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While I value your experience and perspective, I don't believe you speak for all people who are food insecure. There is lots of evidence, given the success of f

While I value your experience and perspective, I don't believe you speak for all people who are food insecure. There is lots of evidence, given the success of food banks, meals on wheels and other programs, that many would welcome this type of universal free food. You also assume that I am somehow in favor of paternalistic policies and against the agency of poor people, when that is not at all the intent of my comment and does not reflect my personal beliefs. I am personally strongly in favor of a universal basic income and other approaches that enable people who do not earn wages or have other sources of income to make the best decisions for themselves. I also think this is a good idea. I think there are a lot of different ways to improve the quality of life of a lot of people, and I don't think just giving away food to everyone (rather than means-testing the program or something) is particularly paternalistic or highly choice-limiting. With regard to "virtue signaling", that is a derogatory term used to imply that a person is only promoting an idea to appear good to others, without a genuine care or interest in effecting the change they are promoting. I think we have a fundamental disagreement about what sorts of policies would be effective, and using that term is unnecessarily dismissive.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
I think we have a fundamental disagreement about what sorts of policies would be effective, and using that term is unnecessarily dismissive. Using that term mostly indicates that I feel incredibly dismissed most of the time on Hacker News. This is a new handle, but I am not new here. I have had college classes on, for example, homelessness and public policy. I got myself off the street on my own efforts, not through some program. As best I can tell, I am the only woman who has ever spent any time on the leaderboard of HN. None of it seems to make any difference. I continue to get no traction. I continue to not get substantive feedback on my projects. I continue to have no connections. My income remains extremely low. I can't help but feel that sexism and classism are factors and I am just incredibly frustrated. Trying to do something good against long odds, etc begins to seem totally pointless and fruitless. I increasingly understand the very angry feminist types. I don't agree with their approach, but no approach seems to actually work. You and I do fundamentally disagree. I am not pro UBI. I think that is a polite means to crap all over the have nots and increasingly cut them out of ever more access to money, rights, you name it. I don't intend to engage further. I don't think this is in any way whatsoever productive. It is yet another exercise in me trying to engage in good faith with someone who seems to fundamentally be incapable of genuinely respecting me. Everything you say is another ever so politely dismissive thing done in accordance with the rules such that me getting offended just makes me look bad in the eyes of everyone here. I have been facing this sort of thing with, I think, quite a lot of aplomb for more than 8 years, to no avail at all. And I just am not coping well with that fact at the moment.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

I think we have a fundamental disagreement about what sorts of policies would be effective, and using that term is unnecessarily dismissive. Using that term mostly indicates that I feel incredibly dismissed most of the time on Hacker News. This is a new handle, but I am not new here. I have had college classes on, for example, homelessness and public policy. I got myself off the street on my own efforts, not through some program. As best I can tell, I am the only woman who has ever spent any time on the leaderboard of HN. None of it seems to make any difference. I continue to get no traction. I continue to not get substantive feedback on my projects. I continue to have no connections. My income remains extremely low. I can't help but feel that sexism and classism are factors and I am just incredibly frustrated. Trying to do something good against long odds, etc begins to seem totally pointless and fruitless. I increasingly understand the very angry feminist types. I don't agree with their approach, but no approach seems to actually work. You and I do fundamentally disagree. I am not pro UBI. I think that is a polite means to crap all over the have nots and increasingly cut them out of ever more access to money, rights, you name it. I don't intend to engage further. I don't think this is in any way whatsoever productive. It is yet another exercise in me trying to engage in good faith with someone who seems to fundamentally be incapable of genuinely respecting me. Everything you say is another ever so politely dismissive thing done in accordance with the rules such that me getting offended just makes me look bad in the eyes of everyone here. I have been facing this sort of thing with, I think, quite a lot of aplomb for more than 8 years, to no avail at all. And I just am not coping well with that fact at the moment.