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"If you're low on income and have a family to support" then you made poor life choices and natural selection comes into play. Like it or not it is a force of n

"If you're low on income and have a family to support" then you made poor life choices and natural selection comes into play. Like it or not it is a force of nature.

jwdunne 10y ago
Right, because you know my life well enough to make that kind of judgement. It's a nice, clever cop out but ultimately a cop out. Bicyclist gets hit by a car. Loses his legs. Did he make poor life choices? I wouldn't say so. Say that same bicyclist has built a career as a great door to door sales man. Now he's on hard times. Did he still make poor life choices? Should we, then, all avoid bicycles and work in door to door sales, even if those two things happen to be things people enjoy and, on the whole, beneficial? You can think of an unlimited number of scenarios where someone has fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. In fact, the most callous and unhelpful thing to say is "you made poor life choices bro" like you even know what you're taking about.
- simbalion 10y ago
  Are you kidding? Riding a bicycle in the street is the very definition of a poor life choice. Haha I got downvoted, probably by people who ride bikes. Hey I love bikes, bikes need their own lane. When I grew up the government told me I could not ride my bike on the sidewalk anymore, so I stopped riding bikes. People who ride bikes in the street get hit by cars all the time. You accept the risks of the activities you participate in. Don't whine about how unfair it is. If you aren't willing to accept those risks then you should not engage in risky behavior.
  - turar 10y ago
    You don't need to ride a bike to get crippled by a car accident. You can choke on a piece of food while eating dinner. You can fall in the shower awkwardly and get paralyzed.
    - Fomite 10y ago
      You can get any one of a number of infections.
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    You're getting downvoted, but your perspective about the bike is correct (not sure about the other sentiments) The logic is as follows: if I'm riding a bike on a sidewalk, the damage I can do to a pedestrian is an order of magnitude less than the car can do in damage to me in the street. Hence bicycles should be riding with the pedestrians (on a wider sidewalk), in a dedicated bike lane separated from the cars, or should be banned entirely (for the convenience of motorists). Forcing bikes onto the street with the US driving etiquette is the equivalent to throwing someone in a piranha tank.
krisdol 10y ago
I was a refugee of war that immigrated to the United States and survived off of food stamps and public housing until we got on our feet. we'd be considered pretty well off today, certainly in the top 5-10% of income earners. Natural selection... More like dumb luck your ignorant persona was born privileged and not having to work your way up through the social structure of a foreign country several times. If it wasn't for public assistance we'd be dead or arrested for god knows what we would have done to put food on the table. Social services exist to keep you safe from the poor just as much as they exist to keep the poor able to move upward through socioeconomic class
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11976748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11976748 and marked it off-topic.

"If you're low on income and have a family to support" then you made poor life choices and natural selection comes into play. Like it or not it is a force of nature.

jwdunne 10y ago

Right, because you know my life well enough to make that kind of judgement. It's a nice, clever cop out but ultimately a cop out. Bicyclist gets hit by a car. Loses his legs. Did he make poor life choices? I wouldn't say so. Say that same bicyclist has built a career as a great door to door sales man. Now he's on hard times. Did he still make poor life choices? Should we, then, all avoid bicycles and work in door to door sales, even if those two things happen to be things people enjoy and, on the whole, beneficial? You can think of an unlimited number of scenarios where someone has fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. In fact, the most callous and unhelpful thing to say is "you made poor life choices bro" like you even know what you're taking about.

simbalion 10y ago
Are you kidding? Riding a bicycle in the street is the very definition of a poor life choice. Haha I got downvoted, probably by people who ride bikes. Hey I love bikes, bikes need their own lane. When I grew up the government told me I could not ride my bike on the sidewalk anymore, so I stopped riding bikes. People who ride bikes in the street get hit by cars all the time. You accept the risks of the activities you participate in. Don't whine about how unfair it is. If you aren't willing to accept those risks then you should not engage in risky behavior.
- turar 10y ago
  You don't need to ride a bike to get crippled by a car accident. You can choke on a piece of food while eating dinner. You can fall in the shower awkwardly and get paralyzed.
  - Fomite 10y ago
    You can get any one of a number of infections.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  You're getting downvoted, but your perspective about the bike is correct (not sure about the other sentiments) The logic is as follows: if I'm riding a bike on a sidewalk, the damage I can do to a pedestrian is an order of magnitude less than the car can do in damage to me in the street. Hence bicycles should be riding with the pedestrians (on a wider sidewalk), in a dedicated bike lane separated from the cars, or should be banned entirely (for the convenience of motorists). Forcing bikes onto the street with the US driving etiquette is the equivalent to throwing someone in a piranha tank.

krisdol 10y ago

I was a refugee of war that immigrated to the United States and survived off of food stamps and public housing until we got on our feet. we'd be considered pretty well off today, certainly in the top 5-10% of income earners. Natural selection... More like dumb luck your ignorant persona was born privileged and not having to work your way up through the social structure of a foreign country several times. If it wasn't for public assistance we'd be dead or arrested for god knows what we would have done to put food on the table. Social services exist to keep you safe from the poor just as much as they exist to keep the poor able to move upward through socioeconomic class

dang 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11976748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11976748 and marked it off-topic.