301–310 of 528 posts
> Everytime you meet someone new and they ask “What do you do?” they’re not asking about your passions, hobbies, or the mundane human tasks that take up most of your time; but how you make money, how you turn yourself into income. 1. That's your assumption. They could really ask out of interest. They couldn't care less if that's your main source of income. 2. In some cultures this question will never be asked. 3. If…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It almost seems as if you are trolling. Surely we can, at least, agree that the excesses you mention exist only because of those who produce.
More than half of employment is “bullshit jobs” needed only for capitalism. There’s artificial scarcity but artificial scarcity in minds of people is much worse problem.
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…
I absolutely agree. We spend $30K/year per person (not per household, per person!) under the poverty line, and that's only on HUD, Medicaid, and Food Stamps. These resources should be lavished on those who actually need them. The tricky part is dealing with the perverse incentives which come with doing right by the disabled. The obscene abuse of military disability benefits is a case in point.
It's simple, what is written here should be part of basic education for every human being/worker. For all who mis-interprent the post and focus only on the anti capitalistic view of it, don't worry your body will tell you soon! Keep an eye for the signals, gut and digestive issues, back stuck and oain, sleeping problems, light sensitivity and irritability. When this will start remember that the problem is probably yo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we could take care of everyone with disabilities 10x over with plenty to spare. Yes, like the 40%[1] of Stanford undergrads who have disabilities. The greatest long term impediment to what you're suggesting is folks who don't need the help taking advantage of the resource distribution. It both massively increases the costs and sours those who have to pay into the system on the whole thing leading to a backlash. If…
This is an issue, but billionaires are a greater issue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it kills the incentive to do more I'm an employee. I don't really benefit from doing more. When I do more, someone else makes money. In my experience that someone else is just as likely to lay me off for a cheaper worker as they are to give me a raise The incentives our system produces are already really skewed, and it would be nice to see them skew the other way for once
It seems your complaint is a lack of recognition, and maybe redistribution would provide vengeance for this injustice. But that is different than "we ought to start giving raises to people who do less work, not more" which is what "skewing the other way" seems to imply.
> "we ought to start giving raises to people who do less work, not more"
This is completely beside the point, honestly
We should not use the most productive members of society as a measuring stick as though they were the average.
The average person does "way less work" than your very productive workaholic outliers, but that doesn't mean those people deserve way less.
Somehow we've all wound up being measured against the most exceptional people, instead of being measured against the average.
Keep in mind we're talking about a society where the median person only makes like $45k per year and exceptional people make many many times more than that
I'm not sitting here saying that some random shmuck should have Elon Musks income or anything, we could probably do better than 45k a year though
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll never understand how people think a personal anecdote contradicts a more general point attained by evaluating collected data that would include those anecdotes. e.g. The claim: Planes are a very safe way to travel. Followed by someone jumping up to say: I know a person who was injured in a rough landing. Note I'm not claiming either the individual or family is the atomic unit here just pointing out that your con…
HN commenters do this all the time. A lot of people here treat comments as mathematical or logic proofs. They see a statement like "Planes are a very safe way to travel", and their minds go to: ∀x(X(x)⟹(Y(x)) and then they make it their mission to find the falsifying x sub 0 example.
More commonly we see things like,
A: "I went to work today"
B: "One time I was on my way to work but I slipped on the ice in my driveway and ended up in the ER with a broken leg instead"
A: "Your broken leg does not disprove that I went to work today..."
Where A is trying to relive their glory days on Reddit where such a retort would have been considered funny, but thankfully most HN accounts know better than to think that is still funny, or that it was ever considered funny on HN. This thread being illustrative of one such exception, of course.
> Everytime you meet someone new and they ask “What do you do?” they’re not asking about your passions, hobbies, or the mundane human tasks that take up most of your time; but how you make money, how you turn yourself into income. 1. That's your assumption. They could really ask out of interest. They couldn't care less if that's your main source of income. 2. In some cultures this question will never be asked. 3. If…
I've also been a social outcast for a while now. But putting my creative works out there makes me feel like I'm building the tools to appreciate myself and be appreciated by others. And knowing I can be appreciated, even if I'm not, is enough to give me a sense of self worth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It almost seems as if you are trolling. Surely we can, at least, agree that the excesses you mention exist only because of those who produce.
They are not trolling. They are stating the simple, undeniable fact that there is more than enough to go around and if we had a more equitable distribution of resources, we could take care of everyone with disabilities 10x over with plenty to spare.