Jordan Neely: The Left and BLM's Latest Moronic Martyr

[Iota]

there are so many words, i’m not reading all that bruh someone make a write up that is a paragraph long and explains all dis

[kabLe]

1 hour ago, Wawa said:

I'd reclarify that to if work, then get what you 'earned', the word 'deserved' was not the best way to put it, I'll admit.  Anyone that works 40 hours a week has earned, or at least should earn from their labor value, basic necessities.  That's not a reward, I'm talking about the entire working class i.e. wage-earners having their basic needs met so they can continue to work 40 hours a week without the deterioration of their material conditions and consequently their physical and mental health.

Ableist comment, the working class is very diverse and not built the same.  I've worked in fast food/food service for close to a decade and have worked with people from many different socioeconomic backgrounds and physical/cognitive conditions--they are definitely putting an effort into their lives, as we all are, but the 'build a skill set' expectation is not always realistic when some of us have a much lower physical/cognitive ceiling than others (disabled/autism/etc.).  I personally know people who could have been like Jordan Neely if their conditions in life were just slightly tweaked for the worse, that's why I believe in seeking for systemic solutions instead of resorting to shaming the same people (homeless) that the system has failed, which ironically makes their mental health deterioration worse.  Obviously, the criminalization of being homeless hasn't been a success, so it's either use a systemic solution or accept the status quo.

The people I worked with in the fast food/food service industry were some of the hardest working people I've ever worked with in my life.  Not only that, but even as a Manager I was still expected to work just as hard and pick up the slack when these workers called out.  Now, I make significantly more money operating machinery, a job anyone can do if adequate training is provided, than I did as a Manager in food service, despite the fact that I busted my ass off in that role while my direct lead right now literally gets paid more money than I do to just make sure I'm working while not doing any real work himself.  Who is 'skipping class' here?  Also, "then as you get towards the finish line demand the next generation and the rest of your country subsidize your poor choices for the last 50 years" is pretty comical considering our grandparents were literally the only generation, the generation thanks to the progress of the labor movement after The Great Depression and WW2, where you could support a family on a single income.

"I did an essential job my entire life, spent my free time outside of work doing what even PMC people do and what lots of people do in general in the form of watching TV or gaming, and never once thought about how the system doesn't work for me and instead works against me to keep me being poor as expensive as possible, when am I going to organize in my workplace?"

Victim mentality

 

if you met the hardest working people in McDonald’s then your the type of person I’m talking about. You nor them have worked hard. You worked a shitty job that a high schooler can accomplish and it drained you because in the back of your mind you knew you weren’t doing anything to help yourself.

 

your manager now likely put his time in at the lower levels and worked his way up. How does one become a manger at McDonald’s? Getting the most orders correct? Making the most burgers? Or simply not moving on long enough that your the only realistic option

 

Stressful and draining doesn’t mean hard working. 
 

your paycheck is your compensation for what you’ve worked. You agreed to it, don’t like it? Do something about it.

 

I entered the workforce at 16 picking up garbage, landscaping and many other odd jobs as a grounds crew member at an amusement park. After 10 years I made 15$ and only because minimum wage kept going up. I had enough and decided to learn networking, got my CCNA, did helpdesk for 5 years where I trained most of my companies employees while still taking the most calls per month. It was stressful and draining but I wouldn’t call sitting at a desk taking phone calls hard work. I tasted what the bottom of the barrel was like an so I got my shit together learned a skill, gained some financial literacy and made a plan. Something most of the people your referring to probably didn’t. Most of them probably have ridiculous debt because they didn’t understand money and made huge financial decisions that put them in the red and made them stuck. They didn’t just wake up one day and have no money. If you have a job and rent is half your income that’s your stupid decision.

 

im not saying I agree with the pick yourself up by the bootstraps but if you don’t do anything to make your life better and just expect a handout or for everything to be okay in the end when you’ve done nothing to prepare for a good ending your just an idiot.

 

 

[Wawa]

22 hours ago, kabLe said:

Victim mentality

 

if you met the hardest working people in McDonald’s then your the type of person I’m talking about.

...

