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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I would really like to do something to put in a floor, so to speak. Something to help mitigate conditions for the people who are the most burdened by current circumstances.

Other people seem to think that's charity or a bleeding heart or something. I see it as just insurance to protect everyone so that stumbling doesn't ruin your life permanently with little to no hope of ever finding your way back to a comfortable life. I also see it as insurance against bloody revolution.

My opinion: Tech giants planning to flee to New Zealand when the Zombie Apocalypse finally hits are fools. A plan to ruin the climate and destroy the social fabric to line their pockets so they can live out the rest of their days in a bunker is lunacy. Why not just, you know, not be so monstrously greedy and, instead, leave the world intact so you can have a better quality of life than that?

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> Other people seem to think that's charity or a bleeding heart or something. I see it as just [...]

I firmly believe that moral virtue and wisdom are inseparable. That is, to behave more virtuously or with more charity (in the old definition) is to benefit oneself more.

How so, and more importantly, how?

Just one example: An awful lot of people are terrified of being around homeless people. They are just sure the homeless are all drug addicts and thieves.

If the street isn't full of smelly, desperately poor people with no home, you don't have to live in terror of being panhandled by them while imagining it will go much worse places than that.

If I make the world a better place, I get to live in a better place. Simple.

Mind. Blown.

Or you could learn a martial art, and not live in terror nor take the entire world's burdens upon your shoulders.

(Or do what I did, and take a job within commute range of a suburb that isn't infested with bums.)

Even if the suburb doesn't have "bums", the area around your job still does, no? So now you also e.g. have to bring lunches rather than taking advantage of the restaurants nearby to work. Kind of constraining.

Also, even if you aren't "living in terror", it still makes you feel instinctually guilty to see people less-advantaged than you, doesn't it? And I would posit that that feeling makes you less productive. (Just like e.g. feeling guilty that you did something bad to your SO makes you less likely to engage in fun activities with them, which decreases the total experienced quality of the relationship for both parties.)

So, even for someone who lived entirely in the safety of suburbia, ending homelessness might have positive knock-on effects for the productivity of non-homeless people due to decreased guilt (and fear), and thereby positive effects on the local economy, and thereby the local tax base, and thereby would improve local civic infrastructure et al. (Oh, and also, people that didn't want to move into the city—like you!—would now move into the city, also increasing the local tax base.)

Or, to put that another way: moving municipal funding from sidewalks to homeless shelters, may increase the total municipal budget, thereby allowing the city to provide both sidewalks and homeless shelters. "The entire world's burdens" never enters into the equation.

> Even if the suburb doesn't have "bums", the area around your job still does, no?

It doesn't have very many, actually. I'd say more about why not, but that would get into self-doxx territory.

> So now you also e.g. have to bring lunches rather than taking advantage of the restaurants nearby to work. Kind of constraining.

Wat? Independently of the previous item, I pack lunches because a packed lunch costs me a little under a tenth of a restaurant lunch nearby. Restaurants are a twice-a-month type of luxury, and I can't imagine throwing away that kind of dosh on a daily basis.

> Also, even if you aren't "living in terror", it still makes you feel instinctually guilty to see people less-advantaged than you, doesn't it?

In a word: no.

> (Oh, and also, people that didn't want to move into the city—like you!—would now move into the city, also increasing the local tax base.)

I like my place for other reasons. Top among them: it's less than half as expensive as an apartment that's near my workplace, yet it's still well within commuting range and is perfectly nice by my standards.

Aaand I don't really see that as a problem to solve; I like car ownership for other reasons, and given that I own a car, I want to use that situation to decrease other expenses to the greatest extent possible.

Being charitable doesn't require taking "the entire world's burdens upon your shoulders". And it's been awhile since I got my black belt in TKD, but martial arts aren't much of a solution for malaise that isn't in the form of physical direct combat.

upthread:

> they are just sure the homeless are all drug addicts and thieves

/upthread

> but martial arts aren't much of a solution for malaise that isn't in the form of physical direct combat.

Attempted theft doesn't qualify? Most interesting.

When u/DoreenMichele said "They are just sure the homeless are all drug addicts and thieves", I think they were arguing the absurdity of such a closed mindset. Not that all the homeless are literally drug addicts and thieves.

> Attempted theft doesn't qualify? Most interesting.

Doesn't qualify as what? My statement about martial arts was that it's not an effective solution for problems that aren't in the "form of physical direct combat". As in, there are other problems and negative consequences that don't manifest themselves in violent personal crimes.

Problems and consequences? Yes. Problems and consequences that affect non-homeless people who are just passing through and minding their own business? Doubtful.

I would definitely like to live in a country where everyone who has a talent is able to learn and develop their skills for a decade or so and then start contributing something amazing back. But I would say that this is the case for no more than 6% of all people in the US. In all fields (from carpentry to opera).

> Why not just, you know, not be so monstrously greedy and, instead, leave the world intact so you can have a better quality of life than that?

Because the entire system is built on greed. In capitalism, if you're not greedy, someone else will be, and you lose out.

> I also see it as insurance against bloody revolution.

Why do you believe that our government does not - like any government purported to be by&for its people - slowly and inexorably march towards needing a horrifyingly bloody revolution in order to escape from degrading into oligarchy?

This isn't a new idea, either; it's ever so slightly older than the Constitution itself:

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." -- Thomas Jefferson

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