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"This cruel paradox — having to get really sick in order to enjoy a better, more comfortable life — has not gone unnoticed. " There is no cruel paradox here. I

"This cruel paradox — having to get really sick in order to enjoy a better, more comfortable life — has not gone unnoticed. " There is no cruel paradox here. I cannot begin to understand the level of lazyness, lack of self responsibility, and sense of entitlement that would lead someone to think that contracting full blown AIDS would be the 'only way' to live more comfortably. This is the line of thinking that only comes from someone that would quite literally rather die a slow painful death than work and support themselves.

lmartel 13y ago
It's pretty hard to get VC funding if you're homeless. But I agree, why do they contract AIDS for food stamps when they could just found bootstrapped SaaS lifestyle businesses? The poor are so fucking lazy.
- gnarbarian 13y ago
  I'm not implying they should go get funding. but They COULD move to a less expensive city and get a regular job. There's a big difference between a poor person and someone who thinks contracting a fatal disease is a better approach than finding a job and actually supporting themselves. But hey, if someone has resigned themselves to leech off society under any circumstance maybe having them contract a fatal disease willingly is simply natural selection at work.
  - Vivtek 13y ago
    Sure, because there are loads of jobs going unfilled right now for poor black men, right? All they have to do is just go get one.
    - mhb 13y ago
      It looks like they need waiters on Mount Desert Island: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/08/13/friends-of-acadia-national-park-charity-auction/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/08/13/friends-of-aca...
    - gnarbarian 13y ago
      There's ALWAYS a job available if you're willing to accept a low enough wage and relocate. No matter who you are. Maybe not right where you're at now. Surely you're not implying that getting AIDS is in any way a good idea.
      - mercer 13y ago
        Being able to reason about such things the way you do is, in itself, a privilege.
        gnarbarian 13y ago
        So I should check my "ability to reason" privilege. Got it.
        mercer 13y ago
        I don't understand what you're trying to say. Could you elaborate?
        gnarbarian 13y ago
        http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/check-your-privilege http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/check-your-privilege
        mercer 13y ago
        Maybe i should've used the term 'advantage' then. I simply wanted to point out that the ability to choose/reason is in itself very much something you 'inherit', rather than some innate skill that we all have equally.
      - mikeash 13y ago
        Willing to accept a low enough wage? There's a hard floor on that in most countries. Even ignoring minimum wage, there's a minimum amount of management overhead involved in having an employee, especially a low-wage, low-skill employee, and the value produced by a worker must at least overcome that even if he is to be worth hiring for free. Willing to relocate? How about able to relocate? Moving to a distant land is a non-trivial exercise. I seriously don't get your attitude in this thread. You're basically declaring that various serious problems in society are not, in fact, problems at all. According to you, as best I can tell, every single poor or homeless person out there has no obstacles to getting out of their predicament if they just did some obvious things like find employment. This leads me to ask: why do these people exist at all, then? Nobody wants to be poor, so if they can get out of it so easily, why are they still poor? This is one of those instances where the mere existence of a problem indicates that it's hard to solve, while you're blithely proclaiming it to be trivial.
  - elif 13y ago
    1) Leaving the city means leaving the safety net of begging for money and food. 2) Would you hire a homeless man who just moved to your small town and is starting to suffer from withdrawal, has no place to live, and has no means of reliably getting to work? for any job? There's a world of separation between the jobless and the homeless. No amount of willpower can bridge that divide, only fortune.
    - gnarbarian 13y ago
      Bullshit. Almost every sizable city has programs and facilities for the homeless who actually want to improve their lives. They can get Cell phones for a dollar a month, and a place to stay while they get on their feet. The only rules are they have to TRY and kick whatever habit has already destroyed their life.
  - mercer 13y ago
    'COULD' is a complicated concept. It's something I struggle with too, when I watch movies like 'City of God', where mostly I ask myself 'why the hell don't these kids leave the city. or the country.' Or The Wire where a kid who 'got out' decides to come back. There are many factors that play a role in the options we have, and the strongest factors have nothing to do with what's objectively best. Psychologically speaking, it's a bit dangerous (and too easy) to say that poor people should just stop living their poor lifestyles and leave their poor friends and poor family for a world totally unknown to them. This is also true for addicts, or homeless people. I've come to know quite a few of both, and if anything I've started to respect the difficulty of their situation.
    - gnarbarian 13y ago
      Agreed it's tough. I've never seen any of those movies but after living downtown in a city with about 400k people I've known a few addicts and homeless people. The vast majority had no intention of getting on the right track and would steal from anyone the second the opportunity presented itself. I think it's important to help the people who genuinely want to get on the right track. But I have no sympathy for someone who thinks contracting AIDS is a way to improve their lot in life.
