Ethics of getting Free Food from the Government!!!!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kim Chee
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ped said:
tl;dr

Here's another fun fact. I've paid about 10% in state and federal taxes for 20 years straight. that amounts to about $45,000.
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So we arrive at a time when four paragraphs is too long for someone to read.

There are concepts, including ones like economics, politics, and almost anything involving human beings, that are complicated enough that entire books cannot contain a full perspective or examination of the relevant dynamics, much less four paragraphs.

What a world of knowledge is lost to someone who finds four paragraphs too long to read. In my time, young schoolchildren could so as much in a single exercise.

Yes, many people pay taxes, it's part of contributing to projects that make modern life possible. The present system is severely corrupt and mismanaged, but taxes themselves are not unreasonable, and usually don't warrant angry martyrdom, especially if the taxes in question go to feed people including children.
 
I see, it's ok for half of the country but not us, despite paying significantly more, cause we're not destroying the planet.

got it.
 
ped said:
I see, it's ok for half of the country but not us, despite paying significantly more, cause we're not destroying the planet.

got it.
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That's not even close to what I said, nor does it follow from anything I've said. I would point out your responses you haven't aptly read what you're responding to, but you've effectively admitted that in some cases you haven't read it at all.

This contrasts with your earlier reaction when you felt words were being put in your mouth.

If you read more, you might see it.

One day, a thing that lives in the superposition between zero and one will read all of this, that these were the records of our thoughts and who we were. What was important to us, and what guided us.

Do you really not think that willful petulant anger isn't also destroying the planet? The refusal to communicate and listen to the other side, because you're angry and they're oh so wrong? Does that thought pattern play no role in what is happening to the world?

What if that mentality is the same source of the people you're so angry at, what if you're doing exactly what they do?

I'd ask to look at the source of these conflicts and think about it, but history is larger than four paragraphs.
 
ped said:
Im just simply not in the mood so Im fucking with you
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Right, because you are someone who fucks with human beings. That's not new information.

All the things you complain about? Those are people who are fucking with you, and who also think the treatment they subject others to should be a function of their mood.

You are a great deal like them, they just do it in a way that profits them enormously because they are clever and often educated (with notable exceptions, especially for their face cards).
 
It would be great if we could return to the original topic and refrain from intentionally antagonizing each other.

Thank you.
 
AnOldHope said:
Right, because you are someone who fucks with human beings. That's not new information.

All the things you complain about? Those are people who are fucking with you, and who also think the treatment they subject others to should be a function of their mood.

You are a great deal like them, they just do it in a way that profits them enormously because they are clever and often educated (with notable exceptions, especially for their face cards).
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meow
 
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AnOldHope said:
Studies in primates have shown they get very upset when they observe another primate receiving more reward than they did for the same task. They do not have elaborate abstract constructions of justice or ethics that informs their response, rather evolution has given them an internal countermeasure against gluttony, against one of them taking too much from the group.
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If you're referring to the same study that I think you are (and I think you are because I failed to locate any studies of similarity) then you misunderstood the real implications of the results. It wasn't simply that the primates were upset that one was being paid better (in grapes rather than cucumbers). The results of the study showed that the primates became upset when the other was paid better FOR THE SAME JOB. At the same time, if the primates were complete strangers the primate receiving a grape instead of a cucumber was upset and would refuse to eat it until the other got a grape.

On the topic of food stamps, I would love to reconduct this study whereas FOR THE SAME JOB one primate gets food and the other gets nothing. Because, essentially, we are all working the same job of meaningless existences (regardless of whether you spend the existence traveling as a bum or working as a wage slave or whatever your cup o tea is) and some of us can farm our own food or purchase our own food with the money the government let's us keep, and some of us can't or don't or won't and use food stamps instead. The ETHICS of food stamps is subjective to each individual and downright irrelevant. If you think you're higher up in the social hierarchy than someone else because you deem their efforts unworthy and therefore they're unworthy of food, whatever. I guess it's a good thing you, personally, ain't the government. But since the government is gonna shove their dick in every single thing I do anyway, the least they can do is buy me some decent fucking food for my belly. Or buy someone a hundred crates of avocados if that's what they want out of it. It sounds to me like some of us are really just pissed that they are working SO HARD to pay their taxes and live a good Babylonian life without qualifying for food stamps while some of us are working so little to not pay taxes and live a good anti-babylonian life with the luxury of free food that someone else's taxes paid for.
 
