141–150 of 528 posts
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"They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words." Sartre didn't respect your kind and I don't either.
Sartre was a nihilistc pdf-file and a prolific liar. I don't have any respect for his ilk either.
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We have enough excess in society that we can spare enough of those things to those who are unable to take care of themselves.
Do you know how tone deaf this is? Some people literally can’t afford their medication and you are saying “meh, we have too much already”
Insulin costs ~3 USD to make per vial. People not being able to afford ~30 USD insulin is not because we have too little medication. It's because there are leeches all over the healthcare system.
And if you genuinely cannot afford it, you should get it for free, as part of a proper healthcare system, which the US famously lacks.
At some point many years ago I read that the family, not the individual, is the building block of society. It might have been Chesterton or Friedman as I read a lot of both when I was young. It certainly is a lot easier to hold the line when you have a squad of half a dozen to a dozen with you (wife/husband/children/brothers/sisters/uncles etc). If the state is there, then you are fortunate, but I wouldn't want to co…
I've read that German society, for example, is largely based on contracts between the family unit and the state. Sweden, as a contrast, is largely based on contracts between individuals and the state.
As an example, Germany treats a married couple as a fiscal unit, Sweden abolished joint taxation in the 70s. Swedish parental leave is allocated per individual, and is mostly non-transferable.
In a lot of ways, individualism is produced by state contract in Sweden.
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> instead of traveling and having fun when you are able bodied Are you having trouble with reading comprehension? Jesus.
Why would you wait to travel and have fun until you are no longer able-bodied? If we go for QALYs as people with this ideology usually do, isn't it better to front-load your high-quality years so you'll at least have the memories for longer?
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Why would you wait to travel and have fun until you are no longer able-bodied? If we go for QALYs as people with this ideology usually do, isn't it better to front-load your high-quality years so you'll at least have the memories for longer?
Yeah and then when something bad happens to you, have no money and be a burden to society! Extremely responsible.
You're treating it as if it goes on forever, but in reality, the end of your life is going to suck no matter what you do, and the beginning is set by your parents, but you get to control the middle, from about 20 to 60 years old if you're doing averagely well. Don't make the mistake of saving up everything until you are 50, and then realizing it's too late to enjoy it!
Recently I was at Fusion Festival, which was cool. Do you think I should have saved the $500 and then gone to the festival (if it's still around) in 40 years at the age of 75?
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So you got lucky, thought it was because you were a genius and now you think everyone who didn't get lucky is just stupid. A common thinking pattern. To prove it's luck, though, your great-grandchildren will be poor again - that always happens - they say rags to rags in three generations.
I am not poor but I am not rich either, why do you make assumptions?
"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel."
The author blames capitalism and religion while greatly indulging in his pride, I think. It is so much beneath him to ask for help from others, he’d rather change the world so that he doesn’t have to ask — instead of expressing some humility. I also have a lot of pride in myself, and I feel deeply for the author. However it looks to me that he’a banging on the wrong door, and instead of waiting for all the people in…
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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…
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_Iddin-Sin_to_Zinu
[2] https://mymodernmet.com/ancient-egyptians-attendance-record/
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Yes to all of this, and want to double stress the Housing theory of everything [1]. Most of the "scarcity" people feel today in the North American context is driven by housing. And there simply isn't enough of it. And citing badly measured vacancy stats does a huge disservice to the effort to fix this. I agree we can do a lot better. And I have no moral qualms about giving the excess away to everyone who needs it. Bu…
Housing is clearly the biggest problem, yes, and I doubt you'll find anyone who'll disagree that it's not a big problem. But it's a big problem for political reasons. If we all woke up tomorrow and thought 'we need 10 million new homes', I'm sure it could happen. It's just not in the short-term (and long-term?) interests of the economy as it is now. Maybe we should do something about that? Or maybe, just maybe, we sh…
The cost (no profit) of 1 Million homes where people want to live (where your community is), would be roughly 0.5 Trillion to 1 Trillion USD [1]. So, I don't think this is true :(.
We simply don't have the construction workers and the supply-chains to make it happen. Again, these are fixable problems and I want this to be true. But it is not today.
[1]: https://medium.com/@dtxtransitposts/how-much-does-it-actuall...
The 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)
Even just capitalism with more regulation and safety nets (the ones most countries implement don't work very well) would suffice here.
I guess this is the basis of my critique: the author seems to be writing as though capitalism is robbing him of some ideal that would otherwise exist: invoking the so-called "Protestant work ethic" to describe a system that took over the world and made us all worse off.
That doesn't feel right to me because I don't think previous economic systems did better at protecting the vulnerable. (But I'm not sure, that's why I framed my comment the way I did!)
Most replies to me are framed more as either "do what Europe does" (but the author lives in Europe!) or "we haven't gotten there yet" - which...sure! We shouldn't accept the status quo. But that's a different argument.