Quote:
Originally Posted by Lune
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Yea that sounds reasonable when you wrongfully reduce civic duty down to some caricature of welfare where you're taking $20 bills out of Johnny Middle Class's wallet and giving it to LeQuandaroga and her 8 kids.
Collective responsibility isn't about giving people things, it's about enriching the entire nation by creating opportunity and investing in society itself. Believe it or not, there is often a culture tied to poverty, and people born into poverty are likely to stay that way. It's a cycle. They are less likely to ever develop the skills to flourish in modern society.
I was born wealthy. My parents had their shit together. They read to me every night, I ate nutritious food, grew up tall, strong, smart, and healthy. They took me on summer vacations all around the country, taught me about ethics, the value of hard work and educational attainment, sent me to exceptional schools, helped me network, paid for my college, my car, and taught me fiscal discipline.
Meanwhile, there were kids growing up in Los Angeles who had never even seen the ocean 30 miles away, whose parents didn't give a fuck, and taught them negative, self-destructive behaviors. What chance did those kids have to end up successful, functional, high-achieving adults? It's not impossible; people rise up out of poverty every day, but that is the exception, not the norm. And it's not because one day they made a choice "Yea I'm gonna be a lazy criminal fuck and do nothing with my life", it's because sociological determinism is real, the culture you are raised with has a profound impact on who you become, and opportunity is important. Culture, including the settings and values with which you are raised, effects you down to the way your prefrontal cortex is wired.
That's the underlying reasoning for why we endeavor toward lower tax rates for poorer people, food stamps, need-based college scholarships, and stuff like that. It doesn't just help them overcome their circumstances, it benefits society as a whole by disrupting the cycle of poverty. When you help the poor, you're not just doing it to help them, you're helping everybody. Because poor people are fucking awful and we don't want them making more poor people. Study after study after study has shown that when there is infrastructure in place to give people opportunity, social mobility increases, poverty decreases, and society improves.
Also I hope you aren't Christian because having contempt for the poor, the less fortunate, or the inferior are just about the least Christian cognitions you can have. How the religious right deals with the cognitive dissonance I have no clue.
/positivism
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Well, in all sincerity good for you and kudos to your parents for raising a fine son. We're on the same page as far as the nature of poverty. We also seem to agree that subsidies do not remedy the source, they simply abate the symptoms. Stop the subsidy and the poverty returns. It's the reason why even in families that extricate themselves from poverty, you see returns to it in subsequent generations: culture. Indefinite subsidy does not afford society the greatest, or even second greatest benefit though, but you already know that. Reason does not deliver disparate conclusions. Motivation does though.
I live by three simple principles:
1. Work Hard
2. Be Responsible
3. Leave others alone
If everyone else did this, we'd enjoy a fantastically productive global society free of conflict. That is not going to happen though, because everyone else is not me and does not think like me, nor should they in a free world I suppose.
I harbor no contempt for the poor. My objection to subsidies is based in reason and the disappointing conclusion that charity is a detriment to society. I do not recognize such subsidies as investment whether consensual or coerced because it effects proliferation of a failed condition. That is of exceptional concern in a representative democracy given that human procreation suffers wildly from adverse selection thanks to divergent survival strategies accommodated by our social nature: quality vs. quantity. (This is why I align with leftist leaders in support organizations like Planned Parenthood. They directly combat poverty by throttling new inductees.)
The end result is you end up with an ever larger proportion of those who cannot care for themselves, until eventually the burden on the "haves" becomes so great that the society collapses and you are left with a nation if angry dullards, which are inevitably subjugated and abused by he among them who is most ambitious. Whether for within or out, societies always fall to barbarians. History is ride with examples.
Is it cold to say these things? Absolutely. Is it sad that other people endure pain and suffering? Absolutely and I understand and share the desire to help because witnessing pain and suffering is distressing to most people. It is one of the primary reasons people engage I charity. The others of course are guilt (penance for one's transgressions) and appreciation (people are often better able to appreciate and find happiness in their own lives by witnessing the distress in others').
At the end of the day, charity is a disservice both to the needy and to humanity. It prolongs and exacerbates suffering while stifling advancement all so that we can feel good about ourselves.
And no, I'm not Christian. I am agnostic, of the un-hyphenated variety. I have limited time to waste contemplating questions I've no hope of answering in my life. Of course that doesn't stop me from doing so or wasting time in other ways.