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 helpful to at least expand 'productivity' to something beyond just what is useful for your work. Reading the classics is productive because it's enjoyable, even though it doesn't help with your work. Ditto spending time with friends and whatever else that doesn't have anything to do with work.
I hope we figure out what to do about disabilities, since the current status quo is inhumane in large parts of the world (and even in places with good benefits systems, getting that support isn't trivial).
I don’t think anyone is advocating to provide a free ride for capable individuals
Of course someone has to produce/work harder — and the parent is arguing that there is already more than enough extra
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 we could just solve this quirk of human nature, we'd be all set.
[1] https://fortune.com/article/rise-in-elite-students-seeking-a...
Maybe it’s time that we worked together to gain that time back for you instead of you fighting for us to lose our free time.
Its everybody for themselves in US, fuck the rest, the more the better. Some 'society' it is. The more miserable and poor others are, the better you can exploit them right. How horrible the world would be if those folks stocking shelves in shops or trimming your hair would also have a shot for a decent life.
Middle class is for mediocre suckers, either your are a star (at least from financial perspective, usually the rest of life is very opposite of it) or a loser. Can't say I can respect that system, but as long as I am not part of it nor bombed by its military industrial complex to death I simply don't care. Folks can stay and be part of that system or leave, that part of freedom is still sorta there.
https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/national-eco...
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.
How are you measuring this? Hopefully something better than stock prices.
Around 10% of houses in the US are vacant, although I'm sure a fair amount are that for good reasons (shitty locations, old and worn to high hell). This to me sounds like a resource allocation problem and not a lack-of-resources problem.
Energy could be free close to free if we made the right choices. The sun's right there. Unfortunately, we've been stuck in a political rut for a long while, making long term projects like 'do something about global warming' and 'transition away from fossil fuels' uninteresting.
Many medicines are only expensive due to patents and making up for research costs. Actual production is usually cheap as hell.
I don't have all the answers. People smarter than me might have them. But I do know that we can do better.
I agree we can do a lot better. And I have no moral qualms about giving the excess away to everyone who needs it. But I need people to admit that it will require a lot of work till we can sufficiently claim we have a real realizable "excess".
And that work requires the current system to work more "efficiently" and with "higher productivity", in the economic definition of the word, not as a personal valuation as OP defines.
[1]: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...
Or maybe, just maybe, we should do it because it's a thing that raises people's quality of life? I only care about the economy insofar as it helps actual people on the ground, so I'll be happy to ignore it for things like this, assuming that doesn't put us in an even worse rut than we are in now.
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...
That sounds worth it to me.
> 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.
Sounds like something we need to fix then.
Also 1 trillion dollars sounds like a single year of national debt interest, the total amount spent and destroyed by the Iran war, or the Pentagon's black budget. I'm sure we can give up one of those for a year to fix every economic problem plaguing the country.
Vacancies in most major cities is near-zero. As a market-rate renter, when someone says "we have so much excess", I have no idea what you're talking about.
The able do. The disabled would love to work hard and earn a nice paycheck. It's a privilege to be able to work and be in good health. Hopefully you don't have to learn that the hard way.
I am certainly sympathetic to people who are genuinely disabled.
That doesn’t mean we have to lie to ourselves that they are being productive by sitting around reading books.
You do
> I am certainly sympathetic to people who are genuinely disabled.
Agreed, and it can be uncomfortable to sort through what's genuine or not. One of my favorite scenes is in the big Lebowski where Walter confronts the other Lebowski claiming he's not a cripple and lifts him out of his wheelchair...Funny and sad all at once.
> That doesn’t mean we have to lie to ourselves that they are being productive by sitting around reading books.
Not asking for anyone to lie to themselves about what they feel is productive, rather giving another perspective to hopefully help people appreciate being able to work.
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 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 that no one wants to pay for, we can revisit this topic.
I think it is sad that many of the people that have the largest positive impact on society — teachers, care assistants and the like — are also some of worst paid.
