset of productivity traits and decrease the area below the poverty point.
-I estimate that the capability curve is the primary 'cause' of poverty in systems without parasitic organizations deforming it. Altruistic love for all people in the curve does not in itself change the shape of it. A transfer of some kind (knowledge, wealth, infrastructure) from the area above the poverty threshold is needed to subsidize the less capable portion to artificially move it past poverty. It appears like it would need to be a perpetual subsidy, however automation and technology may or may not contain one time transfers that could raise the poor - consider the effects of transferring agriculture or perpetual energy technology.
Sure, people are not equal, that is a fact.
But transferring knowledge to people doesn't cost anything. But transferring 50% of our incomes to them does, and it also doesnt help them.
You know that saying: teach a man to fish and he will be able to feed himself, but give him a fish and he will depend on you.
There will always be jobs suitable for poor people in order to survive. Selling food is one option, and in many cases this type of food is better quality that you buy in supermarkets. I always buy my food from the farmers directly, I distaste GMO food.
The duty of the intellectuals is to teach the poor people ,and subsidize them with knowledge and morality. Not everyone can become rich, but everyone will be better off if people were let to do business freely.
It's not even that much work, most farmers actually enjoy being farmers, it's certainly better than being a bureaucrat, at least you are out in the air, not it some office. And farming is actually useful to society while bureaucracy is a detriment.
I don't think farming automation is that good. There is still plenty of farmland that is barren, and automation is usuually bad for the environment.
Therefore you have a potential of millions of jobs in agriculture, if the government would release those lands to farmers, and then we don't need GMO crap food, which is admittedly causing cancer.
Your concrete examples of the current problems are good examples of parasitic organizations deforming the productivity curve toward poverty. I believe the benefit to the parasitic organization, besides simple value extraction, is the amplified stability it brings by the greatly diminished ability of people around or below the poverty line to cause change to the system.
Exactly. Keeping people intentionally poor in order to prevent them overthrowing them.
This was the key policy during the middle ages, taxes around that time were pretty low, and you could not justify higher taxes against an angry peasant population.
So the kings sent the peasants to war to diminish their standard of living and give loots to the survivors as a lottery system.
But once the steam engine was invented, capitalism was introduced which overthorw the landlords and gave power to the manufacturing class.
Today we see the once liberating organizations to become our opressors, the large corporations that carry a fascistic spirit, that are the extender arm of a tyrannical government.
We need a new form of social change, where the power goes back to the individual. And I believe the internet and some of the new technologies, like 3D printers, and such will accomplish that.