I had enough and decided to learn networking, got my CCNA

...

if you don’t do anything to make your life better and just expect a handout or for everything to be okay in the end when you’ve done nothing to prepare for a good ending your just an idiot.

Highlighted just the key points of your response to respond to:  I said I met the hardest working people in food service because that's literally my life experience, something you'd also have if you've also worked in food service and did so in the most densely populated state in the US where food service workers rarely have a minute to enjoy free time.  Conversely, I'd have your opinion on socioeconomic matters if I lived through your life experiences instead of my own when considering our different spawn points, ancestry, environmental factors, impact of people around us, and biological/chemical makeup.  If you agree with that, then we'd both be Jordan Neely if we lived exclusively through his life experiences instead of our own.  If you don't agree, then empathy comes into question.

...

I got my CompTIA Network+ certification when I was 15 and built my first computer at the age of 16, even added a custom watercooling setup to that same computer when I was 17 using an old car radiator.  I had every opportunity to pursue a helpdesk job at the very least and use that as a launch pad for other opportunities, but decided to keep that only as a hobby instead of a career because I didn't see myself enjoying it as a career.  Does that make me a dumb motherfucker for pursuing only what I enjoy as a career versus trying to make a better living off of skills I only enjoy using in my free time in that moment of my life?  You would have made a lot more money working for 10 years in a country like Denmark, which pays McDonald's workers $20+ per hour instead of the $15 or less in the US that you worked for, despite your position that "your paycheck is your compensation for what you’ve worked, you agreed to it."  Does that make you a dumb motherfucker in that moment of your life because you didn't negotiate for a higher wage that the company that you worked for could afford to pay you?

...

And speaking of dumb motherfuckers, I've worked with many of them--people who can't hold down a job and simply don't have the attention span or mental compacity to retain any training in even the most lenient of time frames.  So what should we do with idiots?  Do we just abandon them and leave them on the streets?  It is literally in our best interest to keep people, especially these, off the streets for own safety, but since you'd rather idealize about what 'hard work' is, homelessness is deserved and 40 hours per week of labor doesn't earn basic necessities.  Meanwhile, you'll have no problem giving actual parasites and leeches on society, like landlords, a pass because 'they earned it'.  You'd rather dehumanize people who work at McDonald's while at the same time giving those who add no value to society and more closely embody welfare a pass.

[kabLe]

2 hours ago, Wawa said:

Highlighted just the key points of your response to respond to:  I said I met the hardest working people in food service because that's literally my life experience, something you'd also have if you've also worked in food service and did so in the most densely populated state in the US where food service workers rarely have a minute to enjoy free time.  Conversely, I'd have your opinion on socioeconomic matters if I lived through your life experiences instead of my own when considering our different spawn points, ancestry, environmental factors, impact of people around us, and biological/chemical makeup.  If you agree with that, then we'd both be Jordan Neely if we lived exclusively through his life experiences instead of our own.  If you don't agree, then empathy comes into question.

...

I got my CompTIA Network+ certification when I was 15 and built my first computer at the age of 16, even added a custom watercooling setup to that same computer when I was 17 using an old car radiator.  I had every opportunity to pursue a helpdesk job at the very least and use that as a launch pad for other opportunities, but decided to keep that only as a hobby instead of a career because I didn't see myself enjoying it as a career.  Does that make me a dumb motherfucker for pursuing only what I enjoy as a career versus trying to make a better living off of skills I only enjoy using in my free time in that moment of my life?  You would have made a lot more money working for 10 years in a country like Denmark, which pays McDonald's workers $20+ per hour instead of the $15 or less in the US that you worked for, despite your position that "your paycheck is your compensation for what you’ve worked, you agreed to it."  Does that make you a dumb motherfucker in that moment of your life because you didn't negotiate for a higher wage that the company that you worked for could afford to pay you?

...

And speaking of dumb motherfuckers, I've worked with many of them--people who can't hold down a job and simply don't have the attention span or mental compacity to retain any training in even the most lenient of time frames.  So what should we do with idiots?  Do we just abandon them and leave them on the streets?  It is literally in our best interest to keep people, especially these, off the streets for own safety, but since you'd rather idealize about what 'hard work' is, homelessness is deserved and 40 hours per week of labor doesn't earn basic necessities.  Meanwhile, you'll have no problem giving actual parasites and leeches on society, like landlords, a pass because 'they earned it'.  You'd rather dehumanize people who work at McDonald's while at the same time giving those who add no value to society and more closely embody welfare a pass.

