A mutual aid auto shop in Alabama
lux-magazine.com
lux-magazine.com
It's also the story of a gifted child failed by the world in ways gifted kids are frequently failed.
When Henson was 6, he tested off the charts on an IQ test
We routinely take our best and brightest, tell them a high IQ is good for making money and essentially try to break them in childhood. We could do better, if we really wanted to.
I find it very hard to believe an IQ test on a six year old is going to be much of a indicator of anything. I guess it would at least indicate that the child belongs to a group whose parents’ would give a six year old an IQ test.
> We routinely take our best and brightest, tell them a high IQ is good for making money and essentially try to break them in childhood. We could do better, if we really wanted to.
We could start by not trying to abuse IQ on an individual level.
Though there is a difference between testing and assessment and lots of pitfalls with such and TFA doesn't give enough info to determine which he got.
Some people assess kids young for all the right reasons. This case being mishandled isn't proof kids should never be tested or assessed at an early age.
What a “gifted organization” has to say about IQ is not very convincing. There’s quite a big conflict of interest and bias in play.
Afaik 6yo brains are literally missing mass and have a different structure than adults/teens. Of course this is just on average too because everyone develops at different rates. Not sure how a unitless number used in population level studies is going to help here.
> This case being mishandled isn't proof kids should never be tested or assessed at an early age.
Not what I’m talking about. Of course childhood education is important and assessment is part of that. IQ from what I’ve seen is not a useful tool for individual assessment/education.
The oldest set of email lists in existence for providing free support for the gifted community. At the time, they were trying to transition from a voluntary health and welfare organization to a tax deductible charity. I was invited to be lead moderator and a member of the board.
1 - https://med.emory.edu/departments/pediatrics/divisions/neona....
Is there some obvious source for this claim that I'm missing?
Either early bloomers are not a thing, or they are accounted for and the tests and assessment are not as simple as you aparently imagine.
That is very simply answered by simple time and numbers, once enough time has passed to see a large number of entire human lives while under any sort of methodical recording. That has happened by now. We have data on a large number of entire human lives.
It's only an appeal to authority in so far as I do assume that the people whos job is to collect and reason about that data have done even the most cursory job of it.
Saying that a certain property doesn't change much for most people after a certain age is not something that is likely to be hidden or hidable in the data. It sounds quite basic to me, and sounds like something anyone would see and no one could probably argue with. It sounds like the kind of fundamental and obvious thing that I assume if anyone did try to misrepresent it, too many other people would speak up.
I am only trusting that there isn't some kind of massive conspiracy that every nurse and med student have somehow all agreed to keep this ond wierd thing a secret for some reason.
Instruments were sometimes repeated, but may have been slightly different for age level. But the 'score', such as it is, was always in the same percentile. Being over 50 now, I'm slightly curious if I took another set of tests if the numbers would be similar. I feel slower, cognitively, but unsure how accurate that feeling is.
“IQ tests are ineffective.” Okay. How do you propose we determine what children are smarter (because there will always be those who are more advanced than their peers) and get them the help they need to thrive?
> “IQ tests are ineffective.” Okay. How do you propose we determine what children are smarter (because there will always be those who are more advanced than their peers) and get them the help they need to thrive?
Education isn’t inherently a zero sum game. Last I heard, we were winding down “gifted and talented” programs because there wasn’t much evidence they worked.
What the elementary school teacher I know says (besides that we have bigger problems in the US system) is that the high achieving students aren’t held back by low achieving students. The quicker students are often found to teach the slower students and gain an even stronger mastery of the material by doing so.
Aka full of white and Asian children which made people angry claiming that the other children were being ignored and left behind.
I'd love to see a source for this claim, as it runs counter to my lived experience (both my own education, and my son's). Obviously, my experience isn't scientific proof, but neither is "a friend who's a teacher says..."
[0]: https://www.aera.net/Newsroom/Study-Snapshot-Do-Students-in-...
[1]: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w17089/w170...
From my own mixed-age classroom experience, and stories I've heard about one-room schools, it's not the mixing of skill levels that holds the advanced class back but the structure of the class.
If you're all doing the work at the same speed it has to be the speed of the slowest student so by definition everyone else is held back. This is so obvious that I can't take people seriously when they deny it. It's literally how "the manual" says to teach.
But in a multi-path environment where everyone is working at their own speed, this isn't a problem. Even if the advanced students are tasked with some teaching of the slower kids the dynamic changes and they're not being kept down. The maximal form of this is a one-room school where the older and gifted kids are working on their high-level tasks right next to younger and lower-achieving people. This encourages personal accomplishment by creating an environment full of learning opportunities and decoupling your advancement from your age-group.
The class was supposed to be some sort of experimental multi-path, and even had an extra teaching aid assigned. However, the end result was the 5-6 gifted kids sitting in the back, bored out of our minds for an entire school year, while the 2 teachers struggled to get the rest of the class to learn. Unfortunately for those of us who were ahead of grade level, this effectively put us behind peers in GT math classes right at the time we were all starting more advanced math topics. I felt like it took me most of high school to get caught up. My parents are still peeved that this class ever existed and it's been nearly 30 years.
My son didn't have anything quite so obviously awful. He just tended to perform at the level of his classmates. In gifted classes, he excelled. In mainstream classes, he was mediocre and extremely bored.
My take-away - multi-path teaching doesn't work in the typical American classroom (25+ students per class, all the same age, but vastly different skills).
It might work in a more controlled environment, where the classes are smaller and the range of skill isn't quite to broad. But, that's atypical in the US.
Well yeah, do something badly and it won't work. Each student deserves teacher time even if they get further on that time. Instead they generally try to teach the slowest students more as if they'll ever catch up.
> My son didn't have anything quite so obviously awful. [...] In gifted classes, he excelled.
Well yes, that's small-class tutoring and we know it's almost the ideal. The trick is to replicate that in normal classes, by teaching to the people who will benefit while the others work on exercises, etc.
> It might work in a more controlled environment, where the classes are smaller and the range of skill isn't quite to broad.
My contention is the opposite, that you want a range of skills from newb to expert, and ideally across ages.
You were surely closer to the 6th grade advanced students than the bulk of the 7th grade students who were just getting by. And you may not have been far enough ahead of the 7ths in age and bearing as well as math, and thus not as helpful in teaching as older students would be. Student teachers are a very big part of one-room schools and I think the teaching itself provides invaluable skills in childcare and providing instruction to near peers.
