Supreme Court ruling on money and free speech
POSTED BY: HKCavalier
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 25, 2026 22:50
VIEWED: 10274
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And then the lazy schlubs, or the folks who aren't able to contribute, for whatever reason, starve to death? If the government supports them, then the hard worker still pays for it. I'm not sure I like your utopia.
And yet you live in that same "utopia" today. How would you change it? What would YOU do with those in our society who have no job and no healthcare? Let them die on the street? After all, if "society" steps in to take care of them, then aren't *I* being punished for their "laziness", as you call it? And if society isn't going to help, then aren't you saying that we SHOULD let them die in the street?
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This is surprisingly similar to an almost argument I was having with someone yesterday.
In the course of that argument, I learned that everyone defines profit in a different way. The person I was arguing with took some very similar stances to you, Geezer.
Eventually, we arrived at a basic agreement of some ideas that goes like this.
Every person has some basic worth, if only because all people just by living have a potential tangible and intangible value. Even if they're lazy and never really meet that potential, they have worth as a human because it's likely SOMEONE cares about them. We are all someone's children, most people have SOME friends.
This value that everyone has translates into a sense of what is humane and a baseline standard of living that we'd like to see everyone have, because watching people starve is generally unconscionable.
Back when most people knew how to grow their own food, it was much, much easier for a family to live on a small or even non-existent income (though it's still possible now). I mentioned elsewhere that I recently read my grandmother's memoirs. She was raised by a single mother during in the great depression, because her father was unhappy with the marriage and basically drank himself to death. But her mother was able to raise three kids because she was able to construct a small house with a one of those pot-belly stoves and had a garden plot of vegetables about ten feet by ten feet.
So, in an ideal world, everyone, even anyone who's lazy (a definition I'll get to in a second) would be able to construct a home, farm their own food (which even back then took up not a whole lot of time, and in modern times I can assume is even easier), and generally be able to sustain themselves as a baseline without outside influence.
So, who is considered lazy? From what I understood of this viewpoint as it was explained to me, laziness equates to someone who does not produce anything that society considers useful or valuable. They may still produce things (the starving artist, musician, writer, or philosopher), but not anything anyone wants to buy. Yet these things may have value to the person themselves. Hobbies. Maybe a big family because they like the sex or something. You know. And let's not consider alcoholism or drug addiction a hobby, since eventually those aren't really choices but diseases.
Most people who are poor I think try to sustain themselves, it's in their best interests.
What about the people who don't sustain themselves? Some people do cheat welfare by having large families. Sometimes there just aren't jobs available (that would hire them) that would sustain them better than what they get on welfare.
But generally, I think most welfare is actually people who need it. We have to understand, you might be able to live at this level, but it doesn't have a whole lot of creature comforts, and freezing to death is kind of unconscionable too. And then there are people who got injured on a job, or fired (sometimes because of injury, though one of the (few?) good sides of unions is that they help prevent that), or maybe they were born with a disability: blind, deaf, some odd congenital or genetic condition.
And the people who fall through the cracks and aren't on any kind of welfare? Mental health and substance abuse, though I've heard that 2-3% of the population that doesn't fall under either category will spend one night homeless in their lives. I can only assume this is the low end of the unemployment spectrum.
Personally, I'd like to see welfare as less a Federal thing, and more the choice of the local community to provide to those who need help.
Do you agree with anything I've said here, Geezer? Once we have a foundation we agree on, THEN I think we can start discussing things like incentives for work, and whether profits are really a useful incentive on a societal level.
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Originally posted by Kwicko:
I think you have the wrong idea of co-ops if you think they're all about driving profits up, which you do seem to think, if you're that concerned with the lazy schlub who's "dragging profits down".
As I noted above, when folks can self-select to be in co-ops or communes, generally it's folks already predisposed to the cooperative or communal lifestyle who do so - from Hutterites to old hippies and communists to the FLDS. However, when you force everyone to adopt the co-op/commune economic model, you're throwing in folk with a strong interest in driving the profits up and improving their individual lot in life - some by ethical means and some not so much. Putting these folks in a commune will not change their natures, it'll just cause them to find the ways they can work the system to their advantage. If allowed to move between co-ops/communes, one would expect the go-getters to band together into a more acquisitive group.
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So are you against laws just because there are SOME people who won't follow them?
Depends on the law. I'd see Signym's laws prohibiting Capitalism, requiring everyone to be in a co-op/commune or whatever, and setting wages for all members of a co-op the same, as social engineering on a par with (actually far beyond) alcohol and drug prohibition, Blue Laws, laws against consensual sex between adults, gun control, etc. SignyM is trying to legislate changes to personal ethics and morality.
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Again, I point out that MOST of us DON'T murder people on a regular basis, which is a pretty selfless thing at times, considering... And yet we still make laws REQUIRING us not to murder people.
So making a profit or expecting greater return for greater effort is equivalent to murder in your book? I think I could find more than a few people who'd disagree with that.
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...you can't even comprehend a society that isn't driven by a constant need for increasing profits.
Sure I can. There are pockets of such societies out there now. I also know that everyone doesn't fit into that type of society - whether it's folks who think that if they do better work they deserve a bigger slice of the pie, or folks who will try for a bigger slice by less than ethical means - and that making laws to try and make them conform to one group's 'utopian' ideas isn't gonna work any better than the Soviet's attempt to make a communist state.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Do you agree with anything I've said here, Geezer? Once we have a foundation we agree on, THEN I think we can start discussing things like incentives for work, and whether profits are really a useful incentive on a societal level.
Well, Byte, it was SignyM who suggested kicking the lazy schlubs out of the co-op, not me. I was kind'a surprised, since I figured required membership in a co-op would be the Social Security of her system.
