7 ms·

No the issue is that people like your acquaintance rely on other people living life in a way they don't want to in order to subsidize their preferred way of lif

No the issue is that people like your acquaintance rely on other people living life in a way they don't want to in order to subsidize their preferred way of life. I'm all for homesteading by yourself away from society, but the moment you walk into a homeless shelter asking for a meal funded by the people in the rat race that you like to condemn and opt out of, I'm afraid my opinion starts to matter.

cosmodisk 7y ago
Absolutely agree. Most of the time this kind of lifestyle is only partially possible and still requires reliance on modern world and its people.
gerbilly 7y ago
> the moment you walk into a homeless shelter asking for a meal funded by the people in the rat race that you like to condemn and opt out of, I'm afraid my opinion starts to matter. I'm not sure it matters that much. The number of people doing this is so vanishingly small that I'd characterize your opinion on the matter as peevish. Insisting that people be consistent and that everything always be fair a regressive trait.
- tathougies 7y ago
  > Insisting that people be consistent and that everything always be fair a regressive trait. On the contrary, peddling injustice, no matter how small, is the first step in unraveling society.
  - gerbilly 7y ago
    If you say so. If you'd characterize a semi-homeless person getting a free sandwich 'unjust,' then thanks for making my point for me then :-) edit: grammar
    - tathougies 7y ago
      No. I characterize someone choosing to be homeless who does not have to be (the situation described above) and yet depending on others to feed him as unjust, yes. It would be equally unjust of me -- a perfectly able-bodied human adult -- to ask for charity as well. This is not about unchosen homelessness and poverty; this is about people shirking responsibility because they don't like it. Stop changing the topic.
      - gerbilly 7y ago
        This is just pedantry. There are people playing by the rules doing immensely more damage to the world and to the economy. I'm not particularly enamoured of 'the rules'. It's the lowest stage of moral development to insist on rigid adherence to each and every rule.
        Gibbon1 7y ago
        Years ago I read an interview by Nolan Bushnell or someone like that. He was asked what he did about unproductive engineers and his answer was 'an unproductive engineer is his managers problem because fundamentally I don't care' He went on to say that the problem is negative productive engineers or worse managers. While an unproductive engineer wastes his salary, a negative productive employee destroys the work of many people. I take that to heart. Big picture a bum costs society basically nothing as long as he's not actively making trouble. Meanwhile you have successful people consuming huge amounts of resources while destroying immense amounts of societal value. See Sears and Eddie Lampert.
        tathougies 7y ago
        > Big picture a bum costs society basically nothing as long as he's not actively making trouble That's because you think of society in purely monetary terms. Socially, a bum that needs not be a bum, but chooses to be one, reduces social cohesion, makes people distrustful of necessary welfare programs, and unnecessarily inflates the homeless numbers.
        7y ago
- koheripbal 7y ago
  Actually, you would be surprised. In New York City, there are thousands of "street homeless", despite there being tens of thousands of bed available in shelters.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - cosmodisk 7y ago
    Most Western countries could eliminate homelessness in one day if it was just about the beds in shelters. People opt for a straet instead of a shelter mainly because: it may not be safe there ( drugs, alcohol, aggressive behaviour) or they are on the other side of the spectrum, such as drug addicts, mentally ill and etc. Usually a holistic approach is needed.
    - blaser-waffle 7y ago
      Yeah if it was just about having enough beds somewhere then we wouldn't have issues. But there is a lot of mental health, addiction, and trauma -- often feeding off each other, e.g. people with metal health issues turn to drugs to self medicate -- and that requires more than just a place to keep them. In a lot of cases it's more about harm reduction (to themselves, and to the local community) then getting them fixed in a home. Cuz you're not going to rehab some of these people. The tiny handful of people who are homeless because "they don't like the rules, man" are statistically irrelevant.
- mc32 7y ago
  Materially it almost doesn’t matter, but as a matter of principle it undermines their whole choice.
tyingq 7y ago
Maybe he felt he had already contributed enough to the establishment in his prior, more conventional situation. Would probably take a lot of $3 meals to change that balance substantially. "Apparently the guy just wanted to live this way because he was sick and tired of the life he had earlier."
- koheripbal 7y ago
  Or maybe he was always a drain. Hard to say with no data.
  - hjanssen 7y ago
    Anyways, do we want as a society do the maths if someone has the right to "profit" from our infrastructure? Isn't the main goal of a society to support a wide range of lifestyles? Thats not a rhetorical question, i mean it. There is balance to be struck between enabling everyone to live their life like they want to and having a standardized flow of goods and services that makes a "good life" possible for everyone. In this case, i would say it is a thing that modern society should be able to handle and we shouldn't look after every penny. Those people are in the very minority and if they need help we should be able to provide them with the necessary things. But that is only an opinion of mine and there is a discussion to be had regarding the handling of those cases.
_jal 7y ago
Do trust-fundies bug you the same way? Granted, someone put up capital that came from somewhere to seed their lifestyle, but they're quite literally living off others' labor, too. Putting that aside, a lot of folks seems far more attuned to 'cheating' at the very bottom of society than the (much more damaging) cheating elsewhere. Is someone eating almost-expired grocery store waste a bigger imposition on others than fraud? Tax evasion?
- tathougies 7y ago
  > Do trust-fundies bug you the same way? Granted, someone put up capital that came from somewhere to seed their lifestyle, but they're quite literally living off others' labor, too. No, because they're supposed to be living off of daddy and mummy's labor, not mine. You see, trust fund kids have a trust fund, but the people who provided that money (mom and dad) typically have a lot of say in how its used. It's the same principle here. If a trust fundie went to a public soup kitchen, then yes I want a say, because that's my money. Otherwise, no I don't really care that someone gave someone else money. Not my business. If the 'wild' guy in the comment found an independent patron to provide him everything he needed, I'd say go for it -- that's a great business to be in honestl. > Putting that aside, a lot of folks seems far more attuned to 'cheating' at the very bottom of society than the (much more damaging) cheating elsewhere. That's not true at all. You just haven't made a proper comparison. Trust fund kids aren't stealing anything from me. That money is not mine. It was their ancestor's and now it's theirs. If they were taking my money then that would be unfair. > Is someone eating almost-expired grocery store waste a bigger imposition on others than fraud? I have no idea how this relates > Tax evasion? Tax evasion -- not paying taxes that are owed -- is against the law, and ought to be prosecuted, including with jail time. I don't think that my country (America) typically goes easy on those who flout tax law, but in general, I support law enforcement universally, and I would support cracking down on those breaking tax law and building more jails to house them.
  - GuiA 7y ago
    > If a trust fundie went to a public soup kitchen, then yes I want a say, because that's my money. Soup kitchens are funded with private donations more often than not these days.
dntbnmpls 7y ago
> but the moment you walk into a homeless shelter asking for a meal funded by the people in the rat race that you like to condemn and opt out of, I'm afraid my opinion starts to matter. Well it's a fair trade off. Much of land has been commandeered by the state for the people in the rat race. So the homeless getting a meal from a homeless shelter doesn't seem so hypocritical.
dang 7y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22763551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22763551.

