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A homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews

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Re: A homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews

#121

Post by harryh »

rayiner wrote: post #65
Banthum wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt anyone thinks all failure is a result of bad work ethic. Of course much is due to mental illness, disability, etc. But a huge proportion of poverty stems from bad work ethic. Some of the places in the USA with the highest underemployment are also places where employers are offering decent unskilled jobs and can't find enough workers. The worker gets hired, shows up for a few days, and then starts just not com…

> But a huge proportion of poverty stems from bad work ethic. Is there a morally relevant distinction between mental illness and bad work ethic? There is a lot of research to suggest that things we associate with "bad work ethic" ( e.g. lack of impulse control) appear extremely early in childhood development and aren't things people necessarily have much control over. We need to stop moralizing things that people hav…

The correlation between intelligence (IQ) and conscientiousness (work ethic) is not at all clear btw. Some studies have actually found a negative correlation.

Re: A homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews

#122

Post by Mz »

zem wrote: post #118
Mz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what will stop people from working is that the people currently in charge of creating jobs will not bother to create jobs for everyone because "you have your UBI." That's the problem. http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/05/ubi-is-pc-wa...

the idea that a job is something someone has to "bother to" create and hand to you already buys into the same sort of stratified inequality that you are complaining about with charity. if either way you have to depend on the people with capital and ownership to get money, how is being made to do something for it any better than being given it via the government taxing them and paying you a basic income? also i'm afra…

I am a homeless woman right now. My alimony is roughly the amount of money being batted about as a figure for UBI. I have spent literally years on HN trying to network and figure out how one makes money in earnest on the internet because the only thing I need to make my life work adequately at this point is sufficient online income for supporting a middle class lifestyle.

I face enormous obstacles in trying to get taken seriously and trying to get traction for my writing and trying to find out how in the hell you make money online while surrounded by endless men who know how to do exactly that. So I feel pretty strongly that the people currently being left out will just be left out all the more if they have a UBI.

Maybe both of those problems can be solved. Maybe it doesn't have to be an either/or thing. But replies like yours in no way inspire me to believe that we can intentionally create a permanent underclass and still give them access to the means to create wealth. I have six years of college and I am finding it a huge uphill battle, in part because I am a woman.

And poor women would start cranking out babies if you posit that we give everyone in the nation a check from birth, a thing I have written about before:

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsol...

Re: A homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews

#124

Post by Mz »

logicallee wrote: post #117
gpawl wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, Mz has been here sharing her perspective on homelessness for several years: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+mz+ho...

Thanks, though that doesn't change my impression of mz from our interaction, which I listed. Since we're on HN: I don't see how it's fundamentally different from people who fail for years to raise money, until they finally do. My interaction with GP is from not that long ago. They're a smart, clear writer and I hope they resolve their housing situation soon. Then, if they ever want to do a startup they'll be better a…

Yes, I do have a Certificate in GIS. In theory, I hope to develop this site into a more serious income stream than I have so far managed to create:

http://personalizedrelocationresearch.blogspot.com/

It was at least conceived of as a business idea. Most of my other sites were conceived of as "well, people clearly need this information, so I will give it to them...and, oh, I guess I should have ads or something because it would be reasonable to expect to be compensated for my time and effort."

Because of my compromised immune system, I basically need to figure out some means to make money online. There are plenty of people here who have managed that. But I have trouble accessing their expertise or getting taken seriously, much to my personal frustration.

Re: A homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews

#125

Post by amalcon »

Banthum wrote: post #50
bmpafa wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a critical point, thanks for making it. The mythology that all failure is a function of bad work ethic, etc., is a huge barrier to meaningful progress on poverty alleviation. Anyone interested in reading more on this topic, I rec. this book. It's about people who are near-homeless, not fully homeless, but it's one of the best things I've read on the topic. The author lived with the subjects for several years…

I doubt anyone thinks all failure is a result of bad work ethic. Of course much is due to mental illness, disability, etc. But a huge proportion of poverty stems from bad work ethic. Some of the places in the USA with the highest underemployment are also places where employers are offering decent unskilled jobs and can't find enough workers. The worker gets hired, shows up for a few days, and then starts just not com…

A problem has three types of cause:

- The event that precipitated the problem

- The best place to intervene to correct or prevent the problem

- The moralistic cause; the person to whom responsibility may be assigned

Always be aware of which one you're using. If your goal is to actually solve the problem, make sure that it's the second.

