4 ms·

If the government paid you to dig a hole and fill it back up, all day everyday, for absolutely no purpose, would you feel happy and fulfilled? What about if 50

If the government paid you to dig a hole and fill it back up, all day everyday, for absolutely no purpose, would you feel happy and fulfilled? What about if 50 years ago the government paid you to create typewriters, and because there is no change and everything is static, they are still paying you to make typewriters? Except now they go straight into the trash. The march of progress is important. Jobs need to be destroyed if they are no longer necessary. Paying people with tax dollars to continue to do the same thing for life is absurd.

Fjolsvith 6y ago
Downsize government?
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  This is half of the reason everyone's in so much trouble with this pandemic in the first place. When government is being downsized, disaster preparedness programs, emergency stockpiles and various buffers are some of the first things to go.
  - arkis22 6y ago
    Perhaps the government would not need to be downsized by reducing disaster preparedness programs and emergency stockpiles if it had not already been bloated by high salaries for bureaucrats.
groby_b 6y ago
People always come first. And it's not like the "march of progress" somehow has skipped Germany, so that's a rather flimsy argument. Neither is Germany "paying people with tax dollars to continue doing the same thing for life". Can we move on from the empty talking points? Can we talk about how the social security measures in Europe ensured that, as opposed to the US, we won't see 50+ million people suffering hunger later this year? Can we talk about the oh-so-beautiful paragon of capitalism has gleefully murdered 10s of thousand of people for the sake of the economy? When that "economy" really is only propping up Wall Street?
- dang 6y ago
  You've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly lately (e.g. this comment, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23372779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23372779, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23372391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23372391, among others). Would you please stop using HN for ideological and political flamewar? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. That does no good and helps no one, regardless of how right you are, or feel you are, on the underlying issues. I realize that nearly everywhere else on the internet is burning with these flames, but that makes it more important, not less, to prevent HN from destroying itself in this way. The idea here is to have at least one place on the internet that's organized around intellectual curiosity. We can't do that and also be a political flamewar site, for the same reason that you can't have a tank battle in a park or a museum, or a good hike in a forest fire. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
> The march of progress is important. Jobs need to be destroyed if they are no longer necessary. Paying people with tax dollars to continue to do the same thing for life is absurd. That makes sense as an overall trajectory in normal times. Much less in the middle of a pandemic, where every country decided to pause their economies to save lives. Jobs are put on life support, because otherwise they'd all die and would have to be recreated from grounds up. We're not talking about keeping people doing the same thing for life, just paying them so that they can go back to doing the same thing few months from now.

Fjolsvith 6y ago

Downsize government?

TeMPOraL 6y ago
This is half of the reason everyone's in so much trouble with this pandemic in the first place. When government is being downsized, disaster preparedness programs, emergency stockpiles and various buffers are some of the first things to go.
- arkis22 6y ago
  Perhaps the government would not need to be downsized by reducing disaster preparedness programs and emergency stockpiles if it had not already been bloated by high salaries for bureaucrats.

groby_b 6y ago

People always come first. And it's not like the "march of progress" somehow has skipped Germany, so that's a rather flimsy argument. Neither is Germany "paying people with tax dollars to continue doing the same thing for life". Can we move on from the empty talking points? Can we talk about how the social security measures in Europe ensured that, as opposed to the US, we won't see 50+ million people suffering hunger later this year? Can we talk about the oh-so-beautiful paragon of capitalism has gleefully murdered 10s of thousand of people for the sake of the economy? When that "economy" really is only propping up Wall Street?

dang 6y ago
You've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly lately (e.g. this comment, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23372779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23372779, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23372391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23372391, among others). Would you please stop using HN for ideological and political flamewar? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. That does no good and helps no one, regardless of how right you are, or feel you are, on the underlying issues. I realize that nearly everywhere else on the internet is burning with these flames, but that makes it more important, not less, to prevent HN from destroying itself in this way. The idea here is to have at least one place on the internet that's organized around intellectual curiosity. We can't do that and also be a political flamewar site, for the same reason that you can't have a tank battle in a park or a museum, or a good hike in a forest fire. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

> The march of progress is important. Jobs need to be destroyed if they are no longer necessary. Paying people with tax dollars to continue to do the same thing for life is absurd. That makes sense as an overall trajectory in normal times. Much less in the middle of a pandemic, where every country decided to pause their economies to save lives. Jobs are put on life support, because otherwise they'd all die and would have to be recreated from grounds up. We're not talking about keeping people doing the same thing for life, just paying them so that they can go back to doing the same thing few months from now.