It won't tell you much about motivation and grit, though a 6 year old focusing on a test and trying to get it right gives you hints as well.
Of course, from there, parenting, education, and especially the intrinsic processes of the individual themself will all influence what is done with that raw ability.
They're incredibly fraught when they're used well (there's reasonable criticism they mostly assess test taking ability), and it gets worse when you apply a simplified explanation like "raw processing power".
In my country and state all children have some sort capabilities test, so I think the test says nothing much about the parents other than they participated in some system level testing and didn’t protest or remove their child from the test.
There’s lots of study showing correlation of IQ with income [0] and other positive life outcomes. But I think it’s generally not a good idea to tell six year olds all this.
In my own experience, the standardized tests included guidance about how not to reveal the information to children and why that wasn’t helpful. A few years later one of my children had a psychological evaluation that included IQ and it also included language about not revealing scores to the subject.
It is, though. To a disturbing extent. Individual IQ scores predict career success more than any other single metric.
So while adult/college IQ scores have been correlated with success (equivalents are used university admissions after all). I am not aware of any studies/data sets that show a strong correlation of IQ as measured in six year olds and adult success. Also any study tracking IQ over time is going to have significant problems with goodhart's law.
[0]: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/memory-medic/201805/...
I’m not sure what else humans should be doing, but this seems to encompass at least the ethos we should promote above all.
There is at least one similar shop for bicycle repair, that also does a parts exchange. If you're upgrading your bike, you can leave your old parts for someone else to use.
I'd bet that almost any town of more than 100,000 people, maybe even less, has places like this.
If you go at the right time, you can also often find someone who is willing to teach you these things, despite not being a professional mechanic.
These sorts of places aren't uncommon because maybe, just maybe, that's how things have been for eons and naturally have been as an evolutionary adaptation to millennia of change. In this case, cars are the focus. But one could see the expansion of the concept.
The IQ thing is barely a side story. An attention grabber. People will focus on that, and some will use it to add to the pile of things to care more about the point. But I hope some will accidentally see it as, "hey, smart people do smart things so mutual aid is a smart thing."
[0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_aid_(organization_theor...)
Very happy to have searched "mutual aid" on hacker news today and come across this comment.
The reality is you keep it quiet and relatively secret, and you kick out people who smell like legal liability. This answer cannot be stated in public.
b) they sign waivers
c) the shop has insurance
I guess if the assets aren't lost they could be sold off or donated to a similar organization or something in that case however.
I'd argue the reverse--these kinds of co-ops are more likely to be found in smaller, cheaper, more rural towns. The key to these kinds of places is "cheap real estate with few restrictions".
As soon as the town starts getting too prosperous, they force these kinds of businesses out of the area.
An earther, he looks at all this and thinks, MINE.
In the Belt: "The more you share, the more your bowl will be plentiful"
> “Store my meat? I store my meat in the belly of my brother,” replied the hunter.
The problem is that these kinds of things rarely scale beyond a couple of people.
Once you get too many people, you eventually get a jerk who tries to freeride and take advantage of the situation.
Not everyone is equally intelligent. Not everyone is equally athletic. Not everyone is equally financially apt. Not everyone is equally generous. Not everyone is equally capable. Not everyone has enough resources for themselves, never-mind enough to share.
Free riders should be considered part of charitable activities. We should give freely to all, not just those humble enough to reject it.
Substack: https://themadredneck.substack.com/
More communities need places like yours! In my area there are free tool libraries where people can go to learn, fix their items, and help others.
But I'm mostly dreaming.
The end goal is not to make lives more or less affordable. Just make the work more reasonable by putting working people in charge of how work is organized and rewarded, more often.
Banks don't make risky loans like that, investors do.
And who owns the banks? Investors?
Also some loans might be guaranteed by the government, like it happens with some today, if they are for companies in a inherently risky but promising industry.
If a bank tanks a risky loan, then they need a high interest rate. That's going to accumulate capital in the hands of the lenders, not the workers.
And now the government is going to back these super risky loans? So socialize the loses, but privatize the profits?
But any industry with high capital costs, hardware, electronics, automobiles, consumer appliances, pharmaceuticals all have massive start-up costs that bank loans wont work for.
You think Tesla would ever exist with just bank loans?
Who knows what would be possible in a world where GE was a company owned and managed by the workers. Maybe no one would cancel EV1. Relying on billionaires to chip in on a new ideas is really fickle.
plus a lot of folks don't even realize organizing a business like this is an option. and a lot of folks wrongly assume that cooperative == less money / less efficient. we've been brainwashed by the capitalist organization of enterprise.
I said the same thing that workers cooperatives aren't competitive because they have lower profit because they can't get expenses (on salaries) get that low because they can't exploit workers like the usual business does.
Waving salary taxes is a different story though. I don't see why someone working for a regular company should have to pay for Medicare and Roads but someone working at a co-op should get these for free.
I've been on the board of directors for a co-op in the main challenge is Raising funding. If you want to start a housing Co-op or a auto repair Co-op, those both require capital. If folks want to see more co-ops, I would look for ways to make Capital more available.
Mostly to send a message that you shouldn't work at a regular company. Unless it pays so much that you are better off even after tax.
> If folks want to see more co-ops, I would look for ways to make Capital more available.
Capital goes to where one can get return on capital. To get more capital to coops you need to make them competitive first.
Housing is a really good example. If you have a down payment, most people would not want to use it and take on a mortgage to create a housing Co-op. They would prefer to simply buy a house.
A housing Co-op is attractive for people that can't buy a house by themselves. You can band together with other people to make a down payment, but again, this is unattractive for most people because there is no good exit strategy to cash out. This is the downside of co-ops. They still take investment and risk to create.
Regarding your first point, I assume you were talking about worker co-ops. I don't see why society would want to incentivize people to join them beyond the benefits that those people would naturally see from working at one. on the flip side, why punish workers are aren't part of co-ops?
If it is a good deal for the workers, they should do it. If it is a bad deal for the workers they shouldn't.
Yea. It probably doesn't work if you are wanting to buy something as an investment that you are planning to cash out of. But if you buy to use (to live or to produce something) it is attractive to collectively buy to have larger bargaining power and better credit trustworthiness if the risk is shared.
> I don't see why society would want to incentivize people to join them beyond the benefits that those people would naturally see from working at one.
