A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

So, if you're a spoiled brat lucky to be born in a developed country with socialist tendencies, you're fine. However, suppose you're unlucky and were born in a poor country and now want to migrate somewhere to improve your quality of life. In that case, spoiled brats will do everything they can (including kidnapping you if you try) to stop you from doing so because you're the wrong race|social group|whatever.

You hold such awful vision and wonder if I am being sarcastic? What the heck. If you want to provide services to people, do it with proper and just means. Not by sacking people and pretending you want to give back to them whatever you deem essential services.

> This is a consequence of the state's monopoly on violence. By joining a society you voluntarily give up power to the government in exchange for services and protections.

No. I never did so. You were brainwashed with this stupid idea.

> Wars occur as a consequence of this exchange of power when states look out for their own interests, which include the interests of its people.

No. You're being incredibly silly. How come it was in the German people's interest to do what they did? How come is in North Korea's people's interest to do what they do? How come is in US citizens interest to invade other country and spend a trillion doing war overseas? Sure, some people will benefit from such arrangements. However, most everyone loses.

Besides, you demonstrate a lack of knowledge regarding the positive aspects foreigners usually bring to a territory. For example, most of them come in peace, and the net result is positive. I'm sorry you don't get something as basic as that.

> I'm not sure if you are aware of the other functions that states provide but some of the functions you may find beneficial are ways to resolve conflict without violence, protections to people, and a standard of living. These are again, enforced with violence. Seeing as you moved from Brazil to the Netherlands I'm sure you are aware of the benefits you are granted.

I'd be a fool if I believed in your stupid idea that I benefit from having most of my paycheck extorted from me here or most of my consumer power extorted from me back when I lived in Brazil.

No, most of my money I (or anyone else for that matter) pay doesn't come back as nice services from the public sector but go to harmful programs, intrinsically evil agendas, are used without any accountability, and so on. If I get back 5% in good services that I really need or want, I'd be surprised.

The poorest ones are even more negatively impacted than me by the state, and you probably believe that they get a lot of benefits. Your ideas about what the states do are incredibly out of sync with reality.

Your thesis is non-sequitur, and speaking frankly, degenerate and extraordinarily cynical. Communes are experimental, experiments often fail, that's just the way shit works. Out of those failures, there are communes that have succeeded - you fail to mention them. You don't need gods, or leaders, or governance just the instinctual wanting for both community and self-preservation. Government is reactionary, not preventative,[1] and coercion is endemic to the human population it's tit-for-tat, and even more so in the modern era the great equalizer is among us and widely proliferated. It's not a question of genetic lottery anymore.

Money isn't actually the problem, it is disproportion and, duly, the concentration. That concentration equates to leverage, which is influence. Influence has been used to commit atrocities from times immemorial, it is, if not the foremost then among the foremost elements of human oppression. Historically this has been aceded to by the mass population through various modes of manipulation. It is actually exploitative predation which is founded on artifice, suppression and innate blind spots in social and economic cognition.[2] Worker owned cooperatives, at least superficially, seem to be the only structure that isn't human-perverse which promote both autonomy and community without being disruptively disproportionate in their allotment of power - Mondragon Corporation for example.

[1] Think of how often laws are violated despite the possible consequences: murder, neglect, speeding, embezzlement, bribery... [2] Artifice being the hard work fallacy, which is actually predominately luck with lottery ticket odds and personal delusions of exceptionalism. Suppression being the ceaseless toil the masses necessarily endeavor in to support their livelihood. Blind spots in being inherently biased towards trust, economic blind spots emerging out of ignorance promulgated by that status quo and the nigh-complete opacity presented to workers.

While GP comment may be painting groups with an overly broad brush, I'm not sure I see any fault with the criticism of the specific type of person they describe, which does exist, even if it may not be all of that group (or even a sizable minority).

Any policy that is followed, such as "help and show empathy for those less fortunate" should be actually examined and understood, not just blindly applied. People that wish to participate in society but have fallen on hard times deserve our sympathy and help. People that have health problems that cause their situation deserve our sympathy and help. People that decide to opt out of most of our society and so remove themselves from most of the society deserve our respect, or at least our ambivalence. People that say they want to opt out of society but really just don't want to give anything to society (whether that's time, effort, restraint, whatever) but want to get some benefit of society deserve our scorn.

Far too many people get stuck following the actions of an ideology rather than the precepts. Not everyone that appears homeless is "less fortunate" in their own eyes, and giving to them is not necessarily helping in a way that the precept of helping those less fortunate espouses, but instead a way to trick yourself into thinking you are doing something good without having to put thought into whether you actually are.

In general, we could all do with a lot more introspection as to what our actions are actually doing and whether they serve the purpose we think they are. As a side benefit, a lot of bullshit from both sides of the political spectrum wouldn't survive the light of day some critical thought brings.

> It’s a demonstration that taking part in the economy is not inherently superior

sure, but this is a straw-man. The proposition isn't that participating in the economy is automatically of greater value, it's that not participating (other than to leech off it) produces non.

> directly counters their morality argument

It's possible to oppose this guy and Disneyland.

Encouraging women to become, say, crab fisherwomen, would just result in more humans being maimed and killed. For the same reason that female soccer players tear their ACL at shockingly higher rates than male ones.