    - RougeFemme 13y ago
      I read several years ago about a woman living in Northern Virginia who was considered a mild "success" story because she was able to get on a bus and ride about 2 miles to her job at McDonald's. She and her family had lived in the same neighborhood for a few generations within walking distance of schools, church, clinic, shopping, social services building, etc. None of them had ever left the neighborhood for anything, let alone a job. Learning that leaving the neighborhood as she did was a significant accomplishment for her - given her history/background - was a real jolt to my worldview.
      - mikeash 13y ago
        Provincialism is like a massive invisible wall. The people on either side of it generally can't even fathom what it's like to be on the other side of that wall, but they don't even know it's there. I spent several years growing up in small-town Wisconsin. The idea of moving to another place is just unfathomable to a lot of people who live in a place like that. Not just hard, like, oh, that would cost a lot of money and be a lot of work, but unfathomable, the way buying a house on Mars would be. So much of our outlook is driven by our experience and we don't even realize it unless we encounter the right circumstances. If you grew up in one little area and that's all you know and that's all anybody you know has ever known, then leaving it is a big deal. Some people will pull it off, but many others simply won't be capable.
- ignostic 13y ago
  What's with the demeaning sarcasm? No one - except you - said that building software and getting aids are the only two options. I'm sure you can see what he intended - there are many, many other options, starting with a low-skill low-wage job.
  - lmartel 13y ago
    I responded with sarcasm because I'm sick of comments like the parent. Whenever anyone brings up the possibility of creating a proper safety net in the US, or if anyone just mentions that, hey, there are some people in our country living in unbelievably shitty conditions--there's always someone ready to say "no, they deserve it, they're just lazy." It boggles my fucking mind that someone on HN, who's probably pretty well-educated, who's probably living comfortably on a cushy tech job, could say with a straight face that poor people, as an aggregate, are lazy leeches who would rather get AIDS than get work as dishwashers. A nontrivial fraction of people who read this article respond with scorn for the people involved, rather than concern about the system that puts people in these positions. That squashes any possibility of political or social change. Look at some of the other comments in this thread--"why don't they just get jobs?" Willful ignorance at its worst.
    - gnarbarian 13y ago
      Great you went from infantile mockery to grossly misrepresenting my argument. I suppose that's progress. I'm not sure where to begin with this. Poor people aren't lazy. But someone who would rather contract aids than work IS a worthless lazy leech. So am I to believe that you think all educated people working in the tech industry hold far left views? That is naive beyond description.
      - lmartel 13y ago
        Your argument is that >[the people in the article] would quite literally rather die a slow painful death than work and support themselves And that argument is stupid. I don't care if you call yourself a conservative, people will call you out if you say something stupid. My point wasn't that you should be a liberal, my point is that you're smart enough to know better. You keep saying these people would rather have AIDS than work. You're naive for thinking that they have the option to work; they would rather have AIDS than starve in a gutter.
algorias 13y ago
You do understand, I hope, that poverty and lack of education go hand in hand. Getting a job is not a trivial matter if you're not well educated. That will manifest itself both in less jobs being offered to you, and being less apt at looking for opportunities in not so obvious places.
- gnarbarian 13y ago
  Finding a job sucks, but a lack of education will not prevent you from getting a job washing dishes. *I know because I used to wash dishes.
mikeash 13y ago
Wow, work and support themselves! What an idea! I can't believe nobody thought of that! You must go to New York immediately and tell all these people! Seriously, though, I'm pretty sure they've already had that idea, and I'm pretty sure there are reasons beyond laziness why most of these people haven't carried it out.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Lack of skills required by employers, lack of ability to work, lack of ability to get to work. In another comment, you mentioned that lacking education won't prevent you from getting a job washing dishes. This is true. However, I bet there are a fair number of people out there who simply can't or don't know how to wash dishes. It's almost inconceivable, but many of the skills that we take for granted, like knowing how to wash dishes, or knowing how to apply for a job, or knowing how to take a bus, are learned things that not everyone gets educated about.
    - gnarbarian 13y ago
      Bullshit. None of your examples hold any water. They teach you how to wash dishes on the job. The person in the linked article was obviously savvy enough to know how to work the system for better benefits I'm inclined to think they are lazy rather than simply ignorant. Not knowing how to ride the bus? Are you kidding me? People will even help you fill out a job app if you can't read.
      - mikeash 13y ago
        Curious, why was your question worth deleting yet my reply still worth following up on?
        gnarbarian 13y ago

lmartel 13y ago

It's pretty hard to get VC funding if you're homeless. But I agree, why do they contract AIDS for food stamps when they could just found bootstrapped SaaS lifestyle businesses? The poor are so fucking lazy.

