> If your worth is not determined by your productivity, then what remains of you underneath it all?
Everything else. You are worth so much more than your productivity.
I'm glad I never got sucked into the protestant work ethic, since defining yourself based on your labour and the value you generate from that sounds woefully narrow-minded (this doesn't feel like quite the right word, but close enough).
It's probably helpful to at least expand 'productivity' to something beyond just what is useful for your work. Reading the classics is productive because it's enjoyable, even though it doesn't help with your work. Ditto spending time with friends and whatever else that doesn't have anything to do with work.
I hope we figure out what to do about disabilities, since the current status quo is inhumane in large parts of the world (and even in places with good benefits systems, getting that support isn't trivial).
Who produces the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the house you live in, the energy you use, the medicine you consume, etc. while you airily define ‘productivity’ as reading the classics and spending time with friends?
You’re missing the point of the article and of the post. Why do you assume that someone who reads and takes breaks is unproductive? Should we get a second job instead? I spend 8 hours sleeping. Would you like me to work those hours as well? I spend some of my day cooking and cleaning and raising my son. Would you rather I keep working instead?
Maybe it’s time that we worked together to gain that time back for you instead of you fighting for us to lose our free time.
They are not trolling. They are stating the simple, undeniable fact that there is more than enough to go around and if we had a more equitable distribution of resources, we could take care of everyone with disabilities 10x over with plenty to spare.
The other commentor mentioned food and clothes to you. I'll add that I can get food for free locally (soup kitchen style, although I don't think they actually serve soup) if I really need it.
Around 10% of houses in the US are vacant, although I'm sure a fair amount are that for good reasons (shitty locations, old and worn to high hell). This to me sounds like a resource allocation problem and not a lack-of-resources problem.
Energy could be free close to free if we made the right choices. The sun's right there. Unfortunately, we've been stuck in a political rut for a long while, making long term projects like 'do something about global warming' and 'transition away from fossil fuels' uninteresting.
Many medicines are only expensive due to patents and making up for research costs. Actual production is usually cheap as hell.
I don't have all the answers. People smarter than me might have them. But I do know that we can do better.
Yes to all of this, and want to double stress the Housing theory of everything [1]. Most of the "scarcity" people feel today in the North American context is driven by housing. And there simply isn't enough of it. And citing badly measured vacancy stats does a huge disservice to the effort to fix this.
I agree we can do a lot better. And I have no moral qualms about giving the excess away to everyone who needs it. But I need people to admit that it will require a lot of work till we can sufficiently claim we have a real realizable "excess".
And that work requires the current system to work more "efficiently" and with "higher productivity", in the economic definition of the word, not as a personal valuation as OP defines.
Housing is clearly the biggest problem, yes, and I doubt you'll find anyone who'll disagree that it's not a big problem. But it's a big problem for political reasons. If we all woke up tomorrow and thought 'we need 10 million new homes', I'm sure it could happen. It's just not in the short-term (and long-term?) interests of the economy as it is now. Maybe we should do something about that?
Or maybe, just maybe, we should do it because it's a thing that raises people's quality of life? I only care about the economy insofar as it helps actual people on the ground, so I'll be happy to ignore it for things like this, assuming that doesn't put us in an even worse rut than we are in now.
'If we all woke up tomorrow and thought 'we need 10 million new homes''
The cost (no profit) of 1 Million homes where people want to live (where your community is), would be roughly 0.5 Trillion to 1 Trillion USD [1]. So, I don't think this is true :(.
We simply don't have the construction workers and the supply-chains to make it happen. Again, these are fixable problems and I want this to be true. But it is not today.
> The cost (no profit) of 1 Million homes where people want to live (where your community is), would be roughly 0.5 Trillion to 1 Trillion USD [1].
That sounds worth it to me.
> We simply don't have the construction workers and the supply-chains to make it happen. Again, these are fixable problems and I want this to be true. But it is not today.
Just a note those "vacancies" include dilapidated buildings and housing that is between leases (literally all the housing on craigslist is included in that number).
Vacancies in most major cities is near-zero. As a market-rate renter, when someone says "we have so much excess", I have no idea what you're talking about.
This assumes production of food is the bottleneck rather than distribution. If distribution is actually the bottleneck, overstocked food is not a measure of excess in society.
...and the food part, it's been this way for almost a hundred years now - with agricultural productivity skyrocketing in between. But 100 years ago, chronic food overproduction bankrupting farmers, was already a persistent problem. Since then, lots of bright minds spent their lifetimes to invent new ways to bribe or coerce farmers into growing as little as possible for their own safety.
We have enough medication. People not being able to afford it has little to do with whether or not we have (or could easily make) an excess.