Because model of ownership that is most popular currently led us to very pathological situations. Like this: https://money.cnn.com/2016/07/29/news/economy/top-1-income/i...
It got worse since then.
Another thing is that working conditions and salaries got really ridiculous and a whole class of employed poor rose that borderline can't sustain themselves with their work.
It's hard to regulate this stuff in current ownership model. So I think our best bet is to promote alternate ownership models so we may end up in less insane place than the one towards which we are heading.
> on the flip side, why punish workers are aren't part of co-ops?
It's never actually punishing workers. Ultimately it's the employer who pays for it all. And it makes sense because todays employer on average doesn't invest into the education of the workers, in their health and development, in their safety net. So it's only fair he should be paying for those costs that he externalizes to society.
In case of worker co-ops it's reasonable to assume that workers in them will be taken care of better. So less burden on society from externalized costs.
> If it is a good deal for the workers, they should do it. If it is a bad deal for the workers they shouldn't.
Currently the deck is stacked against coops because being able to fuel your company by burning people is a real advantage so a company that does that more will nearly always win with the one that does that less. And losing company will eventually have to dissolve so workers are pretty much left without a choice.
I think you are missing the point. Im talking about real barriers that prefent people from cooperative agreements, even when they just want to use it.
In the real world, it is rarely attractive to collectively buy, because you are locked in. This is the challenge.
If you want to start a cooperative house, you basically need to be willing to live there forever or walk away from your down payment. The same is true for starting a coop business.
Im not interested in hearing the benefits of coops, Im already a fan of them. I was hoping for an intelegent conversation about how their major limitations can be overcome.
It is much harder to find someone to buy 25% of a house to live in or 25% of an auto shop to work in.
Joint ownership is hard and you need a high level of trust in your cooperative partners.
Imagine what it would take to convince you to buy 1/4 of 4 unit apartment with strangers. You might be putting your financial life's work in their hands.
Edit: Ok I see they refer to a "business model" at one point, but I don't think it could be thought of as a business in the commonly understood sense, as it's not for profit and mostly staffed by volunteers.
> “At this point in my life,” he said, “the highest compliment someone can say about me is that I’m a ‘good man.’ That’s all that matters to me.”
...and:
> Before he started work on their car, Henson sat the Ellises down in their kitchen and made it clear what he was all about. He was a communist, he said, and his repair work was in service of that.
The shop is probably a "business" on paper, because it has to be in America: capitalism has fucked things up so bad that it's impossible to create legal organizations that help people without the assumption of a profit motive.
I’m doing this with a cooperative and I can tell you there aren’t any templates or legal docs or examples. Compared to the profit adjacent (c-corp, non-profit) which have effectively the same structure of ownership just different tax structures, there’s basically nothing off the shelf for mutual aid organizations
And some co-ops are just a standard shareholder business where the shareholders are the members (credit unions are usually setup this way) so if they DO extract profit somehow or by accident, they just return it to the members. This has happened with credit unions when they unexpectedly get a windfall for some reason.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual-benefit_nonprofit_cor...
The basic logic is that if you don't eat, you will eventually starve to death. You might get by for a while on stored fat (savings), but eventually your body will begin to consume itself (debt) and eventually die (bankruptcy).
Sometimes there are other inputs, which aren't as "from nothing" such as car parts or oil. But skilled labor is still a necessary component, to turning those components into a working car that is more valuable than the parts or oil.
And sure, some of those "not from nothing" components are absolutely non-negotiable for survival, like people having to eat and be sheltered. But I think it's pretty clear that a skilled laborer like Henson is able to give more value from his labor than he consumes in food and board.
The corporate model you're shoving everything into assumes we have to put a dollar value on everything and that dollars in versus dollars out has to line up, but forcing a service-based charity into that model is an impediment to its effectiveness. The entire point is to give as much as you can, even if that means giving more than you take.
And that makes perfect sense, by itself, without having to represent it in a balance sheet. And the only way you can shoehorn it into a balance sheet is by ignoring the entire point.
For an organization to output something of value to people they will generally need something of value as input. Money is the best way to convince someone to give you that input. Money is burgers, beers, drugs, and gasoline. Something you can sell for money or barter is a close second. There are other ways to get that input, but ultimately you are relying on someone being convinced into doing something for less in return than what they put in: military draft, patriotic enlistment, prison labor, slavery, volunteering, donations, taxes, robbery, inflationary money printing, non-competes, anti union laws, a nationwide campaign to convert to communism, etc.
As it turns out, skilled labor is a resource that can be given charitably, without having to amass vast resources at other people's expense. Paul Farmer or Jonas Salk have changed more lives than the Gates foundation, without accumulating "abundance"--Jonas Salk even refused to patent the polio vaccine.
Gates is a problematic figure for other reasons, but the idea that all profit is theft and therefore abundance is impossible within the market is a bit absurd. The profit motive is what creates abundance. How individuals choose to spend their profits is an individual decision.
Before you can act charitably, you need the requisite resources. Obsessing over the units of measure is completely besides the point. Time, skills or goods must be acquired in advance. Hard leftists have a penchant for misconstruing market incentives. Greed, uncharitable hoarding and immoral behavior is an option in the market. However it is not a predetermined outcome. The article speaks to this. The charitably minded auto-mechanic is free to deploy his resources in the way that best suits his ends.
Contrast this voluntary charity with state mandated coercion. Violence is implicit. Central planners have little to no incentive to create abundance. Class based subsidies often create resentment and divide communities. As you observe, inter-class and inter-caste conflicts are often used in service of the state's largess. Voluntary market systems have no issue with voluntary charity. To the contrary, they create the conditions of abundance necessary for charity.
As Margaret Thatcher once said: "No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well."
As a brit who grew up during her time in power, I want to say the Thatcher was a vile, vindicive. and spiteful person who blighted countless lives in my country and community. Using her as an exemplar of morality is abhorrent.
Put another way, you need both will and power to do something. Just wanting to be charitable never helped anyone, you also need the means to be charitable.
The power to take charitable action does not require vast resources to be concentrated in a few individuals, and in fact concentrating vast resources in a few individuals often prevents charitable action from occurring.
The Good Samaritan helped because he was doing well in life and could afford to help someone out. If he was a beggar he wouldn't (read: can't) help. The Good Samaritan is remembered because he had good intentions and money to turn his good intentions into good actions.
