These people are our future

[Lyric]

I'm not saying that children working is disgusting. I'm saying that in ISF's ideal society, potentially academically successful children may be taken out of school in order to work to feed the family, and he's cool with that. That's disgusting.

Feel free to gloss over this if you feel it's too personal, but have any of you guys had any experience of working class life, even if it's just being friends with someone in the working class? And I'm not talking hard work here, I'm talking living hand to mouth, struggling to cover the rent, etc

I also worked in three factories packing boxes, stuffing envelopes, and on a manufacturing assembly line. I babysat and cleaned other people's cars. I cleaned schools after hours. I worked as an auto mechanic and in an auto body shop. I worked weekends tending a stand at the flea market, getting up at 3 am to wait in line for a good spot at the market. I managed a university cafe. I worked as a painter.

Additionally I cleaned the family house and did all the dishes every day 2-3 times per day. I walked to school every day. I wore used clothes. I was the oldest and took care of my siblings.

Eventually I started bidding on drywalling and painting jobs with the skills I learned working as a construction laborer. I began fixing my friend's cars with the skills I leaned working as a mechanic. I started buying things in bulk from a co-op and mailed ads/placed ads on cars to re-sell them at a profit. I collected golf balls from lakes and sold them.

I was determined to work hard and find ways to make money. I began looking for ways to buy and sell and be more and more productive with my time and learned skills. I had drive and focus and seriously considered med school and law school because I was so viciously determined to pull myself out of poverty.

If I had enough charity to live comfortably but not well, had enough food and a decent car etc, I may have stayed that way for life, never having any desire to learn or work or do anything but watch TV and sit on the couch. I don't mind all the work I did and I don't see any benefit to giving me money as a child. My father was constantly borrowing money and our neighbors helped u out just enough to keep us alive and get the power back on etc. The government doesn't need to be giving people like me free money or making my life easier. It needs to stay the fuck out of my way instead of encouraging complacency and existing as a huge drag on the productive members of society by "helping" the poor an "spreading the wealth around.".

[Ash256]

I was determined to work hard and find ways to make money. I began looking for ways to buy and sell and be more and more productive with my time and learned skills. I had drive and focus and seriously considered med school and law school because I was so viciously determined to pull myself out of poverty.

Wow. Massive respect for your background Lyric. Do you think that removing the societal safety net would give a majority of currently poor people the same drive, focus and genius that you have?

[bode]

Wow. Massive respect for your background Lyric. Do you think that removing the societal safety net would give a majority of currently poor people the same drive, focus and genius that you have?

i really don't want to get in this debate, but enjoy reading it. Lyric's past and his rise above it is obviously an outlier. He seems to have an incredible work ethic that not everyone will have given the same situation. There will be hard workers that are born poor and rich, and lazy people who accept what they have been dealt and continue to be lazy whether they are born to bill gates or someone on welfare. It would be nice to think that everyone who is born to a lower class family would want to work hard and make a more comfortable life for themselves and their family, but thats just not the case.

[Lyric]

Wow. Massive respect for your background Lyric. Do you think that removing the societal safety net would give a majority of currently poor people the same drive, focus and genius that you have?

No, I realize that I am not a normal person, but at the same time I don't think it is helpful to people like me or to people like my brother, whom I supported for years in adulthood because he lacked any drive whatsoever. When I finally stopped supporting him he got a job and supported himself. It was a relief because for years I was thinking that he would need me for life. Turns out he only needed to be removed from my charity.

Government doesn't seem much different than me. I don't want people dying in the streets but encouraging complacency is not a good plan in my view.

[surviva316]

I also worked in three factories packing boxes, stuffing envelopes, and on a manufacturing assembly line. I babysat and cleaned other people's cars. I cleaned schools after hours. I worked as an auto mechanic and in an auto body shop. I worked weekends tending a stand at the flea market, getting up at 3 am to wait in line for a good spot at the market. I managed a university cafe. I worked as a painter.

Additionally I cleaned the family house and did all the dishes every day 2-3 times per day. I walked to school every day. I wore used clothes. I was the oldest and took care of my siblings.

