that "we" would be better off if all the poets and street performers were making good livings in the white economy,

Wait, what? I was talking about self-modification, not social normativity. It might be a point about the latter in context, but it isn't out of context; I was responding to the words you presented, not the ones in the source.

And my objection isn't that it raises the wrong question, but that it closes that question with a wrong answer.