Thatcher was so inured by her own harsh, judgemental worldview that not only couldn't she properly recognise the point of the story, but her misinterpretation actually contradicts its essential meaning.
[1] were you intentionally referencing Nietzsche there?
Whether the Good Samaritan wants to be compassionate to someone is irrelevant, he could be compassionate because he could afford to. Without the means, his desire to be compassionate would end as just a desire and we wouldn't be here talking about him.
>were you intentionally referencing Nietzsche there?
No.
There is obviously nothing wrong with charity per se; GP is simply pointing out the obvious inefficiency in using charity to improve the lives of the poor (for example). Why not just pay them more to begin with (say through a democratic organization of the workplace in which no worker would ever choose to pay themselves below-subsistence wages)? Instead, we let money accumulate at the top, and then charity sometimes trickles a tiny bit of it back down.
> Contrast this voluntary charity with state mandated coercion. Violence is implicit. By state-mandated coercion do you mean taxes to fund welfare programs? Violence is already implicit in the creation and perpetuation of the working poor. Welfare is a necessary tool to make sure that the poor are not so starved that they might rise up against the ruling class, "having nothing to lose but their chains". Again the inefficiency here is clear -- welfare would be unnecessary if our basic needs were met. Welfare would be unnecessary if workers had democratic control of their own workplaces. Instead, we have a "voluntary" market in which the worker is coerced to participate at risk of starvation and rewarded by wages that have not kept up with increases in productivity for 40 years. The market thus violently creates the _need_ for charity.
I didn't say "all profit", and I didn't say "within the market". Profit is fine and can even be necessary to meet one's needs--the problem arises when people begin accumulating well beyond their needs while others are struggling to meet their needs. If you want a more accurate representation of what I'm saying it's this: Abundance is theft. Abundance and scarcity cannot coexist in a just society.
The way I see it, labor is what creates value. Organizing labor is itself a form of labor which creates value, but often the organizers are self-serving, structuring things in such a way that they receive a disproportionate portion of the results of the collective labor, far beyond the value that their organizing labor provides.
Profit motive is one way to incentivize labor, but there are other reasons why people perform labor. One such reason is simply because we want to provide value to each other: pro-social motive. And unlike profit motive, pro-social motive doesn't motivate people to amass gigantic amounts of resources while others suffer in scarcity.
> How individuals choose to spend their profits is an individual decision.
And when people make bad decisions, they should be treated accordingly.
> Before you can act charitably, you need the requisite resources.
Sure, but the requisite resources isn't billions, or even millions of dollars. Nothing is stopping you from helping people right now, with the resources you have.
> Greed, uncharitable hoarding and immoral behavior is an option in the market.
There is no such thing as "charitable hoarding"--the phrase "uncharitable hoarding" is redundant.
The question is, why are hard rightists so insistent that greed, hoarding, and immoral behavior must be options? Why is it desirable to have that as an option?
> However it is not a predetermined outcome. The article speaks to this. The charitably minded auto-mechanic is free to deploy his resources in the way that best suits his ends.
A few selfish people siphoning off the majority of the profit from millions of people's labor can both drive millions into scarcity, creating a greater need for charity, and take up the resources created by their employee's labor which otherwise might have been used charitably. Sure, a few people here and there can find ways to buck the trend, but with rent-seekers on all sides, it can be a great deal of people's charitable labor is sucked up by greed rather than need.
> Contrast this voluntary charity with state mandated coercion. Violence is implicit. Central planners have little to no incentive to create abundance. Class based subsidies often create resentment and divide communities. As you observe, inter-class and inter-caste conflicts are often used in service of the state's largess. Voluntary market systems have no issue with voluntary charity. To the contrary, they create the conditions of abundance necessary for charity.
I'm not proposing state mandated coercion, so you can drop that straw man. Collective labor and cultural change that causes greedy people to be ostracized are much better solutions.
In a democracy, central planners are incentivized to create value by threat of (non-violent) removal from their position. This breaks down, of course, when you start allowing people to amass huge amounts of resources and then invest a portion of it in buying elections.
I'll add that the contrast between authoritarian communism (which, again, I'm not proposing) and unbridled capitalism, is not as large as you seem to think. Class creates resentments now, because so many are living in scarcity while a few accumulate resources far beyond their needs or contributions to society. Violence is implicit now, with wars driven by greed, prisons driven by profit creating a slave class, and violence driven by poverty and disfranchisement. You're worried about charity being involuntary, but what we have now is that instead of charity being involuntary, giving a portion of your labor to the already-rich is involuntary.
None of the problems of communist authoritarianism which you point out, are solved by capitalist authoritarianism where the rich rule.
> To the contrary, they create the conditions of abundance necessary for charity.
To reiterate, abundance, as in billionaires, is not necessary for charity, and in fact, charity is hampered by this sort of abundance.
If someone has all their basic needs met, what mechanism would cause them to fail if they choose to produce more value (through labor) than the value required to meet their basic needs?
> If someone has all their basic needs met
So, plenty of stuff in, so they can produce value through labor. Reduce stuff in to no longer have their needs met and expect them to keep up that labor. Think that'll go on forever?
If an organization only gives and never receives, it'll surely run out of stuff to give, won't it?
If some people only had a few hundred calories to eat a day, a basic sleeping mat, and a simple roof over their heads their basic needs will be met and will continue living but they probably won't be very good at producing much additional value. They won't be good at forming a symphony, as they don't have any instruments. They won't be good building things, since they won't have hammers or nails or saws or wood or any other construction materials (those fall outside the "basic needs").
So you'd probably need more than just the "basic needs".
And then once again, if they are expected to put out more than what they're getting in, they probably won't live very long. If you're only consuming a few hundred calories but putting out a couple thousand a day, you're not long for this world.
Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point: If someone has all their basic needs met plus enough to have energy, what mechanism would cause them to fail if they choose to produce more value (through labor) than the value required to meet their basic needs plus enough to have energy?
> And then once again, if they are expected to put out more than what they're getting in, they probably won't live very long. If you're only consuming a few hundred calories but putting out a couple thousand a day, you're not long for this world.
Input and output are obviously not measured in calories. Again it seems you're willfully missing the point.
I live pretty frugally, and easily live on ~$30K/year. I have at points been paid $180K/year (annualized) for significant periods of time. If I chose to do the same amount of work as when I made $180K/year, live on $30K/year, and give away the other $150K/year in work, receiving no income for it, by what mechanism would I wither away and die?
