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Her brothers escape from poverty is to literally face death on the battlefield. Not sure thats a better option.
Pretty sad that this got flagged. I guess saying women like her are destroying western society comes off as sexist? But they are the responsible party, at least primarily, for the rise in single parent families. Idek.
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Better at sports .. but I bet there's a fairly even distribution between people who have money and don't. > In the future, we may view enormous disparities in wealth as evil as we do racism today. A lot of people already do.
And a lot of people would be very wrong. There’s a floor to survivability, below which you can’t keep yourself alive, but there is no ceiling. If everyone is above the floor, there’s no reason for concern about those looking for the ceiling. In the future we’ll pull people up to the floor, but that doesn’t require attaching a ceiling. The will never be a successful society that substantially punishes achievement abov…
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And a lot of people would be very wrong. There’s a floor to survivability, below which you can’t keep yourself alive, but there is no ceiling. If everyone is above the floor, there’s no reason for concern about those looking for the ceiling. In the future we’ll pull people up to the floor, but that doesn’t require attaching a ceiling. The will never be a successful society that substantially punishes achievement abov…
The ceiling is there because without it, a minority of people eventually acquire enough wealth and political power than comes from it, that it dominates entire society, to its detriment. Just look at Mexico or Ukraine as examples of what happens when there's no reasonable ceiling.
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And a lot of people would be very wrong. There’s a floor to survivability, below which you can’t keep yourself alive, but there is no ceiling. If everyone is above the floor, there’s no reason for concern about those looking for the ceiling. In the future we’ll pull people up to the floor, but that doesn’t require attaching a ceiling. The will never be a successful society that substantially punishes achievement abov…
The ceiling is there because without it, a minority of people eventually acquire enough wealth and political power than comes from it, that it dominates entire society, to its detriment. Just look at Mexico or Ukraine as examples of what happens when there's no reasonable ceiling.
That's one big paradox. Coming from poverty, I work with plenty of talented people, but nowhere as talented as the people I've studied in shitty schools. Now most of those people from my poverty times continue to be poor, because of many problems poverty brought to them. I can clearly see that, and that I was the lucky one to find a way up many times. Yet, my new social circle believe that I'm talented because of my…
Like, every once in a while I get a craving for poverty comfort foods like ramen with frozen veggies, a slice of American cheese, and a sliced up microwaved hotdog.
Or trying to explain why it's so hard for me to let go of a 20 year old pickup truck that still works because I used to sleep in it.
Or how no matter how much money I earn now I always feel poor and one step away from homelessness.
How I won't go and buy new clothes, why I shop at thrift stores and pawn shops when I can afford new, how I don't feel like I own anything, why I always plan for and expect the worst out of every event and encounter I have, how I dedicate my self to working hard so that the places I work at can't "afford" to fire me, so much so that I have been accused of being an overworker and a slave driver.
On an income basis I'm probably at the top for my entire family right now, but years of homelessness and over a decade of extreme poverty have made their marks on my life and I don't know if it will ever get better. I could win the lottery and I'd still be cutting coupons and searching deal sites for discount codes, wearing discount clothes and shopping in pawn shops.
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You can call it "adding context" if you concede that said context implies the original argument was badly phrased, in that the most direct reading is not what the writer really meant.
Or I could just call it "adding context". I could also expect readers to not have to be spoon-fed, and to avoid launching themselves into "counter-arguments" before they have understood what they are arguing against.
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> In the future we’ll pull people up to the floor, but that doesn’t require attaching a ceiling. It absolutely does, right up until the exact future moment when EVERYONE is pulled up above (well above) the (bottom) floor. In other words no one should be at liberty to seek the ceiling until EVERYONE is out of the basement. > The will never be a successful society that substantially punishes achievement above a certain…
Again, you rely on the utterly false notion of a "zero-sum" economy, when in fact it may only be possible to pull everyone out of poverty if we allow people to be proportionately rewarded for their contributions.
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Some people are indeed much better. Anyone who played sports as a kid understands this. Huge differences are immediately apparent in small children. But generally, I agree that, for most life tasks, the differences between people are not enormous. Humanity could do a much better job eliminating poverty. In the future, we may view enormous disparities in wealth as evil as we do racism today.
> Some people are indeed much better. Anyone who played sports as a kid understands this. Anyone with a little bit of nutritional knowledge knows that having a nutritious diet is a major part of athletic competitiveness. Poverty limits or eliminates the ability of a parent to provide nutritious meals. There's certainly going to be a level of natural talent that exists, but everyone who comes from poverty are playing…
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> a shallow dismissal is less valuable than an excellent critical comment An excellent critical comment is wasted on a shallow argument… your thinking assumes that reaching beyond the metaphorical ceiling doesn’t require standing atop those still struggling to reach the metaphorical floor… it absolutely and necessarily does. Worse, you seem to think that reaching for means that vastly outstrip your need is somehow no…
If Jimmy turns a piece of wood and some graphite into a pencil, he has created value. That didn't require exploiting the lumberjack or the miner. Jimmy did not steal value from either. He created value by inventing a new way for their raw materials to be useful to other people. Jimmy didn't need to "stand atop" anyone to do this. What's "pathetic" are the ad hominems and insults the people in this thread have to reso…
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If Jimmy turns a piece of wood and some graphite into a pencil, he has created value. That didn't require exploiting the lumberjack or the miner. Jimmy did not steal value from either. He created value by inventing a new way for their raw materials to be useful to other people. Jimmy didn't need to "stand atop" anyone to do this. What's "pathetic" are the ad hominems and insults the people in this thread have to reso…
If Jimmy only ever prototyped the pencil by collecting and working the wood and graphite himself then, sure, he didn’t exploit anyone… as soon as he went into business employing others to manufacture those pencils he started to. The moment he concentrated the means of pencil production in his own hands he started to exploit both his raw suppliers — that graphite miner’s health woes are the fruit of Jimmy’s demand — a…
And even so, the work the people making the pencils for Jimmy would not exist without Jimmy. Jimmy, in yet another way, provides value. Jimmy figured out to put the wood with the graphite, not them. Who actually does it is irrelevant; or are you suggesting that if Jimmy kept his operation entirely mechanical, that'd be better?