Men Without Work (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#421

Post by pixl97 » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 9:09 PM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #398

pixl97 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You state a case for the tragedy of the commons. If everyone was like you there would be no society and nowhere safe. Effectively you behave like the billionaires of the world today. They have enough money to run away from whatever problems they create and therefore care little about preventing them in the first place. You have no skin in the game.

So I should die because those billionaires are in a dick measuring contest? The war in ukraine is a proxy war between nato and direct for russia. Some random Vlad and Boris have had nothing to do with it, didn't start it but now have to die, so that elenski, ursula, macron and biden on one side and putin, xi, whoever the iranian leader is on the other side measure their dicks. Sorry, but not sorry, fuck them. If they…

So lets say the world 'goes bad' in the near future. You won't find any way out. Suddenly you'll realize every country out there has a set of rules that say "If you are here you are going to ensure the continuity of our society". Now this may not mean that you have to fight with your life. For the most part countries will take your money in taxation and instead equip a soldier to fight in your stead.

When things get bad enough everywhere will draft you at gunpoint, and you'll either fight or die.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#422

Post by yucky » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

dbingham wrote: post #418

yucky wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with "one worker one vote" is that it assumes an egalitarian world that couldn't be further from reality. CEO's are in many places overcompensated, sometimes ridiculously so. But the idea that a CNC programmer or engineer should get the same input as the guy pushing a broom around to clean up their part shavings is so absurd that you will never get talented people to take part. This of course means the only…

> The issue with "one worker one vote" is that it assumes an egalitarian world that couldn't be further from reality. That egalitarianism already exists in every democracy in the world, and everyone just accepts it. The guy working the McDonald's counter gets the same vote as the PhD in Public Policy. It's a feature of democracy and people, historically, will sometimes complain about it but generally accept it as a n…

    > The guy working the McDonald's counter gets the same vote as the PhD in Public Policy.

That is a very naive view of how elections work, wouldn't you say?

   > Your choices for business structure (in the US) are sole prioritorship, partnership, LLC, S-corp, or C-corp.

You missed some. And really you can structure a business however you want as long as taxes get paid.

    > You may not hire an employee to work more than 40 hours with out paying them overtime.

Salary workers everywhere are laughing.

    > Seems like a net gain in freedom to me!

Forcing everyone at the point of a gun to give up any interests in starting a private enterprise putting their own talents to work - sounds like freedom to you? That explains a lot.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#423

Post by ajsnigrutin » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 9:54 PM UTC

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #416

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feminism is not about making men's lives more difficult or about cheering when men struggle. Most feminists believe that gender equality can benefit everyone, including men, by creating a more just society. It is not about oppression or mistreatment of any group, not of even men. The problem here is, that in many places, we've gone past equality to clear privilige for women (and other groups, that mostly are not yo…

> On the other hand, there are many support systems from women, from women-only workshops, places, scolarships, sponsorships, to shelters, support groups and treating mental healt issues way differently than with men. Those do not spawn out of thin air. Groups of people built them. In my region, there are many such projects and when you dig into their origin it's often women who struggled 20 years ago who then landed…

> Groups of people built them

And they got financed by the governments. Mens shelters didn't, and didn't get built. Men only scholarships would bring protests and calls of sexism, while women-only somehow don't.

Sometimes they even protest against such things:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220101141736/https://www.qchro...

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#424

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 9:58 PM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #423

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, there are many support systems from women, from women-only workshops, places, scolarships, sponsorships, to shelters, support groups and treating mental healt issues way differently than with men. Those do not spawn out of thin air. Groups of people built them. In my region, there are many such projects and when you dig into their origin it's often women who struggled 20 years ago who then landed…

> Groups of people built them And they got financed by the governments. Mens shelters didn't, and didn't get built. Men only scholarships would bring protests and calls of sexism, while women-only somehow don't. Sometimes they even protest against such things: https://web.archive.org/web/20220101141736/https://www.qchro...

> Men only scholarships would bring protests and calls of sexism

There are lots of male-only scholarships, some provided by male-only organizations (e.g., fraternities) to their members.

Some are even exclusively for people pursuing male-only jobs.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#425

Post by light_cone » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 10:40 PM UTC

lordfrito wrote: post #420

light_cone wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, I understand very well it's a slippery slope. For me it's just a cursor, whereas I think that people pretend there is no cursor, only absolute values. I guess it's a question of semantics. Because by reading you, using my definition of transhumanism, you're implying that wearing glasses is already a step too far (because it's using technology to improve/fix yourself). But of course I don't think that's wh…

Not knocking you or general discussion on transhumanism. There's different definitions, and I haven't read up on it enough. Agree that reading glasses isn't a problem, sorry if that's what you thought I was arguing. The original comment was talking about improving people through genetics and brain tinkering. That's just a modern form of Eugenics, and I thought that we all agreed that this line of thinking doesn't rea…

No sorry, I went on a tangent and generalized without stating it clearly.

I just wanted to argue that by my definition, we are already in a tranhumanistic (and eugenistic) society, so we should not spare ourselves these debates instead of blanket statements and be afraid of concepts.

I probably appeared as pro go-nuts-on-brain-generics, whereas I actually agree we should be very cautious. The law of unintended consequences is indeed a strong argument.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#426

Post by dudul » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 10:49 PM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #386

dudul wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If things are so dire, why aren't women drafted too? Why is anyone allowed to leave the country?

It's bad for morale, bad for international PR reasons, most aren't as capable of fighting as most men are,... but in the end, if things get tough, women and children get drafted too. There were some talks about that in ukraine recently, but nothing much happened on that, so women can still leave the country. - https://www.kyivpost.com/russias-war/confusion-as-registrati...