Now you can go to Mercado Libre (the local version of Amazon) compare prices and see the reviews and buy them in 15 minutes. There are a lot of more choices and the prices are lower (or higher if you like fancy stuff). It arrives home at the afternoon.
Some software engineer has to program it. Does s/he deserve a few bucks for the time s/he saved all of us?
Even hundreds and thousands of years ago, people would put semi transparent rocks onto shiny metal shapes and sell those useless gadgets for a lot of money.
If customers are willing to pay for that, it means that those people made something worth that money.
Or at least, that's the logical consequence of that line of reasoning. If that's incorrect, where's the error in the reasoning?
This doesn't mean 4 hour workweeks or majority of people not needing to work, but it means that some of you can be social media managers, others can integrate AI chatbots in apps that don't need an AI chatbot, some can rewrite existing software in whatever the language of the week is, etc. Without offloading all that farming to machines, we'd never have what we now consider for "normal" and "must have".
Those few farmers left (2-3% of the workforce, depeding on the country) want to earn money too, so they can buy smartphones, watch netflix and have that smart toilet seats that open automatically and wash your butthole. If all those replaced-by-machines workers don't produce all that, where's the point in farming food for them?
At least what OP says produces no harm at worst.
But since you ask, also many victims of late stage capitalism explored in modern forms of slavery without work rights, so that richer nations can enjoy cheap electronics and clothing.
What if we make a better world for everyone, instead of a planetary crab bucket?
Most people can't. They just assign everyone to the bucket of unwilling.
It's productive in that it is hard and a sign of high intelligence. Don't believe me and swap it out with Candy Crush. Is playing Candy Crush productive?
This obsession about people with disabilities is weird. Yes, people with real disabilities exist. But focusing on pathologizing every day life is extremely harmful. This constant focus on "mental health" ironically worsens mental health. For instance, any mild discomfort is "anxiety". Most of these things are pretty normal range of emotions. Roughly 20% of undergraduate students at Ivy Plus institutions (including Harvard, Brown, and Cornell) are registered as disabled and receive accommodations. This figure has surged dramatically over time, rising from fewer than 3% at Harvard and under 6% at Cornell in 2015. This is obviously partly cheating the system, but it's also this harmful over-focus on "mental health"
Hard work is a good in it of itself. People pay lip service to the idea that we shouldn't be productive or measure our "worth" (whatever that is) by productivity but they don't live it. For instance, I don't know any parent that doesn't push or at least hope their children work hard at something. Anything. Do something hard. Play a sport. Learn an instrument. Study math. This is common sense.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/opinion/mental-health-exe...
That seems to check out with the period people started getting more addicted to social media, pandemic side-effects and increased awareness of mental health issues
I believe the amount of people dealing with crippling anxiety these days is higher than that 20% figure, and we are still under-diagnosing it
> Hard work is a good in it of itself.
Hard disagree tbh but that's more of a personal values discussion
I'm curious about this. Do you have children? Do you look at someone who does nothing hard in his life with indifference? Someone chooses to spend their life playing video games in their parent's basement. Do you think that's an equally admirable life than someone that spends his life doing hard things?
I think it's naive to assume that this phenomenon reflects an actual increase in disability rather than a cohort who has been raised to pathologize every human difference as a sign of some disability and then use those diagnoses to secure advantages in systems meant to help people with actual special needs.
There's clearly a lot of pretending going on. On the extreme end look at the numerous DID[1] "influencers". These folks are plainly pretending to have a debilitating mental disorder (which strangely never prevents them from going on podcasts and YouTube interviews) to curry fame.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder
Some personal observations, I would say about 90%+ of "emotional support dogs" are fake. And I can't remember the last time I saw someone that was actually disabled use a disabled parking spot. They always have the proper license plate or mirror tag, but every time I've seen someone enter their vehicle it would appear that they do not need special accommodations afforded by the preferred parking spot.
If you enjoy it, then yes.
