Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

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I see so many comments on HN, especially as of late, basically to the effect of "the poor deserve to be poor" and usually with a "they could work hard like I do" tacked on. It's been leaving a really bad taste in my mouth. I've been both rich and poor and never forget where I've been in life.

A lot of people forget how much support they've had to get where they are. When you really take a good hard look at why many poor people are in the situations they're in, you see a total absence of a support network around them.

Working hard to get somewhere without any support around me is the single most frustrating thing I've had to deal with. It's easy to fail and often I have.

I have cousins with trust funds and millions of dollars to back up the pursuit of their dreams. I'm not really envious, but I know that I would be much further along towards my goals if I didn't have to work my ass off to get to somewhere in life where I can even afford to take a risk. Then it can take years to recover from failure.

Phrases I never expected to become part of my vocabulary like "class struggle" are starting to. I grew up in a poor, but conservative family!

At least not all of us think in the way you described, but a significant number sure do.

Exactly! I come from a middle-class background. Not trust-fund level, but enough to shield me from the catch-22s of poverty. It disturbs me, when I reflect back on my life, just how many "steps to success" would have been complicated had my family been lower on the economic totem pole. It disturbs me even more how many of my peers (disproportionately many of which share the same background) don't acknowledge this fact with respect to their own lives. It's easy to be a libertarian when the market is treating you well.

It saddens me that the concept of "class struggle" was sullied by its connection with a certain well-known failed attempt to solve the problem. Just because our rivals failed doesn't mean we have succeeded!

> It's easy to be a libertarian when the market is treating you well.

I'm really glad that my brief flirtation with libertarian ideas didn't even last into my 20s. It was more like an unfortunate stepping stone from growing up in a Limbaugh household to being the radical lefty I am today. Though I try not to identify with any of that either.

At least I can understand where libertarians are coming from. It's really the objectivism and the worship of Ayn Rand in privileged and powerful economic/political circles that makes me worry about the future.

Things are going well when there's a reasonably fair balance between rich/powerful and poor/powerless, especially with respect to rule of law. There won't always be justice but there needs to be a reasonable idea of it. It feels like lately that is slipping away and that such a state of affairs is more common historically -- the culture of (potential) prosperity that our society worked hard for after WWII is gone.

>It's really the objectivism and the worship of Ayn Rand in privileged and powerful economic/political circles that makes me worry about the future.

Be honest. How much Ayn Rand have you actually read? It's a very common strawman to pretend that Ayn Rand was promoting social darwinism. If you truly are just worried about objectivism, what is it that you have a problem with? People being shunned for harming instead of contributing?

Be fair! The woman was such a godawful writer that it's hard to get to grips with any of her ideas for their own sake.

Do you think it's a valid criticism then to complain about Ayn Rand's ideas when you haven't been able to comprehend them?

Sure! -- or would you have me believe every Randite who criticizes Marx has read his impenetrable opus? Being responsible for what posterity does to one's logos is an occupational hazard of the propheting trade.

Anyone who criticizes Marx without having first studied Marx should not be thought highly of. The degree to which you have studied something is roughly proportional to how much criticism you can reasonably heap on it.

I cannot launch an in-depth criticism of, say, Finnish politics because I have not studied Finnish politics in any detail.

I can give a limited criticism of Robert Greene, because I have studied a selection of his writings.

The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and The Virtue of Selfishness.

As far as I'm concerned, her entire argument falls apart when she starts to argue that altruism is immoral. Once you remove altruism as being a virtue and argue for a society where everyone accomplishes everything solely based on their own ability, I don't see how it can be argued that you're advocating anything but social darwinism (just with a different approach).

That's not to say that there weren't some useful things that were said, but in my life it offers very little value and none of the juicy parts are original.

As for why it makes me worry: the ones who often cite her as an influence and publicly sing her praises are very often the ones who are so off the mark in understanding what she actually said.

It's like we are the same person. Or maybe we just live in the same country :)

It's worth mentioning that the only libertarian I know who has been able to argue with me to my satisfaction remarkably agrees with me on "what needs to be done." I suspect political philosophy is somewhat like religion: any sufficiently dedicated person can use any sufficiently developed philosophy to support any sufficiently developed plan. Here's my list. What's yours?

1. Campaign finance reform. Turn the bribing policy from "mandatory bribes" to "optional bribes." Going to "no bribes" is probably too difficult (how to close the "cushy job upon retirement" loophole?)

2. Legislative and judicial policy focused on creating competitive markets, not placating business (#1 necessary for #2)

3. Single-payer healthcare

4. Basic income (Milton Friedman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM )

Very reasonable list there.

1. Campaign finance reform. I actually would like to see some steps towards a return to the older party boss systems. Think Tammany Hall. These systems were incredibly corrupt but very efficient. Moreover, the base of each party wasn't the radical fringe. This isn't ideal, but at times it worked reasonably well.

2. Electoral reform. I would like to see instant-runoff voting. I say this with the caveat that there really needs to be more than 2 major competitive parties, so I'm lumping that into this bullet point as well.

3. Patent and copyright reform.

4. Single-payer healthcare

5. Prison reform. Rehabilitation instead of Punishment. Abolition of private prisons and an overhaul of the criminal code. Could add points onto this topic for hours.

6. Tax reform. Specifically a single tax system using Land Value Tax.

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