Comprehensive Review: John Bird's 'The Necessity of Poverty' Book

This report provides a comprehensive review of John Bird's book, 'The Necessity of Poverty.' The review critically examines Bird's proposed solutions to global poverty, contrasting them with empirical evidence. The report highlights Bird's personal experiences and insights while also pointing out the lack of statistical data and a broader perspective in the book. It discusses Bird's views on culture, social norms, and the gap between the rich and the poor, as well as his perspectives on consumerism and the power of corporations. The review also touches upon the arguments of other thinkers such as Thomas Malthus and explores the limitations of drawing conclusions solely from personal experiences. The report concludes by critiquing Bird's approach, emphasizing the need for a more comprehensive understanding of poverty and its complex causes, while also offering a critical evaluation of the book's strengths and weaknesses. The references include books and online sources used in the review.

REVIEW OF A BOOK

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION
Culture refers to the way of life and especially genral belifes and customs of group of
people or society, Bush & Bennett, (2018). The present report gives review of the book “ The
Necessity of Poverty” which is written by John Bird. John Bird is a social entrepreneur who is
internationally renowned. The writer was brought in orphanage and has also served years in
young offenders' institute. John have been homeless and then did work and found factory work.
The book explores different solutions for globally faced problem i.e. poverty. The suggestions
given by the writer John Bird are insensitive, insulting and flippant. This following report
reviews the book and also advices children and youngsters who face problems due to poverty.
John Bird provides perfect solutions and advice to face death issues happening mainly from
preventable reasons.
ABSTRACT
Culture refers to the social norms and behaviour which are found in human societies and
communities. Culture is the knowledge and characteristics of specific group of people, it
encompasses religion, language, social habits, music, arts and cuisines. John Bird chirps about
his life experiences in the book and describes that world fails to tackle global issues of poverty
because no ample action or move has been taken against poverty. His luck and life did not fairly
deals with him because he faced problems of being born in poverty, getting excluded from
school, was homeless and also got imprisoned. According to John, every experience, problem
and issue seems meaningless in the end. The gap between poor and rich is the concern of many
people, John Bird: Poverty is not a failure of capitalism, but its backbone, (2012). This leads to
makes people think that the self- appointed on percentiles raided the wallets and banks for
building up the gap between themselves and poor people. The most of percenters becomes rich
and one percenter because of consumers who chooses to buy their products. Bill Gates, Philip
Green, Richard Branson and Jamie Oliver are creating enormous gaps between rich and poor
because people and consumers patronise such kind of wealthy traders. People act as the power
house for making of fortunes and put stupendous resources to the hands of few and at the same
time, some people are not having enough resources for sustaining themselves.
“The Problem of Induction” written by Bertrand Russell explains that everyone will draw
conclusion which is based on their experience in life. For eg. Chicken will draw conclusion that
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farmer is there to feed her, Lopez, Pedrotti & Snyder (2018). Every conclusion explains life
experience of people faced and experienced by them. One more example of this is that people of
Brazil's Amazon who have no contact with outside world will assume and draw conclusion that
all other humans speaks their language and also same custom is followed by them as they do.
Therefore, relying on one's personal experience and drawing conclusions accordingly will leads
way of narcissism and psychopathy. Reorganizing world and drafting solutions or conclusion
from one's experience and limited interaction will bring ineffective results and outcomes. This
can be explained for eg. One person got mugged by black person, will think that blacks are
genetically predisposed for crime. Therefore, solutions drawn according to perception and
experience of one person will not lead to be effective and solve global poverty.
John has become major voice for political and social issues and describes solutions for
global poverty. John Bird states that debates should be taken away from experts and turning them
into whining contest who had faced poverty the hardest, The Necessity of Evidence: A review of
John Bird’s “The Necessity of Poverty”, (2016). Thomas Malthus describes a theory and states that
poverty is increasing because of the overpopulation and solution for this problem is that poor
should be abstained from doing reproduction. This theory was rejected with 7 billion reasons
and world experiences exponential growth with increasing standards of living. According to the
views of John Bird, to get out of poverty one needs to behave like middle-class families who
studied, worked hard and resulted in to get themselves out of poverty, Jamieson, Church &
Vogelsang, (2018). John Bird encourages old population and promotes low birth rate and its
example is seen in Russia where birth rate got declined from mid-80s to until 2000s .
In the globalized world, organisation corporations are having greater power than
countries and states that to come out of poverty, people need to choose to shop differently.
According to the view of John Bird, equation of voting and shopping is both pathetic. The
democratic country allows one person for giving one vote. But people have more than one vote
makes ruin the democratic rules. The outlets of different distributions runs collectively
therefore, people needs to focus on redistributing the distributors and convert the monopoly
market into diverse market.
The business with people are familiar are actually the subsidiaries of ten multinational
companies. There is real free market competition in the economy and which makes the country
more poorer. KFC got boycotted but people eating out at Pizza Hut leads to fill the pockets of
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same people. People do not reward good business and spread the money around wrong business
organisation. John Bird aims at guiding people to reinvent the world and society really quick in
order to shorten the gap between rich and poor. The case and solutions put on this book, ' The
Necessity of Poverty', guides people some way for putting that idea before eyes of public, The
Necessity of Poverty, (2019).
John Bird fails fundamentally because he lacks bird's eye view. According to John
everything and anything can be solved from book such as poverty. People are not blinded by
anecdote i.e. incident of interesting story. In the book, “ The Necessity of Poverty”, John has not
provided any graph, statistics or study. The book seems to be a sob -story which describes about
his personal experience and also states that he has had it enough. The founder of NHS and
welfare states, Clement Attlee was a privately educated son of solicitor. This refers that what
actually matters in the end is results and evidence, Bush & Bennett, (2018).
CONCLUSION
The above report is the review of a book named 'The Necessity of Poverty”. The book
consists of the big issue 'poverty' which is spread all around the world. Writer John Bird explores
different solutions to globally faced problem. The review made on the book explores that
proposed solutions of poverty given in the books flies in face of empiric evidence. The writer
John Bird aims at feeding the readers with vacuous slogans rather than originality or innovation.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journal
Bush, M. W., & Bennett, J. L. (2018). Organization Development in Action: Values-Based
Coaching. In Enacting Values-Based Change (pp. 239-263). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Jamieson, D. W., Church, A. H., & Vogelsang, J. D. (2018). Enacting Values-Based Change:
Organization Development in Action. In Enacting Values-Based Change (pp. 1-8).
Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Lopez, S. J., Pedrotti, J. T., & Snyder, C. R. (2018). Positive psychology: The scientific and
practical explorations of human strengths. Sage Publications.
Online
The Necessity of Evidence: A review of John Bird’s “The Necessity of Poverty”. 2016. [Online]. Available
through: <http://www.developmentinaction.org/the-necessity-of-evidence-a-review-of-john-birds-
the-necessity-of-poverty/>
The Necessity of Poverty. 2019. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16352295-the-necessity-of-poverty>
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