> Hard work is a good in it of itself. People pay lip service to the idea that we shouldn't be productive or measure our "worth" (whatever that is) by productivity but they don't live it. For instance, I don't know any parent that doesn't push or at least hope their children work hard at something. Anything. Do something hard. Play a sport. Learn an instrument. Study math. This is common sense.
Hard work is good insofar as you enjoy it or it leads you to things that you do enjoy. Do those things if you enjoy them. Hard things are enjoyable too. I stopped doing most of them because I didn't enjoy them.
I highly doubt you actually believe this, but I have been wrong before.
I'm using the word differently to you. It's productive insofar as you enjoy doing it.
Just to make a point, have these two definitions from Wiktionary:
> Capable of producing something, especially in abundance; fertile.
Capable of producing enjoyment, yup. I'd call playing Candy Crush productive if enjoyment is your goal.
> Yielding good or useful results
The good result here is, again, the enjoyment of whatever. If you enjoy playing Candy Crush, then playing it gives you a good or useful result, namely the enjoyment of playing it.
> I highly doubt you actually believe this, but I have been wrong before.
If someone truly finds Candy Crush enjoyable to the point they do it everyday or whatever, and we're not talking addiction (so they're not actually enjoying it, but rather feel compelled to do it), then more power to them. I wish my desires were so simple.
Yes. That word is only useful insofar as you say or imply a goal. Candy Crush is not productive in gathering food.
Most people imply the goal to be money. I'd rather imply enjoyment. See my OP.
You are worth so much more than your productivity.
I think the issue here is that everyone else is having a discussion about economics, how we efficiently allocate scarce resources as a society, and the role that individual productivity plays in that allocation. You're having a discussion about enjoying your life. Which is great, if you want to play Candy Crush all day and call it "productive" because that makes you feel better, go for it.
But I'm not interested in paying your bills so you can.
In Praise of Idleness
https://ia801002.us.archive.org/27/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.4...
This is something that needs to change at the cultural level but is incredibly hard to change because in order to do so you need to convince most people that the foundational understanding of their worth as a person needs to come from somewhere else.
I'm not sure we are interpreting this right,based also on reactions and troll references in clear contrast to your other comment.
"I've considered suicide because I was unable to make ends meet. I don't want others to experience that. Is that too much to ask?"
was important and extremely insightful, wanted to ask what you meant with "was unable to nake ends meet" which type of ends?
> I'm not sure we are interpreting this right,based also on reactions and troll references in clear contrast to your other comment.
I'm not sure what's unclear about my first comment, but I'll try to rephrase with new words.
People are people and deserve to be treated humanely as such. Productivity is but one aspect of people, and not the only one you can ascribe any value to. People are more than their productivity.
Productivity is often just used to mean 'how much money you earn', but I find it useful to expand its meaning to 'how well you're doing what you're enjoying'. If you spend time reading books because you enjoy it, that's productive. If you spend time at work earning money, that's also productive, since money is needed to, ya know, stay alive, and thus let you enjoy life, for what it's worth.
My point about disabilities is probably better expanded by the article in question, unless you have any pointed questions at that.
> also the comment
> "I've considered suicide because I was unable to make ends meet. I don't want others to experience that. Is that too much to ask?"
> was important and extremely insightful, wanted to ask what you meant with "was unable to nake ends meet" which type of ends?
The instance I had in mind was one where I was in danger of not having food to eat at the end of a month. I wasn't in any danger for that matter. I can get free food locally if I'm desperate. I can call a friend and ask for a favour (and friends have asked me!). But getting to that point is well beyond the point where my mind goes 'oh ffs, just end it, it's not worth the bother'. If someone is at that point, they should get help, but ideally, they shouldn't get to that point in the first place. Prevention is better than a cure (although we should work on cures too!).
Maybe the other reactions made it generally more unclear, but was unsure about the core message.
This is much more clear and direct, and yes I was believing you meant something in that direction.
Regarding the other comment, thanks also, I understand that feeling the moment of having to ask something like that, but I think that if fought with enough pragmacity I think I would try to overcome the psychological part because the need would overcome the shame, and that would overcome the situation. or that is not feasible in that case?