Re: A homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews

#126

Post by thephyber »

mongmong wrote: post #111
Banthum wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt anyone thinks all failure is a result of bad work ethic. Of course much is due to mental illness, disability, etc. But a huge proportion of poverty stems from bad work ethic. Some of the places in the USA with the highest underemployment are also places where employers are offering decent unskilled jobs and can't find enough workers. The worker gets hired, shows up for a few days, and then starts just not com…

I don't necessarily agree with you but I find it frustrating you're being downvoted when you didn't say anything inflammatory.

HN Guidelines:

> Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: A homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews

#127

Post by zem »

Mz wrote: post #122
zem wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the idea that a job is something someone has to "bother to" create and hand to you already buys into the same sort of stratified inequality that you are complaining about with charity. if either way you have to depend on the people with capital and ownership to get money, how is being made to do something for it any better than being given it via the government taxing them and paying you a basic income? also i'm afra…

I am a homeless woman right now. My alimony is roughly the amount of money being batted about as a figure for UBI. I have spent literally years on HN trying to network and figure out how one makes money in earnest on the internet because the only thing I need to make my life work adequately at this point is sufficient online income for supporting a middle class lifestyle. I face enormous obstacles in trying to get ta…

what about all the people who work long, hard hours (often doing two or three jobs), who still don't attain a middle class lifestyle? do you think, given the option of a ubi and those jobs, they would still continue to do them? the lack of basic income adds a huge distortion to the equation of "the work you do is worth X to me, but i will pay you Y for it, and X can be way greater than Y because your side of the balance sheet is Y + not starving".

also, where do you get "permanent underclass" from? if you posit that there is some way to acquire skills that are so valuable people will pay you a middle-class salary for them, surely acquiring those skills is easier if you don't have to also do a laborious and crappy job at the same time. contrariwise, if you think that someone on pure ubi is doomed never to be able to transition from there to a job, what in that equation changes if you give that person a minimum-wage job instead of ubi?

Re: A homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews

#128

Post by greglindahl »

Banthum wrote: post #76
gnaritas wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a shame this is getting downvoted because it's not really inflammatory or even untrue. Actually it's both inflammatory and untrue; spoken by someone who's obviously never been poor or known many poor people. Being poor is not a choice nor due to people simply being lazy, regardless of any anecdotes you might come up with. Anecdotes have no place in such conversations about systemic issues.

Never? Not ever? Not even 1% of the poor? Not even one person? The absolutism of your statements makes it clear that you are convinced morally of your arguments, not factually. You believe intensively in what you're saying because you think it's good , not because you've got an airtight case that it's universally factually correct . Don't let your moral convictions bleed into your understanding of the world; it makes…

The claim was "a huge proportion of poverty stems from bad work ethic". Not 1%. Not one person. Please stop moving the goalposts.

Re: A homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews

#129

Post by thephyber »

placeybordeaux wrote: post #99
jameskegel wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response has given me greater perspective to your situation, bless your heart.

> bless your heart Did you mean this in good faith? Where I was raised throwing that in is fairly insulting.

Not the poster, but I didn't notice this until you replied.

Being from the South, I've heard this in both the straight version and the condescending version. As you point out, without sufficient context, it's bodylanguage-ambiguous.

Re: A homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews

#130

Post by Mz »

zem wrote: post #127
Mz wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a homeless woman right now. My alimony is roughly the amount of money being batted about as a figure for UBI. I have spent literally years on HN trying to network and figure out how one makes money in earnest on the internet because the only thing I need to make my life work adequately at this point is sufficient online income for supporting a middle class lifestyle. I face enormous obstacles in trying to get ta…

what about all the people who work long, hard hours (often doing two or three jobs), who still don't attain a middle class lifestyle? do you think, given the option of a ubi and those jobs, they would still continue to do them? the lack of basic income adds a huge distortion to the equation of "the work you do is worth X to me, but i will pay you Y for it, and X can be way greater than Y because your side of the bala…

You know, I am homeless right now and I don't know how I will eat for the rest of this month. I am finding your remarks insulting, depressing, frustrating and obnoxious.

Are you doing anything to help lift me up while trying to prove your point that I am wrong and you are right? In my eyes, you continuing to argue this while doing nothing to help me grow my online income just supports my point of view that UBI will be yet another source of class divide.

I have $10k a year unearned income and I have been on HN for several years. I am the top ranked woman here. I still can't make the business connections I need to figure out how the hell to make good money online. I don't know a stronger argument for what I am saying than my life and you can't be arsed to even finish reading things I have written.

I don't plan to continue to engage you. I don't feel your argument is remotely in good faith. I think if you were right and I was wrong, then I would have long ago established sufficient income to get my sorry ass off the fucking street. Having $10k in unearned income in no way gives you the business connections you need and if other people for any reason don't want to make those connections with you, then trying to figure it out your damn self tends to involve painfully slow progress that has little hope of ever leading to a middle class income.

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