I believe you that those people exist. And I don't believe they should just starve to death. I'm equally unsure of how to help them aside from charity, given th

I believe you that those people exist. And I don't believe they should just starve to death. I'm equally unsure of how to help them aside from charity, given the current political climate. I would like to help them, but honestly charity is probably the least helpful of the options (if the only one available); I'm sure that no one likes to accept charity. I believe that everyone wants to feel useful, meaning that accepting charity actually hurts their self esteem. Which is better than starving, of course. But it seems like there should be a better way. >I would not want to live in a world that treats "under-performing" (implication: "performing" is our raison d'être) people as second-rate citizens. Agreed, with the caveat that some jobs still need to have a minimum performance level. We've been talking about driving people around, where the performance level is "only" critical to the survival of the company. But if you take the "ignore under-performance" concept to its logical conclusion, then you couldn't fire surgeons who kill all their patients. Yes, that's a far more extreme example, but the point is some jobs really require that you are able to do them well. You can't ignore job performance for social ends, or you will end up harming society. There are many reasons that Communism failed: One is that people who know they can't be fired don't have as much motivation to perform well. An even better motivation to perform well would be to own the business you are working for (just look at the differences between neighborhoods that are primarily owned versus primarily rentals to see a very real example of this). But we can't flip the ownership equation overnight, and in the mean time we don't want incompetent surgeons killing people. What you can do is create jobs where being a top performer isn't critical. And ensure those jobs pay a living wage -- even at 30 hours per week, ideally. A 30-hour work week might be the right answer, regardless. [1] It worked for Kellogg until the 80s, after all. [1] http://www.alternet.org/labor/when-america-came-close-establishing-30-hour-workweek http://www.alternet.org/labor/when-america-came-close-establ...