Good vibes are nice and all, but affirming each other isn't going to actually make the world more comfortable. Looking after disabled people requires an enormous productive surplus from the rest of us and a recognition that the people creating the enormous surplus are in practice worth quite a bit more than the people who are on the receiving end of charity. Playing pretend on this topic is just going to lead to people being worse off.
We already don't do this with regards to normal people. Being a farmer isn't a particularly high-paying nor high-status job. I don't mind changing this around if we get a more humane world in return, but these issues seems orthogonal to each other.
Life is not about how much you make or how much you're worth. It's about being worth something to someone. It's about having meaningful relationships.
As a typical software nerd, it took me decades to get that.
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.
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 contribution doesn't contradict or even narrow the argument.
∀x(X(x)⟹(Y(x))
and then they make it their mission to find the falsifying x sub 0 example.
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.
You come across the term a lot in old genealogy books. For instance in "The History and Genealogy of the Prentice, Or Prentiss Family" (from 1883) contains:
> All his immediate family, himself, wives, and children, are dead.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_History_and_Genealo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_the_Family%2C_Pr...
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-gathering, villages, farmland, and walled city-states. We just had clans which were all our family. A fellow villager wasn't much different than a cousin. The individual and nuclear family, not so much a thing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_Iddin-Sin_to_Zinu
[2] https://mymodernmet.com/ancient-egyptians-attendance-record/
in which they lived in families, extended families and tribes as the primary units. I didn't understand your argument at all.
Probably you're focusing too much on the parent comment's mention of nuclear family. Even that, despite only being named a few decades ago, is likely to exist to some extent. Even in some ancient tribe or village, most people would favour their spouse (or equivalent) or child over a cousin or niece/nephew if some dispute formed. That hardly seems controversial.
It's a policy where, if you become disabled to the point where you can't work, it pays out $X per month, every year until you're 65. And if you're partly disabled and have to cut back your hours, some policies compensate you for those lost wages.
These LTD policies are expensive, but they DO give you peace of mind about this possibility.
It's kind of understandable, given that the risk is not all that low. But my guess would be that it's amplified by fraudulent claims in relation to psychological illness, burnout, etc. I asked my insurance guy to exclude those, but, apparently, it's something he can't do.
You can kind of see, how this works for a roofer: If you hurt your leg and can no longer climb a roof, the policy pays. What does it take for me to no longer be able to sit in front of a screen? Well, it would almost have to be something in the psychological realm. Sure, there's the possibility of an illness with chronic pain or cognitive impairment, but those are orders of magnitude less likely, so the psychological stuff is what completely dominates the high premia.
For anything more, this private insurance market works just fine for those who opt into it.
I hail from a culture that's decidedly Catholic, but at the same time shares this mindset.
To me it has more to do with farming and the culture around it.
On a farm you have to earn your keep and there's no space for "freeloaders". You work all day, every day and don't complain.
Attitudes are very different in places where there was a significant urban class in the renaissance era already.
...hmm. Not sure that this is quite state-of-the art in sociology today. Crediting a particular strand of a particular religion as the locus of a virtue that confers a clear fitness advantage in and of itself, and without recourse to any outside explanation, seems a bit off.
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 they do ask and judge; what does that matter? If you dislike such personalities, avoid them.
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 your work or your working environment not you! And you should react to it!
This article should be eye opening, and support for disabilities should be always there. The abandonment of human beings is the biggest failure of societes.
Or that an unproductive member of society wasn't always scorned or at least viewed negatively by those having to produce.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200715153724/https://nmaahc.si...
Some Inuit practiced senilicide up through the 20th century.
"On the other hand, when food did run short, the old and sick were looked upon as drains on the community’s resources. Sometimes they were killed – thrown into the sea, buried alive, locked out in the cold, or starved to death. Far more commonly they were simply abandoned to die. The victim might be taken out in the wilderness and left there, or the whole village might pick up and move away while the old person slept. If the villagers were unexpectedly restored to prosperity, they might go back to rescue those left behind. An abandoned person would also be welcomed back as a full member of the community if he could manage to make his way back to the village on his own. But usually he couldn’t."
https://www.straightdope.com/21343302/did-eskimos-put-their-...
