thirty five years ago i took a class called "Poverty in America" at Yale and the professors tried again and again to impress upon us that people generally make entirely rational decisions based on their specific economic circumstances - it's just that their circumstances are entirely untenable
I'd love to hear more insights from that class, if you have the time.
The research center I work for does a lot of work on climate resilience with a focus on community capacity. You know what makes a community highly resilient? Money. That allows them to buy infrastructure, plan, and have alternatives when extreme events happen. Other things, too, but $ is key.
There was a point in my life where I was far from "poor" in the conventional sense ... but all of my capital was trapped in a bureaucratic knot by the Bonairean government and I was watching the clock tick down towards losing everything I had because of a bureaucratic logjam. ...
Like the guy I once met who took Ubers even though it clearly would use up half his day wage. But he didn't have the money to buy a car and distances in the country without public transportation are far.
Swapping our own rationality for those of the folks who make decisions we wouldn't is one of the fastest ways to misunderstand rationality generally, but particularly in these kinds of examples. (Addiction is another one.) The just world phenomenon is rat poison.
The US is an open-air debtors prison.
The more money you have the more choices you have available.
I think about that class all the time. These professors were saying "just give people money" in 1989. They hated the punitive cruelty of means testing. They hated "culture of poverty" talk and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Like, yeah, weirdos exist, and maybe there's more of em out there just due to *waves at America* but generally? People trust the weather service and if they get told "GTFO NOW" they're going to listen and do what they're told -- IF THEY CAN
Something I came to appreciate gradually over time as I aged was that my Marxist sociology professors were the only adults whose worldview created predictions that accurately matched what would go on to happen in the real world after I left school.