They don't need to do a task, they don't have to pay to pick fruit from a plant like we do.
Control their access to the plants on the other hand...
They don't need to do a task, they don't have to pay to pick fruit from a plant like we do.
Control their access to the plants on the other hand...
I don't have any ethical qualms about food stamps, or any other government assistance. Everybody's gotta eat. It's a grain of sand in the beach that is our governments budget. And feeding hungry people seems like a more ethical way of spending money than bailing out billion dollar companies so executives can keep making more money than they'll ever spend.
Desperado Deluxe
Well-known member
Ok i didnt read most of the thread but i really wanted to say that the ethics of receiving food assistance really depends on the consumer. Its probably better to get food stamps and use them to support your local economies such as your farmers markets, food co op, local health food store, or hell buy local produce at a chain grocery store than it is to not recieve them at all. All about where its going.
Vanholio
Active member
What you're talking about is Basic Income. Look it up. Some of the real life experiments with people have worked out real well.
Since he didn't make the decision to keep you from providing it for yourself (that was done centuries past), but does continue to support (both financially and philosophically) the part that at least feeds people, I'd say the first one.
I think when I was on food stamps I did feel some gratitude to people whose taxes paid for it, especially the ones who support it (who are the ones that allow it to continue to be politically and financially viable).
Whatever construct one uses to show why money should be taken from him and given as food to you, I think a reasonable human response to his empathy in agreement to do so would be civil gratitude, which emerges from symmetric empathy.
Ironically, absence of empathy will destroy the program.
I would like to see discussion on directing food stamp expenditures to local and sustainable food producers, as long as it was properly monitored for fraud (it would be easy to create a small dummy entity to exploit), but its an interesting idea.
I imagine the big industry would crush it before first whisper, they want that money to go back into their corporate products, so people's charity becomes their profit in the end.
What's really ironic is I have a cdl-a temp and could easily finish the process and work too
If they recognized the humans involved in the situation and did not react with needless hostility?
Yes, it would be. Some have begun to, but still too rare.
Their system has failed, and they are not adapting. Global systemic collapse is easily within a generation.
Then many many people will find that the wonderful process of growing your own food without a supporting technological infrastructure is going to be very different than what they may have envisioned, and that's assuming they survive (or necessarily any of us) survive the intervening trans-scalar conflict.
For such an elastic non-sequitur, you'll need to flesh out how you arrived at that.
There are many who pay taxes, and don't have need for food stamps. I would only find them unempathic (not necessarily unethical depending one's ethical position) if they begrudged those who did receive them.
How did you arrive at the above?
I said the system has failed and the one's controlling it are not adapting, because of lack of empathy.
Joining in the behavior causing a system to fail isn't useful, and the effect of that empathy is not to "prop up" the system but because empathy has value in itself to humans, in practice and receipts.
Your assumed implication arose from thinking there could not be other reasons for a behavior aside from propping it up.
For one who strongly dislikes having others put words in your mouth, it would lead by example to take fewer assumptions and make fewer elaborations on the views of others.
While not working may drive wages higher, society would benefit from productivity moreso, particularly at least enough to offset what you take.
I think the only solution would be a global basic income, but the political will for that is very absent from the united states. For moderates and average people to consider it, they would need some basic civility, or at least the absence of passive aggressive hostility, from those would benefit from their labor. The hyper wealthy don't want it, and use the entitled mentality and general combativeness of the few to justify denying the benefit to the many.
As soon as one is hostile, especially in broad and generalized ways, one is defeating even their own cause.
we do need more production. you can still see the ocean. the lack of floating plastic islands cause the water to get too hot and its melting the ice caps.
The assumes that all production is the same, a deeply held misconception among both sides of the political spectrum.
There are production methods that are very sustainable, and can support technical infrastructure (including advanced medical care, research, etc), it's a question of how you do it.
But the preceding question is, what does one want? To understand and cooperate with others to pursue solutions (and our species survival), or to show that you are strong and angry and wronged?
The answers to one question give solutions to others.
Strong, Angry, and wronged.
Going to have to start somewhere, cant just sit back and expect someone else to do the work.
Did you know...Cattle ranchers get to graze on thousands of acres of public land very cheaply. But they're so beligerant the still steal it and then go take over bird sanctuaries and hold stand offs armed to the teeth.
They also let them mine, log, and drill it.
But God forbid we grow a few half acre gardens.
Going to have to start somewhere, cant just sit back and expect someone else to do the work.
Did you know...Cattle ranchers get to graze on thousands of acres of public land very cheaply. But they're so beligerant the still steal it and then go take over bird sanctuaries and hold stand offs armed to the teeth.
They also let them mine, log, and drill it.
But God forbid we grow a few half acre gardens.
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There's a difference between productive strength, and the need to project to others that you are strong through hostility. Anger is almost never productive, and notably diminishes the ability to empathize. Focusing on how wronged you feel just means you don't realize that not everyone you talk to is who wronged you.
It's funny you call it "expect someone else to do the work", when this subset of the exchange developed when you took needless umbrage at someone who voices that they were happy to do work that is taxed so that others may have food assistance. So, if the work of earning the money that is taxed to provide food stamps (the thing that actually feeds the people), other people are in fact doing the work, unless we solely mean the work of complaining and blaming.
Again, your assumptions lead you to non-sequitur. Neither I nor the person you became indignant with have voiced against people being allow to grow small gardens on public land, your anger and feeling of how wronged you've been causes you to not understand who is actually doing that to you and why. It's just easier for you to become low-grade hostile with everyone. That's the difference between strong => solution vs strong=>hurt+angry+needs-everyone-to-know.
Not everyone you interact with created the system that you are so put-upon by, and many of us have worked to change it. In the interim, those who work and gladly pay taxes to support food assistance for others could at least be interacted with reasonably. Your anger and hurt doesn't have to color everything you do.
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.
...while 42% of the country are getting a net postive to make babies in an overcrowded world
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.
...while 42% of the country are getting a net postive to make babies in an overcrowded world
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I think iamnoone's experiment would reveal something about primate behavior that may influence human models at scale.
Some have the concern that a simply providing for general needs will result in people becoming lazy and no longer seeking to accomplish things. iamnoone's study could illustrate that this is not necessarily the case, that people can still be brought into larger scale cooperation with things other than the need to pay rent.
I think some extant data done with humans in small experiments in Europe show there maybe something to it.
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