I can agree with the this first part to an extent. Sure where you come from effects how you view the world. However you need to think for yourself and look at the big picture in the world. You just said you could have had a better life but instead you had no discipline and chased hedonism and “your passion” and now you live life thinking it’s everyone else’s fault except your own. I was in a shitty situation, I enjoyed the people I worked with and believe me the mechanic and owners of that amusement park worked harder than all of your fast food workers. Unless you think tearing down a roller coaster and maintaining 15 other rides is easier than fast food service. 
 

point is you can chase your passion but if your passion doesn’t pay shit whose fault is it? Did you not research average salaries and upward movement in your job sector? 
 

I agree on a societal level you need idiots, however on an individual level you don’t have to be that idiot. Not all homeless people are the same, some have phones paid for by the government that they only use to jerk off on the side walk while your kids walk by, you want to save those? Lots have just straight given up and find it easier to be homeless, this is not debatable it’s a fact. The ones that don’t want to be where they are will put the effort in to get out of that situation and I agree they deserve some help, but I’d bet my bank account al of the people who recognize where they are and deserve that helping hand will recognize where they went wrong. Sometimes life hands you a bad set of cards and things happen outside of your control but if you look close enough you did something somewhere. If you can’t relate to that kind of attitude towards ultimate responsibility over your life and the decisions you made throughout life then we are fundamentally different and it would be pointless to keep going.

 

I think your conclusion is noble and I’m willing to believe you want the best for people down on their luck but we live in a country filled with people waiting to take advantage of any help offered and be further of a drain on the system lowering everyone else’s quality of life as they have to pay more and more to subsidize shit decisions and lack of accountability by others. That’s too ingrained and in our society and it’s not going to change. If you want to keep fighting against the reality of where you live then it’s time to accept where you are based on your decisions or move to Germany.

 

I would also say that the general longevity of happiness of people who think and live as you do is lower than that of people who think like me. When something goes wrong I blame me inspect what happen and find out where I went wrong and what I could have done to avoid that. People who think like you throw their hands up and say da gubbament!! 

[Wawa]

18 hours ago, kabLe said:

However you need to think for yourself and look at the big picture in the world. You just said you could have had a better life but instead you had no discipline and chased hedonism and “your passion” and now you live life thinking it’s everyone else’s fault except your own.

---

I would also say that the general longevity of happiness of people who think and live as you do is lower than that of people who think like me. When something goes wrong I blame me inspect what happen and find out where I went wrong and what I could have done to avoid that. People who think like you throw their hands up and say da gubbament!! 

I believe you're confused about who I am, I do believe in and practice personal accountability in my life, it's one of the reasons why I have such a healthy relationship with my wife.  When an issue arises and I'm not satisfied with the result, I ask myself "what could I have done to make this right?" instead of blaming others.  As it pertains to work, I just prefer to be happy and comfortable at my job, again where we spend most of our lives, while prioritizing my passions in life for my free time outside of work.  I could have had a better life financially, but I chose my current life instead and it's nobody else's fault but my own.  I'm still financially stable today, so I don't regret my decisions, and I'm staying true to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'

 

So then why do people like me throw my hands up and say 'da gubbament'?  Well, because even for 'hard workers' like you, they're doing a shit job serving us.  Why are most of our tax dollars going to a hyper-inflated defense budget and militarizing police forces instead of education or infrastructure?  You say "sometimes life hands you a bad set of cards," what if we can make just one of those cards a good card for every deck across the board in the form of say, jobs programs for example?  Any policy that results in one less degenerate being taken care of so they aren't jacking off on a sidewalk by my house or being a threat to my personal safety just because I want to go for a stroll at night is one worth my tax dollars.  You call it a free pass, I call it being safer, 'a rising tide lifts all boats' in this case.  Finland has open prisons, does that mean their people are encouraged to commit crimes?  Denmark pays McDonald's workers $21+ an hour, does that mean everyone in Denmark wants to work at McDonald's?  Regardless of what you think about people who are in poverty because of their decision making, addressing poverty has a positive impact on all of us while criminalizing it has not tackled the problem. 