gnarbarian 13y ago
I'm not implying they should go get funding. but They COULD move to a less expensive city and get a regular job. There's a big difference between a poor person and someone who thinks contracting a fatal disease is a better approach than finding a job and actually supporting themselves. But hey, if someone has resigned themselves to leech off society under any circumstance maybe having them contract a fatal disease willingly is simply natural selection at work.
- Vivtek 13y ago
  Sure, because there are loads of jobs going unfilled right now for poor black men, right? All they have to do is just go get one.
  - mhb 13y ago
    It looks like they need waiters on Mount Desert Island: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/08/13/friends-of-acadia-national-park-charity-auction/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/08/13/friends-of-aca...
  - gnarbarian 13y ago
    There's ALWAYS a job available if you're willing to accept a low enough wage and relocate. No matter who you are. Maybe not right where you're at now. Surely you're not implying that getting AIDS is in any way a good idea.
    - mercer 13y ago
      Being able to reason about such things the way you do is, in itself, a privilege.
      - gnarbarian 13y ago
        So I should check my "ability to reason" privilege. Got it.
        mercer 13y ago
        I don't understand what you're trying to say. Could you elaborate?
        gnarbarian 13y ago
        http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/check-your-privilege http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/check-your-privilege
        mercer 13y ago
        Maybe i should've used the term 'advantage' then. I simply wanted to point out that the ability to choose/reason is in itself very much something you 'inherit', rather than some innate skill that we all have equally.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Willing to accept a low enough wage? There's a hard floor on that in most countries. Even ignoring minimum wage, there's a minimum amount of management overhead involved in having an employee, especially a low-wage, low-skill employee, and the value produced by a worker must at least overcome that even if he is to be worth hiring for free. Willing to relocate? How about able to relocate? Moving to a distant land is a non-trivial exercise. I seriously don't get your attitude in this thread. You're basically declaring that various serious problems in society are not, in fact, problems at all. According to you, as best I can tell, every single poor or homeless person out there has no obstacles to getting out of their predicament if they just did some obvious things like find employment. This leads me to ask: why do these people exist at all, then? Nobody wants to be poor, so if they can get out of it so easily, why are they still poor? This is one of those instances where the mere existence of a problem indicates that it's hard to solve, while you're blithely proclaiming it to be trivial.
- elif 13y ago
  1) Leaving the city means leaving the safety net of begging for money and food. 2) Would you hire a homeless man who just moved to your small town and is starting to suffer from withdrawal, has no place to live, and has no means of reliably getting to work? for any job? There's a world of separation between the jobless and the homeless. No amount of willpower can bridge that divide, only fortune.
  - gnarbarian 13y ago
    Bullshit. Almost every sizable city has programs and facilities for the homeless who actually want to improve their lives. They can get Cell phones for a dollar a month, and a place to stay while they get on their feet. The only rules are they have to TRY and kick whatever habit has already destroyed their life.
- mercer 13y ago
  'COULD' is a complicated concept. It's something I struggle with too, when I watch movies like 'City of God', where mostly I ask myself 'why the hell don't these kids leave the city. or the country.' Or The Wire where a kid who 'got out' decides to come back. There are many factors that play a role in the options we have, and the strongest factors have nothing to do with what's objectively best. Psychologically speaking, it's a bit dangerous (and too easy) to say that poor people should just stop living their poor lifestyles and leave their poor friends and poor family for a world totally unknown to them. This is also true for addicts, or homeless people. I've come to know quite a few of both, and if anything I've started to respect the difficulty of their situation.
  - gnarbarian 13y ago
    Agreed it's tough. I've never seen any of those movies but after living downtown in a city with about 400k people I've known a few addicts and homeless people. The vast majority had no intention of getting on the right track and would steal from anyone the second the opportunity presented itself. I think it's important to help the people who genuinely want to get on the right track. But I have no sympathy for someone who thinks contracting AIDS is a way to improve their lot in life.
  - RougeFemme 13y ago
    I read several years ago about a woman living in Northern Virginia who was considered a mild "success" story because she was able to get on a bus and ride about 2 miles to her job at McDonald's. She and her family had lived in the same neighborhood for a few generations within walking distance of schools, church, clinic, shopping, social services building, etc. None of them had ever left the neighborhood for anything, let alone a job. Learning that leaving the neighborhood as she did was a significant accomplishment for her - given her history/background - was a real jolt to my worldview.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Provincialism is like a massive invisible wall. The people on either side of it generally can't even fathom what it's like to be on the other side of that wall, but they don't even know it's there. I spent several years growing up in small-town Wisconsin. The idea of moving to another place is just unfathomable to a lot of people who live in a place like that. Not just hard, like, oh, that would cost a lot of money and be a lot of work, but unfathomable, the way buying a house on Mars would be. So much of our outlook is driven by our experience and we don't even realize it unless we encounter the right circumstances. If you grew up in one little area and that's all you know and that's all anybody you know has ever known, then leaving it is a big deal. Some people will pull it off, but many others simply won't be capable.
ignostic 13y ago
What's with the demeaning sarcasm? No one - except you - said that building software and getting aids are the only two options. I'm sure you can see what he intended - there are many, many other options, starting with a low-skill low-wage job.
- lmartel 13y ago
  I responded with sarcasm because I'm sick of comments like the parent. Whenever anyone brings up the possibility of creating a proper safety net in the US, or if anyone just mentions that, hey, there are some people in our country living in unbelievably shitty conditions--there's always someone ready to say "no, they deserve it, they're just lazy." It boggles my fucking mind that someone on HN, who's probably pretty well-educated, who's probably living comfortably on a cushy tech job, could say with a straight face that poor people, as an aggregate, are lazy leeches who would rather get AIDS than get work as dishwashers. A nontrivial fraction of people who read this article respond with scorn for the people involved, rather than concern about the system that puts people in these positions. That squashes any possibility of political or social change. Look at some of the other comments in this thread--"why don't they just get jobs?" Willful ignorance at its worst.
  - gnarbarian 13y ago
    Great you went from infantile mockery to grossly misrepresenting my argument. I suppose that's progress. I'm not sure where to begin with this. Poor people aren't lazy. But someone who would rather contract aids than work IS a worthless lazy leech. So am I to believe that you think all educated people working in the tech industry hold far left views? That is naive beyond description.
    - lmartel 13y ago
      Your argument is that >[the people in the article] would quite literally rather die a slow painful death than work and support themselves And that argument is stupid. I don't care if you call yourself a conservative, people will call you out if you say something stupid. My point wasn't that you should be a liberal, my point is that you're smart enough to know better. You keep saying these people would rather have AIDS than work. You're naive for thinking that they have the option to work; they would rather have AIDS than starve in a gutter.

