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Comment by zwkrt | Hacker News Reader

Weve been "paying" to take care of our elders in various ways since the beginning of humanity. The only problem is that in our ponzi scheme capitalist culture if someone can't make money they are considered dead weight.

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What do you think happened to people in nomadic tribes that could no longer move with the tribe?

They were cared for as long as possible, since people are not mindless optimization machines, and elders have always been revered in ancient cultures.

In some cultures, the elders were eaten, esp. if the tribe has fallen on hard times.

Human cannibalism is exceedingly rare (and, if practiced longterm, leads to prion diseases which will decimate the population). A much more common practice is infanticide.

They were left behind.

And you know this from...?

1. a documentary on the last remaining nomadic tribes

2. common sense. Nomadic tribes are nomadic for survival. How are they going to take them along? Carry them on their backs? They have no choice but leave them behind.

It may well be true of some tribes in some regions, but it's a very broad generalization to make from a single documentary.

The main people forgetting about non-workers are the ones who think you can eliminate poverty by raising minimum wage.

The US hasn’t. Almost all of our social programs are aimed at the elderly; they’re the ones who vote!

Traditionally, we've been "paying" by having a dozen children so that four or so would survive long enough to take care of their parents.

That's not all of it. A large amount of people just "fell through" and died in the gutters when they were old, or they lived in some minimum accommodation with minimum food provided by their community, e.g. "poorhouse" ("Armenhaus" - German, a direct translation).

Not even family might protect you: There is a German "Robin Hood" type that really existed whose biography I read. His children refused to let him in when he was old, they did not want to or could not share.

Living with family requires that they had the space, that the family had enough income, that they actually lived together (women especially were married off, if you only had surviving daughters you depended on their husbands).

Pretty much every culture ever has considered people who are unable to contribute to the functioning of society to be dead weight (thus why being disabled had been a curse unless you happened to be born into wealth and why female infanticide was so common in much of the world). Being old didn't tend to be as much of an issue in the past as people regularly living past the typical retirement age of ~60 is a fairly recent phenomenon.

Modern societies (especially the so called "ponzi scheme capitalist culture" ones) tend to go far beyond pretty much all past societies to support such people.

Weve been "paying" to take care of our elders in various ways since the beginning of humanity. The only problem is that in our ponzi scheme socialist culture if someone can't make taxable income they are considered dead weight.

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