(His title is sarcastic. They aren't known to have done that in particular.)
Without stable income it might be more like 20 years. (I wish you personally a long and bountiful life!)
I'm in a similar boat. As a 3rd child in a somewhat poor family, I do not have any inheritance and actually need to help my mom financially (though it's not a burden). My wife is also from a rural area and her inheritance is barely worth 5 (hypothetical) figures. We never got or will get anything given to us for free. We are in our 40s and we completely gave up on having children (though it was not overall a financially-motivated choice) or property (this one certainly is). Live day to day while I can work, and die without regrets when I cannot anymore. Thanks to AI that happens probably sooner than later.
There absolutely is. Labor can be fullfilling and give joy, but for most people it is just an easy tool on how to survive and hopefully have some comfort as well. Do not ever feel ashamed of your labor and even more, do not ever feel ashamed of not doing labor if you don't want to. You have one life in this universe. Make it a nice one.
Whenever folks conflate capitalism to greed and socialism to altruism, I worry they haven't understood capitalism or socialism.
Would you rather be handicapped in Sweden or Venezuela? If you chose Sweden, you chose capitalism. Again, you can have altruistic capitalism -- albeit, admittedly uncommon -- and you can have socialism where folks are only looking out for themselves as much as is possible.
It’s good that our society is doing this, and we could do better! but why do we have to characterize this existing herculean effort as “fundamentally hostile to bodies that cannot produce consistently”
Are you saying we're providing those things instead of food? Or that if we provided food we wouldn't need to provide those things?
If so, that's patently false. A lot more than food is needed to give someone a better standard of living.
That providing these things is something we are doing, that is good, and that is hard work actually.
My reading of this is that the threshhold for the USA government to withdraw financial (and other?) support for disabled people is too low, is that right?
This isn’t an argument to remove support—it’s an argument to remove binary thresholds with smooth ramps to incentivize people to work.
In general, step functions (earn 200 get benefits, 201 no benefits) are really really bad from a public policy perspective. If you want to get people out of these dependency traps then you need to taper them more effectively.
Even tapering them is problematic as you end up with astronomically high effective marginal tax rates, but it's better than a hard cut off.
Not that that's like ... a policy slam-dunk or anything. Even putting aside the massive hurdle of getting UBI enacted into law, you'd still have to cope with sources of unreported income, asset/gift valuation, and so on. But that second category are, at least, tractable problems as evidenced by most countries' tax codes having contingencies to deal with them.
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
Bedridden and suffering from a neurological disorder, the author recounts the profound effect on her life caused by a gift of a snail in a potted plant and shares the lessons learned from her new companion about her the meaning of her life and the life of the small creature.
I would, however, encourage the author that maybe the answer to their question at the end of the article lies in the very world view they rejected half-way through: Christianity. Yes, in the Christian scheme of things, hard work is a virtue and laziness a vice. But to see this as the direct root of ableist capitalism is a severe twisting of the actual Christian teaching.
On the contrary, the Bible simply resounds with two truths, throughout the Old and New Testament:
1) We are to care for those who cannot care for themselves. We have a God-given duty to provide for our family members, community members, and fellow citizens who (for whatever reason) are dependent on our help.
2) Our worth as humans does not depend on who we are, what we can do, how much we own, or any other property residing in ourselves (which may change at any moment). Our worth comes directly from the fact that we are created and loved by an unchanging God. We have worth because we are valuable to the One who made us!
"There were no needy ones among them, because those who owned lands or houses would sell their property, bring the proceeds from the sales, and lay them at the apostles’ feet for distribution to anyone as he had need." Acts 4:34-35
The Catholic Church has an ancient tradition asserting the inherent dignity of the human person (imago Dei), regardless of circumstance, including the very recent Encyclical Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity) subtitled On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.