The article very specifically highlights that it's not a draft, a mere registration.

At the end of the day, even if women are not as good as men at being soldiers they should be drafted similarly. They should see the same rules/laws applied to them. But hey, sometimes we're ok with some inequality I guess.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#427

Post by abdabab » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 11:49 PM UTC

lordfrito wrote: post #395

qwerpy wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to say I really appreciate you taking the time to put all these thoughts down into words. As a father it captures a lot of what I'm feeling these days. People are quick to attach moralistic judgments onto facts and statistics, but all I care about is what kind of society my kids will grow up in and how I can help them have good lives. Our society does not seem to be incentivizing good behavior or rewarding peo…

I feel for you brother. For your kids to be successful, their life strategies have to take into account the environment they're living in. Basic game theory stuff. Play chess, not checkers. The world I was hoping my kids would live in no longer exists, and so those old strategies no longer work. In fact, they put you at a disadvantage. This is why people who "play by the rules" feel left out, disenfranchised, whateve…

> Keep your head down and weather the storm.

This certainty a good way to survive but not a good way to live.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#428

Post by pnf » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 12:00 AM UTC

mint2 wrote: post #412

pnf wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he's a surgeon or a pianist he gets a pass. The exceptions that prove the rule.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_ru... “ In what Fowler describes as the "most objectionable" variation of the phrase,[1] this sort of use comes closest to meaning "there is an exception to every rule", or even that the presence of an exception makes a rule more true; these uses Fowler attributes to misunderstanding.[1]”

I enjoy such etymologies as much as anyone but not sure I agree with you or Fowler's on this one. I mean, if you want to police grammar around HN, fine, but you're going to wear out the tips of your fingers. But aside from that there is also a kind of linguistic luddism in refusing the accept popular usage of idioms. Imagine demanding the same scrupulosity of someone learning English. They would be deprived of such lovelies as "begging the question" without being handed a dog-eared copy of Sophistical Refutations. Or how about "the proof is in the pudding"? No "alright" for you. You must promptly declare yourself when leaving a voicemail for your spouse: "Hello, it is I." So much lost, so little gained.

"The exception that proves the rule" is a saying whose meaning is contested."

I don't find the objection here very credible. The usage you object to is "unfortunately the commonest". The common usage has the advantage of being the most obvious. The valences offered in the article don't seem that significant when it all boils down to what people mean by it, which is pretty well-understood. De gustibus...

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#429

Post by deterministic » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 12:18 AM UTC

WhiteBlueSkies wrote: post #353

deterministic wrote: post #321

I am not surprised really. If the alternative to not working is to have a minimum wage job where you get treated like shit by customers and management every day.

I had an almost minimum job in early twenties. It was lots of hard work but I don't regret it. The boss was a total jerk but I made some friends. You've no idea of the camradarie that comes up when you've a shitty boss and a list burgers that you have to cook ASAP. Gets your blood flowing. Definitely that would've been preferable than just sitting at home idly playing video games and becoming more and more depressed.

Yeah having good colleagues makes a big difference. You all support each other against a common enemy. I once worked for a very-much-not-minimum-job dysfunctional company where even the colleagues were jerks. That was pretty bad. Luckily that is the only bad experience I have had. Most companies I worked for in my career were pretty good.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#430

Post by pnf » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 12:51 AM UTC

hezralig wrote: post #414

pnf wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that I'm not claiming to speak for HN and censor voices I don't agree with. That's your job, apparently. In any case, glib dismissals of shallow, condescending arguments are the appropriate response. In point of fact, my response wasn't shallow at all, if you think about it. There's a lot to unpack in considering whether someone's opinions are indistinguishable from something chatGPT might output. E…

It sounds more so that this community has a set of standards and that you are not a culture fit. Have you considered using reddit for your sort of 'passionate debate' ?

This is going to sound harsh, but I mean it in the most sincere way possible and I hope you'll take it with that in mind.

This community's standards are old and evolving and contested. There was no vote or debate on the guidelines you cited. They are just the same boilerplate you'd expect from any watered down open community. If you believe the members should have a say in the standards of the community then you should object to the diktat of these guidelines as much as I do. I've been here in various guises for well over a decade and I can tell you the standards have changed from something that was closer to Reddit or Digg for programmers into something that is trying to be as corporate and anodyne and bloodless as possible. The worst part is it isn't even the official mods doing it, it's the school marms in the comments. So, for you to come in and suggest that I'm out of order with my style of comment only suggests to me you are some arriviste with no sense of the cultural history of the place. The changes around here already look like a form of digital colonialism and then here you come acting as some kind of warrant chief disciplining the discourse. You change the culture and then tell the natives they aren't a 'culture fit'? That's pretty offensive. Anyway, it's not your particular fault exclusively but, without cultural memory, someone arguing forcefully or rhetorically on HN may seem like a dangerous new precedent when it's really just an obsolete local tradition that some of us quixotically try to protect. I don't know if you've noticed but there is a deficit of diverse political opinions around here. I'm old enough to remember when that wasn't the case. Allowing wannabe mods to enforce the new rules is a form of giving up on the fight over the culture of the place. Civility is not a universal standard. Go to any subculture and query the standards of civility and I bet you'll get some surprising answers. No, civility is the rule of the people who get to decide what's acceptable. This is contested space. I find comments like the parent's to be quite offensive and can give deep reasons for my opinion. In short, I found it uncivil. You may not like my style of participation, but at least understand why. I post my comments not to fight or offend but for the silent lurkers to see other possibilities and to be of good cheer in the knowledge that they are not alone in their sense of alienation from official tech culture.