There’s also the “You have to suffer as much as I did” mentality from people who have actually been hurt by the current system. I see that argument a lot about free college / student loan forgiveness
Yeah. A few years ago there was a referendum whether to keep compulsory military service in Austria. All the 18 year olds where like, fuck no, abolish this shit. All the old farts where like, I had to do it, I hated it, so you have to do it too.
That’s when I realised democracy sucks. They made a big deal of giving voting rights to 16 year olds, but in the end it doesn’t matter, it’s still the older people deciding what the young people have to do.
younger people don’t vote. most people don’t give a shit about politics until they have children and own homes and are 40+
My old boss felt this way about the industry (healthcare/emergency services). This attitude literally drove all our quality providers away. Now my supervisor has the mentality that our goal is to make our industry better for ourselves and for each class (yearly graduates). How much we suffered is a reminder of what we are building away from, not a litmus for “trial by fire” of our new hires. I took a slight paycut (but better work/time off cycle) to take this job just to escape the “I walked uphill both ways naked so they can too” mentally. I don’t understand the idea that other people getting better treatment than I got will somehow hurt me.
I want to tax billionaires and churches their fair share, but if raising my taxes gave everyone healthcare I would do it. First, it would probably save money getting private insurance out of peoples lives, but also the overall benefit to society outweighs any small burden I would shoulder. I see myself as a pretty antisocial person, and I rarely want to interact with others. I don’t think the people I want to avoid should suffer
This is the thing I see. Often people who have made it out feel the most strongly about nothing for the poor.
have you been poor? I have.
sadly a lot of poor people are stupid and make shitty choices. most of my friends form high school went to shitty schools and dropped out and did nothing with their lives and ended up married with kids very young. they partied and didn’t study. they took out loans they could not afford. they had no discipline or drive. they now are in dead end low paying jobs and struggling and miserable.
as someone who ‘made it out’ I was only able to do so because i was able to make sacrifices to do so. i didn’t party. i worked. i spend all of my 20s working my ass off to improve my situation. because i knew the consequences for me if I ever slacked off would ruin my life. fortunately i was also able to realize that my parents were complete idiots and not to follow any advice they ever gave me about money or life. but that all came at a huge emotional cost.
like… why should I or anyone feel bad for people facing the consequences of their actions?
but on the flip side, the wealthy can fuck around and never find out because they will be bailed out of all their poor choices by their parents wealth. if we create a society where everyone is bailed out of their own poor choices by never having to pay negative consequences for what they choose, what kind of society will that create?
you could say the same thing about people who purposely destroy their health by eating poorly, smoking etc. which is sadly the majority of our health crisis in America… it’s self-inflicted. and again my motivate to be healthy is because i know i can’t afford to be sick, it would bankrupt me.
truth is a lot of people are shitty people, why should they be given equal footing for those of us who chose to do the right things?
several people i know who were banking on the loan forgiveness… could pay back their loans. they just refused to because they wanted to travel and party. nor should they have taking out a six figure loan to become a social worker.
That’s great but the VAST MAJORITY of poor people are only poor because they were born poor, and never had a chance to grow past it. Not because of personal choices.
And the VAST MAJORITY of rich people are only rich because they were born to rich parents, not because of personal choices.
So all that stuff you’re talking about? Even if it’s true, which I doubt, it’s just edge cases. Not worth discussing.
I think that you are missing how people have a variety of capabilities and intelligence. I would pose you this theoretical to ponder. You have a maze, and six rats. Of the six, one finds the exit with ease, while the other five struggle and don’t find the exit. Yay for the smart, efficient rat!
What are you going to do with the other five? Maybe some of them can learn the maze, but is there any utility in this now? Will you, knowing their deficiencies, throw them back into the maze over and over until they learn it? Some of them never will. Is this not a cruelty to them? What benefit do you derive from doing that?
Beware this feeling: “I worked hard and I made it, while these fuckers dicked around. They don’t deserve anything.” That thought is entirely focused on yourself, and does nothing but cause suffering in others. What do you wish to do about the others, leaving your own feelings out of it. What is best for society? You know they are not as efficient and hard working as you are, but you really do not know why this is the case. What will you do about that?
Those are the useful questions. Feelings of self righteousness help no one. They harm even you.
plenty of my friends were smarter and more capable than me. they simple chose not to develop their abilities. a lot of them had wealthier parents than me too and didn’t have to pay for school like i did. they chose drugs and being deadbeats.
people have free will. do we want to actively subsidize people fucking up their lives? that they choose suffering when they had other options? that’s a hard thing to say yes to for the majority of people.
not everyone is an angel who is misunderstood. lots and lots of people are assholes. just look at what happens when rich and successful people have positions of power… they pull the ladder up behind them. hence the system we have now.
it’s not about righteousness, it’s about how people behave. and lots of people behave poorly and without consideration for their futures or anyone else around them. they ignore opportunity and abuse privileges.
people really seem to think the rich and evil and the poor are good… but they aren’t. they are just people.
nobody owes anyone anything. i’m not talking about theoretical questions, I’m talking about the real world in which people make choices for themselves. and a lot of people choose poorly even when they have good opportunities.