 

If you don't want 'bad people' to exist, then shut down the 'bad people' factory.  If you took every bad person off the streets right now, the problem still wouldn't be solved because you'll just have more bad people being put on the streets due to shit policies.  You can't 'if only they accepted ultimate responsibility' your way out of this problem, the only solution is systemic.

[Steven.]

i’m a fed 

 

[ThRza]

On 5/9/2023 at 1:08 PM, kabLe said:

Forgive me if I come across as vague with some of these responses. Hopefully we can clear up any confusion in follow-up posts.

No offense Wawa, but you’ve always given the view point that if work then get reward.

 

A few questions.

 

1. Why wouldn't this be the case? Why does work =/= reward?
2. Where does the value embedded in commodities come from? In other words, how do things get their value? What is value and where does it come from?
3. If a man made money from owning and operating a factory, how exactly does he make his money?

 

At first these questions may not look related to the topic at hand, but if you'll entertain me with a few answers I can show you that they are.

 

If you work at McDonald’s for 30 years because you never cared to build a skill set, no you don’t deserve anything except the harsh reality of putting no effort into your life.

 

Saying that people stuck in low-paying jobs like McDonalds are stuck there because they "didn't care to build a skill set" is awfully presumptuous; you're no clairvoyant, you can't see every aspect of these people's lives. Additionally, it's a little ridiculous to declare that people working 40 hours a week put "no effort" into their lives. How do you define effort? More importantly, how do you quantify effort? Can it be empirically measured? The short answer is no, as whatever constitutes "effort" is subjective. Really, try and measure, in concrete terms, the amount of effort a mechanic puts into his work as opposed to a nurse. Hell, try and measure the amount of effort a mechanic puts into his work as opposed to a different mechanic two cities over. It is simply not possible to do empirically, as the definition of "effort" that you're working with is both subjective and too broad. We could measure the physical exertion required to perform certain jobs, the amount of time dedicated to job training or education to work a job, or the mental strain of a job, and so on, but even with these definitions we cannot measure them against each other under the broad definition of "effort", as each one of qualities will manifest themselves with variable levels of difficulty to different people. In other words, what can be done easily and with little effort for one, cannot necessarily be easy and effortless for another. Measuring the amount of effort it takes to do a job can never be universally applicable.

You don’t get to skip class all through school, not go to college, not build a profitable skill set, not go to any secondary school, not save any money for retirement, refuse to live within your means,

 

The material conditions of someone's life are complicated, and to analyze those conditions in isolation is reductive. In other words, everything that exists is in some way being influenced by something else. To put this less abstractly, I can use a hypothetical:

That kid skipping school might have been involved in a traumatizing event. This event put a strain on his family relations and consequently his mental health. Because of this, he is unable to consistently pay attention in/attend school. This will deal a significant blow to his school records. Because of these poor records, he is now unable to get a scholarship and consequently unable to afford (what is already significantly going up in price) a college education, and so on, and so forth.

None of the events described above exist in isolation, and are themselves subject to the consequences of their surrounding material conditions. The same is applicable for all existing phenomena. So, if someone gets stuck with a low-paying job because of their material circumstances, is it really fair to say that it is, without a doubt, because of their individual failures? If someone is stuck in a low paying job with no way out, how will they accrue savings? Almost all of their paycheck must go towards paying for their necessities. What skills can be built when the majority of your time goes to working at McDonalds? What education opportunities are there for you if college is off the table? Should this person be required to spend all the free time they have outside of work attempting to educate themselves and build skills, leaving  little to no time for anything else? Is this universally feasible for everyone in this situation? These are important questions you need to ask when it comes to diagnosing social problems and offering solutions. If the problem identified and the solution given aren't universally applicable, then we need to look into other explanations and solutions. 

 

and then as you get towards the finish line demand the next generation and the rest of your country subsidize your poor choices for the last 50 years.