algorias 13y ago

You do understand, I hope, that poverty and lack of education go hand in hand. Getting a job is not a trivial matter if you're not well educated. That will manifest itself both in less jobs being offered to you, and being less apt at looking for opportunities in not so obvious places.

gnarbarian 13y ago
Finding a job sucks, but a lack of education will not prevent you from getting a job washing dishes. *I know because I used to wash dishes.

mikeash 13y ago

Wow, work and support themselves! What an idea! I can't believe nobody thought of that! You must go to New York immediately and tell all these people! Seriously, though, I'm pretty sure they've already had that idea, and I'm pretty sure there are reasons beyond laziness why most of these people haven't carried it out.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- mikeash 13y ago
  Lack of skills required by employers, lack of ability to work, lack of ability to get to work. In another comment, you mentioned that lacking education won't prevent you from getting a job washing dishes. This is true. However, I bet there are a fair number of people out there who simply can't or don't know how to wash dishes. It's almost inconceivable, but many of the skills that we take for granted, like knowing how to wash dishes, or knowing how to apply for a job, or knowing how to take a bus, are learned things that not everyone gets educated about.
  - gnarbarian 13y ago
    Bullshit. None of your examples hold any water. They teach you how to wash dishes on the job. The person in the linked article was obviously savvy enough to know how to work the system for better benefits I'm inclined to think they are lazy rather than simply ignorant. Not knowing how to ride the bus? Are you kidding me? People will even help you fill out a job app if you can't read.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Curious, why was your question worth deleting yet my reply still worth following up on?
      - gnarbarian 13y ago