cosmodisk 7y ago

Absolutely agree. Most of the time this kind of lifestyle is only partially possible and still requires reliance on modern world and its people.

gerbilly 7y ago

> the moment you walk into a homeless shelter asking for a meal funded by the people in the rat race that you like to condemn and opt out of, I'm afraid my opinion starts to matter. I'm not sure it matters that much. The number of people doing this is so vanishingly small that I'd characterize your opinion on the matter as peevish. Insisting that people be consistent and that everything always be fair a regressive trait.

tathougies 7y ago
> Insisting that people be consistent and that everything always be fair a regressive trait. On the contrary, peddling injustice, no matter how small, is the first step in unraveling society.
- gerbilly 7y ago
  If you say so. If you'd characterize a semi-homeless person getting a free sandwich 'unjust,' then thanks for making my point for me then :-) edit: grammar
  - tathougies 7y ago
    No. I characterize someone choosing to be homeless who does not have to be (the situation described above) and yet depending on others to feed him as unjust, yes. It would be equally unjust of me -- a perfectly able-bodied human adult -- to ask for charity as well. This is not about unchosen homelessness and poverty; this is about people shirking responsibility because they don't like it. Stop changing the topic.
    - gerbilly 7y ago
      This is just pedantry. There are people playing by the rules doing immensely more damage to the world and to the economy. I'm not particularly enamoured of 'the rules'. It's the lowest stage of moral development to insist on rigid adherence to each and every rule.
      - Gibbon1 7y ago
        Years ago I read an interview by Nolan Bushnell or someone like that. He was asked what he did about unproductive engineers and his answer was 'an unproductive engineer is his managers problem because fundamentally I don't care' He went on to say that the problem is negative productive engineers or worse managers. While an unproductive engineer wastes his salary, a negative productive employee destroys the work of many people. I take that to heart. Big picture a bum costs society basically nothing as long as he's not actively making trouble. Meanwhile you have successful people consuming huge amounts of resources while destroying immense amounts of societal value. See Sears and Eddie Lampert.
        tathougies 7y ago
        > Big picture a bum costs society basically nothing as long as he's not actively making trouble That's because you think of society in purely monetary terms. Socially, a bum that needs not be a bum, but chooses to be one, reduces social cohesion, makes people distrustful of necessary welfare programs, and unnecessarily inflates the homeless numbers.
      - 7y ago
koheripbal 7y ago
Actually, you would be surprised. In New York City, there are thousands of "street homeless", despite there being tens of thousands of bed available in shelters.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- cosmodisk 7y ago
  Most Western countries could eliminate homelessness in one day if it was just about the beds in shelters. People opt for a straet instead of a shelter mainly because: it may not be safe there ( drugs, alcohol, aggressive behaviour) or they are on the other side of the spectrum, such as drug addicts, mentally ill and etc. Usually a holistic approach is needed.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Yeah if it was just about having enough beds somewhere then we wouldn't have issues. But there is a lot of mental health, addiction, and trauma -- often feeding off each other, e.g. people with metal health issues turn to drugs to self medicate -- and that requires more than just a place to keep them. In a lot of cases it's more about harm reduction (to themselves, and to the local community) then getting them fixed in a home. Cuz you're not going to rehab some of these people. The tiny handful of people who are homeless because "they don't like the rules, man" are statistically irrelevant.
mc32 7y ago
Materially it almost doesn’t matter, but as a matter of principle it undermines their whole choice.

