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The article makes a very good point. I like the dents-in-the-car metaphor. I don't, however, agree with how he interpreted it. If I have a car with, say, ten de

by ebukys 18y ago

The article makes a very good point. I like the dents-in-the-car metaphor. I don't, however, agree with how he interpreted it. If I have a car with, say, ten dents in it, and I get one more, no, I am not inclined to try to fix it. And let us follow his story, and say that someone comes along and fixes all but two of those dents for me. The question is, does the fact that I have fewer dents in my car make me more likely to fix the others? If someone comes along and does almost all of my dishes for me, am I more likely to wash the last few myself? I believe the answer to that is not, as Bennett suggests, "Yes." If someone comes along and fixes most of my car for me, or cleans most of my dishes, when I had no inclination of doing it myself, why would I stop them? If someone is going to come and fix my problems for me, why do it myself? All you have to do is wait long enough, and, like magic it's done for you! So while it is an interesting theory, the problem is, people become set in their habits fairly quickly. If I do not wash my dishes one day, I am not really more inclined to wash them the next. Indeed, why should I? There is suddenly an almost empty sink in which to store the dirty ones.

albertcardona 18y ago
You could try it: go to a friend's home that has his sink full of dishes all the time. Wash them all but two. Go there a couple hours later and see what happened. That would only be a sample of one though. The experiment may be worth just to make you realize how powerful the mixture of gratitude, self-hate, the willingness to help oneself, greediness and generosity is.
- ebukys 18y ago
  Haha, I already know the result. I live in a house with four other girls, and the sink is usually filled with any number of dishes. Once it becomes completely piled up (as we don't eat together, and most of us cook real meals, this usually happens about every other day), one of us will become disgusted with the others and empty the dishwasher, fill it with dirty dishes, and clean most of the dishes left in the sink. Do the remaining two pans and glass get cleaned by anyone else? Of course not; they are the base dishes that we pile everything else on top of that day. Why clean the remaining two dishes, there was originally an entire sink full of them! Comparatively, it's almost spotless!
lutorm 18y ago
As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in between. There will be people who freeload, and there will be people who seize the opportunity to get themselves out of poverty. There are surely hard working people who can't improve their situation because they are working two jobs just to support their family and can't get a better education, just as surely as there are people who would take the handout and buy booze. In my native Sweden, which has a much more generous social network than the US, it's clear that there are people who don't bother getting a job because they can live off unemployment. But social mobility is also higher than in the US; the correlation between income and parental income is weaker. It boils down to the question of how many freeloaders you are willing to accept for each person that these policies help become self-sufficient. One way is to try to calculate the minimum cost to society in the long run (based on policy cost, positive contribution of those who succeed, as well as external factors such as cost of crime). Another way is to make a judgement based on moral grounds (either that people should not be given handouts by society or that it is morally wrong to have people living in poverty.)
deleted 18y ago
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DmitriLebedev 18y ago
The example in the article is flawed. I find it easy to care of big problems rather than perfecting a single small one. I wear clean clothes every day, but find it hard to care of a single small spot or a few grease or dust on my trouses or shoes. BUT if they become noteable dirty or very dirty and I'm in the office and still have to work half a day, I'd rather clean then, or go home and change, not give up. Easier to solve many problems than to be a perfectionist. Completely the opposite of what Karelis observes.
noonespecial 18y ago
Sadly, in my experience, they will harass you for leaving the 2 dents behind and then demand that you pay for the flowers you stepped on while using your dent-puller. A few days later you'll get a summons for small claims court indicating that you owe their brother-in-law who is a part-time mechanic $750 to fix the dents "right". Does this guy not watch Judge Judy?

by ebukys 18y ago

albertcardona 18y ago

You could try it: go to a friend's home that has his sink full of dishes all the time. Wash them all but two. Go there a couple hours later and see what happened. That would only be a sample of one though. The experiment may be worth just to make you realize how powerful the mixture of gratitude, self-hate, the willingness to help oneself, greediness and generosity is.

ebukys 18y ago
Haha, I already know the result. I live in a house with four other girls, and the sink is usually filled with any number of dishes. Once it becomes completely piled up (as we don't eat together, and most of us cook real meals, this usually happens about every other day), one of us will become disgusted with the others and empty the dishwasher, fill it with dirty dishes, and clean most of the dishes left in the sink. Do the remaining two pans and glass get cleaned by anyone else? Of course not; they are the base dishes that we pile everything else on top of that day. Why clean the remaining two dishes, there was originally an entire sink full of them! Comparatively, it's almost spotless!

lutorm 18y ago

As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in between. There will be people who freeload, and there will be people who seize the opportunity to get themselves out of poverty. There are surely hard working people who can't improve their situation because they are working two jobs just to support their family and can't get a better education, just as surely as there are people who would take the handout and buy booze. In my native Sweden, which has a much more generous social network than the US, it's clear that there are people who don't bother getting a job because they can live off unemployment. But social mobility is also higher than in the US; the correlation between income and parental income is weaker. It boils down to the question of how many freeloaders you are willing to accept for each person that these policies help become self-sufficient. One way is to try to calculate the minimum cost to society in the long run (based on policy cost, positive contribution of those who succeed, as well as external factors such as cost of crime). Another way is to make a judgement based on moral grounds (either that people should not be given handouts by society or that it is morally wrong to have people living in poverty.)

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

DmitriLebedev 18y ago

The example in the article is flawed. I find it easy to care of big problems rather than perfecting a single small one. I wear clean clothes every day, but find it hard to care of a single small spot or a few grease or dust on my trouses or shoes. BUT if they become noteable dirty or very dirty and I'm in the office and still have to work half a day, I'd rather clean then, or go home and change, not give up. Easier to solve many problems than to be a perfectionist. Completely the opposite of what Karelis observes.

noonespecial 18y ago

Sadly, in my experience, they will harass you for leaving the 2 dents behind and then demand that you pay for the flowers you stepped on while using your dent-puller. A few days later you'll get a summons for small claims court indicating that you owe their brother-in-law who is a part-time mechanic $750 to fix the dents "right". Does this guy not watch Judge Judy?