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People should not have to live or die depending repeated random acts of kindness from strangers. So many American feel-good news stories are utterly dystopian,

People should not have to live or die depending repeated random acts of kindness from strangers. So many American feel-good news stories are utterly dystopian, where some person completely fucked dry by the government or corporate interests have disaster temporarily staved off by friends or colleagues desperately sacrificing their time or money. Either that, or it's about some billionaire dropping pocket lint on a good cause. Sites like https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news just make me depressed: https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news/3283/Man-Shares-Chick-Fil-A-Employee-039-s-Quiet-Act-Of-Kindness https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news/3283/Man-Shares-Chick-Fi... - man starving on the streets gets one meal our of sheer luck https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news/3279/7-Eleven-Owner-Catches-Shoplifter-Instead-Of-Calling-911-He-Asks-Him-Why https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news/3279/7-Eleven-Owner-Catc... - starving children win the getting-fucked-for-life vs eating-a-meal lottery one single time. Thoughts and prayers go to their next 1000 times they need to play. https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news/3270/Unused-Cafeteria-Food-Is-Being-Turned-Into-Take-Home-Meals-For-Kids https://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news/3270/Unused-Cafeteria-Fo... - starving children (Why is this even a thing anywhere?) are allowed to eat leftovers.

TomMarius 7y ago
You ruled out everything we know/have tried, though. What is your idea? IMHO we should improve technology in such ways to replace social security.
- chottocharaii 7y ago
  The question is who owns the technology we are improving. For whose financial interests does that technology work?
  - TomMarius 7y ago
    Open source?
    - sgift 7y ago
      Variant of charity. Or company sponsored. Also has a sustainability crisis where maintainers burn out left and right.
- Deestan 7y ago
  > You ruled out everything we know/have tried, though. What is your idea? I am not sure I understand. I ruled out only desperate random acts of charity. Surely other tried-and-tested working alternatives are well-known? In other developed countries we do not consider starving children normal because we have a stronger and enforced minimum wage and people out of work get dependable welfare. We do not have thousands people dying from disease because they can't afford treatment, because it's handled by the government.
  - TomMarius 7y ago
    > fucked dry by the government Do you expect that same government to help or what other option is there?
    - sgift 7y ago
      The government is not some unmovable entity. For the most part it follows the priorities of society. Just look around at the comments when people are not able to feed their kids, or get bankrupted by medical bills or all the other times when they have problems: "It's your fault to have kids if you cannot afford them", "the best medicine in the world has to be paid!!!" and so on. Despite all the failings of the political system (and from my view as an outsider the US has many) for the most part what you get is a mirror of the American society. And that's something people don't want to hear, because then they have to accept a fundamental truth: They are the problem. Not some faceless government, that they can hold up and say "it is responsible. Not me. I'm a good person."
_lessthan0 7y ago
People of the US are scared of taxes for some reason, and they are scared of having a political spectrum. Does the 2 party system work? There is huge amount of people that it has failed. Very few which it has actually helped.
- thisrod 7y ago
  Americans are scared to start another labor party, because the last one lost the second biggest war in American history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
  - Joakal 7y ago
    What's the third most popular political party?
    - nilskidoo 7y ago
      Libertarianism, which uses the same logic as the cotton plantations of old and the feudalists from before that. As long as everybody has a price, the solution will never be a new flavor of party, but a new government from the ground up.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nilskidoo 7y ago
  People of the US are scared to address how the vast majority of taxes paid are not going to the general population of the US, not infrastructure or anything else outside of the private coffers of the biggest con-artists alive today or the largest and most expensive enterprise in all of human history- the US military and its 900+ bases thrust around the globe to better serve those same con-artists.
- lliamander 7y ago
  > People of the US are scared of taxes A mind reader, are we? > for some reason If only someone could find out what it is! /sarcasm Here are some pretty standard reasons why many Americans oppose ever expanding taxation and redistribution schemes: - government redistribution schemes often create perverse incentives, even arguably perpetuating the very problems they were intended to solve - government redistribution schemes are often inefficient and have significant administrative costs - when a private charity is behaving badly, you can simply choose to send your money to a more effective charity. Cutting back failed redistribution schemes is all but unheard of. - Lastly, we do technically have laws that restrict our government's ability to levy taxes. This is based on the very reasonable moral position that citizens should not be serfs, and that the government does not have an unlimited claim on the people's productive output (no matter how well intentioned the government is). You may think those reasons are insufficient, but they are reasons nonetheless and it is not merely an outgrowth of fear.
arcticbull 7y ago
Much of living in America is a black mirror episode.
HighValuation 7y ago
What a ridiculous website. Never thought I’d see a front page with more clickbait than BuzzFeed. Out of all the stories of perseverance you could find, why did you link 4 articles from this website? Are you trying to help them with SEO? None of the articles are sourced and it even looks like they’re taking videos from other news publications like ABC and playing their own 15 second ads over them.
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  I for one didn't click on any of the links, why would I.. and even if all of the 3 stories were fake, it wouldn't change the point -- which, as I see it, is about such things being considered "feel good" stories, as if we already accepted the background of suffering that makes them stand out. I know I see that stuff in the wild all the time. But I don't bookmark that stuff, and if I searched for, it I would probably end up on a "farm" for it, too.
roenxi 7y ago
> People should not have to live or die depending repeated random acts of kindness from strangers. That is true, but the flip side is that people should not have to live or die depending on compelled acts of strangers either. No ideological purity survives the myriad of real world circumstances; but the normal case should be that people don't need charity because when life hits them hard there are avenues where they can live a dignified life through their own hard work.
- nicolapede 7y ago
  >> No ideological purity survives the myriad of real world circumstances Just wanted to praise the way you've been able to summarise something I find so true.
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
  If all it took was hard work to live a dignified life there would already be plenty of dignity. The fact of the matter is the world doesn't work on dreams, hopes, and hard work. Silicon Valley had plenty of failed companies to prove this. It works on the fact that bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people and the vast majority of your ability to deal with that comes from how much money your parents had, something over which you have no control. The fact that you have to pay dues in the form of taxes to be part of something like the United States shouldn't be a hard choice to make. We're all willing to pay for corporate welfare, military excess, public land give aways to private entities, but heaven forbid we give up a little bit of cash in the form of taxes to help our fellow citizen. If you look at the outrage on taxes it's always when it comes to helping other people. Access to healthcare shouldn't be a political issue. There is no liberty in a life where one must make the choice between certain death and loss of freedom. As a citizen you're also not compelled to stay in the United States. You can gain all the benefits of citizenship and live in another country. You can even choose to become a citizen of another country. This idea that you're forced to help your fellow citizens is plainly a falsehood. As soon as you become an adult you're free to leave the country. Compulsion is an illusion.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
drcongo 7y ago
This is possibly my favourite ever HN comment. When people talk about how terrible social media echo chambers are they're often overlooking the fact that they're living in one of a much larger scale. I find it utterly baffling that the people of the United States aren't at the gates of the Whitehouse with pitchforks over even just the healthcare issue.
- nilskidoo 7y ago
  I think it proves most Americans are either ignorant or villainous. Or both. Which sounds smarmy but then, what other explanation might there possibly be?
  - dang 7y ago
    If you continue to post unsubstantive or flamebait comments to HN, we will ban you. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - nilskidoo 7y ago
      We help the most when we elect to do so ourselves, not when we leave the options to be considered by those with more resources to spare. If they entertained any inclination of helping those outside their own closed circuits they’d never have accumulated and stockpiled such resources to begin with. I explain this further over here: https://nilskidoo.blackblogs.org/lady-windermeres-fanzine/ https://nilskidoo.blackblogs.org/lady-windermeres-fanzine/ But if you'd prefer to restrain all preaching to the choir, to persist with fantasy, then by all means rub your mighty ban-hammer.