> I live pretty frugally, and easily live on ~$30K/year. I have at points been paid $180K/year (annualized) for significant periods of time. If I chose to do the same amount of work as when I made $180K/year, live on $30K/year, and give away the other $150K/year in work, receiving no income for it, by what mechanism would I wither away and die?
So, clearly well above and beyond the basic needs, huh? I bet even the ~$30k/yr includes some amount of personal comforts, more than just the absolute bare minimum to survive? Probably meeting more than just the basic needs?
Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point, if someone is only getting the basic needs, they don't have anything left to give. Because otherwise they'd inherently be getting more than the basic needs, by evidence of being able to give some away without being below the basic needs.
Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point, if you need 5 units of something, and are given 5 units of something, how many units of something do you have left over to share? 5 - 5 = ??? And if you're given 7 or 8 of those units, clearly you were given more than just the basic need of 5, right?
You're able to produce that labor because you at some point had more than the basic needs to survive. And if you continue to only get the basic needs to survive, you literally won't have the energy to do it anymore or you won't continue to have as useful of knowledge or have access to the computing for that labor or tools or what have you. Getting the tools for generating that value goes above the basic needs of survival.
The same concept goes for that tool repair collective talked about in the sibling comment. If the organization isn't being refreshed with replacement parts for the broken tools or doesn't have a place to store things or doesn't have a place to work on stuff or energy to run a forge or what not, they won't be very effective at being a tool repair collective. Eventually the things they do have will fall apart and need "new" stuff to come in to keep it up. They'll need more than just having a small amount of food and a roof over their heads for the tool repair collective to be useful, more than just the basic needs of survival.
If all I'm given is a 150sqft prison cell of an apartment with a toilet and a sink and a loaf of bread and some beans a day, I'll survive. My basic needs are met. I probably won't be able to start up a tool repair collective though, I can't run a forge on a loaf of bread. A sink isn't a useful hammer. I won't have any books to tell me how to actually build or use a forge. And I'll probably tire pretty quickly since I'll barely have any extra calories.
Sure, I'm not contesting that point, which is why I rephrased to specifically agree with that point. You should read the post you're responding to.
Given that's the part of what I'm saying that you continue to focus on, you're still missing the point.
> Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point, if you need 5 units of something, and are given 5 units of something, how many units of something do you have left over to share? 5 - 5 = ??? And if you're given 7 or 8 of those units, clearly you were given more than just the basic need of 5, right?
I understand that if you only focus on one unit, that there are a lot of cases where units must be conserved. If you eat 2500 calories a day, you can't expend more than 2500 calories a day without running into problems. Obviously. Nobody is disagreeing with you on that completely irrelevant point.
It's completely irrelevant, because as it turns out, nobody gives a shit how many calories of software development you do. That's not how the value of software development is measured. If you consume 2500 calories a day and expend some fraction of it on 8 hours of software development per day, 8 hours of software development is worth more than 2500 calories of food in most contexts.
And sure, there's other inputs which are necessary to do software development besides calories, but as it turns out, no matter how many things you add as "necessary", software development seems to come out ahead, as evidenced by the fact that lots of people, myself included, are able to work as software developers and buy a whole lot of junk that nobody could reasonably argue enables them to produce value through software development. If you add up the value of the inputs in the form of food, housing, entertainment, travel, education, computers, and whatever else you think is necessary for optimal software development in a year, the fact is, I've produced an order of magnitude more value than that in the form of software development in the same year. The equation isn't even close to balanced. Going beyond basic needs doesn't change anything about this.
This is the original comment in this chain that I was really wanting to address and build on. Charities and non-profits need to have some kind of input more than just existing, or else they probably won't achieve their goals. If the FSF stopped being able to host things and potentially sponsor free software and lobby for the goals of free software, if a scholarship foundation's grants exceeded their incomes for too long, if the tool collective stopped getting parts of fuel to run the forge, they'll eventually for all practical purposes cease to be. If the inputs fall below the outputs, there will eventually be a time where the outputs stop. This was my main point. Do you disagree?
> If you add up the value of the inputs in the form of food, housing, entertainment, travel, education, computers, and whatever else you think is necessary for optimal software development in a year
Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point: all that stuff is beyond the basic needs. The fact you can work as a software developer is evidence of you having access to more than the basic needs for some period of time. You have computers. You have an education. You probably have an internet connection. You don't need computers to survive. You don't need much of an education to survive. You don't need an internet connection to survive. You don't need Linux to survive. You don't need GCC to survive. All of these things are massively above and beyond one's "basic needs". So if our standard is we'll just give people the basic needs, they won't be very good software developers.
I definitely agree, a software developer's labor will generate a massive ROI. I definitely agree, my employer isn't measuring my caloric expenditure and writing a paycheck based on that. Teaching a miner better mining strategies, equipping a miner with better mining tools, giving a miner better geologic analysis, etc will also massively increase a miner's ROI. But if I never had a computer, and I never had an internet connection, and I never had an education, I probably wouldn't be in software. If you just put an uneducated person in a mine without any tools or guidance, they won't be a very good miner. All of those things are above one's basic needs.
So arguing all we need to do is give people some "basic needs" and they'll magically create tons of extra value is a bit absurd. They need tools. They need education. These are all above and beyond the basic needs.
Well, I'd have to wonder what units you're using that you think are relevant for all inputs and outputs. You might, for example, consider what units you'd measure "all of the inputs you think are necessary for software development" and whether that's an appropriate unit for measuring "software" in.
> Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point: all that stuff is beyond the basic needs.
Agreed! I never disagreed, I merely misspoke initially.
But I've amended that error two posts ago and you're still ranting on about how I don't understand all of this is beyond basic needs. You're trying to argue with me on a point we agree on. Until you stop doing that, it's clear you aren't reading what I'm writing, so I'm not sure why I'd keep writing it.
For example: if my basic necessities were covered by something like a UBI, I could spend my time teaching math/art/code/whatever. If I were a medieval peasant, to take another example, I'd be subsisting on my own farm and after the harvest (and after paying the lord a hefty amount of it) I might have some time to help neighboring villagers repair their tools. That is to say: the need for survival does not necessarily imply the need to have a society organized around profit-seeking.