Eventually I started bidding on drywalling and painting jobs with the skills I learned working as a construction laborer. I began fixing my friend's cars with the skills I leaned working as a mechanic. I started buying things in bulk from a co-op and mailed ads/placed ads on cars to re-sell them at a profit. I collected golf balls from lakes and sold them.

I was determined to work hard and find ways to make money. I began looking for ways to buy and sell and be more and more productive with my time and learned skills. I had drive and focus and seriously considered med school and law school because I was so viciously determined to pull myself out of poverty.

If I had enough charity to live comfortably but not well, had enough food and a decent car etc, I may have stayed that way for life, never having any desire to learn or work or do anything but watch TV and sit on the couch. I don't mind all the work I did and I don't see any benefit to giving me money as a child. My father was constantly borrowing money and our neighbors helped u out just enough to keep us alive and get the power back on etc. The government doesn't need to be giving people like me free money or making my life easier. It needs to stay the fuck out of my way instead of encouraging complacency and existing as a huge drag on the productive members of society by "helping" the poor an "spreading the wealth around.".

I know I'm late on this, but this touching little story doesn't argue against anything in a system with progressive taxation, and regulations on corporations and the market in general other than welfare, unemployment, etc. i think this represents a huge reason why there is no stasis in the fight between teabaggers and the boogey man progressive policies. teabaggers seem to think the debate is whether the poor should be given handouts or should their taxes be lower, and that's why they think that they're the movement of the middle class. really probably the biggest debate is over the merits and application of the trickle down effect.

let's say that in your story, welfare and unemployment benefits don't exist (and since welfare and unemployment benefits are a microscopic portion of what comes out of everyone's taxes, they essentially are a rounding error in the course of this debate anyway). now, your use of this story to argue against regulations and taxation means that you're living in a world with pre-Teddy Roosevelt regulations. I don't see how you having to work 60 hrs/wk instead of 40 in order to make 1/2 the amount of money, etc really helps your situation instead of hurting it. of course, you could argue all that teabagger rhetoric that if it weren't for these regulations, then the business for which you work would have more money which they would reinvest into the business, or allow for there to be enough profit margin for more business (hence, more competition w00t w00t!) to survive, hence more competition in the job market, etc. so in this free market, you magically get more wages, better products, etc.

of course, this is actually fairly how it works when you're talking about small businesses where there's no mega-wealthy board of trustees, and the CEO/owner/president are all one dude who's not exactly pinching pennies to keep is business running and is probably keeping a few hundred thousand a year or maybe even a mil or two, but hey the risk and hard work and stress and contribution to the economy, etc all make this small business owner more than worthy of keeping this margin. in THIS case, more money for the business, almost directly means reinvestment into the business itself, which means better product, more jobs, and hence more job competition, and hence better wages/benefits/etc. HOORAH!

YOU CAN IGNORE THIS PARAGRAPH: (there is nothing in the definition, theoretical structure or even practice of a progressive system that demonstrates that small business owners get dicked and are worse off than regressive tax systems. Obama tax cuts actually heavily benefitted small business owners by not giving near as much relief to the top 1% as bush cuts did, and in turn helped small businesses more than bush did. Also, the healthcare plan was actually v v good for small businesses as they got a lot of relief and rebates in the bill for providing health care even though the percentage of employment that already had benefits pre-healthcare plan was WAY higher among small busninesses than with the walmarts and sodexhos of the world. It’s too complicated for me to understand, but basically all independent reports that I’ve seen on it have concluded that small businesses benefit, while mega-corporations lose from their bottom line. The reason I put this paragraph in parentheses is because clearly this debate isn’t about obama vs. bush because that’d be retarded because obama policy doesn’t come all that close to repping MY ideal vision for how our economy would work, and I know that even coming close to coming up with an argument for how bush’s policies aren’t desirable is a MASSIVE motherfucking strawman for the teabaggers much less for lyric, isf, etc. this paragraph is simply meant to demonstrate that it’s a false dichotomy to put progressive policies as being anti-employers and conservative/libertarian economic policy as being pro-employers. This is why we’ve cried “STRAWMAN” so much itt because a lot of the arguments (especially with the island bs) have been illustrations on how communism just doesn’t work, to which we can only reply “csb, who didn’t know that already?”)