TomMarius 7y ago

You ruled out everything we know/have tried, though. What is your idea? IMHO we should improve technology in such ways to replace social security.

chottocharaii 7y ago
The question is who owns the technology we are improving. For whose financial interests does that technology work?
- TomMarius 7y ago
  Open source?
  - sgift 7y ago
    Variant of charity. Or company sponsored. Also has a sustainability crisis where maintainers burn out left and right.
Deestan 7y ago
> You ruled out everything we know/have tried, though. What is your idea? I am not sure I understand. I ruled out only desperate random acts of charity. Surely other tried-and-tested working alternatives are well-known? In other developed countries we do not consider starving children normal because we have a stronger and enforced minimum wage and people out of work get dependable welfare. We do not have thousands people dying from disease because they can't afford treatment, because it's handled by the government.
- TomMarius 7y ago
  > fucked dry by the government Do you expect that same government to help or what other option is there?
  - sgift 7y ago
    The government is not some unmovable entity. For the most part it follows the priorities of society. Just look around at the comments when people are not able to feed their kids, or get bankrupted by medical bills or all the other times when they have problems: "It's your fault to have kids if you cannot afford them", "the best medicine in the world has to be paid!!!" and so on. Despite all the failings of the political system (and from my view as an outsider the US has many) for the most part what you get is a mirror of the American society. And that's something people don't want to hear, because then they have to accept a fundamental truth: They are the problem. Not some faceless government, that they can hold up and say "it is responsible. Not me. I'm a good person."