Insulin costs ~3 USD to make per vial. People not being able to afford ~30 USD insulin is not because we have too little medication. It's because there are leeches all over the healthcare system.
And if you genuinely cannot afford it, you should get it for free, as part of a proper healthcare system, which the US famously lacks.
Don't expect much sympathy here, as per many comments folks are mostly on purely capitalistic camps to the extreme. Its distillation of US approach to work and society, something I've grown to detest by mere fact of living in much more humane, while vastly more financially efficient system that doesn't use my tax money to kill civilians all over the world (none other than Swiss system and yes it could easily work elsewhere if people reduced their egos significantly, which they won't).
Its everybody for themselves in US, fuck the rest, the more the better. Some 'society' it is. The more miserable and poor others are, the better you can exploit them right. How horrible the world would be if those folks stocking shelves in shops or trimming your hair would also have a shot for a decent life.
Middle class is for mediocre suckers, either your are a star (at least from financial perspective, usually the rest of life is very opposite of it) or a loser. Can't say I can respect that system, but as long as I am not part of it nor bombed by its military industrial complex to death I simply don't care. Folks can stay and be part of that system or leave, that part of freedom is still sorta there.
> Who produces the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the house you live in, the energy you use, the medicine you consume, etc.
The able do. The disabled would love to work hard and earn a nice paycheck. It's a privilege to be able to work and be in good health. Hopefully you don't have to learn that the hard way.
> Who produces the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the house you live in, the energy you use, the medicine you consume, etc
You could say the same thing about software engineers. But someone spending their days just creating JS frameworks is oh-so-productive and paid enough money every month to buy several years’ worth of food and shelter.
When I was young, to buy a tee shirts for the kids you have to walk like 10 block to visit like 5 shops and compare prices. Let's say 1 or 2 hour and the choices were quite limited and you must keep a mental list of the location and quality of each shop. [The cheap ones may open only at the same time you have to be in the office.]
Now you can go to Mercado Libre (the local version of Amazon) compare prices and see the reviews and buy them in 15 minutes. There are a lot of more choices and the prices are lower (or higher if you like fancy stuff). It arrives home at the afternoon.
Some software engineer has to program it. Does s/he deserve a few bucks for the time s/he saved all of us?
If they are JS frameworks that enable other engineers to build applications that support farms, and banks, and taxi services and insurance companies and mines and factories, etc. then obviously that is productive.
If someone is willingly paying money for their labor then I see little point in questioning the worth of that exchange.
When JS engineers start asking for public money to support them writing JS frameworks that no one wants to pay for, we can revisit this topic.
This has been happening for more than a hundred years now... 90%+ of the people have been farming not that long ago, and mechanized farming equipment has replaced 95%+ of those workers.
This doesn't mean 4 hour workweeks or majority of people not needing to work, but it means that some of you can be social media managers, others can integrate AI chatbots in apps that don't need an AI chatbot, some can rewrite existing software in whatever the language of the week is, etc. Without offloading all that farming to machines, we'd never have what we now consider for "normal" and "must have".
Those few farmers left (2-3% of the workforce, depeding on the country) want to earn money too, so they can buy smartphones, watch netflix and have that smart toilet seats that open automatically and wash your butthole. If all those replaced-by-machines workers don't produce all that, where's the point in farming food for them?
Many places around the world, we work for what is needed, not for hitting it big.
But since you ask, also many victims of late stage capitalism explored in modern forms of slavery without work rights, so that richer nations can enjoy cheap electronics and clothing.
Sometimes they are forbidden from making the things they’d like for themselves. You used to be able to get your own food, build your own home, etc. But enclosure put a stop to that. And besides, who made the land you live on?
> Reading the classics is productive because it's enjoyable, even though it doesn't help with your work
It's productive in that it is hard and a sign of high intelligence. Don't believe me and swap it out with Candy Crush. Is playing Candy Crush productive?
This obsession about people with disabilities is weird. Yes, people with real disabilities exist. But focusing on pathologizing every day life is extremely harmful. This constant focus on "mental health" ironically worsens mental health. For instance, any mild discomfort is "anxiety". Most of these things are pretty normal range of emotions. Roughly 20% of undergraduate students at Ivy Plus institutions (including Harvard, Brown, and Cornell) are registered as disabled and receive accommodations. This figure has surged dramatically over time, rising from fewer than 3% at Harvard and under 6% at Cornell in 2015. This is obviously partly cheating the system, but it's also this harmful over-focus on "mental health"
Hard work is a good in it of itself. People pay lip service to the idea that we shouldn't be productive or measure our "worth" (whatever that is) by productivity but they don't live it. For instance, I don't know any parent that doesn't push or at least hope their children work hard at something. Anything. Do something hard. Play a sport. Learn an instrument. Study math. This is common sense.