this trickle down effect is at best an extreme exaggeration, and at worst a complete rhetorical myth, though, when applied to mega-corporations like walmart or sodexho or any number of other companies with whom your factory work could've been. My post is already getting long, and I have shit to do today, so I’ll just oversimplify it by saying, that basically ANY addition to the bottom line (whether it be through not having to pay workers as much or through tax cuts or etc.) doesn’t get reinvested into the business because the business doesn’t need that money to survive. Instead it makes the executives’ bonuses go from a few hundred million, to a few more hundred million. This means that the money doesn’t trickle down directly back into the business. Also, the mega-millionaire executives don’t need these few extra 100s of millions to buy groceries or even put their kids through college, so a vastly smaller percentage of this revenue goes back into the economy AT ALL than would be if the same revenue were among the employees.


Anyway, point is, regulations (or at least the ones I cherry picked J) only help your condition; they don’t hurt it as the conclusion remarks. If you can find me a similar story, except the hero in that one has leukemia and is better off paying for their cancer treatment exclusively off of factory work and finding golf balls in bushes rather than having government intervention make sure that insurance companies aren’t raping them, THEN you would be cutting closer to how progressive gov’ts are a detriment rather than a help to the lower class.

[Lyric]

I know I'm late on this, but this touching little story doesn't argue against anything in a system with progressive taxation, and regulations on corporations and the market in general other than welfare, unemployment, etc. i think this represents a huge reason why there is no stasis in the fight between teabaggers and the boogey man progressive policies. teabaggers seem to think the debate is whether the poor should be given handouts or should their taxes be lower, and that's why they think that they're the movement of the middle class. really probably the biggest debate is over the merits and application of the trickle down effect.

let's say that in your story, welfare and unemployment benefits don't exist (and since welfare and unemployment benefits are a microscopic portion of what comes out of everyone's taxes, they essentially are a rounding error in the course of this debate anyway). now, your use of this story to argue against regulations and taxation means that you're living in a world with pre-Teddy Roosevelt regulations. I don't see how you having to work 60 hrs/wk instead of 40 in order to make 1/2 the amount of money, etc really helps your situation instead of hurting it. of course, you could argue all that teabagger rhetoric that if it weren't for these regulations, then the business for which you work would have more money which they would reinvest into the business, or allow for there to be enough profit margin for more business (hence, more competition w00t w00t!) to survive, hence more competition in the job market, etc. so in this free market, you magically get more wages, better products, etc.

of course, this is actually fairly how it works when you're talking about small businesses where there's no mega-wealthy board of trustees, and the CEO/owner/president are all one dude who's not exactly pinching pennies to keep is business running and is probably keeping a few hundred thousand a year or maybe even a mil or two, but hey the risk and hard work and stress and contribution to the economy, etc all make this small business owner more than worthy of keeping this margin. in THIS case, more money for the business, almost directly means reinvestment into the business itself, which means better product, more jobs, and hence more job competition, and hence better wages/benefits/etc. HOORAH!

YOU CAN IGNORE THIS PARAGRAPH: (there is nothing in the definition, theoretical structure or even practice of a progressive system that demonstrates that small business owners get dicked and are worse off than regressive tax systems. Obama tax cuts actually heavily benefitted small business owners by not giving near as much relief to the top 1% as bush cuts did, and in turn helped small businesses more than bush did. Also, the healthcare plan was actually v v good for small businesses as they got a lot of relief and rebates in the bill for providing health care even though the percentage of employment that already had benefits pre-healthcare plan was WAY higher among small busninesses than with the walmarts and sodexhos of the world. It’s too complicated for me to understand, but basically all independent reports that I’ve seen on it have concluded that small businesses benefit, while mega-corporations lose from their bottom line. The reason I put this paragraph in parentheses is because clearly this debate isn’t about obama vs. bush because that’d be retarded because obama policy doesn’t come all that close to repping MY ideal vision for how our economy would work, and I know that even coming close to coming up with an argument for how bush’s policies aren’t desirable is a MASSIVE motherfucking strawman for the teabaggers much less for lyric, isf, etc. this paragraph is simply meant to demonstrate that it’s a false dichotomy to put progressive policies as being anti-employers and conservative/libertarian economic policy as being pro-employers. This is why we’ve cried “STRAWMAN” so much itt because a lot of the arguments (especially with the island bs) have been illustrations on how communism just doesn’t work, to which we can only reply “csb, who didn’t know that already?”)