tyingq 7y ago

Maybe he felt he had already contributed enough to the establishment in his prior, more conventional situation. Would probably take a lot of $3 meals to change that balance substantially. "Apparently the guy just wanted to live this way because he was sick and tired of the life he had earlier."

koheripbal 7y ago
Or maybe he was always a drain. Hard to say with no data.
- hjanssen 7y ago
  Anyways, do we want as a society do the maths if someone has the right to "profit" from our infrastructure? Isn't the main goal of a society to support a wide range of lifestyles? Thats not a rhetorical question, i mean it. There is balance to be struck between enabling everyone to live their life like they want to and having a standardized flow of goods and services that makes a "good life" possible for everyone. In this case, i would say it is a thing that modern society should be able to handle and we shouldn't look after every penny. Those people are in the very minority and if they need help we should be able to provide them with the necessary things. But that is only an opinion of mine and there is a discussion to be had regarding the handling of those cases.

_jal 7y ago

Do trust-fundies bug you the same way? Granted, someone put up capital that came from somewhere to seed their lifestyle, but they're quite literally living off others' labor, too. Putting that aside, a lot of folks seems far more attuned to 'cheating' at the very bottom of society than the (much more damaging) cheating elsewhere. Is someone eating almost-expired grocery store waste a bigger imposition on others than fraud? Tax evasion?

tathougies 7y ago
> Do trust-fundies bug you the same way? Granted, someone put up capital that came from somewhere to seed their lifestyle, but they're quite literally living off others' labor, too. No, because they're supposed to be living off of daddy and mummy's labor, not mine. You see, trust fund kids have a trust fund, but the people who provided that money (mom and dad) typically have a lot of say in how its used. It's the same principle here. If a trust fundie went to a public soup kitchen, then yes I want a say, because that's my money. Otherwise, no I don't really care that someone gave someone else money. Not my business. If the 'wild' guy in the comment found an independent patron to provide him everything he needed, I'd say go for it -- that's a great business to be in honestl. > Putting that aside, a lot of folks seems far more attuned to 'cheating' at the very bottom of society than the (much more damaging) cheating elsewhere. That's not true at all. You just haven't made a proper comparison. Trust fund kids aren't stealing anything from me. That money is not mine. It was their ancestor's and now it's theirs. If they were taking my money then that would be unfair. > Is someone eating almost-expired grocery store waste a bigger imposition on others than fraud? I have no idea how this relates > Tax evasion? Tax evasion -- not paying taxes that are owed -- is against the law, and ought to be prosecuted, including with jail time. I don't think that my country (America) typically goes easy on those who flout tax law, but in general, I support law enforcement universally, and I would support cracking down on those breaking tax law and building more jails to house them.
- GuiA 7y ago
  > If a trust fundie went to a public soup kitchen, then yes I want a say, because that's my money. Soup kitchens are funded with private donations more often than not these days.

dntbnmpls 7y ago

> but the moment you walk into a homeless shelter asking for a meal funded by the people in the rat race that you like to condemn and opt out of, I'm afraid my opinion starts to matter. Well it's a fair trade off. Much of land has been commandeered by the state for the people in the rat race. So the homeless getting a meal from a homeless shelter doesn't seem so hypocritical.

dang 7y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22763551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22763551.