That we _do_ live in such a society today is a matter of history, not logic. The structuring of human society around profit-seeking (or capitalism more generally) is a relatively recent historical phase (what, about 600 years, maybe?) -- it was not inevitable and there's no logical reason to assume that it will go on forever.
Sure, but you'd still probably need to somehow gather additional resources to make that tool repair collective effective. You'd probably want to somehow acquire additional tools, maybe build a place to store spare parts, acquire spare parts and inventory them, etc.
Organizations today don't need to be profit seeking. I'm a member of many such groups which don't seek profit. We still ask for donations and/or have dues for members, not because we pay leadership any salaries but because some part of the mission does require acquiring things. If we didn't bring things in, we wouldn't be as successful at doing the mission.
You're ignoring a massive part of the tax code if you think all organizations in the US need a profit motive. But in the end almost all organizations probably need to acquire some stuff somehow, otherwise they'll probably fail.
First, did you bother reading the article? He is the opposite of an activist these days. He goes out of his way not to preach to anybody to the point where there are longtime conservative volunteers there that have no idea about his personal politics. He is just living his life according to his personal ideals.
Secondly, what is your issue with communist activism? If someone genuinely thinks that's the best way forward and wants to try and spread the word, power to them.
Does that mean we should never again root for radical change? Because Stalin effectively murdered millions of people? If that's what you're implying, then I would have to disagree completely.
The activism of socialists and communists that you're labelling as "utopian" involves working on community problems, fighting for local progressive legislation, practicing mutual aid, showing up in solidarity with unions, and so on. And that's how it's been for a very long time. Where is the utopianism in that? And how on earth do you look to that and see a specter of genocide?
American capitalism has plenty of genocide on its hands, from the Trail of Tears to Wounded Knee to all of the stuff that Kissinger did in multiple countries.
You realize that there are plenty of communists who don't believe in violence or authoritarianism, right?
Yes I read the whole article, I thought it was interesting.
Why do you need to register as some sort of legal org? Can’t you just be a business that doesn’t make money? Or even better, some sort of non profit?
Charitable organizations exist in The United States. The unsupported claim that it is impossible and that 'capitalism' is preventing charity, is probably what made this thread so inflammatory.
The statement laments the state's regulations (which don't prevent charity in any case) while blaming markets. From my side this reads as a non-sequitur.
History tells a different story in regards to mutual aid societies. It wasn't markets which prohibited mutual aid, but the state itself.
>Mutual aid, also known as fraternalism, refers to social organizations that gathered dues and paid benefits to members facing hardship.
>For instance, in New York City in 1909 40 percent of families earning less than $1,000 a year, little more than the "living wage," had members who were in mutual-aid societies.
>The first major blow against fraternalism occurred when the American Medical Association gained control of the licensing of medical schools. In 1912, a number of state medical boards formed the Federation of State Medical Boards, which accepted the AMA's ratings of medical schools as authoritative. The AMA quickly rated many schools as "unacceptable." Consequentially, the number of medical schools in America dropped from 166 in 1904 to 81 in 1918, a 51 percent drop.18 The increased price of medical services made it impractical for many lodges to retain the services of a doctor. Medical boards also threatened many doctors with being stripped of their licenses if they practiced lodge medicine.
>The next most damaging piece of legislation was the Mobile Law. The Mobile Law required that mutual aid societies show a gradual improvement in reserves. Until this time, societies had tended to keep low reserves in order to pay the maximum benefits possible to members. High reserve requirements made it difficult for societies to undercut traditional insurance companies. The Mobile Law also required a doctor's examination for all lodge members and forbade all "speculative" enterprises such as the extension of credit to members. By 1919, the Mobile Law had been enacted in 40 states.
Further examples of regulatory capture follow.
The IRS doesn't like this, as they suspect you're doing tax fuckery and trying to write off hobby expenses.
Non-profits have various rules and regulations that can be relatively prohibitively expensive to deal with especially if you have never done it before.
Having a legal organization helps in many ways, so you're often best to set something up, or partner with someone who does have one. Many of these will be related to a church, fraternal organization, or even an actual business.
There's many household names like this. Associated Press is one example (between institutions rather than individuals).
Nothing legally stops you from opening a business that won't make net income, if you are willing to backfill the shortfall.
Capitalism hasn't put up any type of barriers against doing so, and there are still plenty of options. The barriers are primarily individually pessimism with a light sprinkling of government regulation.
This is why I like the term occupation. Clearly, a way they occupy their time.
It's an article describing the benevolent societies and social aid and pleasure clubs that were a necessity in New Orleans during and after slavery and segregation. These societies were formed so that people could ease the burden of poverty and allow for their dead to be buried during a time when white funeral home owners weren't keen about allowing black bodies into their establishments. The result is still a huge part of the fabric of New Orleans area culture to this day.
I've wanted to do something similar, and I remember reading on reddit that communal garages are very common on military bases...but in the real world, the greatest barrier I can see is insurance, primarily liability insurance. The potential liabilities, especially if you are a "shadetree" mechanic without some sort of recognized certification, are huge. Waivers cannot cover everything (including gross negligence.) I really wish the article had covered how he structured things; maybe he's simply banking on not having anything worth going after?
There's the liability not just from the repairs but from having volunteers using tools and lifts.
On a moral front: I'm very experienced with car repair, and while I have done things like brake jobs for street and track cars - it's me in the driver's seat in those cars. I wouldn't do a brake job for a friend beyond maybe a pad and rotor change, mostly because I couldn't bear the thought of my fucking up something and it resulting in someone being hurt.
Efforts like this are commendable, but what we really need to work on is putting back the public transit infrastructure that used to be in this country, and making it not only possible to walk and bike, but safe to do so, in terms of infrastructure and enforcement of vehicle standards and traffic laws that hold people more legally responsible if they are at fault when injuring or hurting others.
The automotive industry acclimating us to the notion that you can get away with injuring someone in a car crash you caused without any criminal penalty is the greatest wool-pull-over on the American public in probably the history of our country. Ditto for establishing the precedent that the identity of someone inside a metal box with partially reflective (and likely even tinted) windows in order to hold them responsible.
Why? As the article points out:
> Automobile culture is a system in which individuals privately shoulder the cost of public economic life. If your car fails in Alabama — and you cannot get to work, the grocery store, or school — your life begins to fail. It’s a system that perpetuates poverty.