this trickle down effect is at best an extreme exaggeration, and at worst a complete rhetorical myth, though, when applied to mega-corporations like walmart or sodexho or any number of other companies with whom your factory work could've been. My post is already getting long, and I have shit to do today, so I’ll just oversimplify it by saying, that basically ANY addition to the bottom line (whether it be through not having to pay workers as much or through tax cuts or etc.) doesn’t get reinvested into the business because the business doesn’t need that money to survive. Instead it makes the executives’ bonuses go from a few hundred million, to a few more hundred million. This means that the money doesn’t trickle down directly back into the business. Also, the mega-millionaire executives don’t need these few extra 100s of millions to buy groceries or even put their kids through college, so a vastly smaller percentage of this revenue goes back into the economy AT ALL than would be if the same revenue were among the employees.


Anyway, point is, regulations (or at least the ones I cherry picked J) only help your condition; they don’t hurt it as the conclusion remarks. If you can find me a similar story, except the hero in that one has leukemia and is better off paying for their cancer treatment exclusively off of factory work and finding golf balls in bushes rather than having government intervention make sure that insurance companies aren’t raping them, THEN you would be cutting closer to how progressive gov’ts are a detriment rather than a help to the lower class.

Please read all my island BS posts. We can't hope to understand the modern world unless we begin at the beginning, and talking about health insurance and big business and gov't without understanding where it all began is like telling me how computers work without beginning with ones and zeros.

Without the basics we are all lost; pointing to "experts" who "understand." No. I want to build an understanding myself, from scratch, and determine my own belief system. I don't need an "expert" to instruct me on complex systems and I don't need faith to understand economics.

[boost]

Please read all my island BS posts. We can't hope to understand the modern world unless we begin at the beginning..

see, but I take issue with this. You claim to be starting at the beginning, yet when it was pointed out that your starting point is not the start at all since you are granting the sole islander knowledge that was collected over eons you just brushed it off. I know you probably think that I am nit picking but I really think that this is the faulty ground that your entire analogy is built on.

Furthermore I am near the point of being offended when you dodge peoples points by insisting that they be rephrased to fit your broken analogy. This is not your debate, but a debate that we are all participating in. If someone wishes to reference your analogy, or comment on it, fine. Otherwise it is quite rude to insist on its use.

[Lyric]

see, but I take issue with this. You claim to be starting at the beginning, yet when it was pointed out that your starting point is not the start at all since you are granting the sole islander knowledge that was collected over eons you just brushed it off. I know you probably think that I am nit picking but I really think that this is the faulty ground that your entire analogy is built on.

Furthermore I am near the point of being offended when you dodge peoples points by insisting that they be rephrased to fit your broken analogy. This is not your debate, but a debate that we are all participating in. If someone wishes to reference your analogy, or comment on it, fine. Otherwise it is quite rude to insist on its use.

Why does it matter if the island man is educated or not? We can begin with a man 200,000 years ago with no knowledge. That will work as well, but a modern man is easier for us to understand. Either will get the job done. Does the first man on earth, 200k years ago not apply either because he evolved from other animals? I don't understand your point here. It isn't relevant if he is a modern human or not.

The only people who think the island analogy is "broken" are people who can't get a very simple system to fit their world view, and cognitive dissonance is imploring them to dismiss it as "broken" or not applicable in some way. No one has offered convincing arguments for why it is broken, and it would be lovely if you didn't dismiss it because your ideas don't fit and you can't explain what, exactly, is wrong with the island analogy except to say your ideas don't work there and it therefore must be a worthless thought exercise.

[boost]

Why does it matter if the island man is educated or not? We can begin with a man 200,000 years ago with no knowledge. That will work as well, but a modern man is easier for us to understand. Either will get the job done. Does the first man on earth, 200k years ago not apply either because he evolved from other animals? I don't understand your point here. It isn't relevant if he is a modern human or not.