In our supposedly rational age we've discarded structures which encoded timeless wisdom because we didn't recognize the value. We thought we'd outgrown it, but it turns out that now is when we need it the most.
This isn’t to say that the purpose of Christianity is to fix these social problems, but it’s easy to forget how central generosity and compassion are to the Christian message. “Money Cult” by Chris Lehmann is a good exploration of how American Christianity corrupts these truths.
People keep mindlessly saying this but I have never seen evidence for it. Before money was ever invented the idea was already there that if you're healthy you can sustain yourself. All 'capitalism' did was saying "and most people nowadays perform abstract services in trade for an abstraction of a promise of a pinky swear saying "if you trade this pinky swear to me you'll get some food".
It's not 'economic systems that are fundamentally hostile to bodies that cannot produce consistently', it's a fundamental reality of life. Either you are capable of getting enough food for you and your family, either directly by farming, gathering or hunting, or you are not.
Yes, you need food. Guess what, we have plenty of food. But the system for allocating food says this guy doesn't get any because he's disabled.
We have plenty of food because of capitalism (particularly the fact that we have plenty of incredibly cheap food grown by a tiny fraction of our population).
I'm not saying it's an ought situation or even an is situation; it's that I disagree with his diagnosis of what causes it.
When you suddenly become unable to "give anything" to others and become the one who must be given to, you feel a disconcerting sense of loss and powerlessness.
I don't think it really has anything to do with capitalism.
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 the world to change a lot, he could change himself a little.
Worth and productivity are synonyms in direction, wouldn't a better phrase not track either? It's difficult to answer anything other than naught without some mental gymnastics because the words themselves are implicit.
How about happiness? That is one human quality that is not directly tied to any of worth, value or productivity.
I've worked 96-hour weeks for six months at a time. Even working nonstop, I can't save any money. I don't have enough to buy a house, and I'm exhausted. I've done so many different kinds of work, but no matter how much I work, the money just doesn't accumulate. It's not that I haven't tried.
Good jobs are only in big cities, and to live in a big city, you have to pay rent. If I pay rent, my salary doesn't accumulate. I can't even think about getting married.
I really gave it my all, but I don't know anymore. Why is my life like this? By the time I paid off my student loans, I was already in my mid-30s, and I still can't even think about marriage.
I just work and try hard, but the money doesn't add up. It feels like my life has gone wrong. I used to laugh at people who gambled or traded coins, but now I feel like a fool for working so diligently
(I think about the "worst system, except for all the other systems" quote often)
"Capatalism" means something different in the USA than it does in say France. In the USA, any attempt to keep check of or reign in capatalism is seen as socialism, and governemnt overreach. In France it's seen as common sense, though they would still say they practice "capatalism". Similarly, taking care of people that can't take care of themselves is obvious in France, but seen as nearing socialism in the USA.
It's important to note, because when people go for things like "democratic socialism", they may not be against what they think they're against.
The author of this post apparently lives in Porto.
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.
As another commenter has pointed out, the surest ally in this case is family. Not all families are tight, but families are largely the ones who will take care of the indigent in a compassionate, long-term way.
The productivity topic is interesting. From my view, it really is _people_ that require you to be useful. Different social or political systems can be better or worse about this, but all of them are sort of playing with the same base human behavior.
Try being the one who constantly needs help from your friend. That friend will leave eventually. And they'll leave in an emotional sense. They'll sort of think less of you, or be a bit disgusted.
Try getting a woman to be sexually attracted to you if you constantly need her help or support. Outside of a few interesting fetishists, you're out of luck.
You don't even need to imagine the workplace scenario -- you already know how that works.
But picture a pre-industrial, barter economy. How well would you do when you're not able to contribute? There is history of people caring for the old, infirm, and indigent ... but remember that when you go that far back you're talking about kin-groups. You're taking care of your grandfather, or your great uncle. Not some random guy you happened upon.
