The Hobo Ethical Code of 1889
openculture.com
openculture.com
To this day, words I live by and they never failed me.
Thanks for the pointer!
Just like all of us.
Are we saving that they're digital hobos?
I love it.
Which recalls the term "Bobo" .. which is the original term for a hipster: Bourgeois Bohemian
Also probably a play on the term.
Another was Of Captain Mission by Daniel Defoe.[0]
> 2. When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be a gentleman at all times.
I gather that it was a steal-from-the-rich thing. Banks were OK targets. And jewelry shops. But not hard-working folk.
It's never made sense to me, honestly.
I think you might need to look up the word "steal" in a dictionary. That or you're deliberately skewing the definition for your own agenda. I'm hedging my bet on the latter.
The first definition provided when Googling "steal": take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.
If a good or service is provided that is needed or desired by either a group or an individual there is a cost regardless of whether that cost is absorbed by the individual or group procuring the good/service (as in Capitalism) or by society. The provider of that good or service should somehow be rewarded or incentivized to continue providing the service so as to keep that service provided.
You made a blanket statement that "rich are only rich because they steal from the poor...". That's wrong, true in some cases, but far from a universal truth, if I'm wrong please prove it. If you're good a something society deems valuable, shouldn't you be compensated adequately for that? Should a good jeweler be compensated well for producing a necklace of spectacular quality if someone is willing to pay for it? Should a good neurosurgeon who went through probably a decade of intense schooling be adequately compensated for extracting a tumor? Are either of these people stealing from someone? The answer is no. They are providing a service that the recipient or society (in the case of universal healthcare) willingly compensate them for.
This is in direct contradiction to your point of a "poor person \"stealing\" from the rich", which brings me back to my first statement. You used quotes around "stealing" which deliberately attempts to invert or misdirect the actual definition of the word. Taking something from someone without their permission is "stealing", not providing a service for compensation. In the case of the jeweler, that jeweler bears the cost of materials and time the spent to both learn how to make the commodity when their product is stolen. In the case of the neurosurgeon, when their product is stolen, it's very equatable to slavery.
It doesn't matter what economic model you prescribe to, if people providing a needed good/service aren't adequately compensated, the quality of that good/service degrades or becomes non existent. Unless, of course, you enslave or force those people to provided the good/service, which is not what anyone should be advocating.
does a person that gets paid a wage for menial labor that funnels into a value chain that some executive sells for much more than the wage really work voluntarily?
does someone that's manipulated by social media that buys worthless overpriced brand name items really pay voluntarily?
does someone that gets arrested on trumped up charges and values their freedom really pay a lawyer voluntarily?
do people that live in blighted, neglected neighborhoods really move to higher cost of living neighborhoods voluntarily?
I could go on.
Your post implicitly assumes that contracts between equals exist. They don't.
also "if people aren't compensated, the quality..." is an assumption of your model, not an implication
Yes
> does a person that gets paid a wage for menial labor that funnels into a value chain that some executive sells for much more than the wage really work voluntarily?
Yes-ish... one can't really not participate in society in this day and age. One can't just go homestead anymore and subsistence farm. So I understand the argument.
> does someone that's manipulated by social media that buys worthless overpriced brand name items really pay voluntarily?
Yes... get TF off social media.
> does someone that gets arrested on trumped up charges and values their freedom really pay a lawyer voluntarily?
Yes
> do people that live in blighted, neglected neighborhoods really move to higher cost of living neighborhoods voluntarily?
Yes. It's entirely possible to live in a shit area and life a "good life," though there are mental costs associated.
...
It's not black and white as you paint it.
If you want to live a modern, "easy" lifestyle then some of these things start to look rather coercive.
Technically you could successfully perform your own neurosurgery at home with a spoon and a dull butter knife...
I was not implying that in the least, that's what you chose to read into it.
> One that ignores the entirety of human psychology, probability, and what we understand about motivation, reward, and healthy socialization.
Like anyone involved in software, you're surely an expert in all of these topics and thus qualified to make this claim without backing it up.
One can voluntary, that is choose, to opt-out of any number of those situations. Some may be more important or costly than others.
PhD in neuroscience, undergrad research on reward and behavior. So, yes, yes I am qualified. You are 100% wrong on all fronts.
- the NSA, CIA, and FBI,
- Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google, or
- AT&T & Comcast,
or something else?
Would you be willing to elaborate on "the forces" you think shape our society?
I've lived life travelling the world on a shoestring, hiking some of the world's most famous trails, living in cars, camping on beaches, etc. Of course it's a bit different as it's easy to do this and there are lots of backpackers about--most of them quite casual in their pursuit of freedom.
Anyways most people without lust to follow the dictations of the almighty dollar (or other forms of power over others, like becoming a police officer) but still have enough ambition and gumption to put in the effort to do this sort of thing, tend to be really wonderful people... Occasionally a bit of the rails, though.
Are you excusing corruption because it's hard to be disciplined enough to not be corrupt when you have power?
Chris Rock has a great standup bit where he points out that you can’t really know how faithful a man is to his wife if the man has never had the opportunity to cheat. Celebrities are often in the news for cheating on their wives. This may not be an indication that they have any weaker morals than ordinary men, but rather simply that they have far more opportunities to cheat than ordinary men. How many ordinary, faithful men would make the same mistakes if suddenly given all the wealth and social status of George Clooney or whoever?
It seems like US politicians are plagued with it. I consider constant giveaways to the wealthy while mostly ignoring the majority of the population to be corruption, like this recent tax bill.
>The fact that such a law existed at all suggests that someone thought it was necessary. There must've been a fair number of unethical witches/gays/drug users/race of people.
Wikipedia[1] also offers some definitions of the hobo slang used in the code:
Boil Up - specifically, to boil one's clothes to kill lice and their eggs; generally, to get oneself as clean as possible
Jungle - an area off a railroad where hobos camp and congregate
When a writer puts down people who add enormous value to the world while putting those who extract value on a pedestal, I have to wonder about her motives.
Just what they need, a passenger who thinks they are crew.
They won't accept it anymore (for other homeless) if they have multiple bad events, altercations etc.
I'm all for Medieval societies where we dress up and pretend to kill, so have no problem with romanticising the Hobo life and trying to move it forward, but let's not take any actual lessons from the old way of life, keep it in the realm of fantasy.