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You know, it's quite possible to treat adults as independent agents who are responsible for their own actions and yet acknowledge (and possibly even be sympathe

You know, it's quite possible to treat adults as independent agents who are responsible for their own actions and yet acknowledge (and possibly even be sympathetic to) the fact that these same adults can be subject to external forces which put them in a really tough spot.

Domenic_S 12y ago
Of course. But what about the people who are in a tough spot because of internal forces? Surely you don't think the woman in the first video fell pregnant a second time because of external forces? Yes, some people do have the story of "got laid off after 35 years, company stole my pension, now I'm homeless", or "had a long, expensive medical emergency, now am homeless". You can pinpoint the external force. But this piece showed one thing in particular that was striking: it seems it's rarely one major event that plunges someone into a bad situation like these (consider that none of these videos had one "this is what happened" sound bite). It seems like it's the snowball effect of bad decision after bad decision. What do we do with people who are in really tough spots because of the compounding behavior of bad decisions? "We invest in the educational system so kids learn how to avoid these spots" -- ok, great, but what do we do with THESE people, today? Accepting the "external forces" thing is a slippery slope, because now somebody is the arbiter of You Did It To Yourself vs. It's Not Your Fault. Who can we trust with that position? Is it even moral to make that judgement? Was this whole comment satire on being the arbiter of justice?