I'm just not convinced. If there's not a market for your art, yes you will not be able to sell it and make a living. But, in other systems:
- Your art disagrees with the soviet government, so you are sent to a torture / labor camp to work until you die.
- The soviet government does not care about your art, but you're still in the soviet union and everyone is poor so no one can pay for your art anyhow.
- It's the 1600s Europe, and you're only sort-of in a capitalist society given modern definitions, but the Church doesn't like your writing so you've been locked up.
- Your are a subsistence farmer, and have absolutely no chance of creating art whatsoever given how busy and poor you are.
- You're a subsistence farmer, and somehow you manage to make art, but the only people you have access to are the ~2,000 people in your immediate vicinity, and none of them have any money to pay for your art to support you, and they are not willing to trade a chicken for a song.
vs.
- You have the most niche art you can imagine, (eg: Dark Souls analysis, or Harry Potter fanfiction where Snape gets pregnant and is constantly embarrassed by it) but due to (lousy, imperfect) platforms such as Patreon and the internet you can get enough patronage to support yourself, even if it's just barely.
I'm just not convinced that artists are doing worse now (in terms of per-capita artists) than other times in history, or under other systems.
No way -- I threw in 1600s Europe as well as subsistence farming in there.
I think the Patreon point is really interesting. I really don't like Patreon or anything like that, but is a bit miraculous. There's some really, really, niche art up there. That sort of art would have NEVER found an audience, even as recently as the 90s. If it had to be on TV, or in a book, no publisher or producer would have touched it. And even if they had, said publisher or producer would have never managed to find the 0.001% of the population who was interested in it.
The kind of niche art that's available now was simply never possible in any other time in history.
A potential counter-argument could be something like: yes, in the past artists could not have just produced just what they wanted, but perhaps more artists were previously employable (even if they had to just make paintings or Jesus or some other popular thing they didn't really care for.)
What do you think about that?
At any rate, judging by the author's 4.3k subscribers, he is doing fine. Whether you react with a heart emoji or revulsion, broadcasting sob stories into the internet is productivity -- in the attention economy, something that only exists in rich, capitalist societies.
It’s always there in the subtext of a lot of alt-med and the sort of pure-eating wellness stuff, that if it doesn’t work then you’re just not trying hard enough and your mindset is wrong. Still got cancer? Well clearly you didn’t juice, enema and positive-think enough! That’s the flipside of every “you can heal yourself!” assertion.
I feel very sorry for this person, as much as I aspire to be out of work one day, I aspire to be out of work on my terms and with enough financial resource to support myself, and I fully expect to still be able to support myself. This is very different from having to face the fact you can’t, and adjust to that fact and then struggle like hell just to survive on barely adequate provision.
Tech people in particular seem to see themselves (ourselves…) as capable, independent and entirely autonomous beings. Being forced to reframe your whole existence must be very tough.
The benefits cliff is a real problem (and the UK seems intent on making it worse). But "ooo nasty capitalism doesn't force people to pay for art"... Come on. And disabled people have it better than at any time in history. The UK is bankrupting itself to pay for PiPs and other benefits (and pensions unfortunately).
After that, tell me how someone who became disabled after an accident which they themselves did not cause, made the wrong decision?
Thirdly, tell me how someone who lived perfectly healthy just happend to have some blood clot shot into their brain suddenly, made the wrong decision?
For someone who has been born disabled, the conversation should be moved to the people who brought them to life and are responsible for their survival.
My family until my parents generation were dirt poor in one of those countries you would also call piss poor.
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.
"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."
Which wrong decision did the parents of a disabled person make? Not getting prenatal genetic testing and an illegal abortion?
Sadly (arguably this is the greatest possible sadness) biology doesn't work that way. I think at our current rate of advancement we'll have practical immortality within the next 500 years, which is far too late for any of us alive right now, but it's not like a 90-year lifespan is an irreducible fact of reality. We've already found several genes that control certain aspects of aging and death. Interestingly, it seems to have evolved on purpose, and there are other animal species with indefinite lifespans.