I don’t think your frame is correct. I admit that you might be, but I doubt it. There is plenty of research which shows that our feeling that we control ourselves, that we have free will, is illusory. For instance, your brain has already sent signals to your muscles to make movement before you are aware of consciously deciding to do so. The only thing you might do is change your mind, arrest the signal already sent before your conscious decision. Yet you and I are presently using our conscious minds to converse. We believe we control our own motivations and movements, even though there is scientific evidence that suggests it’s not at all simple like that. And that is to leave aside how very strange the universe we inhabit appears to be. We still live as if we inhabit the world that scientists and philosophers would now call ‘naive realism’ even though it is more than a hundred years out of date. In fact, I think all of us have had the experience of thinking one way, and then finding ourselves acting in another, against what we had thought consciously. I don’t think our consciousness, and that includes that which we write, has very much bearing on our actions.
Granting these things being the case, I submit that ‘blaming’ others is a useless enterprise. It’s akin to continuing to do that which has been proven not to work over and over.
Consider this. Given that we do not have complete control over our own impulses, what if we envision the course of all our decisions like a pachinko machine? The little ball falls, subject to initial conditions, and inertia, all that. Each time it bounces off a strut, it goes either right or left. If your ball of consciousness finds itself in the favorable position, let us just arbitrarily say that is the right half of the machine, then you may look back at all your ‘decisions’ with a sense of superiority. You may look at the balls that landed on the left with disdain. They made poor choices!
Yet if what you want is to get more balls to the right, you don’t change each ball. You change the way the pachinko machine is made. That’s social action, to step out of the metaphor. Think about what you’d really want, if you understood that people don’t all have the same capacities? You say that people who are smarter than you are make stupid choices… doesn’t that suggest that intelligence isn’t very useful by itself? Scientists have shown that our consciousness’ strongest ability is in rationalizing what we did, after we’ve already done it.
I look around at the state of the world as it is right now. Billionaires – those are the big winners, the most fortunate, have vastly more control over what happens to the people you disdain than they do themselves. And we’re not likely to do anything about that, because those of us who ‘win’ on a smaller scale, will use our rational minds to rationalize why we should have won. I think that’s what you’ve been doing. I don’t mean to insult you. It would not be very remarkable that you have. It’s what the vast majority of us are doing.
Unfortunately, it looks like the planet will burn before we figure it out.
One thing that gets me with this is an idea that everyone should be as competent as I. I know a lot of folks that are doing the best they can but not only did I sacrifice in various ways but I have a bookish nature and an inquisitive mind. This is the main reason I was in the advanced group in high school. But you know I was at the bottom or close to of that group. Was it because I was lazy. Maybe but I certainly felt like I had to work at it a lot. My experience with that and college has made me realize I just can’t memorize as quickly or as perfectly as my peers. This put me in a poor position in some ways but it gave me a leg up in understanding as this is how I competed. Anyway everyone cannot be top of the class or good at a whole bunch of things (I feel america expects everyone to be a doctor and a lawyer and an accountant and a mechanic along with every other type of tradesman). People at the bottom should have a decent enough life and people at the top should not have wealth representing 10 or 100 or 1000 people because as good as they are they are not that good. In many cases they are not even good but inherited or lucked into it or bastarded their way through.
people at the bottom should have more resources, but we can’t force them to make good choices with those resources.
that’s the issue you fail to see. that many people choose to live shitty lives despite whatever they are given. that is the ugly truth.
you can’t force people to live positive lives. you can’t force them to get help. you can’t force them to utilize teh resources available to them.
why is it that poor immigrant kids do so much better than poor domestic kids even though they have far less resources? because they have drive to succeed and make a better life for themselves.
some people are just lazy. it’s not a matter of competence, it’s a matter of them not giving a fuck about anything outside of gratifying their immediate wants.
like the people who take out huge loans, get good jobs, and then don’t pay the loans back so they can party and travel.
the real argument is the moral hazard one, in that if you don’t have skin in the game you won’t appreciate or respect what you’ve been given.
i mean, if college was free, yes there would be a huge uptick in ‘useless degrees’ or whatever, but that might be a net benefit for society in the long run. we can’t know that though.