I'd also have to disagree with your idea that farming is an easy life. My mother's family are mostly farmers, and they'd tell you, as they have told me, that it's hard and uncertain.
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So, who is considered lazy? From what I understood of this viewpoint as it was explained to me, laziness equates to someone who does not produce anything that society considers useful or valuable.
Not my viewpoint at all. The viewpoint explained to you would seem to include folks who are unable, due to illness, incapacity, age, lack of skill, or lack of work, to be productive. Any system needs to consider ways of providing for those who can't provide for themselves.
To me, lazy schlubs are those who could produce things considered valuable and provide for themselves, but choose not to do so, instead living off the labor of others. Unfortunately, you have to consider how to provide for them too, since most folk have the basic humanity that requires it, and if they died, they'd clutter up the place.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Geezer, we already live in YOUR utopia, of "lazy schlubs" who reward themselves billions of dollars in bonuses, dividends and stock options at the end of the year for... what, exactly? If you're so dead set against rewarding do-nothings, how do you justify THAT? (I'm gonna hound you on this one until you either answer or leave, bc you're a pretty famous black pot.)
Quote:Last time you came up with those "plenty of examples"... Ben&Jerry's, Burt's Bees etc... on tracking them down, we all learned (Well, OK, YOU didn't, but everybody else did) that they had been bought out by large corporations.
That's been pretty much your argument - backed up by nothing, since there are plenty of examples of corporations that do not live specifically for profit or exploitation, and of capitalists who are not thieves or scam artists and produce things - at least if you don't define by fiat corporations as only those who exploit or capitalists as only the thieves and scam artists.
So, since there are SO MANY out there, how about coming up with a couple dozen examples of these selfless corporations- which, BTW, you say don't exist, since selfless cooperation isn't in your world-view. (Contradict yourself much, Geezer?)
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GEEZER TSK TSK.
Quote:Putting words in my mouth again??I'm really sick of that. I think I'm going to start doing that to you.
since I figured required membership in a co-op would be the Social Security of her system.
Cooperatives are meant to replace corporations, not government. It is an alternate form of production, not an entire replacement for society. There will still have to be government, and taxes There will still have to be laws and courts... for example, laws against pollution, food safety laws etc. In previous discussions, I DID talk about alternate forms of government.. for example, running it cooperatively, not having the position of President, Chair, or other unitary power... clearly, I expect government of sorts to continue to exist.
But then, we can always fall back on YOUR favorite: PERSONAL CHARITY! Nothing in the cooperative structure exactly forbids personal charity, does it? Unless, of course, you think that selfless cooperation doesn't exist, in which case your argument for personal charity goes POOF!
Oh, and BTW- before you put THIS in my mouth, I'm not in favor of doing away with families either.
Just doing a little preemptive positioning, to keep you from doing you usual bullshit.
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I'd also have to disagree with your idea that farming is an easy life. My mother's family are mostly farmers, and they'd tell you, as they have told me, that it's hard and uncertain.
And I hesitate to call a ten foot by ten foot plot "farming" on any scale, though my grandmother's family didn't have any other trade. Subsistence farming, I suppose. I'll grant you both subsistence and commercial farming aren't luxurious by any stretch of the imagination.
Commercial farming has an increased difficulty, in that technology has made it less physical (still quite a bit physical), but that the improvement has also devalued crops, which are purchased by food processing corporations so cheaply that often commercial farming requires a welfare itself to live off of the wages.
Still. If four people can live on a haphazardly maintained ten foot by ten foot plot and have shelter, I think this is a reasonable baseline for at least survival, if nothing else, and survival is humane compared to the alternative. People will do what they need to survive, and if their struggles and personality inspires compassion from their community, I'll hope for this outcome and call that good. Even if their contribution into that community is negligible, but for the potential that each of them might have.
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Not my viewpoint at all. The viewpoint explained to you would seem to include folks who are unable, due to illness, incapacity, age, lack of skill, or lack of work, to be productive. Any system needs to consider ways of providing for those who can't provide for themselves.
To me, lazy schlubs are those who could produce things considered valuable and provide for themselves, but choose not to do so, instead living off the labor of others. Unfortunately, you have to consider how to provide for them too, since most folk have the basic humanity that requires it, and if they died, they'd clutter up the place.
Then I'm satisfied with your definition, and it might even improve on the one that I agreed on. Though I think there may still be factors and complications involved with why people choose, if there is a choice, to live off of welfare and not provide anything for themselves (or their families).
Profits and corporations are another thing, like Sig just mentioned, I might try to get around to that later. Perhaps it's a double standard, but I have more problem with dishonesty and theft and inflated value among those who already have themselves well taken care of than those that don't.
I suppose no matter what, you will find dishonesty and theft. I'm interested in determining what is it that causes dishonesty and theft in the upper end of the spectrum more than I am in the lower end, and whether there are alternative systems that might help that issue.
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BYTE:
Quote:Is this "my" POV? That's not my POV at all! Byte- please, please, please... be VERY careful when Geezer "explains" anyone's POV, since he's a notorious liar! If you want to know what I really think, just scroll up a few posts.
The viewpoint explained to you {by whom???} would seem to include folks who are unable, due to illness, incapacity, age, lack of skill, or lack of work, to be productive. Any system needs to consider ways of providing for those who can't provide for themselves.
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Sig, no worries, Geezer wasn't talking about you. I prefaced my long post before with the note that I had this same almost argument, almost verbatim, with someone else I know on Sunday. Geezer was referring to the person I was talking to, who I didn't identify.
It was my dad, BTW. Who is a businessman, which probably explains some of his sort of entrenched views about this current system and his perspectives on the needy and homeless. Which apparently Geezer doesn't share, and I'm glad.
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