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So what if he did buy booze with it? I buy booze with my money and there's nothing wrong with that. If someone asks me for money, and I feel inclined to give it

So what if he did buy booze with it? I buy booze with my money and there's nothing wrong with that. If someone asks me for money, and I feel inclined to give it, the money becomes theirs, and why shouldn't they spend it on whatever seems like the best choice for their circumstances? And what gives me the right to decide what that best choice would be? I'm not living that life. Maybe a bottle of whiskey really would offer the most comfort per dollar. That's pretty sad, but why judge the person making the choice? Judge the situation offering them that choice instead.

danielweber 10y ago
Because he was trying to help, and not doing a philosophical life-experience exercise
- marssaxman 10y ago
  Then why all the philosophy about what "kind of person" he was and whether he would use the money "for other purposes"? If someone asks me for money, and I give them money, it becomes their money, and it is none of my business what they choose to do with it, any more than it is any of their business (or yours!) what I would have done with it if I kept it. Otherwise, you're not really giving them help, you're taking some amount of control over their life.
  - iprateek 10y ago
    "If someone asks me for money, and I give them money, it becomes their money, and it is none of my business what they choose to do with it" It isn't if your idea of help is unconditional donation. But is there anything wrong if I see donations as investments (in society) with expected returns on the same? Would I be wrong in trying to maximize my returns?
    - Retra 10y ago
      Do you think activities that magnify your personal influence over others is an honest improvement in society?
      - imtringued 10y ago
        So basically don't donate to the poor?
        Retra 10y ago
        It's not a donation if it comes with enforced obligations.
      - iprateek 10y ago
        Where did I mention that my objective was maximizing my influence? The objective is improvement in the society. My influence has nothing to do with it. The point is, just giving money does not absolve us of our moral responsibility. If I donate with an objective of social good, not just with the idea of dispensing my spare wealth, it is my right and duty to see that my investments give the maximal return, i.e. maximal social good. Of course I can be wrong/ suboptimal in my investment strategies but then I can improve.
lolc 10y ago
I don't want them to destroy their bodies. I don't want them to fuel black markets with my money, and this is speaking as an occasional consumer of mind altering substances not available in pharmacies. Further, I don't have much money. I cannot afford a lot of stuff for myself. So I can only help with necessities. And I don't want to judge whether any given person is lying. In conclusion, I never hand out money. But I've bought quite a few bags of groceries for strangers.
- marssaxman 10y ago
  Well, that seems reasonable. I'm just not OK with the whole "deserving poor" idea that seems to be baked into American political philosophy when it comes to homelessness and poverty support, because I don't want to have control over other people's lives any more than I want them to have control over mine. Freedom isn't freedom without the option to fuck up.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    Having the option to fuck up isn't the problem. The problem is that the US system has such incredibly low social mobility that it prevents any alternative to fucking up. The mythology of personal choice applied to situations over which hardly anyone has actual personal control is perniciously misleading. The "undeserving poor" - feckless, addicted, irresponsible - is just as much of a cliche as the opposite. In fact, BI research shows that most people don't waste the money. They use it to improve their lives - sometimes by starting small businesses that wouldn't be possible without BI.
    - marssaxman 10y ago
      Your response is phrased in the form of a rebuttal, but I think I agree with everything you are saying, so far as I understand it, which leaves me to wonder if I didn't explain myself clearly. I believe that the concept of "deserving" or "undeserving" poverty is not just unhelpful but actually misleading, and creates a great deal of unnecessary confusion. It is more useful to ignore the personal details and look at the systems. We can't change other people; we can rarely change ourselves; but we can certainly change systems, because they are human creations in the first place. So that's how we should approach poverty. I am in favor of basic income as an improvement on and replacement for other forms of social support, for a variety of reasons: it seems like a more efficient way to move money around, it seems like a more effective way to distribute resources to people in need of them, and it seems overall like a more egalitarian, less judgemental way of dealing with a whole complex of problems which currently create a great deal of suffering. It is simple enough to feel like good engineering. It is fair enough to feel sustainable. It is non-ideological enough that I feel reasonably sure it would be difficult to use it as a mechanism of social control against weirdo outliers, like I am, but who aren't fortunate enough to have access to the same resources I do. By "option to fuck up" I mean simply the freedom to do something other than mainstream opinion thinks you should. In these examples, people clearly believe it would be a bad idea for someone begging on the street to use the money they earn to buy alcohol. Well, on average, that's probably true. But just because someone is in a desperate way, I don't believe that gives me (or you, or anyone) the right to tell them what choices they should make. It's still their life. If I am willing to hand the guy on the street corner my spare $5, I have to be willing to accept that he's going to do whatever he thinks best with that money. If I can't be happy with that I shouldn't give him the money. But I believe that each person generally is the best judge of what is best for themself; I'd like it if the society around me would leave me free to make my own choices, not because I'm successful enough not to have to beg for money on the street, but because that's how I think we should all treat each other all the time, regardless of circumstances.
nomoch 10y ago
>So what if he did buy booze with it? I buy booze with my money and there's nothing wrong with that. So what if they buy a machine gun with it an kill a few hundred people? Everything has spill over effects. It isn't just your body, it's my body as well because now when you get liver cirrhosis I have to pay part of the bills that end up paying for treatment.
- goldbeck 10y ago
  On the other hand, if you were paying part of the bill for his treatment, you'd also be incentivized to help him out in ways that might prevent that fate. I believe that, at the end of the day, we're all in this together. So to me, clarifying that economically is a feature of public healthcare, not a bug.
  - marssaxman 10y ago
    This has always struck me as one of the stronger arguments against the idea of public healthcare, which otherwise seems like a good idea. I feel quite certain that this tool of social control would be used against me, to dissuade me from engaging in some of the dangerous activities which give me great pleasure, and am therefore extremely reluctant to accept the argument that this is a legitimate use of power against other dangerous activities I don't happen to prefer.
kisil_reboot 10y ago
In general, I favor freedom of determination; if your randomly selected person wants to spend their BI on drugs or alcohol, fine. But the persistently homeless are not at all a representative sample population. There are a number of intersecting problems, especially mental health and addiction, that place them among the least credible cases for self-determination. We can argue about where the cutoff is, but there will always be people out at the end of the bell curve that need more active intervention. And that's without even getting into the problem of perverse incentives involved in giving money to people for asking for it.

