A homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by Banthum » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 7:39 PM UTC

Mz wrote: post #85

Banthum wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, more like: 3) "This person is struggling, we can't help them in ways that are too paternalistic or agency-denying, because that will ultimately just end up harming them". E.g. You wouldn't tell your child that his economic outcomes are completely unconnected to his own choices or work ethic. If a kid has trouble at a task, we don't just tell them that the task is stacked against them and that they can do nothing…

Actually, it would be more like telling your child with ADHD "You just need to study harder at school and the beatings will continue until morale improves. No, we won't give you ADHD meds nor hire you a tutor. Buck up and grow a spine, you whiner." See also my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14590486 Your remarks are incredibly ignorant and are being downvoted because it is the sort of attitu…

So you think of every poor person as having a fundamental disability comparable to a medically-diagnosed case of ADHD.

This is flatly, verifiably wrong, as well as reprehensibly paternalistic and self-indulgent.

And all this after I specifically talked about mental illness in my original post.

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

#192

Post by Mz » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 7:44 PM UTC

Banthum wrote: post #191

Mz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it would be more like telling your child with ADHD "You just need to study harder at school and the beatings will continue until morale improves. No, we won't give you ADHD meds nor hire you a tutor. Buck up and grow a spine, you whiner." See also my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14590486 Your remarks are incredibly ignorant and are being downvoted because it is the sort of attitu…

So you think of every poor person as having a fundamental disability comparable to a medically-diagnosed case of ADHD. This is flatly, verifiably wrong, as well as reprehensibly paternalistic and self-indulgent. And all this after I specifically talked about mental illness in my original post.

We were specifically talking about homeless people, not poor people. I am currently homeless and have had a class on Homelessness and Public Policy. I know whereof I speak here.

I don't disagree with some of your assertions that we should treat such people as if they have agency and can make choices. But your framing is incredibly hostile and in the vein of "We don't need to do anything for such people because they made these choices and did this to themselves."

No one makes choices in a vacuum and, currently, an awful lot of people have no good choices available to them. Blaming them so you can wash your hands of responsibility is rather ugly behavior. You don't personally have to do anything for someone like me, but posting comments on a forum where you are basically publically advocating that no one should do anything for them -- well, I feel pretty well entitled to rebut that. Feel free to do nothing and feel that my problems are all my fault and I am just not trying hard enough. But if you post that to HN, I can rebut it, and likely will if I see it.

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

#193

Post by Banthum » Thu, Jun 22, 2017, 8:05 PM UTC

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #172

Banthum wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel this is irrelevant for this discussion, because none of what I or anyone else is arguing is that "it's their fault they're poor so screw them" as so many people here seem to want to conclude. All I said was: Some people have bad work ethic. This means people they decide to not work when they should work, which causes them to end up in poverty. Therefore, to reduce poverty, part of our strategy should be doing…

It's incredible that for someone stressing work-ethic and the implicit "responsibility" associated with them, you won't even take responsibility for your own words. In multiple child comments you've now claimed things like what you say here: > All I said was: Some people have bad work ethic No, that's not "All you said". The proof is right there in your original comment. You actually said > a huge proportion of pover…

>"a huge proportion of poverty stems from bad work ethic." restated as >"Some people have bad work ethic"

And to you that restatement constitutes "attempting to shirk from and minimize away from your own comments". Seriously? It's the same thing with a difference in degree. The degree word "some" overlaps with "huge amount".

So my great crime is replacing "huge amount" with "some", and connecting it to poverty?

Meanwhile, you go ahead and restate what I said as "the reason the poor are poor is mainly/mostly/primarily due to moral failings."

Which is an utterly different, wild, moralistic, absolutist statement that I obviously never made and don't believe. And hypocritical, given how sensitive you seem to be about accurately re-stating what someone has said.

Let me disabuse you of the anti-charitable notion that you've invented in your head implicitly attributed to me: Just because someone has bad work ethic, doesn't mean it's their fault. I've specifically said in this thread that work ethic is changeable by policy and cultural factors. And, I think bad work ethic often isn't the fault of the person with it, but is rather the fault of people you who gaslight the poor into believing that all they can do is wait to be saved by Wise Rich White Leftist Social Engineers.

A huge proportion of poverty stems from bad work ethic. A huge proportion of that bad work ethic stems from the cultural effects of messages like yours.

Neither of the previous statements present any moral attribution - they are simple statements of objective, measurable cause-and-effect. (Yes, work ethic is measurable; the effect that your messages have on it could in principle be estimated via survey or experiment).

Honestly, you really seem to want this to be about morality. You want to see evil in people with whom you disagree because it makes you feel more secure in your own beliefs - a world where good people question your morals with powerful arguments is just too uncomfortable. You continue to apply the exact opposite of the principle of charity. It's unfair to others, and unproductive.