You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal (2020)

Those with the wealth and the power to change this, don't have an interest in spreading out welfare and therefore making themselves less wealthy and powerful in the process, but enriching themselves or at least maintaining the status quo, and that usually comes at the expense of keeping those less fortunate where they are.

A lot of goods and services that we take for granted in the west, like commodities in our daily lives: cheap cocoa, cheap coffee, cheap exotic fruits, cheap sneakers and clothing, cheap electronic gadgets, all rely on an underclass of less fortunate people who have no choice in life but be prisoners in a neo-slavery system where they have to work in their given conditions for the give pay, with no way up or out.

Please google and check out the human exploitations going on in cocoa and coffee farming at your own discretion.

Do you think the kids and adults working on those farms for pennies in the beating sun and bitten by mosquitos, wouldn't rather do something else with their lives than picking coffee beans, like go to school/university and work in an office? But if we would spread welfare for them to have that choice, who would then choose work in those bad conditions for nothing to provide western consumers with cheap commodities? Robots aren't even remotely there yet. Same with mining minerals to make iPhones, PlayStations and EVs.

If we were to make their lives and jobs fair while also watching over the environment, then the price of commodities would explode, so the mega conglomerates who own these markets, like Nestle or Apple for example, would have to take a missive hit on their profits, or the western consumers would have to stomach the explosion in prices, or both simultaneously, neither of which are acceptable trade-offs in the west, so we keep the status quo of having to rely on perpetual underclasses of people slaving away in poverty for us, while pretending we're great humanitarians and benefactors.

I said "we" here, because it's not just the great evil billionaires like Bezos, Jobs, Saudis, and so many others who profit from and enable this exploitation, but also the western governments like US, Switzerland, Netherlands, etc. where they're HQ but have the audacity to lecture them on human rights and environment concerns, plus the individual shareholders, employees, taxpayers and consumers who enable them as well.

Sure, a lot of people in poor nations got out of poverty "thanks" to globalization and mega conglomerates outsourcing of less desirable manufacturing and services there, but let's not forget they didn't do this out of the goodness of their hearts, but to extract even more profits. People getting out of poverty was just a happy side effect.

I am 100% lucky that I was in the right place at the right time so that I could be offered the opportunities that I had.

But I think you have to be disciplined in that you must try and try and try to do everything in your power to put yourself in the right place. Of course, even if you do this, you might never be given the opportunity. But if you don't try, you _definitely_ won't.

Many of the people I grew up with did not do this. They had the ability to do it, but they lacked initiative or the ambition. They were complacent with what they had, even though it was very little.

Not everyone comes from an unbroken home, or had a support network to do these things - I get that. But I see many people that could do better and just don't do it for what I'd guess is because it's hard. Instead they make bad decisions that are easy and increase quality of life on the short term: racking up debt, having kids at a young age without a career, etc.

Do people not shoulder some of the blame in today's information age?

Those that I know who have made bad life decisions (kids too early, dropping out of college, leaving extremely supportive parents) could totally have been expected to based off looking at GPA/SAT signals.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... (https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2007.02....) page 5 table 1.

> I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

This took me several decades to grasp and then "forgive" myself for not being the person I wanted to be. I also think it is a message that is worth spreading, particularly among young folks.

It's quite easy to amalgamate the concept of meritocracy with that of success, such that a lack of the latter implies a lack of the former. This is (or, at least for me, it was) an endless supply of anxiety of pain, which is completely unfounded.

Everyone fails dozens of times before hitting on something good, it's just the nature of things. Some lucky people can just fail as much as they need to, while some other's can't even afford to try even once. I read this somewhere else and stuck with me, "people don't make better choices, they just have better choices".

A university professor's personal observations about how a typical city college student faces myriad obstacles to success with little support, whereas a typical student at an elite college must practically struggle to fall through all the safety nets and actually fail. The article should be required reading for anyone who is or has been in any way involved with a higher-tier university in the United States.

Sure there are better and worse people everywhere, but on average the more meritocratic the system, the more poor people suck! With the exception of immigrants who start from 0.

In completely non-meritocratic system like Soviet Union you could have people living next door to each other in similar conditions, who went to the same schools and had the same opportunities, and one would be a Physics professor and the other a raging alcoholic. A system where equality is not forced just sorts them better.