danielweber 10y ago

Because he was trying to help, and not doing a philosophical life-experience exercise

marssaxman 10y ago
Then why all the philosophy about what "kind of person" he was and whether he would use the money "for other purposes"? If someone asks me for money, and I give them money, it becomes their money, and it is none of my business what they choose to do with it, any more than it is any of their business (or yours!) what I would have done with it if I kept it. Otherwise, you're not really giving them help, you're taking some amount of control over their life.
- iprateek 10y ago
  "If someone asks me for money, and I give them money, it becomes their money, and it is none of my business what they choose to do with it" It isn't if your idea of help is unconditional donation. But is there anything wrong if I see donations as investments (in society) with expected returns on the same? Would I be wrong in trying to maximize my returns?
  - Retra 10y ago
    Do you think activities that magnify your personal influence over others is an honest improvement in society?
    - imtringued 10y ago
      So basically don't donate to the poor?
      - Retra 10y ago
        It's not a donation if it comes with enforced obligations.
    - iprateek 10y ago
      Where did I mention that my objective was maximizing my influence? The objective is improvement in the society. My influence has nothing to do with it. The point is, just giving money does not absolve us of our moral responsibility. If I donate with an objective of social good, not just with the idea of dispensing my spare wealth, it is my right and duty to see that my investments give the maximal return, i.e. maximal social good. Of course I can be wrong/ suboptimal in my investment strategies but then I can improve.

lolc 10y ago

I don't want them to destroy their bodies. I don't want them to fuel black markets with my money, and this is speaking as an occasional consumer of mind altering substances not available in pharmacies. Further, I don't have much money. I cannot afford a lot of stuff for myself. So I can only help with necessities. And I don't want to judge whether any given person is lying. In conclusion, I never hand out money. But I've bought quite a few bags of groceries for strangers.