The people who are extremely close to death need to stop making decisions about the future
Fuck, I downvoted you and started writing an argument against you because I though that you responded to one of the posts on my sub “fuck cars” but then I noticed the sub where you commented LMFAO
Edit: for clarification, you’re upvoted now.
Edit2: to elaborate further, I thought you were talking about cyclists.
The sad thing is that even if you don’t give a shit about other people, it would still be beneficial to make sure everyone is taken care of.
Imagine if we didn’t have to worry about people stealing our bikes or breaking into our basement because everyone had enough money to not have to steal stuff.
Or if we didn’t have to worry about our kids getting a good enough job because even if they follow their passion their jobs would still pay enough to have a good life.
Like everything in our life there is a golden middle. You can not have zero social safety net, and you can not (at least yet, or at least it is sub-optimal for human development) have absolutely everything taken care off. But where is this middle is is the question different people answer differently.
exactly.
people really seem to not get how complex this stuff is. you can’t force people into a better life.
plenty of homeless simple choose to live life on the streets. they do not want intervention or care. they want to steal and do drugs. these core set of people is what drives the ‘image’ of homelessness.
most homeless people are actually just in a temporary situation and will use the resources to get back on their feet. but certain people refuse to help themselves and won’t ever accept help no matter what is offered.
they do not want intervention or care
I’m don’t think you can say that in general. They might not want the intervention and care they are offered, which usually comes with strings attached. Eg. homeless shelters in my city require you to arrive at a specific time, leave at a specific time, and you can’t bring alcohol. Plenty of non-homeless people would be kicked out of their home if they had to stick to those rules.
Yeah, I’m not asking for literal handouts (except for people who are unable to work because of illness/disabilities). I’m just asking for wages to be enough to rent a reasonably sized apartment close to work, with enough free time to raise their kids.
I’m sure most people would prefer having a job to stealing stuff.
people would still steal bikes and break into shit.
theft is driven by drug use mostly, not by poverty.
The thing that gripes me is that it’s not even necessary to want a good life for other people to arrive at the conclusion that one should support things like this.
One could be completely self-absorbed and self-interested and still arrive at the same conclusions. All it requires is the bare modicum of thought necessary to figure out that society as a whole benefits when people have to put up with less shit and anything that benefits society as a whole benefits me.
It’s not even complicated or particularly subtle.
Isn’t it weird how policies that help the poor are treated like a zero sum game (“anything they get is less for the rest of society”) but policies that help the rich are treated as good for everyone (“a rising tide lifts all boats”).
That’s capitalism for you where rich have significant control over media and people are uneducated enough to realise those problems. And people that know about the issues mostly don’t do anything bacause people don’t have energy and time to organise and push for the better future because everyone is fucking overworked from trying to literally just live.
or we do, and we watch the people we vote into office just tell us to go fuck ourselves when they elected.
and anyone who runs against them that gets into office… does the same thing.
Actually I have been happy with most of the work my states rep have done but much does not get through with the rest of the countries reps or things go through despite my reps not voting for it.
all my state reps support that status quo the second they are elected and refuse and genuine or difficult reforms.
Mine support plenty of status quo to but usually they are trying to at least shift it in a better direction. I get it to because they can push radical change with a certain chance of getting it which is low or gradual and have a good chance of making it through. Now don’t get me wrong. I realize how useless gradual change can be at this point but I think the same of radical but im sorta a doomer.
I hate those “pull yourself up by your boostraps” people, who don’t realised the phrase was coined satirically because it’s impossible to actually pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
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Yeah I agree with the statements in that picture. Plus, counties that don’t support their population get weaker as a whole. The USA for instance is a much weaker country when it comes to education, health, population growth, and military strength because we kept screwing over the majority of people to benefit a tiny amount of people at the top that barely spend their money.
Now that we’re potentially in a great power competition with China, we’re starting to see how behind we’ve gotten compared to what we should be. All because our oligarchs don’t understand that helping the average person makes the whole country stronger. It’s the real example of “A rising tide lifts all boats”.
The only good new is that China stupidly is following our example and lowering its birth rate and power by also being an oligarchy that screws over workers. So much for “communism”.
In a way I think it’s the humans nature to gamble, the people that are thinking they’ll be in that position one day so they’re just paving the way for when they get there?
Either way, even with France as an example of a fiery people revolting against the negative changes coming towards them, there’s not a lot of budge happening. Not saying they shouldn’t, they absolutely should and so should the rest of the world! It’s just looking bleak, but not enough people are organized to orchestrate a bigger movement beyond words spilled online.
I only wish there was some sort of organized global union as we’re moving into a more connected global network.
I don’t and won’t have kids, yet I still pay for education because I don’t want to live amongst a bunch of uneducated idiots (I spend enough time on the Internet already).