If he really wants to help people, getting them on e-bikes, if it's practical to do so, would be a huge money savings for them. The vast majority of the US population lives in urbanized areas, and the vast majority of vehicle trips in the US are well under 5 miles. The "need" for cars is entirely artificial in much of our country and it is due to conscious choices by transportation planners and politicians to make infrastructure hostile to people not in a car.
I think the break-event point for a $1-1.5k ebike, which is a pretty damn nice ebike, is probably less than a thousand miles of driving a car (going off the IRS 50 cents/mile deduction) particularly an older one that doesn't get good mileage. Even if you've got a Prius, in gas costs alone the payback is under a year presuming you drive 20k miles/year.
An expensive ebike is potentially an attractive nuisance that could get stolen. Not everyone knows how to ride a bike.
He's been politically active, got someone elected and they didn't keep their promises. He's doing what he can do to make a difference rather than making excuses and saying "We really ought to fix the infrastructure...but..."
In the US, 6%. Non-issue. 3x people do not have a license (16%). Far more people are prohibited from driving for reasons like OUI or nonpayment of citations and such.
> An expensive ebike is potentially an attractive nuisance that could get stolen
Car theft in low-income neighborhoods is a huge problem and police don't care. A bicycle is a fraction of the replacement cost and is much easier to secure. You can't bring a car into your apartment, nor can you stash a car in the corner of your shop at your job.
Also, many renter's insurance policies will either cover a bike by default or they can be added for a cheap rider....far cheaper than the cost of car insurance.
It also doesn't have to be an e-bike...$500 gets you a really nice single-speed transportation bike that costs next to nothing and is easy to stash somewhere safe. Do you seriously not realize that such bikes are a staple of service workers and students in a lot of cities?
> He's doing what he can do to make a difference rather than making excuses and saying "We really ought to fix the infrastructure...but..."
Nobody is "making excuses" here except you.
That is a personal attack. It's not appropriate here.
You want to go to Alabama and implement your ideas? Cool. Otherwise, I think it's inappropriate to dismiss the work he chooses to do and assume you, as an outsider, have better armchair solutions.
I grew up in Georgia in a city on the Alabama border. I'm extremely poor and have lived without a car for over a decade.
Insurance for your apartment is not something extremely poor people necessarily have.
Someone very comfortably well-off and living in a bike-oriented locale talked on HN about not wanting to leave their ebike locked up too long in a public place (for fear of it being stolen).* So that's part of where that thought comes from.
I gave up my car while living in Georgia. There were few sidewalks and it was an hour walk to work.
There was a bus stop near my apartment and a bus stop near my job but there was no bus connecting the two. It would have taken more time to take the bus than to walk it.
People who have no actual experience living within the system thinking they can fix fundamental structural societal problems with money is the essence of a savior complex.
If you don't understand the lived experiences of others you have no lever with which to move their world. You can swing your ideological stick all you want to but nothing is gonna happen but tiring yourself out.
First, solve their political problems, their financial problems, their health problems, their access to education problems, their ignorance problems and their self-proclaimed exceptionalism problems.
Once you have done that, then build them to a point where they can engage with their own history from a higher psychological standpoint and THEN you can throw money at the ecological consequences of their transportation issues.
If you do this out of order, you will either have your money appropriated into various contractors and government officials hands or you will find all of your precious ebikes either for sale on ebay within a year or rusting on the side of the road.
It’s also not uncommon for people living in areas like this to be getting a government check every first of the month & making a singular trip to the nearest Walmart - which may be far away - & getting essentially the months worth of groceries in one trip. Whether or not that’s a good thing is not the point, people are set in their way & nothings going to change that. An ebike cannot make that trip. Automobiles are a lifeline/necessary evil for these people, & life can quickly fall apart without them, as he’s mentioned.
Hell, even riding an ebike in these areas can be quite an alienating social faux pas, & there’s enough deranged people that routinely try to run them off the road/literally run them over (news articles of this happening even front page HN every now & then)
It's also wrong. Bicycles are more efficient than walking...depending on who you ask, 2-5x times as efficient.
E-bikes require almost no physical fitness to ride. The cheapest ones have a 'throttle' lever; the ones with a cadence sensor just require the pedals be turning. The torque-sensing ones provide a boost to whatever you "put in" and the energy required for a bicycle without assistance to go 10mph is very, very low.
Uhh… I’m from one of the poorest parts of Appalachia & am myself disabled (and living on a corresponding income) - do not know just how you came to this conclusion from what I’ve said. Nothing was structured in a way that I’m wanting people to “read between the lines”
Where did I say anything about walking?
Please google “obesity rate”
I’m referring to Americans - not just poor people. Americans are, nearly on average, fat. I didn’t make any mention of laziness.
I am very curious whether or not you’ve ever spent any significant amount of time in a rural/impoverished/blighted part of the USA. A lot of people are too out of shape to operate a riding mower. Heart attacks spike during the beginning of winter from shoveling snow & whenever people first start to use a push lawnmower again. You are objecting reality & I’m not sure why. Maybe you could email the group in the article to ask their opinion on whether or not I’m making this up.
Anyways, your comment is part of the reason I like to repeatedly bring things like this up on HN. For some reason a significant amount of people on here just seem to have no clue of the quality of life/lifestyles many people have & very openly try to reject the reality surrounding it. You’re never going to see much societal progress when you reject reality.
and if you’d really want to indulge in a hot take of mine - poor people tend to not be lazy. Maybe intellectually lazy if I’m trying to entertain many non-poor peoples opinions on the poor, but the impoverished typically have to work much harder in many facets of life to earn the most meager of a living. People born into the middle class & sheltered by affluence really have no clue, & seem to not care to ever get a clue.
He is really helping people. People are coming to him for a solution to a problem and they're solving it.
Frankly, when you look at what hacker news types have done by coming up with scalable solutions in search of problems, it's a disaster. E-bikes where I live, in Chattanooga, would be a disaster, and having been to Montgomery, the problems are likely worse there. Sure, there are lots of <5-mile drives in Chattanooga--across bridges where the speed limit is 55 and it's not enforced, so the average traffic speed is closer to 75. Consider dragging around groceries on an E-bike, and consider it for more than 2 people: poor people have more children on average than rich people. And then consider that the average doesn't tell the whole story: if you need to make a trip once a week that's 25 miles, suddenly you've got to find a ride once a week. Dirt roads don't work well with Ebikes. Repairs are less available. Hospital bills when you get in a bike accident are more expensive than cars. The list of reasons why you should actually listen to people from Alabama before suggesting solutions for Alabama goes on and on and on.
