I said that the state of being poor imposes such a high mental cost that even the intelligent poor struggle to apply their intelligence consistently...I believe that every human being should have the right not to suffer, along with the opportunity to make their best contribution to the progress of humanity.
You seem to want to have it both ways. Either the poor are adults capable of making their own choices, or they aren't.
If they are mentally competent, they have the right not to "suffer" ("suffering" isn't the word I'd normally use to describe a life of leisure). They just choose not to exercise it.
Your definition of competence seems to differ significantly from mine. For one thing, there's not some binary threshold of competence vs. incompetence. What I'm describing is a temporary condition caused by depletion of mental willpower. You also seem to be applying a degree of the typical mind fallacy. Maybe you are the ubermensch incarnate and could maintain total control of your creative mental faculties through the most painful torture, but most people have limits. That doesn't make them incompetent; it just makes them human.
Maybe you are the ubermensch incarnate and could maintain total control of your creative mental faculties through the most painful torture...
Hardly. I certainly wouldn't hold a person being tortured responsible for their actions, but I also wouldn't permit them to make their own decisions.
My position is that the right to make a choice and the responsibility for that choice go hand in hand. Either the poor are allowed to make choices and suffer the consequences, or they aren't. If you'd like shades of grey, perhaps they could jointly make decisions with a guardian, and the guardian is partially responsible for those choices.
I take exception to the example of invisibly raising of insurance prices as a result of unannounced data mining. It's entirely unfair to hold people to standards they aren't told about in advance.
You seem to want to have it both ways. Either the poor are adults capable of making their own choices, or they aren't.
If they are mentally competent, they have the right not to "suffer" ("suffering" isn't the word I'd normally use to describe a life of leisure). They just choose not to exercise it.