> Hard work is a good in it of itself. People pay lip service to the idea that we shouldn't be productive or measure our "worth" (whatever that is) by productivity but they don't live it. For instance, I don't know any parent that doesn't push or at least hope their children work hard at something. Anything. Do something hard. Play a sport. Learn an instrument. Study math. This is common sense.
Hard work is good insofar as you enjoy it or it leads you to things that you do enjoy. Do those things if you enjoy them. Hard things are enjoyable too. I stopped doing most of them because I didn't enjoy them.
The thing that sucks is it doesn’t matter if you don’t get sucked in. Society is and as a result even if you the individual feel valued society largely will not value you. Of course it’s better for your mental health to escape the trap of believing your value as a person _is_ you value to capitalism but that won’t put food on the table or get you the care you need.
This is something that needs to change at the cultural level but is incredibly hard to change because in order to do so you need to convince most people that the foundational understanding of their worth as a person needs to come from somewhere else.
"Your worth" is a bit of a vague and meaningless term (everyone is worth infinite in some sense). But if we want to talk about your general ability to secure more comfortable living conditions then your worth is very much linked to your productivity. The average living conditions are largely determined by how productive the average person is. There are some hard-to-escape balance equations at play there.
Good vibes are nice and all, but affirming each other isn't going to actually make the world more comfortable. Looking after disabled people requires an enormous productive surplus from the rest of us and a recognition that the people creating the enormous surplus are in practice worth quite a bit more than the people who are on the receiving end of charity. Playing pretend on this topic is just going to lead to people being worse off.
Related: "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." (Jesus, in Luke 12:15).
Life is not about how much you make or how much you're worth. It's about being worth something to someone. It's about having meaningful relationships.
As a typical software nerd, it took me decades to get that.
> Everytime you meet someone new and they ask “What do you do?” they’re not asking about your passions, hobbies, or the mundane human tasks that take up most of your time; but how you make money, how you turn yourself into income.
1. That's your assumption. They could really ask out of interest. They couldn't care less if that's your main source of income.
2. In some cultures this question will never be asked.
3. If they do ask and judge; what does that matter? If you dislike such personalities, avoid them.
I was raised as a Buddhist and in Buddhism it says that the biggest wealth you can have in your life is good health. Most of us take it for granted, that how lucky we are to born without a disability and can function doing daily tasks like taking a shower, going to the toilet without the help of someone else. I cannot imagine how difficult life would be with a disability and even thinking about it makes me anxious
I always try and remember that the majority of the creatures of this planet do not have the luxury to live in an environment where they can freely choose to shield themselves from bad weather and regulate temperature of their surroundings to their convenience.
At some point many years ago I read that the family, not the individual, is the building block of society. It might have been Chesterton or Friedman as I read a lot of both when I was young. It certainly is a lot easier to hold the line when you have a squad of half a dozen to a dozen with you (wife/husband/children/brothers/sisters/uncles etc). If the state is there, then you are fortunate, but I wouldn't want to count on it myself.
I've read that German society, for example, is largely based on contracts between the family unit and the state. Sweden, as a contrast, is largely based on contracts between individuals and the state.
As an example, Germany treats a married couple as a fiscal unit, Sweden abolished joint taxation in the 70s. Swedish parental leave is allocated per individual, and is mostly non-transferable.
In a lot of ways, individualism is produced by state contract in Sweden.
This is how it has always been throughout history (and still is in most parts of the world).
Individual is part of nuclear family, nuclear family is part of extended family, extended family is part of tribe, etc. When one part is in need, the others jump in to help.
Nuclear family is indeed a recent development and started with industrialization and modern capitalism. While we use the same term, 'family', to refer to (pre-)historic forms of family, too, those family types had little or nothing in common with the modern definition, when it comes to power, inheritance, law, sex, love.
Ancient egypt? Roman times? Medieval times? Byzantine times? Pre-colonial Philippines? Pre-colonial America?
I think it may have started in the late 1800s at the earliest. I would need a bit more evidence to be convinced that your model of individual to nuclear to extended etc has been a thing longer than a few centuries, vs the vast majority of human life experience being in nomadic hunter-gathering, villages, farmland, and walled city-states. We just had clans which were all our family. A fellow villager wasn't much different than a cousin. The individual and nuclear family, not so much a thing.
There's extensive written evidence as far back as writing goes of recognizable family units. Here[1] we see a young man in 18th century B.C.E writing to his mother to ask for new clothing for school. It refers to household units with mothers and fathers having discrete roles. In 1250 B.C.E.[2] Egyptian workers took days off to take care of their wives, or sick members of their immediate household. Cross cultural examples abound. In Mexica (Aztec) culture adult life began upon marriage where a couple was given a small house and plot of land.
