Strawman. I was answering the previous point: betting is probably a reasonable choice when you have not much to begin with. I would not make a 2 lines comment to explain poverty as a whole.
No. Betting is a reasonable choice when you, like a VC can bet on a ton of options and still have cash left for immediate problems. All other times, betting is playing your luck and bound to fail.
First, I don't want to read to much into the OP regarding betting. Because there is something to it. Without risks no rewards. Yet what constitutes a risk and a reward differ significantly based on your resources.
That being said, risking some of your resources, money, time, whatever, to get out of poverty is reasonable. Betting on a start-up might not be. Simply because if it goes wrong instead of rewards there might be debt and even worse poverty.
This is a fallacy. The vast majority of people are rewarded for minimizing risk, not taking it. People justify extra risk for disproportionate reward, not reward in general. You have to take risks if you want relatively unbounded returns. Getting out of poverty does not require that at all.
When you're in poverty, getting out of poverty is about risking, but not in a lottery kind of way you're talking about. It's about risking to get away with not spending the money on some immediate emergency and holding it for some bigger emergency in the future.
> A poor person not betting on anything is bound to stay poor. Your point is?
And the poor know this. And yet, they still have literally everything to lose if they fail. They don't want to be poor, but being poor is better than being with absolutely nothing.
To you it may seem there is little difference between being poor and being financially wiped out. To the person experiencing it, the difference is huge. Among other things, it can mean the difference between struggling to make rent, and not being able to.
Some bets are safer than others. A poor person betting everything had better have a sure bet that will pay off quickly. Not many of these exist.
A poor person is safest betting on a stable (if low paying) job and ensuring he keeps it. Taking on a few side projects on the weekend can earn some extra cash, but there comes a time you either need to bet on growing that side business, or not: if you bet on it you better have enough contacts to grow it to a real job quickly, if not you have to start refusing work for the side job - the worst thing you could do is to fall asleep and get fired from the day job while the side job isn't paying enough to live on.
