411–420 of 817 posts
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Could you explain what point you're trying to make?
I guess they mean that in many places around the world, public transportation is more usable, so people don't need cars.
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I was referring to this phrase: > Because they have never been poor, they had no idea what I might do. Why would I steal, when everyone clearly has enough? from how I understood it, because she has been poor, she had reasons for stealing. In companies I worked for the snacks are there for being taken, I notice in every company I worked for there's the rule "the company is going to put stuff in the kitchen in some com…
> from how I understood it, because she has been poor, she had reasons for stealing. No, it says that nobody even considered that she might steal, because rich people don't see the point of stealing when stuff is so cheap relative to their wealth that it's effectively free. That's why nobody bothered to even escort her, stealing just didn't even occur to them at all.
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Even without the race element - there’s definitely a class thing. I noticed it when I moved to the Bay Area after growing up in western New York. The types of foods people ate or didn’t eat, the restaurants people would or would not go to. The shows people would or would not watch, even the way people talked. I think I hadn’t really seen the difference in class behavior before in America. Now it’s easy to see it. A l…
Much racism in America is actually classism. That's why something like Henry Louis Gates being profiled by a neighbor and a policeman as he was trying to get back to his Harvard home makes the news: Gates is an educated upper-class black man, and in this case he was treated as the latter rather than the former.
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Tl;dr Poor people (and racial and ethnic minorities, and women, and queer folk) are not dumb. They just have to turn their equal cognitive resources towards things other (and more fundamental to survival) than their magnum opus/business idea/etc. Those who overcome this are HIGHLY effective, but it's not fair that we ask it of them. That's not how an effective or efficient or just society runs, and we leave money on…
No, the solution is to acknowledge that they are dumb and therefore focus resources with the assumption that they are dumb. USA assumes that poor people are smart, Europe assumes poor people are dumb. The European way is much better, and yes poor people in American are dumb, just like they are in Europe.
This is one of the many drawbacks of socialism, even the "socialism with Scandinavian characteristics" that everyone seems to be obsessed with lately in the U.S. It assumes government paper-pushers are the smartest people around with the highest I.Q. ever, and everyone else is just a dumb lightweight. It's all about that soft bigotry of low expectations.
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I'm definitely not poor, and I've always greeted the cleaning staff. That's not a sign of being poor, it's a sign of not being an ass.
There's another side of this which is that you and the janitor have very little common ground so while you can say hi to each other anything beyond the most basic small-talk is going to get very uncomfortable for both parties very fast. I'm not going to post my credentials on HN but I have it on good authority that these jobs suck enough without having to pretend to relate to your customer. Hello is fine but beyond t…
You share the same space. How distant are you with other people that you can't just say hi? Does it matter if you don't discuss politics after it?
When i was a kid, i had to take the bus and i forgot my bus ticket (a pupil, on one bus stop, everyday, the same bus stop the same bus driver on a school route...) and he put a lot of energy into telling me off.
A few days/weeks later i thought about it and i also thought about why i'm not greeting my bus driver when i enter. I started to say hi. I liked it. I liked saying hi to my bus driver.
I forgot my bus ticket again. No issues no worries. there was mutual respect and that mutual respect came to acknowleding him.
I like greeting my neigbhours as well. Somehow it makes a small connection between us.
and yes i read the part with the shield: The first step is a hi. Every other step is easier not harder. Finding out their names, a little bit of talking about family and friends etc.
If i would have worked close enough to Bill Gates i probably would have talked to him sooner or later. Why not? He is a human, not like Mark Zuckerburg.
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> from how I understood it, because she has been poor, she had reasons for stealing. No, it says that nobody even considered that she might steal, because rich people don't see the point of stealing when stuff is so cheap relative to their wealth that it's effectively free. That's why nobody bothered to even escort her, stealing just didn't even occur to them at all.
Thanks, I got the wrong reasoning, it's not that she might steal, it's that people that has never been poor don't think stealing is an option.
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It seems that much of Chapter 6 of Wigan Pier is still pretty relevant: http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/5.html
Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is th…
I do encourage anyone who hasn't already to read the whole chapter http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/5.html : it's not really very long though I felt that the relevant parts were a bit too long, all together, to fit in a comment.
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Calories In/Calories Out is 90% of it. You're better off being relatively slim on junk food than being fat on good quality good.
> You're better off being relatively slim on junk food than being fat on good quality good. This has consistently proved false. Being 'underweight' is associated with significant excess death; being 'overweight' is associated with a lower death rate than 'normal' BMI: e.g. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/20073... (many other sources are available)
> Excess Deaths Associated With [...] Overweight
Results:
> Overweight was not associated with excess mortality (−86 094 deaths; 95% CI, −161 223 to −10 966).
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I guess they mean that in many places around the world, public transportation is more usable, so people don't need cars.
That's true too, the point I wanted to make is that in many places, poor people can't afford any cars.
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I also do not read this article that way. I think she does not complain about them. Most of them are most likely nice people (ignoring the gym paragraph). She reflect that "she realizes" that she is "poor compared to them". She does not imply that they are bad people or that she feels miserable about her "poorness" (she seems to earn much more than before .. and quit ... and probably got something better ... and ...…
The only other implicit criticism toward her coworkers was ignoring and not greeting the cleaning staff. For the most part, her coworkers come across as privileged, rather than mean or otherwise morally deficient.