Going fully into a discussion about welfare would warrant a new thread. Let me know if you'd like to talk about this specifically.

 

You over simplify your position by just saying if you work most of your life you should be rewarded.

1. You're correct, it is an oversimplification.
2. Although it is an oversimplification, the position, and its underlying reasoning, are correct.

Again, I can and will elaborate further. I'll go more into labor/value stuff whenever you get the chance to answer those first few questions I asked. It's just an easier point to start the conversation from.

 I cleaned bathrooms at McDonald’s my whole life, smoked weed everyday, and never once thought about how any of my actions now could affect my life in the future, when you gonna cut me a check?

To reiterate, the fact that someone has ended up in this situation isn't necessarily because of their individual failings, and even if it were, they still deserve to be able to live comfortably. As far as the weed thing goes, there is a definite correlation between poor living standards and drug use. I think it's important to consider why that might be. (The weed comment may be less literal and more of a demonstration of the type of character you envision in this situation. Pardon my autism if this is the case.)

 

On 5/10/2023 at 4:33 AM, kabLe said:

if you met the hardest working people in McDonald’s then your the type of person I’m talking about. You nor them have worked hard.

This is the same point you made about "effort". The same logic applies here. What constitutes "working hard", how do you quantify who works harder than who, etc. The distinction between work that is hard and work that isn't is arbitrary and subjective.

That said, I'd like to clarify that I'm not saying that certain jobs aren't difficult, nor am I trying to say that some people don't work more to get where they are than others. I am trying to say that you shouldn't disregard the work done by those working "low-skill" jobs as effortless. Their work matters, and they should be compensated accordingly for it. (I have my own reservations regarding the term "low-skill" and "high-skill" labor, but to fully get into it I'd probably have to make that a post of its own. Let me know if you'd like me to clarify.) 

You worked a shitty job that a high schooler can accomplish

Whether or not a job can be performed by a high schooler doesn't matter. Labor is labor; work is work. Labor should be paid what labor is worth regardless of who can perform it.

and it drained you because in the back of your mind you knew you weren’t doing anything to help yourself.

KabLe, with all due respect, how in the world would you possibly know this? I'm not sure how you can authoritatively declare that someone is drained not because they "worked hard" but because they "didn't do anything to help themselves". What exactly does "doing something to help yourself" look like? Is it universal? Do you know for certain that people working bad jobs aren't already trying to do this? Even if they aren't, how do you know that that's the cause for their exhaustion? This reads as more of a baseless assertion than it is a concrete analysis of the conditions which lead to exhaustion, so I'm genuinely interested in how you arrived at this position.

your manager now likely put his time in at the lower levels and worked his way up. How does one become a manger at McDonald’s? Getting the most orders correct? Making the most burgers? Or simply not moving on long enough that your the only realistic option

 

Stressful and draining doesn’t mean hard working. 

1. Why the distinction?
2. Why does it matter if work is hard or not?
 

your paycheck is your compensation for what you’ve worked.

Yes, but it is absolutely not adequate compensation. Again, answer the first questions I asked and I can explain what I mean by this in much more detail.

You agreed to it, don’t like it? Do something about it.

 

*"Hello employer, it is me, single employee, I am here to do something about my compensation."* - thing that happens
 

If this is in reference to the whole "go to college", "build your skills", and "save your funds" stuff then I already addressed this. These kinds of opportunities are not available to everyone, let alone people stuck in low-income jobs. This isn't to say there's nothing these people can do, or that none of these people can do these things, but to apply it as the universal standard and hold it against people who are stuck in these situations doesn't offer any meaningful solution.
 

I entered the workforce at 16 picking up garbage, landscaping and many other odd jobs as a grounds crew member at an amusement park. After 10 years I made 15$ and only because minimum wage kept going up. I had enough and decided to learn networking, got my CCNA, did helpdesk for 5 years where I trained most of my companies employees while still taking the most calls per month. It was stressful and draining but I wouldn’t call sitting at a desk taking phone calls hard work.
 

Same thing as earlier.
 