The fact is, infrastructural change needs to happen before anything like an Ebike revolution could happen. And the only way infrastructural change like that will happen is if there is political change. And the only way political change like that will happen is if you start persuading people to form a real community that is united in trying to make positive changes. A mutual aid mechanic is a step in that direction--maybe it will lead to Ebikes, but we're pretty far away from that.
Henson seems to have reached a lot of the same conclusions I've reached. When people try to make big changes by "disrupting" things, they're trying to skip a bunch of necessary steps and as a result, it doesn't work out as they planned and they just end up lining their own pockets while harming everyone else. Positive intentions are worthless.
And look, maybe bikes and ebikes are working out really well in your community--that was certainly the case in Philadelphia when I lived there a decade ago. But it isn't the case in many southern cities. And believe it or not, a big part of the reason southern states don't like liberal coastals isn't completely irrational: it's because people from coastal cities are trying to ram solutions down their throats to problems they don't understand.
> if it's practical to do so
It's even in the line you quoted
First, you dismissed a practical idea which is being executed successfully. Second, you spent two paragraphs waxing poetic about an impractical idea. Inserting a "if it's practical to do so" between those doesn't really fix it.
If you still don't get what I'm reacting to, perhaps consider where you said, "...but in the real world" or "Efforts like this are commendable, but what we really need to work on is...". It's clear you think you know better than he does how best to help his community, which you've probably never even visited.
On-brand HN technosolutionism. Henson already admitted the naivete and idealism that led him working for people he shouldn't have; what he's doing is confronting the unfortunate reality of his region's car-first infrastructure and addressing existing problems with existing means.
But weird coincidence, a few minutes ago I purchased some Park Tools bicycle repair tools to perform some maintenance on my mountain bike after watching a couple of their videos.
Distances are large. The rain is heavy and sudden. The humidity is high. The heat is high in the summer and the cold is low in the winter. Obesity is common. Your pecking order in your local society or work can be determined by things like the vehicle you drive or the church you go to, not to mention the aging population who are often too infirm to ride any bicycle regardless of powertrain.
Further, drivers don't treat bicyclists as human beings even in areas where biking is common, so die hard automobilists will most likely accidentally kill dozens of people every year during the transition period.
While the suggestion is admirable, the practical implementation of it is orders of magnitude more than shelling out a few million dollars.
"How so?"
"You're a genius. You could be a captain of industry by now."
"So I'm both a genius, and no longer a child?"
"Yes"
"Are you also a genius?"
"No"
"Then aren't I by definition the best judge of what would constitute wasting my life?"
Also, note that "Toyota Dealer Maintenance Packages" are generally offered to people who have purchased their vehicle at the dealer, new (or slightly used). That's not the target market here, and compared to having those services performed at an independent shop (or at a dealer without such a package), that monthly charge is quite affordable.
I think this would've been better up front instead of in the third paragraph but maybe that's just how the writing flowed.
> He is a self-identified redneck (as in the original reference: communist-sympathizing miners in West Virginia)
Interestingly it doesn’t actually seem accurate. The Wikipedia article cites a quote from 1893 referring rednecks in the more well-known context. Did the West Virginia miner thing happen before that?
Coal miners
The term "redneck" in the early 20th century was occasionally used in reference to American coal miner union members who wore red bandanas for solidarity. The sense of "a union man" dates at least to the 1910s and was especially popular during the 1920s and 1930s in the coal-producing regions of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.[18] It was also used by union strikers to describe poor white strikebreakers.[19]
> I, too, was confused to hear this new version of an old bit of folk wisdom, and went to check up on it. The Oxford English Dictionary finds derogatory usages for redneck—when defined as “a poorly educated white person working as an agricultural laborer or from a rural area in the southern United States, typically considered as holding bigoted or reactionary attitudes”—much earlier than 1921: 1891, 1904, 1913. What gives?
[...]
> This history of disputation around the uses of the term is what’s most interesting here, and it’s also what resists a “just-so” story about the word’s origins. Catte pointed me to a 2006 article by historian Patrick Huber in the journal Western Folklore that she said formed the basis for her own interpretation. Huber’s argument—that redneck, in the 1910s through the 1930s, sometimes meant “Communist,” or at least “a miner who was a member of a labor union,” especially one on strike—made it clear that this usage was a strategic reclamation of a word that had been used as a slur. Some union organizers, Huber found, used red bandanas and the term redneck as a way to culturally integrate groups of white, black, and immigrant miners—who were often set against each other by owners eager to divide labor’s power—into a single identity. Because miners often wore red handkerchiefs to protect their faces and necks from coal dust, the bandana was a symbol of labor that was universal among ethnicities and races.
https://slate.com/culture/2019/12/redneck-origin-definition-...
"poorer inhabitants of the rural districts ... men who work in the field, as a matter of course, generally have their skin stained red and burnt by the sun, and especially is this true of the back of their necks"
Frederic Gomes Cassidy & Joan Houston Hall, Dictionary of American Regional English VOL.IV (2002) p. 531. ISBN 978-0674008847
Yiddish has just the right word for this:
For example:
> The State should straight up take over regular businesses and make 'em into workers co-ops. And make sure to have labour courts to keep 'em operating within the republican norm.
I've never met a more openly communist group than the tech industry though. It makes sense; we're engineers. Engineers think like engineers, and default to seeing other people as cogs in a great machine. "Social Engineer" has the correctly negative connotation, but still doesn't get used as the insult it truly should be. "Techno-Karen"?
Poland is also on that Hungary train of open fascist revanchism so it may not be the best example? I mean I would use it as an example of a country that is worse off for having effectively expelled their communists but I'm not sure you would want to.
> many of which consider themselves the peers of communist parties in other states
At least we can agree that the socialist parties in Poland are closer allies to Russia than to the West! Moral implication heavily implied.
Funny, I help out at the family service station from time to time. Had a nice lesbian couple show up last weekend. They requested assistance installing a taillight bulb. I walk out and am greeted by a man-hating, derogatory sticker on their trunk lid. I didn't say a word, and still installed their taillight with my useless man hands.
This article started out alright, then slid further and further left until it fell off the topic altogether.