What's your generation and how would you change your government?

[JasonBlack]

(03-28-2022, 11:29 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: No, I don't think anyone needs to spend anytime being poor, but some time spent making a living on your own instead of depending on government or parents is probably a good experience. But I would not judge someone as having the wrong perspective on life if they haven't done this. I don't agree with judging people based on "people I know" either. What we need is more ability to empathize, and if this takes working for a living on one's own, or just better education and higher consciousness, it's all the same to me.

The problem is that empathy comes as much (in fact, I would argue more) from understanding and experience than it does gut-level feeling. Don't get me wrong, I hate all those people who yell out "privilege" this, "privilege" that as an excuse to be disrespectful and not listen to what could be valid input. The problem isn't privilege, it's that many people let that privilege trap them in a bubble of delusion because they don't know how the real world works, don't know how to adapt/problem solve and have difficulty imagining themselves in situations where their primary focus needs to be practical. It's possible to be well-meaning and good natured, yet lack a reference point for what someone else is speaking about to the point where they just end up talking past you.

I realize I'm using an extreme example here, as I don't think you're proposing anything this radical, but this experiment is a good example of what happens when you take away too much personal choice and create a world where government makes the majority of important decisions for you.

Quote:What is society's job may have to be more generous if we take away peoples' ability to make a decent living from a job. That's true whether we have replaced jobs with machines, or whether through neoliberalism we enable bosses to fail to pay people what they have rightfully earned.





http://philosopherswheel.com/freemarket.html

The bias people keep making here is that assuming an economic system is supposed to give you an identity/self-worth to begin with. No one is really telling you you need to base your self-worth based on your balance sheet or income statement. Market-based economics is simply an efficient means of letting people get their work done so that they can go home and do what they really want. We can argue about whether more or less government intervention is more efficient, what industries are best left to the state vs run by private enterprise, etc, but that's what the debate should be over. Not over issues of self-worth which people have 100% control over anyway. You can choose to have high self-esteem, you can choose how you define yourself, you can choose what you believe in. Do most people really want someone to tell them how to feel about themselves? Doesn't it make more sense to just take personal responsibility for that?

This is the main thing I don't get about other millennials....why do we need a collective purpose? I'm perfectly happy doing what I want, looking out for my friends and family, pursuing whatever projects strike my fancy. Putting aside the economic scale, the concept that government is supposed to just give people some collective purpose to live their life by seems extremely authoritarian to me. People often argue back to me like "your self-worth doesn't have to be defined by money! My self-worth comes from___", to which I respond "yes...that's literally the point".

Edit: if anything, I'd argue the point of capitalism is more "other people's opinions are irrelevant to my self-worth. the more money I have, the more freedom I have to make the rules". Speaking of compassion, this is often an extremely seductive mindset to people who have spent a good deal of their lives being poor, abused or otherwise powerless. When you are persecuted or unpopular, money is one of your only defenses, a means to fight back in a world where power normally boils down to popularity contests and connections more than competence and boundaries. I have met a lot of entrepreneurs in my time, and every...single...one grew up with peer relations that were unkind them to them, often to the point of physical violence, genuinely life-threatening situations and other forms of peer-related abuse. To a lesser extent, I relate to this myself (I consider my life to have been hard enough to teach me some good lessons, but not so hard that I was permanently damaged, and given how many people I know with far too much or too little hardship in life, I am tremendously grateful for this. In either event, my peers have never been kind to me, and any sense of community I've ever felt was found in niches of likeminded people). People like that don't want to "just get along". They don't want the government micromanaging their lives. They don't want to spend most of their time thinking about the "greater good". They want to be left alone, want peace and quiet, want to, God forbid...enjoy the fruits of their labor without the gossiping Puritans of society trying to get in their business at every turn. For many, separation brings catharsis far more readily than inclusion and big, overarching systems.

I realize this is more a point about preferences than cause/effect economics, but regardless, if you want a system like the one you're proposing to work, there needs to be a place for people like that. A place for lone wolves, rugged individualists, people who don't care about being "appropriate" and opponents of social and moral policing. Too often, big government also means nosy government, witch hunts and demanding not just behavioral, but emotional conformity. Such witch hunts are clearly happening in the modern era, and history has shown they can often continue well into the 1T.