1. Why isn't it hard work?
2. Why does something being hard work matter?

I tasted what the bottom of the barrel was like an so I got my shit together learned a skill, gained some financial literacy and made a plan. Something most of the people your referring to probably didn’t. Most of them probably have ridiculous debt because they didn’t understand money and made huge financial decisions that put them in the red and made them stuck. They didn’t just wake up one day and have no money.

 

True, those stupid financial situations like....student loans....having to pay off medical debt....having to use your entire paycheck for basic necessities....huh
 

The sequence of events that lead to something like homelessness and poor employment can't be reduced to nothing more than the results of a few bad decisions. Bad personal decisions can absolutely play a role, and can absolutely play the primary role, but to generalize and reduce every situation down to the personal faults of people just isn't a nuanced position.

If you have a job and rent is half your income that’s your stupid decision.

Who sets wages, the employer or employee? Who sets rent, the landlord or the tenant? What bargaining power does the individual have against his landlord or employer? It is by no means in the hands of the individual to decide how much they pay for rent, nor is it in their hands to decide how much they earn in wages. Consider that moving is not a luxury that is available to everyone, nor is it a foolproof go-to solution. Additionally, rent is not the only expense that must be paid when it comes to necessities. You must also pay for: utilities (water, electricity, gas, etc.), car payments (assuming you commute long distances), groceries, phone bill (probably), fuel for your car (gas or otherwise), and so on. The cost of everything here is by no means the decision of the worker.
 

im not saying I agree with the pick yourself up by the bootstraps but if you don’t do anything to make your life better and just expect a handout or for everything to be okay in the end when you’ve done nothing to prepare for a good ending your just an idiot.

With all due respect the arguments you've been making this whole time really do seem to hinge on a sort of bootstrap mentality. Your analysis has been very narrow and deterministic when it comes to determining the reasons for why people are where they are, as well as their relations to their material surroundings. Things aren't as simple as you're making them out to be. It appears that, rather than look at the concrete material conditions surrounding things like homelessness and employment, you've imposed upon these people an inherent quality of laziness or incompetence. This analysis is overly deterministic and unhelpful.

 

On 5/11/2023 at 5:37 AM, kabLe said:

I was in a shitty situation, I enjoyed the people I worked with and believe me the mechanic and owners of that amusement park worked harder than all of your fast food workers. Unless you think tearing down a roller coaster and maintaining 15 other rides is easier than fast food service. 

Already went over this with the questions about hard work.
 

point is you can chase your passion but if your passion doesn’t pay shit whose fault is it? Did you not research average salaries and upward movement in your job sector? 

Depends on the nature of the work, but if it's wage-labor then it is most certainly not the fault of the worker.
 

I agree on a societal level you need idiots, however on an individual level you don’t have to be that idiot.

True! Kind of? You're right, and we should definitely encourage people to do everything in their power to improve their situation, but we shouldn't pin it against those who may not have the agency to consistently improve due to the nature of their material circumstances. These people aren't inherently stupid. I think it's important to recognize that.

Not all homeless people are the same, some have phones paid for by the government that they only use to jerk off on the side walk while your kids walk by, you want to save those?

Like Wawa said; "If you don't want 'bad people' to exist, then shut down the 'bad people' factory."

I want the material relations which produce people like this to fundamentally change so as to stop producing people like this. That homeless guy jerking off was not predestined to be there. He is only there because of the consequences leading up to the fact; consequences which are directly caused by his material circumstances.

Lots have just straight given up and find it easier to be homeless, this is not debatable it’s a fact.

It is, by no means, easier to be homeless. It is not easier living with the conditions of starvation, degradation, and insecurity, than it is to work a job. If a homeless man were to be offered an opportunity for secure employment and affordable housing I guarantee you, 99 times out of 100, he'd take it. How is a homeless guy supposed to pull himself out of poverty without the necessary resources to do so? How can he educate himself if he is not permitted access to a decent education? How can he build skills if he is denied access to entry-level employment on the basis of him being homeless? How can he avoid contracting illness without the security of housing? How can he get back on his feet if every attempt to do so is crushed? In many ways, we've effectively criminalized the very act of being homeless. Would you not also lose hope? Would you not give up? If denied the possibility of escape, what else would there be to turn to other than to whatever makes living with the harsh material reality you've been forced to exist in more bearable? Of course, this is not the reality of every homeless person. I'm sure there have been cases in which people do deny opportunities. I'm sure there have been instances in which people have been offered the means by which they can escape poverty and homelessness, and chose to not utilize them. Unfortunately, however, this is not the reality presented to the majority of the homeless population.

