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I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore
51–60 of 528 posts
Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is how it has always been throughout history (and still is in most parts of the world). Individual is part of nuclear family, nuclear family is part of extended family, extended family is part of tribe, etc. When one part is in need, the others jump in to help.
> throughout history Ancient egypt? Roman times? Medieval times? Byzantine times? Pre-colonial Philippines? Pre-colonial America? I think it may have started in the late 1800s at the earliest. I would need a bit more evidence to be convinced that your model of individual to nuclear to extended etc has been a thing longer than a few centuries, vs the vast majority of human life experience being in nomadic hunter-gathe…
> the vast majority of human life experience being in nomadic hunter-gathering, villages, farmland, and walled city-states.
in which they lived in families, extended families and tribes as the primary units. I didn't understand your argument at all.
Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is how it has always been throughout history (and still is in most parts of the world). Individual is part of nuclear family, nuclear family is part of extended family, extended family is part of tribe, etc. When one part is in need, the others jump in to help.
> throughout history Ancient egypt? Roman times? Medieval times? Byzantine times? Pre-colonial Philippines? Pre-colonial America? I think it may have started in the late 1800s at the earliest. I would need a bit more evidence to be convinced that your model of individual to nuclear to extended etc has been a thing longer than a few centuries, vs the vast majority of human life experience being in nomadic hunter-gathe…
It was _especially_ like this further back. You literally could not survive without the tribe, and the tribe had norms-and-values you had to adhere to, some of which were to do with family units. This went for nomads and settlers alike.
Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore
#54> If your worth is not determined by your productivity, then what remains of you underneath it all? Everything else. You are worth so much more than your productivity. I'm glad I never got sucked into the protestant work ethic, since defining yourself based on your labour and the value you generate from that sounds woefully narrow-minded (this doesn't feel like quite the right word, but close enough). It's probably h…
Who produces the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the house you live in, the energy you use, the medicine you consume, etc. while you airily define ‘productivity’ as reading the classics and spending time with friends?
People who the current system fully agrees should be paid like dirt while others party, that's who.
Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
“We have enough excess in society” How are you measuring this? Hopefully something better than stock prices.
In the US, it can be measured by the overstocked food that gets discarded everyday, and by the houses that are vacant nine months a year.
Just a note those "vacancies" include dilapidated buildings and housing that is between leases (literally all the housing on craigslist is included in that number).
Vacancies in most major cities is near-zero. As a market-rate renter, when someone says "we have so much excess", I have no idea what you're talking about.
Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who produces the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the house you live in, the energy you use, the medicine you consume, etc. while you airily define ‘productivity’ as reading the classics and spending time with friends?
Increasingly, the answer is a “what”, not a “who”.
This has been happening for more than a hundred years now... 90%+ of the people have been farming not that long ago, and mechanized farming equipment has replaced 95%+ of those workers.
This doesn't mean 4 hour workweeks or majority of people not needing to work, but it means that some of you can be social media managers, others can integrate AI chatbots in apps that don't need an AI chatbot, some can rewrite existing software in whatever the language of the week is, etc. Without offloading all that farming to machines, we'd never have what we now consider for "normal" and "must have".
Those few farmers left (2-3% of the workforce, depeding on the country) want to earn money too, so they can buy smartphones, watch netflix and have that smart toilet seats that open automatically and wash your butthole. If all those replaced-by-machines workers don't produce all that, where's the point in farming food for them?
Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
“We have enough excess in society” How are you measuring this? Hopefully something better than stock prices.
In the US, it can be measured by the overstocked food that gets discarded everyday, and by the houses that are vacant nine months a year.
This assumes production of food is the bottleneck rather than distribution. If distribution is actually the bottleneck, overstocked food is not a measure of excess in society.
Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I've considered suicide because I was unable to make ends meet. I don't want others to experience that. Is that too much to ask?
Of course nobody sane wants something like this to happen. The problem isn't the people unable to make ends meets, it's the unwilling.
Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tell me how someone born disabled made the wrong decision? After that, tell me how someone who became disabled after an accident which they themselves did not cause, made the wrong decision? Thirdly, tell me how someone who lived perfectly healthy just happend to have some blood clot shot into their brain suddenly, made the wrong decision?
The wrong decision is not being insured for disaster and not saving enough when you were able to work, electing to spend the money instead. Not being unlucky with your health or having an accident. That's clearly stated in my original response if you care to read and not knee-jekingly respond. For someone who has been born disabled, the conversation should be moved to the people who brought them to life and are respo…
Almost everything in this universe wants you dead, including the species you belong to yourself, including the oxygen you so desperately need. The sooner you realise that the living time you have left is a careful balance of sheer luck and some preparations (money, food, shelter, love, the whole Maslov pyramid) the sooner you realise a standard job or labor is just a tool.
Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore
#60The author lays most of this at the feet of capitalism, and I agree that the system has excesses that have contributed to the atomization of society, which can cause people to slip through the cracks, but...has any other system been obviously _better_ at supporting those with disabilities? Did feudalism or communism do this better? (I think about the "worst system, except for all the other systems" quote often)
I think most people conflate the 2 things the current problems are not just because of capitalism but rather the capture of the government by capitalism.