I think a lot of people do not realize that you are lucky if you are born into a middle class or upper class family. Having parents with some savings allows you to take extra career risks because you know that you can likely get help from your parents if none of the risks pay off. It is more difficult to make the decision to work at a startup or buy a house if you are totally on your own when things go south.
Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
91–100 of 303 posts
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#92I think this touches upon one of the biggest weaknesses of the current economic system. We systematically waste the human capability of millions of people because the system essentially randomly gives much better opportunity to some over others. Meritocracy somewhat exists but mostly to the extent that people can maximize the opportunity they've drawn as their lot in life. I like the idea of Basic Income, but it's a…
We systematically waste the human capability of millions of people because the system essentially randomly gives much better opportunity to some over others. We don't do anything. The nature of reality is that there is not equal distribution of [anything]. The universe is a dynamical system - portions of the system will through probability always get stuck at local/global minima.
Sure, but the universe is also a place where it rains on your head, and then the sun burns your skin off, and wolves casually stroll in and eat your children. That's what the universe does when left to its own devices, and we don't like that, and we change it.
"It is the way it is because it's natural" is a pretty naive fallacy.
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#93Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#94Progressive consumption tax is ridiculous. It requires your tax rate at the point of sale to be dependent on all your purchases to that point in time. That's just not practical. Or it may require every purchase you make to be recorded for tax-time when you then pay the taxes. Either way it requires the government to know every purchase you make, or at least the price. This is not something anyone should want.
Also it encourages hoarding and less spending of the upper class, which is a major economic problem in it's own right.
Although, this decreases money supply which makes everyone's savings worth more at the expense of slowing economic growth. Slower growth may be undesirable to many, especially startups, but could have positive environmental effects.
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#95My father and I have somewhat productive political conversations: He's fiscally conservative, I tend towards the liberal side of the scale. Drilling in to find what we really disagree about, it seems to boil down to two concepts: (1) I view success as a matter of luck that your effort can make better or worse. He views effort as the single most important deciding factor in success in life (2) I'm willing to tolerate…
There is also the biggest luck factor of all, that being how/when/where you were born. Most of us were born in the US into a family. We did nothing to deserve that but it already makes us in the top 1% richest people globally. What would our path look like if we had been born in rural Nicaragua instead?
I'm not "woe is me" but I was raised in a super conservative family, taught to avoid risk and that a steady paycheck was the ultimate success. It has taken many many years to break out of that mindset and be willing to take calculated risks.
The really hard questions arise when you start talking about what people deserve. Who is to say? We all have a unique frame of reference and experiences that have shaped us.
In the end, the only middle ground we're likely to reach is the mindset of helping people help themselves. To me, the fairness question is more about the opportunity to improve you and yours. Having no opportunities is unfair and must be fixed. The question is always going to be who decides how much is fair?
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#96I think this touches upon one of the biggest weaknesses of the current economic system. We systematically waste the human capability of millions of people because the system essentially randomly gives much better opportunity to some over others. Meritocracy somewhat exists but mostly to the extent that people can maximize the opportunity they've drawn as their lot in life. I like the idea of Basic Income, but it's a…
>but it's a somewhat limited solution to capping how far down someone can fall in society That's welfare's job. UBI is to provide a living wage when its not possible or difficult to do so (depressed areas, automation taking jobs, etc). As a social safety net UBI does nothing welfare doesn't, and in most cases does worse. Welfare can be controlled via food stamps that stop people from wasting their money on alcohol, c…
> food stamps that stop people from wasting their money on alcohol, cigarettes, lottery tickets, and casinos
Are you certain they are effective at that? It isn't hard to imagine that a secondary market for food stamps could exist wherein they're traded for cash at some reduced rate.
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
And what caused you to not acknowledge the so called truth. Determinism implies that even this acknowledgment was beyond your control, even though you feel like it wasn't.
I do accept that there is some "determinism" in life. You do not choose the game, you do not choose the board and you do not choose the pieces. However, you are playing the game. To say that you have no control and that the game is playing itself is to have "mauvaise foi". Life might limit your options but only you can make choices. To wait until life cuts out all options but one is not letting life make choices for…
Suppose I could show you a "Raphmedia" response that I calculated, held aside while you were making this post, then showed you my calculated responses (top-5). If we compared the corpus to what you wrote, would you think differently about determinism and who you are? Maybe right? This presuppose I know a lot about Raphmedia, I'm thinking brain scan type detail (Google does pretty well with the search bar autocomplete using a lot less info).
I sort of feel like Raphmedia could be encoded, same here as well. Still, I enjoy the chats :)
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#98My father and I have somewhat productive political conversations: He's fiscally conservative, I tend towards the liberal side of the scale. Drilling in to find what we really disagree about, it seems to boil down to two concepts: (1) I view success as a matter of luck that your effort can make better or worse. He views effort as the single most important deciding factor in success in life (2) I'm willing to tolerate…
In other words, he believes in a just world, in providence, and you don't (in other words, he's religious and you're not). I think this is the crux of most of these arguments.
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#99My father and I have somewhat productive political conversations: He's fiscally conservative, I tend towards the liberal side of the scale. Drilling in to find what we really disagree about, it seems to boil down to two concepts: (1) I view success as a matter of luck that your effort can make better or worse. He views effort as the single most important deciding factor in success in life (2) I'm willing to tolerate…
The liberal view of this issue may have the virtue of being correct, but it's very counterproductive from the individual's standpoint. I know that the ideology espoused on sites such as dailykos.com were very detrimental to personal drive and success in my college years of 18-22. That ideology kept pounding home the idea of the unfairness of the economy, of the lower share of the pie allocated to labor vs capital and…
I tend to look at it this way: hard work improves the probability of financial success, but it is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition. So yes, people benefit on average from hard work, but because of the uncertainty of the situation you can't take the contrapositive and say that poor people are lazy.
Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only the consumer needs to do so in this case, not the government, and if you don't keep track of your own purchases, no problem, you just don't get the rebate.
Tracking purchases requires time and skill, both of which are often lacking in the poorest. Rich would hire a person to do it. (and also to game the system)
[deleted]