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> Fewer and fewer people can make a decent living with traditional work. I don't think it's that "fewer people can make a living". It's just that we have too m
by fortran77 7mo ago
> Fewer and fewer people can make a decent living with traditional work.
I don't think it's that "fewer people can make a living". It's just that we have too many amoral people who won't work.
It's a shame the New Yorker article didn't talk much about the true victims here: the innocent truck drivers.
- Throaway199999 7mo agoThats bs...it says right in the article that the payout for a trailer truck accident can be a million usd. Pretty sure that is a major attraction to the 25% of NO that lives in poverty.
- gottorf 7mo agoThe traits in a person that lead them to a life of perpetual poverty are the same traits that make this type of "lottery" winning seem desirable.
- Throaway199999 7mo agoHAHAHAHA So, how about the dozens of lawyers and doctors in the story? You know, the ones who made 90% of the money and never got charged? The ones who set the whole thing up because they knew they could convince desperate & uneducated people? The ones who orchestrated a murder (the thing that finally got two of them caught)? What're their "traits?" Did you even read the article?
- brookst 7mo agoTraits like ethics? Yes, that was my point.
- gottorf 7mo agoI'm talking about traits like high time preference and poor impulse control. Ethics make people live in poverty? That would be news to a lot of people.
- brookst 7mo agoIt’s a really good article if you read it. The people who got rich were not the poor people.
- gottorf 7mo agoWe must be talking at odds here. I'm neither claiming that being ethical is a sufficient condition to getting rich, nor that the ethics of the poor people described in the article played a significant part in their being and remaining poor. The article seems replete with unethical behavior at every level of wealth. > the American shift from “a hard day’s work for fair pay” to what I’m calling the lottery economy My point is that people with high time preference and low impulse control, who naturally will tend to be poorer than people without those traits, will also naturally be more drawn to the "lottery economy", whether or not bad actors exist who will take advantage of that. Just look at who buys literal lottery tickets!
- selimthegrim 7mo agoCome live here for a month or two and see if you're so sanguine in your judgments next time.
- Throaway199999 7mo agoThe people who are behind this scam chose the east side of N.O. because poor people are desperate, not cause they have bad judgement. They could have found other people but why bother?
- Thegn 7mo ago‘Pride is all very well, but a sausage is a sausage,’ he said. - Terry Pratchett The poor have ethics just like the rest of us. They just can’t afford to keep it.
- bombcar 7mo agoPratchett goes into it more when talking about the “proud” poor - which is a real subset of the population. You can see an example in the rural poor who refuse to take “government cheese”.