marssaxman 10y ago
Well, that seems reasonable. I'm just not OK with the whole "deserving poor" idea that seems to be baked into American political philosophy when it comes to homelessness and poverty support, because I don't want to have control over other people's lives any more than I want them to have control over mine. Freedom isn't freedom without the option to fuck up.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  Having the option to fuck up isn't the problem. The problem is that the US system has such incredibly low social mobility that it prevents any alternative to fucking up. The mythology of personal choice applied to situations over which hardly anyone has actual personal control is perniciously misleading. The "undeserving poor" - feckless, addicted, irresponsible - is just as much of a cliche as the opposite. In fact, BI research shows that most people don't waste the money. They use it to improve their lives - sometimes by starting small businesses that wouldn't be possible without BI.
  - marssaxman 10y ago
    Your response is phrased in the form of a rebuttal, but I think I agree with everything you are saying, so far as I understand it, which leaves me to wonder if I didn't explain myself clearly. I believe that the concept of "deserving" or "undeserving" poverty is not just unhelpful but actually misleading, and creates a great deal of unnecessary confusion. It is more useful to ignore the personal details and look at the systems. We can't change other people; we can rarely change ourselves; but we can certainly change systems, because they are human creations in the first place. So that's how we should approach poverty. I am in favor of basic income as an improvement on and replacement for other forms of social support, for a variety of reasons: it seems like a more efficient way to move money around, it seems like a more effective way to distribute resources to people in need of them, and it seems overall like a more egalitarian, less judgemental way of dealing with a whole complex of problems which currently create a great deal of suffering. It is simple enough to feel like good engineering. It is fair enough to feel sustainable. It is non-ideological enough that I feel reasonably sure it would be difficult to use it as a mechanism of social control against weirdo outliers, like I am, but who aren't fortunate enough to have access to the same resources I do. By "option to fuck up" I mean simply the freedom to do something other than mainstream opinion thinks you should. In these examples, people clearly believe it would be a bad idea for someone begging on the street to use the money they earn to buy alcohol. Well, on average, that's probably true. But just because someone is in a desperate way, I don't believe that gives me (or you, or anyone) the right to tell them what choices they should make. It's still their life. If I am willing to hand the guy on the street corner my spare $5, I have to be willing to accept that he's going to do whatever he thinks best with that money. If I can't be happy with that I shouldn't give him the money. But I believe that each person generally is the best judge of what is best for themself; I'd like it if the society around me would leave me free to make my own choices, not because I'm successful enough not to have to beg for money on the street, but because that's how I think we should all treat each other all the time, regardless of circumstances.

nomoch 10y ago

>So what if he did buy booze with it? I buy booze with my money and there's nothing wrong with that. So what if they buy a machine gun with it an kill a few hundred people? Everything has spill over effects. It isn't just your body, it's my body as well because now when you get liver cirrhosis I have to pay part of the bills that end up paying for treatment.

goldbeck 10y ago
On the other hand, if you were paying part of the bill for his treatment, you'd also be incentivized to help him out in ways that might prevent that fate. I believe that, at the end of the day, we're all in this together. So to me, clarifying that economically is a feature of public healthcare, not a bug.
- marssaxman 10y ago
  This has always struck me as one of the stronger arguments against the idea of public healthcare, which otherwise seems like a good idea. I feel quite certain that this tool of social control would be used against me, to dissuade me from engaging in some of the dangerous activities which give me great pleasure, and am therefore extremely reluctant to accept the argument that this is a legitimate use of power against other dangerous activities I don't happen to prefer.

kisil_reboot 10y ago

In general, I favor freedom of determination; if your randomly selected person wants to spend their BI on drugs or alcohol, fine. But the persistently homeless are not at all a representative sample population. There are a number of intersecting problems, especially mental health and addiction, that place them among the least credible cases for self-determination. We can argue about where the cutoff is, but there will always be people out at the end of the bell curve that need more active intervention. And that's without even getting into the problem of perverse incentives involved in giving money to people for asking for it.