Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

itsmevox.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 528 posts

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#241

Post by birksherty »

avalys wrote: post #121
jplrssn wrote: post #69

Earlier 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 You could say the same thing about software engineers. But someone spending their days just creating JS frameworks is oh-so-productive and paid enough money every month to buy several years’ worth of food and shelter.

If they are JS frameworks that enable other engineers to build applications that support farms, and banks, and taxi services and insurance companies and mines and factories, etc. then obviously that is productive. If someone is willingly paying money for their labor then I see little point in questioning the worth of that exchange. When JS engineers start asking for public money to support them writing JS frameworks…

Meh. Those are just Making meaningless things that tracks users, hogs computer resourses, showing nonsense social media posts, brainrot contents, changing things constantly to put in their resume at the expense of users. Would prefer if these people did not exists in first place.

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#242

Post by birksherty »

avalys wrote: post #8
Telaneo wrote: post #5

> 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?

3rd world sweatshop workers who are exploited by filthy rich.

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#243

Post by therealdrag0 »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #126

We could provide food for the poor and disabled who lack or are not using family support with a tiny fraction of our industrial output. We wouldn’t even notice this expenditure, let alone whine about it. But what we are providing is actually “Healthcare. Specialists. Medications. Supplements. Mobility aids. Physical therapy. Accessible housing. Delivery fees when you cannot physically shop for yourself. Ride shares w…

The US spend like 66% of our federal budget on these things. Hard to imagine significantly increasing it and “hardly noticing”. People notice higher taxes in California; people notice higher taxes in Europe.

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#245

Post by throwaway27448 »

seanclayton wrote: post #164
throwaway27448 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Odyssey is in theaters right now; it rather famously deals with the importance of family and that's a close to 3000 year old poem.

Not really relevant at all

How do you figure? It seems trivially relevant to asserting that family has only mattered for 200 years.

I suspect you're actually talking about the current western/american conception of family (fair!) but it doesn't make sense to ignore this obvious miscommunication.

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#246

Post by WithinReason »

b3lvedere wrote: post #39
sajithdilshan wrote: post #2

I was raised as a Buddhist and in Buddhism it says that the biggest wealth you can have in your life is good health. Most of us take it for granted, that how lucky we are to born without a disability and can function doing daily tasks like taking a shower, going to the toilet without the help of someone else. I cannot imagine how difficult life would be with a disability and even thinking about it makes me anxious

I always try and remember that the majority of the creatures of this planet do not have the luxury to live in an environment where they can freely choose to shield themselves from bad weather and regulate temperature of their surroundings to their convenience.

Even humans only learned how to do it well relatively recently

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#247

Post by tavavex »

senordevnyc wrote: post #227
inigyou wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well right now there isn't a food shortage so what should we do while there isn't a food shortage? Should we perhaps say, that we only jettison the disabled people once we're actually running out of food and are forced to make a tough decision about who to keep alive, instead of doing it 20 years in advance just because there might be a shortage one day?

Whether we as a society support those who cannot productively contribute is orthogonal to capitalism. Capitalism itself has nothing to say about what we do with the increases in productivity. You can see this in many developed countries, which have wealth and surplus thanks to their capitalistic markets, but they also have high taxes and a strong safety net.

> Capitalism itself has nothing to say about what we do with the increases in productivity.

No, it has a lot to say about that. Our system encourages self-interest and maximizing profits, and that is what businesses do. Increases in productivity increase how much there is to skim off the products of said productivity. To them, using it for reasons outside profiteering is an immoral and wasteful. All the biggest players are aligned on this, and they are desperate to get another droplet of productivity by spending their money and power in all the right places. Corruption, favoritism, advertising, propaganda, monopolism (to accrue as much leverage over people and governments as possible). This is the default state that the system leads us to, it's not orthogonal, this is its natural outcome.

The counterexamples are countries that have found ways to counteract this influence in spite of the incentives. Usually it takes the right culture, as well as strong and competent government that looks out for their citizens. Capitalist absolutists rightfully see that all of this hinders their progress, so the fight between the 'make money at all costs' and 'we need to look out for other people' will always continue. If you don't fight it, you get something akin to the modern US.

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#248

Post by swat535 »

Telaneo wrote: post #5

> 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…

> the protestant work ethic,

I can't speak for Protestants because the denominations vary (though I doubt they would differ greatly on this point) but for Catholics "works of mercy" is defined as caring for the vulnerable, the elderly and tending the sick. It's not meant to shame those people into guilt.

Additionally, there are many other facets such as the spiritual works of mercy such as comforting the sorrowful or counseling the doubtful.

I think you are perhaps better off putting the blame on the Capitalism hustle culture that forces people to work day and night to be "productive" than Christianity.

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#249

Post by sleight42 »

At 53, and someone whose life significantly imploded three years ago (two years before an autism and autistic burnout diagnosis), I'm so fucking grateful that this made it to HN. It needs to be the top post in LinkedIn and forever pinned at the top of everyone's feeds, too.

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#250

Post by dubeye »

Telaneo wrote: post #5

> 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…

Interesting that you highlight classics, is the implication that it's more ... productive for your personal development to read classics than trashy thrillers?

As someone who spent four years reading 'the' Classics at uni, I doubt it's very true

you comment wouldn't read quite so well if you swapped classics for posting cat tiktoks and hanging out with strangers you bump into in the street. But what makes that inferior?

Post reply on HN