The only people who think the island analogy is "broken" are people who can't get a very simple system to fit their world view, and cognitive dissonance is imploring them to dismiss it as "broken" or not applicable in some way. No one has offered convincing arguments for why it is broken, and it would be lovely if you didn't dismiss it because your ideas don't fit and you can't explain what, exactly, is wrong with the island analogy except to say your ideas don't work there and it therefore must be a worthless thought exercise.

Because a man with out the benefits of societies collected knowledge cannot be wealthy nor poor. He cannot preserve the extra fish he catches, he has no knowledge of building a shelter, and certainly does not know how to domesticate animals, much less make cheese. Possibly over a long stretch of time if he is lucky enough to not twist an ankle, which would mean death, he can learn some skills to make his life a bit easier.

But even if I concede that he can be "wealthier" on his own without the gift of societies knowledge, it is to such a small degree that it does not matter. To illustrate this, if we had a second island in which we put another man that was "lazy" and they both lived into their 60's, their lives would be hardly distinguishable, if at all.

Now when we drop in another person, the fisherman can now catch two fish without much more effort than it took him to catch the one. Both men do not need to fish, so the second can afford to become proficient at something else. On a lucky day the fisherman has caught one fish and on the second spear throw two fish line up and he spears both. Now the second man with his free time can use the extra fish to develop a method of preservation(this takes a bit of a leap, but if you take issue with it I'm sure I can tighten it up.) Now that extra fish can be stored, the fisherman can catch three fish in a day, and every third day both men can have free time to become proficient at other tasks.

As we add islanders, eventually we have enough people specialized in building shelters, collecting food, etc, that we will start to see people specialized in healing. Now when our islanders have an unfortunate accident and twist their ankle, through the benefits of society, there is someone to help them heal and avoid death. There is also plenty of smoked herring to sustain the unfortunate while they are unable to work. Society has created a value, and therefore the islanders are in debt to it. For society to continue to create value, they will need to continue to pay down their debts.

I still think that my analogy is broken, but that could probably be mostly fixed by replacing fish with fruit foraging-- even so I think we are creating a world that can never be analogous to our world as a whole. When we create these worlds to support our points they are for that purpose alone. I actually think that the island was my idea, and the point was to illustrate that a man alone is neither poor nor wealthy. And I think when he don't gift the man with libraries of knowledge this is as true as it is true that pi is equal to 3.14159265. The island was never intended to tackle the issue of healthcare, a progressive or regressive tax system, etc. That's not to say that it can't, but that if we want it to, we need to be very careful to make sure we don't cheat ourselves out of the truth with a broken analogy.

[Numbr2intheWorld]

Because a man with out the benefits of societies collected knowledge cannot be wealthy nor poor.

What in god's name does the word wealthy mean to you

[Lyric]

Because a man with out the benefits of societies collected knowledge cannot be wealthy nor poor. He cannot preserve the extra fish he catches, he has no knowledge of building a shelter, and certainly does not know how to domesticate animals, much less make cheese. Possibly over a long stretch of time if he is lucky enough to not twist an ankle, which would mean death, he can learn some skills to make his life a bit easier.

But even if I concede that he can be "wealthier" on his own without the gift of societies knowledge, it is to such a small degree that it does not matter. To illustrate this, if we had a second island in which we put another man that was "lazy" and they both lived into their 60's, their lives would be hardly distinguishable, if at all.

Now when we drop in another person, the fisherman can now catch two fish without much more effort than it took him to catch the one. Both men do not need to fish, so the second can afford to become proficient at something else. On a lucky day the fisherman has caught one fish and on the second spear throw two fish line up and he spears both. Now the second man with his free time can use the extra fish to develop a method of preservation(this takes a bit of a leap, but if you take issue with it I'm sure I can tighten it up.) Now that extra fish can be stored, the fisherman can catch three fish in a day, and every third day both men can have free time to become proficient at other tasks.

As we add islanders, eventually we have enough people specialized in building shelters, collecting food, etc, that we will start to see people specialized in healing. Now when our islanders have an unfortunate accident and twist their ankle, through the benefits of society, there is someone to help them heal and avoid death. There is also plenty of smoked herring to sustain the unfortunate while they are unable to work. Society has created a value, and therefore the islanders are in debt to it. For society to continue to create value, they will need to continue to pay down their debts.