LeeenPocket said:
If you're referring to the same study that I think you are (and I think you are because I failed to locate any studies of similarity) then you misunderstood the real implications of the results. It wasn't simply that the primates were upset that one was being paid better (in grapes rather than cucumbers). The results of the study showed that the primates became upset when the other was paid better FOR THE SAME JOB. At the same time, if the primates were complete strangers the primate receiving a grape instead of a cucumber was upset and would refuse to eat it until the other got a grape.

On the topic of food stamps, I would love to reconduct this study whereas FOR THE SAME JOB one primate gets food and the other gets nothing. Because, essentially, we are all working the same job of meaningless existences (regardless of whether you spend the existence traveling as a bum or working as a wage slave or whatever your cup o tea is) and some of us can farm our own food or purchase our own food with the money the government let's us keep, and some of us can't or don't or won't and use food stamps instead. The ETHICS of food stamps is subjective to each individual and downright irrelevant. If you think you're higher up in the social hierarchy than someone else because you deem their efforts unworthy and therefore they're unworthy of food, whatever. I guess it's a good thing you, personally, ain't the government. But since the government is gonna shove their dick in every single thing I do anyway, the least they can do is buy me some decent fucking food for my belly. Or buy someone a hundred crates of avocados if that's what they want out of it. It sounds to me like some of us are really just pissed that they are working SO HARD to pay their taxes and live a good Babylonian life without qualifying for food stamps while some of us are working so little to not pay taxes and live a good anti-babylonian life with the luxury of free food that someone else's taxes paid for.
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Leeen, please review what I wrote:

"Studies in primates have shown they get very upset when they observe another primate receiving more reward than they did for the same task." (emphasis added).

So, I acknowledged and in fact specifically noted it was for the same task, which of course is very central to the point, as it explains pre-existing roots for the resentment and to demonstrate why that resentment may be somewhat primitive, and absent the higher cognitive processes that form a more developed reasoning for the good that food stamps do.

You are welcome to view existence as meaningless, and view yourself or others that way, but I frequently find meaning in what I do.

Moreover, the hyperbole of "the government shoving their dicking in everything I do" indicates you may have some emotional things going on in your response to this, which is fine, but please read again what you're responding to, I did recognize that it was for the same task.

I don't mind working to pay food stamps, and I have said so. It appears both in detail and in a broader sense you are over generalizing (and in some cases just clearly missing) what is said in what you're responding to.
 
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AnOldHope said:
Leeen, please review what I wrote:

"Studies in primates have shown they get very upset when they observe another primate receiving more reward than they did for the same task." (emphasis added).

So, I acknowledged and in fact specifically noted it was for the same task, which of course is very central to the point, as it explains pre-existing roots for the resentment and to demonstrate why that resentment may be somewhat primitive, and absent the higher cognitive processes that form a more developed reasoning for the good that food stamps do.

You are welcome to view existence as meaningless, and view yourself or others that way, but I frequently find meaning in what I do.

Moreover, the hyperbole of "the government shoving their dicking in everything I do" indicates you may have some emotional things going on in your response to this, which is fine, but please read again what you're responding to, I did recognize that it was for the same task.

I don't mind working to pay food stamps, and I have said so. It appears both in detail and in a broader sense you are over generalizing (and in some cases just clearly missing) what is said in what you're responding to.
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Apologies for the miscommunication. Not everything was directed toward you. And although I emphasized "for the same task", I was actually more interested in emphasizing that primates also get very upset when they see another primate receiving LESS than them.
 
LeeenPocket said:
Apologies for the miscommunication. Not everything was directed toward you. And although I emphasized "for the same task", I was actually more interested in emphasizing that primates also get very upset when they see another primate receiving LESS than them.
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I think you make a fair point. Hopefully it illustrates that the survival advantage of equality works both ways in our ancestors; I have to admit that those who criticize and condemn those who use food stamps are much louder than the many who understand what it could be like to need food.

If our species survives another century, a time will come when we can organize matter more or less at will, and physical objects will retain value only historically, sentimentally, etc. Simple human biological needs will be easily satisfied, and we will have to progress to more difficult problem of what to do with our power.
 
The free food I've gotten at various Missions and relief groups was near dated anyway. Nobody was going to profit from it by then. So, I have no qualms about eating it. I've paid taxes when employed, so my use of SNAP/EBT is not unfair.
 
When the grocery stores stop compacting tons and tons of good food daily to make room for new products no one asked for... then I'll take a hard look at the ethics of food stamps. Till then, fucking blow it all on whipped cream and cooking sherry for all I care. You're literally stressing out about taking money from the institution that backs it to purchase food they subsidized with money they borrowed from themselves.
 
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