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Comment by hestipod | Hacker News Reader

This is how 99% of people are. I wouldn't have believed it until I became a victim. Even people who claim to love you and you have known for life. In the end people care about themselves and if you challenge their just-world view by suffering in front of them, or make them feel bad or guilty, they attack. The sad part is for those people nothing will change it but being forced into despair themselves and then it's too late for both of us.

I made an account just to comment on this issue after lurking for a long time but it's surely just another pointless action because it's the same story over and over. Empathy is not common.

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> This is how 99% of people are. I wouldn't have believed it until I became a victim. Even people who claim to love you and you have known for life.

I used to be a republican. Or Libertarian. Blame my parents, as I do. They're dyed-in-the-wool republicans/christians, where if you have bad happen, you must have deserved it. So they dont help because you should be able to rescue yourself.

One of their most shameful moments was how horrible they talked of welfare. They qualified for it years ago, and made a big point of pride that they never took it. It to them was this huge badge of shame.

So when I had really bad times, I did take it. And instead of hiding, I said so on Facebook. Boy, my parents hated that. Pity, cause I didnt care. And that it did help me get back up.

> In the end people care about themselves and if you challenge their just-world view by suffering in front of them, or make them feel bad or guilty, they attack. The sad part is for those people nothing will change it but being forced into despair themselves and then it's too late for both of us.

Indeed. Most in this country will never see that. Or they are that, and they'll never be here to say so. Hell, even the "richies" here in HN have had many discussions about it. And one idea that is mentioned is to sell services to them - and its summarily shot down. Why? "There's no money in helping poor people. They don't have money."

> I made an account just to comment on this issue after lurking for a long time but it's surely just another pointless action because it's the same story over and over. Empathy is not common.

We're around. We aren't popular, especially around here. People who focus on empathy simply cannot become capitalists. Because they have to make decisions that preserve human-ness over money, which is completely antithetical to the idea of Venture Capitalism, Capitalists, Big Business, Disruption, and on and on.

There are, of course, token projects that try to show that this class of people care, but in all seriousness, when I stop seeing a fistfull of dollars to X project for "UBI" and briefcases of dollars to lobbying, I'll know that equation has changed.

I have known people in more social countries that were able to regain a life because they had access to medical care, housing and reschooling. It takes years but it's possible IF you have that help. Those people are now contributing again and have independence even with their limits. If I had that available, if I had been born in such a place, I would have had a life back over a decade ago. But here I simply cannot manage everything. I have tried to immigrate but it takes 5-8 years of legal stability in most places just to become a permanent resident or citizen and have access to the benefits of such a system. I think I am just screwed. I will move and at best get some small under the table cash and at least accessing affordable healthcare in the private syste while hoping I don't get deported since I probably won't be able to formally legalize. It's not ideal at all but I simply cannot make it here anymore.

Capitalism does not require a lack of empathy- quite the reverse. Good capitalists help every stakeholder, from paying everybody well to providing great, safe, products and excellent returns. The US system is sickening sometimes.

Capitalism is a an extremely old game design, an MMO created to solve the complex barter chain problem. One of the game's many exploits is that sociopaths (and anyone they train through reward to override their sense of empathy) have an unfair advantage.

The key to the exploit is at the heart of the core gameplay mechanic, which is that every transaction in capitalism is a codec that decimates the complex history and state of the values and liabilities of a good or service down to a single number- the price.

So hiding the abuses of others is one of the many exploits you can hide in the compression artifacts of this global codec. The key workarounds for the exploits in scalar money commerce come in the form of laws, regulations, and investigative journalism. These are all extremely high-latency, low-reliability workarounds.

Scalar money commerce was invented as a low-tech, distributed hack to solve the complex barter chain problem. It worked, but it always had issues, and it didn't scale well.

We need to evolve beyond this primitive system of commerce that decimates everything to a single number at each transaction to one that journals state with long vectors of information tracking millions of dimensions of value and liability, and that uses more sophisticated game design and graph algorithms to solve complex barter chain problems.

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