They have to believe it is a choice. If not, they are equally at risk of losing everything and becoming homeless and that terrifies most people. Picard’s “you can do everything right and still fail” is not something most people want to know. No one wants to be impoverished, homeless, sick, mentally unwell. Instead they find it comforting to believe that this is happening to others simply because that person made the wrong choice. The same happens for success. The one who make it would have everyone believe that if they made the exact same choices, they too would be rich and that opportunity, chance, luck have nothing to do with it.
I seriously think this is the reason why everyone got so mean post-Covid. They realized it can always get worse; there is no rock bottom. Everyone was forced to accept that things can always suck WAY more tomorrow than they do today, and they/we can’t handle knowing that.
It broke a social contract.
Alternatively everyone realized it could be a lot better.
Way too many chucklefucks sat at home collecting pay “working” remotely for almost 0 hours per day
Those people got to bake bread, go outside, learn to be themselves, be happy.
Then despite hitting every goal for their department/whatever - they were told to come back in.
Post COVID is an attempt return to normal. Except it’s not even normal. It is worse in every quantifiable way. Everyone is more stressed out. Money is tighter.
Nobody is in a good mood when they are hungry, and tired
Also, many people simply don’t want to acknowledge the safety nets that they have had surrounding them. Ever moved back in with your parents after a breakup or because you couldn’t afford the rent? Ever got a lead on a job because you knew someone who already worked there?
People tend to think of safety nets as government handouts, but the reality is that the vast majority of safety nets are social. And some people don’t have strong social circles (like family or friends) to rely on.
Well said.
Kewl, at least the globe knows only Americans think highly of themselves.
It does not play a zero percent role but its 100% that societal choices keep them there. College dorms give students all the essentials. There is no reason all people could not have a right to an individual roomed dorm. Heck college dorms could get certified in the program reducing tuition.
They feed us this shit in our media for decades, and then people conduct studies and find that the indoctrination is working.
Most of the modern media I consumed in my lifetime had this basic message behind it. Surprise, surprise, people believe the shit they read, view, and listen to even if the evidence isn’t there to support it.
The proliferation of Randian Objectivism as a personal belief system has damned society.
The inescapable conclusion to draw form that is most people are fucking stupid.
70% of Americans still believe angels exist, so yeah… We’ve got a long fucking way to go.
Most adults can’t read at a high school level (usa.) World full of idiots.
Because we have all been thoroughly propagandized to believe this. I think a lot of people even feel this way about themselves-- a kind of internalized hatred of themselves for being poor. Purely coincidental that everything keeps getting more expensive relative to wages!
This reminds me of one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes.
Expand quote
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, ‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’ It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/158414-america-is-the-wealthiest-nation-on-earth-but-its-people
Damn, that’s a banger!
Love me some Vonnegut. I earnestly (albeit temporarily) convert to Bokononism every time I read Cat’s Cradle.
This comes from the same mindset that states:
“If you don’t like the interest rate on your credit card, just pay it off and close it”
“I am a self made man. I started with nothing, and had to take a small 10 million dollar loan from my father to get started”
“If your job doesn’t pay you enough, then quit and get one that does”
People are sooooo out of touch with reality.
my favorite is “Just take risks, and success will find you”
Yeah, its real easy to take risks when you parents worth 45 hojillion dollars, who can throw a million bucks at every one of your dumb ideas until one sticks without even noticing as more than a rounding error.
For the average american, if they take a risk and fail, their life is utterly ruined forever.
I usually counter those arguments with “So how come you’re not a multimillionaire?” “How come you’re not (CEO, Foreman, successful business operator, position of leadership)?” “How come you didn’t buy your house with cash?” Etc.
The ignorance of opulence
This might have been true in 1960s, when wages were actually high and if you saved up, you could become a millionaire, but it’s no longer true. The mindset is simply stuck in people because people are slow on updates and haven’t recognized yet that there’s practically no well-paying jobs on the labor market anymore, no matter what you do. The consequence is that you can’t get rich if you’re poor today, no matter what you do. No kind of saving is gonna do that.
The only way forward is a better social system, and i did some maths the last few weeks and figured out that it’s surprisingly doable economically on a macroeconomic level, i.e. if the US introduced a wealth tax and a universal basic income today, it would NOT really hurt the US’ long-term competitiveness on the global free market, and import tariffs aren’t even needed to sustain the US companies’ competitiveness.
This is fascinating because you would kinda expect that if you tax the rich, they would try to make up for it by bigger profits on their products and it would simply lead to inflation. This is partially true, but only partially, because the tax only applies if the company is owned by rich people, and not if it’s owned by a large number of normal people. So, companies owned by a large number of normal people have a competitive advantage because they don’t need to profit as much to make up for the wealth tax, so they have an easier time in the domestic market.
But even better than that, domestic companies don’t even suffer in international competition. Because at first, yes, prices would rise and there would be inflation, but that makes the dollar cheaper (in other words, a bit more worthless), and that makes manufacturing inside the US cheaper, because the wages are cheaper in international competition, because the dollar is cheaper. So it stimulates manufacturing and exports, keeping the import/export business in balance.
I would argue that money is actually pretty useless, the true value in a economy is time - the time to spend on family and friends, the time to create new ideas, the time to learn, and the time to support society. Capitalism forces people to hyperfixate on money in order to survive, which inherently limits what a person can do to better themselves and the world around them.
It encapsulates the existence of an individual into a fishbowl, forever unable to do more than simply exist in place.
You make some perfectly valid points, the only thing I take issue with is
Money is actually pretty useless
So, I do historical reenactment and one of my focuses is the history of money. Money has been in use, in some form or another, all over the world, for about ten thousand years. Roughly twice as long as written language.
Again, I agree with what you’re saying about time and how important it is. But go back to when humans had huge swaths of free time and you still find money. It’s just INSANELY useful.
That’s about as dumb as you get right there. It’s not even tricky to see that’s wrong.
Well, yeah, they’ve been indoctrinated for decades to think Money = Merit by those who want them to think that Rich People are only Wealthy because they’re superior to the rest (which is a hilariously false idea given that almost the Wealthy come from Wealthy or at least Upper Middle Class families - they were born at or past the finish line in the race for success, not all the way back like the rest), and the other side of that exact same coin is the idea that it’s the fault of the Poor for being poor.
Forget decades. Try millennia. Historically people didn’t even think being wealthy came from working hard and good decisions… but that God willed it that you be rich.
Well yeah, for ages, literally the richest dude, be he king, emperor or great Khan or what the hell ever was “blessed by heaven and god and had the divine right”.
Individual choices of the few keep the many in poverty needlessly, yes, indeed.
You’ve done a wonderful job helping the line go up. But in an effort to further grow, we must innovate further by shedding unnecessary weight. It’s nothing personal, but it’s time for you to go now.
Leonidas spartan kick
The soul crushing machine demands cruelty and suffering for the line to go up.
(All system do, that’s nature, but without having optimisers to change the red line indicator from money to societal progress we for some reason just keep feeding this baby killing machine.)