The ones that don’t want to be where they are will put the effort in to get out of that situation and I agree they deserve some help, but I’d bet my bank account al of the people who recognize where they are and deserve that helping hand will recognize where they went wrong. Sometimes life hands you a bad set of cards and things happen outside of your control but if you look close enough you did something somewhere. If you can’t relate to that kind of attitude towards ultimate responsibility over your life and the decisions you made throughout life then we are fundamentally different and it would be pointless to keep going.

We agree, people should absolutely do everything in their power to recognize where they've gone wrong and what they can do to improve. I am by no means anti-responsibility, nor am I against the notion that people should, if physically and mentally able, carry their own weight. That said, you overestimate the degree to which people have agency. The cards are stacked against the majority of people from the beginning. This is by design. I will elaborate further once we begin discussing value.

 

I think your conclusion is noble and I’m willing to believe you want the best for people down on their luck

I know you weren't talking to me, but I'm going to go ahead and take the opportunity to return the same courtesy to you. I genuinely think we have the same goals in mind, those goals being to create a society that's as fair and free as possible. I just think we've arrived at our conclusions through fundamentally different methods of analysis. I would absolutely love to explain in more detail both how I arrive at my positions and what those positions are, but to do so thoroughly would definitely take a while. To be honest, I get the feeling that we'd both get much more out of a conversation if we both were to lay out in clear terms the underlying philosophy of our politics. Remember those questions I asked earlier? I'm hoping that they'll give me an opportunity to do exactly that.

but we live in a country filled with people waiting to take advantage of any help offered and be further of a drain on the system lowering everyone else’s quality of life as they have to pay more and more to subsidize shit decisions and lack of accountability by others. That’s too ingrained and in our society and it’s not going to change. If you want to keep fighting against the reality of where you live then it’s time to accept where you are based on your decisions or move to Germany.

Again, once we begin discussing value I can wrap back around to this. I have a lot of opinions regarding a group that does this at a scale *waaaaay* larger than that of the homeless population.
 

I would also say that the general longevity of happiness of people who think and live as you do is lower than that of people who think like me.

I will concede that people with your mindset are happier than people with mine, but if it weren't for our ability to be dissatisfied with the system under which we exist, we'd still be hitting each other over the heads with clubs and rocks. Our ability to critique is a gift, as is our capacity for dissatisfaction and anger. There's nothing wrong with being in a state of indignation regarding the injustice that is actively propagated by our currently existing institutions.

When something goes wrong I blame me inspect what happen and find out where I went wrong and what I could have done to avoid that. People who think like you throw their hands up and say da gubbament!! 

We also inspect and analyze why things go wrong, and by no means deny personal faults and mistakes as a factor in people's misfortune, but we also consider the underlying conditions which cause these situations to occur in the first place. As I brought up earlier, nothing exists in isolation. While the exact reasons someone may have ended up homeless could largely have to do with their personal decisions, the conditions which led them to make those decisions, as well as the conditions for homelessness itself, are systemic in nature, and must be approached as such. This extends far beyond a simple "government bad", so I find it a little silly how you reduce our analysis to that conclusion alone.

Again, to go fully in-depth regarding all of this would take a long ass time, and I'd rather do that as the thread goes along than cram it all into one post. I'm tired enough as it is having taken way too long to write all of this out lmao

I hope this is a good enough starting point for us to discuss some of this further.

I am way too tired to proof-read this, so here's to hoping I didn't royally fuck anything up.

[kabLe]

18 hours ago, ThRza said:

 

 

I am way too tired to proof-read this, so here's to hoping I didn't royally fuck anything up.

I’m not reading all this

[ThRza]

1 minute ago, kabLe said:

I’m not reading all this

Would you engage with it if I cut it down into a few key takeaways?

[Wawa]

23 minutes ago, kabLe said:

I’m not reading all this

Anarchist/libertarian moment.