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I'm the child of substinence farmers and have had to go hungry and without shelter for multiple days. Am I allowed to hold such opinions?

• rorykoehler 11y ago
  Sure, anyone is allowed to hold such opinions. There is no right or wrong. The point is that opinions should be based on critical thought and then articulated in a way that reflects this. Take Marc Andreessen for example. Many of his views are very different to mine but he articulates them well and can back them up by showing his thought patterns. I respect, listen to and learn from him because of this even though I often do not agree with him.
  • LLWM 11y ago
    That's definitely not the message you send when you start interrogating someone about their background like that.
    • rorykoehler 11y ago
      All I was doing was pointing out that his life experiences are nothing but a fantasy to all but less than 1% of the world's population. I have never met someone who has no choice but to work in a whatever job they can find have such skewed views so your subsistence farmer proposition is highly if not completely improbable. Sillygoose was born with more economic purchasing power than most people will ever achieve in their whole lifetime no matter how hard they work. If sillygoose wants to be taken seriously he should first of all deal with the core premise of what we are talking about rather than make up something that he can then argue against even though it has nothing to do with the topic at hand. When he says "We should all just get whatever we want, because we deserve it!" he has made up a premise that no one else suggested to discredit a perfectly viable suggestion (UBI). That adds nothing to the conversation and deserves to be called out.
      • sillygoose 11y ago
        If you want to be taken seriously, you need to be able to differentiate between subjective and objective things ("there is no right or wrong") for starters. Then it would be great if you could just accept valid points when they're staring you in the face. My purchasing power or personal history has nothing to do with whether handing out things that cost something to produce is sustainable or not. Hint: it's not. But nevermind. So much sophistry is spewing out of your mouth that you're most likely a psychopath. Yes, I realize I haven't proven anything, so there's no need to point that out. I'm either right or I'm wrong.. and yes, here in the real world, there's this thing called "truth".
      • LLWM 11y ago
        Where "skewed views" primarily means "opposing the idea of a universal basic income based on the moral principle that people should earn what they receive"? Because that's what I got out of his comment.
        • rorykoehler 11y ago
          Exactly. How can someone who was born with more economic purchasing power than what most of the worlds population can achieve in a lifetime have the view that people have to earn what they receive? Did he earn the right to be born into a wealthy family? The world is not that simple and doesn't work on such one dimensional premises. Once that is acknowledged then there is a foundation upon which a discussion can be built.
          • LLWM 11y ago
            Why not? Someone whose mother died giving birth to them can still believe murder is wrong. Heck, even someone who has consciously murdered another person as an adult can believe that. Humans are rarely capable of perfectly following their own moral codes, but that doesn't make that morality invalid. Especially when the "violation" happened as a circumstance of someone's birth that they themselves had no control over.
        • sillygoose 11y ago
  • sillygoose 11y ago
    > There is no right or wrong. So I guess 2 + 2 makes whatever the hell you want it to? > he articulates them well and can back them up by showing his thought patterns What if his thought patterns are all fucked up, and completely detached from reality? Wouldn't it be better to change your views based on reason, logic and evidence? I'll be throttled again real soon, if I can even post this one anymore, so I'll paste a reply that was meant for another comment of yours. ------- > As I suspected you have never experienced any financial hardship. This is fine in itself but is very telling in how you perceive the world. Having experienced it wouldn't change anything about what's rational and objective though. > It's easy to calculate the value of something that has no direct value to you. It's called a cost benefit analysis and it is the corner stone of any business education but is applicable in many fields beyond business. I can't help but wonder if you're trolling me, but here goes.. Since value is subjective, it cannot be calculated, because calculations require units, and there's no unit for how much you happen to want something at a particular moment. It also can't be measured or represented externally, outside of your mind. If you're engaging in a cost / benefit -analysis, that implies that you do perceive value in something. That would be the "benefit" part. But you still can't put exact, objectively accurate numbers on the benefit. You can, however, decide how many dollars you're willing to lose through a course of action, and you can expect to gain a number of dollars from it. But that only represents your subjective evaluation of how much something is worth to you, in terms of monetary units. > It is however impossible to do this accurately if you are incapable of any thinking apart from ego-centric thinking. That's insulting, especially coming from someone who's woefully unequipped to correct me on economic matters. > If you do understand the difference then you are purposefully corrupting the discussion. Please stop doing this. Yet another wild-ass accusation. Could you please stop? -------