Many people are really much better than others at most things, including merely being a decent worker/friend/partner. And many are worse

Like, every once in a while I get a craving for poverty comfort foods like ramen with frozen veggies, a slice of American cheese, and a sliced up microwaved hotdog.

Or trying to explain why it's so hard for me to let go of a 20 year old pickup truck that still works because I used to sleep in it.

Or how no matter how much money I earn now I always feel poor and one step away from homelessness.

How I won't go and buy new clothes, why I shop at thrift stores and pawn shops when I can afford new, how I don't feel like I own anything, why I always plan for and expect the worst out of every event and encounter I have, how I dedicate my self to working hard so that the places I work at can't "afford" to fire me, so much so that I have been accused of being an overworker and a slave driver.

On an income basis I'm probably at the top for my entire family right now, but years of homelessness and over a decade of extreme poverty have made their marks on my life and I don't know if it will ever get better. I could win the lottery and I'd still be cutting coupons and searching deal sites for discount codes, wearing discount clothes and shopping in pawn shops.

Per George Lakoff (full interview: https://newsarchive.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10... )

The conservative worldview, the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline - physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once grown, the self-reliant, disciplined children are on their own. Those children who remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further discipline or be cut free with no support to face the discipline of the outside world.

So, project this onto the nation and you see that to the right wing, the good citizens are the disciplined ones - those who have already become wealthy or at least self-reliant - and those who are on the way. Social programs, meanwhile, "spoil" people by giving them things they haven't earned and keeping them dependent. The government is there only to protect the nation, maintain order, administer justice (punishment), and to provide for the promotion and orderly conduct of business. In this way, disciplined people become self-reliant. Wealth is a measure of discipline. Taxes beyond the minimum needed for such government take away from the good, disciplined people rewards that they have earned and spend it on those who have not earned it.

If you want something more concise and to the point, the article "The Science of Scarcity" [0] in Harvard Magazine provides a pretty good summary of the book.

The themes from the book complement those in the article fairly well.

[0]: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2015/04/the-science-of-scarc...

It's been wrecked by the current right-wing government.

Maybe he passed away. Maybe she left him because she just wanted the kid. I don't know why you assume wrongdoing while, as you pointed out, no details is given.

Not due to the lack of others help. Sure, one of her brothers didn’t help, but her parents fed her and helped her during her pregnancy. The father of the son shares responsibility. See the below Guardian article[1].

I get the feeling she is one of those people who is an exceptionally brilliant narrator, knows how to captivate and truly reach their audience. Like a lot of politicians and public figures.

1. https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/07/jack-monroe-...

> Before long, Monroe was using a food bank. “It had taken me four or five weeks to pluck up the courage to go. The first time, one of the women looked at me and I looked at her. She went to church with my mum. She said, ‘Your mum will be devastated.’ And I said, ‘You can’t tell anyone. You haven’t seen me.’ She said, ‘Your parents will help you,’ and I said, ‘They can’t know.’”

> That’s what I don’t understand, I say. Why didn’t you tell your parents when they were in a position to help? “Because … ” For once, she slows down. “I was ashamed. I was ashamed that I had had a good job and I’d fucked it. I was embarrassed that I’d ended up not being able to provide for my son, and I was worried that if I told a soul, the walls would come crumbling down. Because my parents had fostered for most of my childhood, I’d grown up with this fear that if I ever had a child, he would be taken into care. That I would be an unfit mother. I’d grown up with almost 100 children revolving through my childhood home. So in my head, nearly every kid went into care because nearly every kid I came across was in the care system. I was terrified that if I told anyone, my son would be taken into care.”

So the shame itself was one of the biggest obstacles - compounded by the idea that poverty is evidence of personal inadequacy or moral weakness.

There is a problem with lack of community there: the feeling that really struggling means that you don't deserve help, because that's the message you get from your society. (And it certainly doesn't help that lack of money excludes you from all kinds of normal social activities, as she mentions in the article.)

You could ask the same of homeless people, drug addicts, people with mental issues, people from foster care, criminals, the elderly. Some people lose their community, and don't have the tools or capacity to build a new one. Single mothers are one of those groups that can quickly be kicked out of, or need to escape from, their community, and have a hard time building a new one.

