"Had poverty’s solution been as simple as an abundance of cash then perhaps the big government project would have met with more success."

My feeling for awhile now has been that the solution might really be that simple, but that big government tends to overcomplicate it. I'm personally quite sympathetic to the idea of the "small government welfare state" in which the state empowers individuals through simple social programs like direct cash transfers and some form of universal health care, then steps back. The idea being that an efficient safety net would make people less wary of markets and more skeptical of central planning (as we've seen in some social democracies like the Nordic countries). I'm curious if/why you would disagree.