I still think that my analogy is broken, but that could probably be mostly fixed by replacing fish with fruit foraging-- even so I think we are creating a world that can never be analogous to our world as a whole. When we create these worlds to support our points they are for that purpose alone. I actually think that the island was my idea, and the point was to illustrate that a man alone is neither poor nor wealthy. And I think when he don't gift the man with libraries of knowledge this is as true as it is true that pi is equal to 3.14159265. The island was never intended to tackle the issue of healthcare, a progressive or regressive tax system, etc. That's not to say that it can't, but that if we want it to, we need to be very careful to make sure we don't cheat ourselves out of the truth with a broken analogy.

If one man can specialize in fishing and catch enough fish for the two men so that the other can specialize in something else, there is nothing to stop one man on the island from catching enough fish in one day to feed him for two days, and specializing in something else on the second day when he eats the second fish. In both cases we have one man catching enough fish for two men.

Society is certainly not required to build wealth. All that is required is work, intelligence, and raw materials. Many people trading with each other and sharing inventions will exponentially raise the quality of life, but is not required. More people will reduce the chance that injury will kill anyone but is not required. One man alone is more likely to die than two men living together.

A lazy man on one island and a working man on another would live very different lives even if they had no knowledge of anything. As long as the island has enough food the working man can easily create a better quality of life.

[Lyric]

But even if I concede that he can be "wealthier" on his own without the gift of societies knowledge, it is to such a small degree that it does not matter. To illustrate this, if we had a second island in which we put another man that was "lazy" and they both lived into their 60's, their lives would be hardly distinguishable, if at all.

Imagine a man who lives on a Hawaiian island. Food is abundant and he spends his free time experimenting. Active volcanos give him fire. He finds that fired foods taste better and are easier to eat.

Eventually he tries to flavor his milk with lemon juice and finds that it curdles into strange little bits that taste pretty good and get more and more flavor as the days go by. He makes more curdled bits and packs them together into bricks of cheese. He finds they last even longer if he coats them in mud or leaves and stores them under the ground or in a cave. Later he experiments with bee wax and that works even better to coat the cheese for storage. He finds that each brick develops a new flavor depending on its storage location on the island.

He finds that a pot of grain that has been left in the rain for a few days turns to beer. He builds multiple buildings over time and realizes that homes are like trees, they need deep foundations. He finds that fallen trees have roots as deep as the try is tall, and he builds a hut with a deep foundation.

He finds that bits of clay left in a fire harden to something usable for brick building materials. He begins constructing brick encased fireplaces inside his hut.

He finds that fat dripping from an animal onto the alkaline ashes of a fire create soap. He begins collecting the soapy fat drippings from his cooking fires and packing them into soap bricks (soap can actually be made this way).

He explores plant life and finds that many of the plants on the island smell and taste very unique, and adds them to his meals to make them taste better. He picks and stores all of the spices he can find, and they dry and last for many years.

He finds that ocean water left in a bowl for too long evaporates and leaves a very tasty white residue. He begins allowing large amounts of ocean water to evaporate and he stores the salt in his hut.

He finds that leftover meat that he has salted and cooked over a smokey fire stays edible for a long time. Longer if it is left in the sun accidentally.

He finds honey and loves it enough to harvest it and store it in fired clay pots (honey is edible forever). Tribes in the amazon currently use honey as money.

He explores his island and finds natural hot springs heated by the volcano. He picks a good one and builds a larger hut near the hot tub. Already we can see how his life can almost accidentally become better and better through work and experimentation and luck.

The lazy man on the other island lives on the beach and eats and sleeps and has no hut, no hot tub, no salt, no spices, no medicines, no preservation techniques, no honey... nothing.

[boost]

I want to build an understanding myself, from scratch, and determine my own belief system. I don't need an "expert" to instruct me on complex systems and I don't need faith to understand economics.

You seem to be utterly opposed to the idea that it may be impossible to accurately model society at the scale you wish to use. This stubbornness is worrying. You're putting all your eggs in one basket, and I'm not saying the basket is going to break, but you seem vehemently against the idea that it even could.