Growing up in the USA, I don't think it's the West that has a problem with community - I think it's the Caucasian West. Latin/Hispanic families are highly connected, as are Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern, etc. Some cultures are highly collective and have strong support structures for extended family. Immigrant communities also tend to have stronger bonds as they may depend more on each other in a new land. OTOH some cultures are more individualist, having expanded the concept of the "nuclear family" in the early 20th century, weakening extended family bonds. In the conservative caucasian West, the nuclear family is now seen as the "traditional" family structure, which is odd, because everywhere else in the world it's non-traditional.

Recklessly spending is a symptom of poverty (also, ADHD, which she mentions) - spend it before it runs out. Comes from a life of having plans (No not those life kind of plans - plans to buy food, pay rent) then something urgent happens and takes away the money.

I'll be the first to agree it's stupid, but I can't blame her too harshly on that point. Seen it play out too many times. Also been there done that after a broken hip settlement (saving my other one for retirement!) - I got so fat lol

See also: lottery winners that go broke inside a few years

Especially the pics of rice with various vegetables. I'll always have a bag of rice and a bag of frozen veg just in case, even if I become a billionaire somehow.

Survived for literal years on that combo, lol.

You didn't have kids though. That changes everything. I do agree from experience as well, a single healthy young person in good spirits can make it work. Knowing you're responsible for a little baby that can die or be hurt for life changes the stakes.

I assume there wasn't an extended family that was near enough, kind enough, or able enough to take them in for a few years. That kind of support is indispensable when you have kids and don't have a lot of resources. Generally material poverty is experience very differently when there is also social relationship wealth. But nowadays in US/UK, there is a lot of social relationship poverty. When combined with material wealth it is not great, but combine social poverty with material poverty, and you have a big problem.

I suspect, this author is driven in some peculiar way. I’ve seen it with other strongly artistic types, the drive isn’t to make money, and that allows them to do great things. Sadly, if they don’t align with value of the populace in a way that makes money, they will simply toil in poverty. Worse, is they are often easy marks to be take advantage of. I’ve even seen it in tech, people who should be making way more than they are, but continue to be underpaid because there’s a kind of playground for them to explore.

So you are inclined to dismiss her stated experience because she didn't choose to share every little detail of her life to your satisfaction?

I know. I’ve experienced it first hand (as the kid).

To your point about deliberate choice: What I do recognise from the article, and it was clear before she mentioned it, were the signs and symptoms or untreated trauma and ADHD. The deleterious effect of those conditions on decision making often seem to us observers as ‘deliberate choices’. This can be very frustrating for those of us who would and do make different choices in similar situations.

Wanting to beg her parents to take care of her does not imply they would. Many people want things they cannot have.

The amount of hours I've spent on calls with the bank or filling out their damn budgets when I could have been spending the time working and earning.. I'd have probably been able to pay them off lol

Never mind all the paperwork and appointments and journaling you have to do if you need to claim benefits.

Luckily I managed to get freelancing off the ground in the 6 or so weeks I was waiting to see if they'd give me food money.

One day I'll earn enough to get to £0, then imma start helping everyone else in this situation. Being poor fucking sucks.

And just as an addendum, tech is more meritocratic than many fields, but even tech has long-standing issues with gender, race, and age discrimination. Whether it's a pipeline problem or not, it's clear that many things besides talent close people off from working in the field.

I'm not sure that capitalism is the creator of poverty. There have been poor throughout history and nearly all of them living in vastly worse material conditions than the poor in modern capitalist societies.

I'm coming up on 25 years of living month to month, with nearly all of my hopes and dreams dashed by the necessity of having to pull the yoke in the workaday world. I was one of the gifted kids who probably should have worked at NASA, but nobody warned me that I'd grow up to be a people-pleaser due to ADHD symptoms. I didn't know how important it was to set boundaries to protect my mind and body, because as a geek, I didn't value my own time and had no real need of money if I could just be left alone.

But see, that's the thing: poor people can't get left alone. Borrowing money makes one a slave. Working as a wage slave at a low-paying job makes one a slave. Not having the money to afford to live alone, much less date or travel or do middle class things - destroys mental health and makes one a slave. Despite periodic financial stability and healthy relationships, I know deep down that I've mostly lived as a slave.

The big epiphany came for me during the pandemic. I hit such a rock-bottom low after developing food sensitivities and chronic fatigue from stress that rendered me unable to work for 6 months in 2019, that I left logic-based reality when COVID hit in 2020. I had to shift laterally through meditation into a neighboring reality where magic returned (where we are now at the time of this writing), in order for my soul to want to continue in this incarnation. TikTok was the gateway drug to Alan Watts, Terence McKenna and Dolores Cannon (among a great many others).

