Ok, while we're nitpicking Paul Graham's essay, I should mention the part of it that struck me as least rational when I read it. Namely, the sloppy way he talks about "poverty", conflating relative and absolute poverty. After all, thanks to advances in technology what's considered poverty today was considered unobtainable luxury several centuries ago.
Advances in technology have certainly improved living standards across the board, but they have not done much for the next layer of human needs - things like social inclusion or safety against adverse events. Indeed, we can assume that, in reasonably developed societies (as opposed to dysfunctional places like North Korea or several African countries) lack of such things is probably the major cause of absolute 'poverty', since primary needs like food or shelter are easily satisfied. It's interesting to speculate about focused interventions that could succ...
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