Please explain exactly what you are suggesting or advocating for here.
e.g my grandmother had a brother who their brain stopped developing at a very young age (afaik 5), the parents ensured and my grandmother ensured that my uncle lived a full (but sadly difficult) life living and been taken care of by them and then my grandma after they passed.
My best friend married the love of his life. Had amazing kids and a nice job. Then he got cancer.
He had amazing insurance, a very supporting family, a job at a company who totally understood his situation. Everything was taken care of. The only thing left was hopefully getting better.
Which he did not. All that was left was pain. I literally watched him die. I heard his last breath. I saw the life leave his eyes.
That was it. His book of life will never have any more pages. It's done. The only thing left is to remember him.
Somebody will have to endure cruelty when someone makes bad decisions. The question is whether the cruelty will be received by the person making the bad decision or somebody else.
> It's rarely "you are making a bad decision right now so you should stop that before you deserve cruelty in the future".
So it's the economic system's fault that you weren't stopped before making a bad decision? It's the economic system's fault that schools teach gender theory instead of personal finance, economics and rational decision making?
It's convenient when someone labels themselves as a propaganda poisoned shithead so thoroughly.
Sartre didn't respect your kind and I don't either.
Sounds like you also don't respect your own kind.
Because that's what meta_gunslinger claimed while you say he was using words "responsibly".
Who do you think "my own kind" are, anyhow?
I don't agree with railing against capitalism either-- it's not clear to me that there's any other system I would do better in, given my disability-- but the idea of, "if you do everything right, nothing bad will happen to you" is basically a comforting lie people tell themselves to feel safe. I believe in the value of hard work, and I am trying my best to better my situation-- switching my entire career from humanities to IT-- but I still am not fully sure how I am going to be able to support myself, and I don't think that's my fault.
I say we should all give it a shot. Capitalism has had its time to prove its value and its report card has left too many wanting. I think now is a good as time as any to re-evaluate alternatives to capitalism and its overwhelming role within our societies.
When a machine breaks, the best engineers find out what's wrong and fix it, no matter how many political feelings it hurts and what theories are shattered along the way. Chernobyl is a great show, btw.
The irony of you using this in a negative sense when capitalism has profited mightily from exactly this dynamic is not lost on me, in that insurance companies are insanely profitable things. And that's without getting into what b3lvedere notes in the other comment about disability and the absolute, fundamental dependency capitalism has on socialized risk, e.g., limited liability as a corporate model, bankruptcy protection, even the dependence on national military and economic strength to create the conditions for private profit. Note that I'm not even dinging capitalism here. Not at all. It's just that capitalism wouldn't work without whole social risk networks to create the conditions for private profit.
People are born with disabilities, which doesn't always show it's face until it is too late.
There are people who are completely incapable of saving and investing, because for them the "future" does not have any meaning in it self.
What is the point of investing if money by it self does not have any value?
There are also people who are born who will never be able to work a "normal" 9-5 job.
To put everything on their shoulders is what is wrong with the system.
Capitalism bears a heavy burden for causing a lot of angst.
People don't choose to be born blind, or with a deformed limb, or with a genetic blood disease.
What fucking choice were they ever given?
It's always somebody that got lucky that wasn't born with a disability that makes these statements.
Are you having trouble with reading comprehension? Jesus.
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?
What's the point of society if not being a buffer for bad individual decisions? If I can't count on y'all when I'm down, why should I help y'all when I'm up?
The reality of it is that the reason why it hurts is you're essentially being kept alive artificially. As at any other time period you'd have just starved to death or died to freezing a winter or two later, putting an end to the misery.
Can you still have fun moments and learn to live your life as a glorified leech? Sure, a lot of people do so, and our society has decided that's for the best.
And in case you or someone else has an issue with the term leech here I'm going to be extra clear: you need to face reality to get over this pain. Accept what you have been forced to become. Then you can make an effort to life with your lot in life, and potentially find acceptance to the cards you've been dealt.
Probably wasn't your fault and almost certainly unfair, but that's just how life is