Now I view Big Tech as a clear and present danger to world peace, especially with the arrival of AI. All creative work will lose its value within 5 years. Even the security of our programming jobs isn't something that can be counted on, as AI will perform better than us at all problem solving within 10 years. Nearly all projections for environmental health, wealth inequality, the rise of authoritarianism, etc etc etc predict collapse between 2040 and 2050. We're either going to defeat the status quo or all be enslaved.

The fix is so easy and obvious that most people can't see it: tax the uber rich. Start undoing all of the trickle-down legislation passed since Reagan and put the new tax revenue towards automating the work that slaves must perform to acquire the resources to survive. Specifically: fund universal healthcare, affordable college, low-cost housing/staple foods/natural monopolies like internet service, and most importantly - UBI.

Unfortunately about half of thought leaders have either never been poor, or been poor but arrived at a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps worldview through survivorship bias (why billionaires usually subscribe to right-wing ideology). A vanishingly small number of people go on a healing and growth journey, eventually experiencing a spiritual awakening and arriving at a leftist or trans-political worldview based on the dignity of all living things, valuing conscious awareness most of all.

I've let go of expectation that things will get better through practical application of logic, as it's probably too late for that. But I've put conscious effort into manifestation and witnessed how outer reality improves as inner reality heals. Now I lead a life of service, often sacrificing what might have been in this life to improve the lives of others, in recognition that I may be them in my next life, because we are all one. As above, so below. And so it is.

Edit: I forgot to make my point: it only takes 1% of the population waking up to cause a shift towards world peace. That's why the wealthiest 1% wield ego-based tools like fintech to suppress awakening and build empire. But the rise of the dark side is always balanced by the rise of the light side through natural law. So I believe that the meekest among us - the poor, the infirm, the light workers - are our best hope for healing and eventual peace as we transition into the New Age.

That was a while ago, when things like CDs were still targetted by theives, and I got everything replaced, which would have cost me thousands.

I still keep contents insurance; haven't claimed on it more than once in a couple decades though - it's there for the case where my appartment is destroyed (I live in a block of flats), and it's nice to have the lost property/damaged devices cover for travel and general use.

US, not the UK:

Counties with poverty rates of >35% have obesity rates 145% greater than wealthy counties.

Back to Europe:

The Paradox of Poverty and Obesity

Among the reasons for the growing obesity in the population of poor people are: higher unemployment, lower education level, and irregular meals. Another cause of obesity is low physical activity, which among the poor is associated with a lack of money for sports equipment.

I am a follower of her site for years, have all her books. What crashed her site I have no idea but it has never been the same since. It's a shame that Automattic - who created Jetpack - never reached out to help her restore the site. They have no obligation of course, but given her profile, given the massive good that she does, it would have been decent of them to do that.

Not sure how that way of thinking is productive. Patronising people is bad in itself. Thinking that people you perceive as "privileged" can't comprehend you is a choice too and a form of ignorance.

Is that true for this case?

Understanding the actual on-the-ground situation for all types of people and situations in the 10 largest countries will probably take up most of a normal human lifespan. And that's assuming they spend several hours a week, 50 weeks a year, learning.

Understanding India and China alone to that level would probably take up 30-40 years.

It seems literally impossible for the vast vast majority of people to have enough time for that ignorance to have been a meaningful choice.

i.e. This is likely the baseline default for nearly everyone, who are not especially interested in the UK or who are not super-geniuses.

No, it's not always a choice.

You might be born in a family and community that actively brainwashes their members and prevents you from coming into contact with conflicting information.

This can even be true in less severe circumstances, such as being bombarded with propaganda on social media, which essentially hacks your brain.

> Choosing to use the powers vested in you by the constituencies you serve, to deprive those same constituents of light, heating, food and home security is a wilful and deliberate act. And it has to stop.

It’s abundantly clear that the whole passage was speaking to Rees-Mogg, calling her out for her Marie Antoinette ‘let them eat potatoes’.

This passage isn’t a generalism, is a specific response to the words of a former politician, a former Conservative MP and MEP for East Midlands.

To reduce the articles substance to a specially selected out of context quote such as OP highlighted seems disingenuous.