system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Claiming that "working hard," or making changes in your community is not a viable solution to improving your life is reprehensible. You should not be accused of "boot strapping" when you suggest it is good to try to do the best by yourself/children/family/community.

Far too often, I see people immediately reject the idea of self-improvement by claiming it is suggesting "bootstrapping." I am well aware of the bogus origins of the word. As Martin Luther King once put it(to paraphrase), telling a man with no boots to lift himself up by his bootstraps is a cruel thing.

However, the needless absolutism that people use, by rejecting the idea that people can improve their own lives and dismissing it as bootstrapping is absurd, deceptive, and destructive. (One hypothesis I have is that people want to be saviors, and suggesting that to *some* end, even a small one, people can save themselves would remove their role as the hero, savior, etc.)

Do therapists tell a depressed person that there is absolutely nothing in the world that they can do to get through dark stages in their life?

Do doctors tell someone overweight that there is *literally nothing* someone can do to manage their weight?

Do you tell a kid struggling in college from a rough background that there is no way to succeed because he was born into poverty?

So yes, while there are many injustices in the world, which I could write multiple essays on, I don't see why in almost all conversations, people suggest you can EITHER have policy reform or you are advocating bootstrapping. It is a fake argument in my opinion:

You can and should do everything in your power to succeed, even if you weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth. You can want the world to change for the better and still not be resigned to the fate of your ancestors, and people drawing a line in the sand between the two are being irresponsible and reprehensible.

\_\_\_

Real-world examples:

1. I recently read the article: The Case For Reparations, and the author claims that slavery wasn't just a brutal southern thing, but was more deeply entrenched in our society than people realize(to include the north). The author suggests that after nearly 400 years of wrong doing, as a nation we should look into ways we can right the wrongs of the past that still affect us to this day(which is very reasonable and I am surprised it hasn't happened already). At the same time, he drops a small sub-point that there is nothing the African American community can do to help themselves, which I found quite insulting. Under no circumstances is suggesting that you should give up on life because you weren't born into privilege acceptable(feel free to CMV)
2. I personally did not grow up rich (to say the least haha), and am the child of immigrants. Quite a few people in my immediate family were illiterate until the late stages in their lives, and they emphasized the importance of education to me. While many people were dropping out of high school in my area, getting GED's, etc, I, at the bare minimum, graduated high school thanks to the emphasis and help along the way. Later in life, when I now suggest that a potential solution to kids doing bad and dropping out of high school is the parent's emphasizing education in a meaningful way(among my college educated friends), I am accused of advocating "boot strapping." While maybe there is blame to go around, if there are things in your power to change, you should do it.
gpt
The issue with the ‘boot-straps’ argument as a response to poverty is that it predisposes that *people are not already doing all they can to elevate themselves out of poverty.* It implies that the reason for poverty is *poor people are just not trying hard enough.* So, it often elicits an emotional response. 

The ‘bootstraps’ approach is fine when you’re dealing with issues like mental or physical health, but people generally are referring to ‘bootstraps’ in the context of poverty. In reality, most of the time there’s nothing an impoverished person can do to escape the cyclical nature of poverty. 

I mean this makes sense when you think about it - impoverished people often cannot afford attending expensive private universities that would give them a leg-up in job hunting, and sometimes they cannot attend community college due to the immense time commitment required. So they don’t have access to higher education to elevate themselves or invest in their skills. They cannot accrue the wealth required to purchase property, so they also do not have access to the intergenerational wealth that owning property creates. Minimum-wage jobs are often their only options, because there’s expenses involved in building up the kinds of marketable skills that yield higher earning positions. And on top of this, they also face expenses that middle or upper class people do not - out of pocket medical expenses, the cost of public transportation, etc. Due to the nature of their poverty, they’re more susceptible to the financial impact of things like medical issues and legal troubles.

The ‘bootstraps’ argument, while not completely invalid (there’s always things that people can do to make their lives better), isn’t useful in addressing poverty because it doesn’t deal with the cyclical nature of poverty. In order to address poverty, we need to examine the issue systematically.