Comment by verylittlemeat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by verylittlemeat | Hacker News Reader

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It comes down to economic expectations.

I live below the poverty line in the United States and my life is great. My health insurance is 100% free and probably the best in the world. I get financial aid from different government sources that give me a comfortable simple life.

The people who feel they need to own cars or houses and have children struggle to meet their personal expectations. Their struggle and wealth subsidies my lifestyle.

I don't consider wealthy people my enemy or "rich fools." Instead I see them as people who psychologically for one reason or another have certain expectations about what life is supposed to be. They wouldn't want my life for free and I wouldn't want their life at a cost. Does my lifestyle carry a social stigma? Of course. But do I really care what someone else thinks when I'm basically allowed to live in a first world country for free? Not even a little bit.

To me this is as fair as you can probably get in an economic system.

> The people who feel they need to own cars or houses and have children struggle to meet their personal expectations.

Yes, possibly yes, and no.

The great thing about personal expectations is that they're personal.

I'd argue the choice to have children guarantees you a future benefactor to your retirement plan (planning a life that guarantees you subsidies).

You're absolutely right. People should be free to choose to have kids if they want. On the other hand those same people should not project their expectations on others. We all come to our values through a complex combination of nature and nurture.

That is really the spirit of my comment.

I'm impressed, being content is as difficult as it is laudable. Do you contribute back to society in some other ways?

I mean the following without snark even though it can easily be read that way:

I contribute to society by making the choices I want and not imposing my expectations of contribution on to others.

The best thing you can do for society is take care of yourself first, because that's what you have the most control over. How justified is much of the debt, guilt and obligation that we feel? I guess most of us believe that if we shirked these things then babies would be abandoned in the streets and all sorts of lawlessness would occur.

Is my lifestyle naive and selfish? Maybe. But I know who I am and I don't have to justify my choices to anyone else. I am not going to make a list of my good deeds to make sure people respect me. What if instead of trying to save the world so you can be happy you chose to be happy and that led to you saving the world? Why do we assume the former is more true than the latter?

It's really hard to talk about these things without coming off as being "holier than thou" but I think they're questions worth asking. They're questions I still ask myself all the time, I don't believe that I've reached some higher plane of enlightenment with all the answers.

People should be allowed to suffer and sacrifice their happiness but they have to want to it can't be imposed on them (consciously or not).

what about traveling and seeing the world.

Do you value you that? Then live your life in accordance with achieving that goal. There are lots of ways to see the world, from being a vagrant to a CEO who travels business class to the finest hotels.

I don't value travel enough to change my lifestyle so I wont work toward that end but if you do then you should. I say this with zero judgment or passive aggressive intention.

Really? Many people don't want to do that, just like I don't want to play the guitar or go fishing. Many find it to be down right unethical due to the high carbon footprint required for world travel.

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