_lessthan0 7y ago

People of the US are scared of taxes for some reason, and they are scared of having a political spectrum. Does the 2 party system work? There is huge amount of people that it has failed. Very few which it has actually helped.

thisrod 7y ago
Americans are scared to start another labor party, because the last one lost the second biggest war in American history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
- Joakal 7y ago
  What's the third most popular political party?
  - nilskidoo 7y ago
    Libertarianism, which uses the same logic as the cotton plantations of old and the feudalists from before that. As long as everybody has a price, the solution will never be a new flavor of party, but a new government from the ground up.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nilskidoo 7y ago
People of the US are scared to address how the vast majority of taxes paid are not going to the general population of the US, not infrastructure or anything else outside of the private coffers of the biggest con-artists alive today or the largest and most expensive enterprise in all of human history- the US military and its 900+ bases thrust around the globe to better serve those same con-artists.
lliamander 7y ago
> People of the US are scared of taxes A mind reader, are we? > for some reason If only someone could find out what it is! /sarcasm Here are some pretty standard reasons why many Americans oppose ever expanding taxation and redistribution schemes: - government redistribution schemes often create perverse incentives, even arguably perpetuating the very problems they were intended to solve - government redistribution schemes are often inefficient and have significant administrative costs - when a private charity is behaving badly, you can simply choose to send your money to a more effective charity. Cutting back failed redistribution schemes is all but unheard of. - Lastly, we do technically have laws that restrict our government's ability to levy taxes. This is based on the very reasonable moral position that citizens should not be serfs, and that the government does not have an unlimited claim on the people's productive output (no matter how well intentioned the government is). You may think those reasons are insufficient, but they are reasons nonetheless and it is not merely an outgrowth of fear.

arcticbull 7y ago

Much of living in America is a black mirror episode.

HighValuation 7y ago

What a ridiculous website. Never thought I’d see a front page with more clickbait than BuzzFeed. Out of all the stories of perseverance you could find, why did you link 4 articles from this website? Are you trying to help them with SEO? None of the articles are sourced and it even looks like they’re taking videos from other news publications like ABC and playing their own 15 second ads over them.

PavlovsCat 7y ago
I for one didn't click on any of the links, why would I.. and even if all of the 3 stories were fake, it wouldn't change the point -- which, as I see it, is about such things being considered "feel good" stories, as if we already accepted the background of suffering that makes them stand out. I know I see that stuff in the wild all the time. But I don't bookmark that stuff, and if I searched for, it I would probably end up on a "farm" for it, too.

roenxi 7y ago

> People should not have to live or die depending repeated random acts of kindness from strangers. That is true, but the flip side is that people should not have to live or die depending on compelled acts of strangers either. No ideological purity survives the myriad of real world circumstances; but the normal case should be that people don't need charity because when life hits them hard there are avenues where they can live a dignified life through their own hard work.

nicolapede 7y ago
>> No ideological purity survives the myriad of real world circumstances Just wanted to praise the way you've been able to summarise something I find so true.
cannonedhamster 7y ago
If all it took was hard work to live a dignified life there would already be plenty of dignity. The fact of the matter is the world doesn't work on dreams, hopes, and hard work. Silicon Valley had plenty of failed companies to prove this. It works on the fact that bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people and the vast majority of your ability to deal with that comes from how much money your parents had, something over which you have no control. The fact that you have to pay dues in the form of taxes to be part of something like the United States shouldn't be a hard choice to make. We're all willing to pay for corporate welfare, military excess, public land give aways to private entities, but heaven forbid we give up a little bit of cash in the form of taxes to help our fellow citizen. If you look at the outrage on taxes it's always when it comes to helping other people. Access to healthcare shouldn't be a political issue. There is no liberty in a life where one must make the choice between certain death and loss of freedom. As a citizen you're also not compelled to stay in the United States. You can gain all the benefits of citizenship and live in another country. You can even choose to become a citizen of another country. This idea that you're forced to help your fellow citizens is plainly a falsehood. As soon as you become an adult you're free to leave the country. Compulsion is an illusion.
- AstralStorm 7y ago

drcongo 7y ago

This is possibly my favourite ever HN comment. When people talk about how terrible social media echo chambers are they're often overlooking the fact that they're living in one of a much larger scale. I find it utterly baffling that the people of the United States aren't at the gates of the Whitehouse with pitchforks over even just the healthcare issue.

nilskidoo 7y ago
I think it proves most Americans are either ignorant or villainous. Or both. Which sounds smarmy but then, what other explanation might there possibly be?
- dang 7y ago
  If you continue to post unsubstantive or flamebait comments to HN, we will ban you. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - nilskidoo 7y ago
    We help the most when we elect to do so ourselves, not when we leave the options to be considered by those with more resources to spare. If they entertained any inclination of helping those outside their own closed circuits they’d never have accumulated and stockpiled such resources to begin with. I explain this further over here: https://nilskidoo.blackblogs.org/lady-windermeres-fanzine/ https://nilskidoo.blackblogs.org/lady-windermeres-fanzine/ But if you'd prefer to restrain all preaching to the choir, to persist with fantasy, then by all means rub your mighty ban-hammer.