I think I'd need quite a lot of evidence that families weren't the major unit of society. A hunter-gatherer tribe is an extended family, so that only proves the point. If there's more than about 30 people in one then surely family based factions will form within it to some extent.
Probably you're focusing too much on the parent comment's mention of nuclear family. Even that, despite only being named a few decades ago, is likely to exist to some extent. Even in some ancient tribe or village, most people would favour their spouse (or equivalent) or child over a cousin or niece/nephew if some dispute formed. That hardly seems controversial.
It was _especially_ like this further back. You literally could not survive without the tribe, and the tribe had norms-and-values you had to adhere to, some of which were to do with family units. This went for nomads and settlers alike.
The nuclear family lived separate from the extended family. In separate cities. This is a new thing. You lived with your clan in history, not apart. The nuclear family is completely separated physically from their extended families, even across village lines.
> Much of modern Western culture, particularly in the United States, was shaped by what sociologist Max Weber called the Protestant work ethic: the belief that hard work, discipline, frugality, and productivity were signs of virtue.
I hail from a culture that's decidedly Catholic, but at the same time shares this mindset.
To me it has more to do with farming and the culture around it.
On a farm you have to earn your keep and there's no space for "freeloaders". You work all day, every day and don't complain.
Attitudes are very different in places where there was a significant urban class in the renaissance era already.
It's simple, what is written here should be part of basic education for every human being/worker.
For all who mis-interprent the post and focus only on the anti capitalistic view of it, don't worry your body will tell you soon!
Keep an eye for the signals, gut and digestive issues, back stuck and oain, sleeping problems, light sensitivity and irritability. When this will start remember that the problem is probably your work or your working environment not you!
And you should react to it!
This article should be eye opening, and support for disabilities should be always there. The abandonment of human beings is the biggest failure of societes.
If you read this article and feel worried about your financial situation if you become disabled, you might look into long-term disability insurance (LTD).
It's a policy where, if you become disabled to the point where you can't work, it pays out $X per month, every year until you're 65. And if you're partly disabled and have to cut back your hours, some policies compensate you for those lost wages.
These LTD policies are expensive, but they DO give you peace of mind about this possibility.
Worker's compensation is similar, and that actually is mandatory for employers to offer in most US states. But IIUC, that's only for injuries that are caused by your job in some way?
We could provide food for the poor and disabled who lack or are not using family support with a tiny fraction of our industrial output. We wouldn’t even notice this expenditure, let alone whine about it. But what we are providing is actually “Healthcare. Specialists. Medications. Supplements. Mobility aids. Physical therapy. Accessible housing. Delivery fees when you cannot physically shop for yourself. Ride shares when public transportation is inaccessible. Caregiving.” and this turns out to be enough effort to make society groan and strain.
It’s good that our society is doing this, and we could do better! but why do we have to characterize this existing herculean effort as “fundamentally hostile to bodies that cannot produce consistently”
The idea that "hard work, discipline, frugality" are Calvinist and Protestant inventions may be the most preposterous thing I've read today. As if the rest of the world or previous eras valued self-indulgence and wasteful lavishness.
Or that an unproductive member of society wasn't always scorned or at least viewed negatively by those having to produce.
"But I am trying to believe there is more to a human life than how efficiently it converts energy into labor."
There absolutely is. Labor can be fullfilling and give joy, but for most people it is just an easy tool on how to survive and hopefully have some comfort as well. Do not ever feel ashamed of your labor and even more, do not ever feel ashamed of not doing labor if you don't want to. You have one life in this universe. Make it a nice one.
I think part of the lie is that we live for and unto ourselves. We instinctively know it's not true, yet for much of our lives we live as if it is. Until one day we find out what we knew all along.
When you suddenly become unable to "give anything" to others and become the one who must be given to, you feel a disconcerting sense of loss and powerlessness.
I don't think it really has anything to do with capitalism.
> Earn slightly too much, and vital support disappears
My reading of this is that the threshhold for the USA government to withdraw financial (and other?) support for disabled people is too low, is that right?
Not only is it too low, but it is the discontinuity in support. This leads to perverse incentives where for the wage you could make, you’d barely clear the threshold to lose benefits and make barely more money than on government support.
This isn’t an argument to remove support—it’s an argument to remove binary thresholds with smooth ramps to incentivize people to work.
> My reading of this is that the threshhold for the USA government to withdraw financial (and other?) support for disabled people is too low, is that right?
In general, step functions (earn 200 get benefits, 201 no benefits) are really really bad from a public policy perspective. If you want to get people out of these dependency traps then you need to taper them more effectively.
Even tapering them is problematic as you end up with astronomically high effective marginal tax rates, but it's better than a hard cut off.
I'm not sure that's true, though most policies are implemented that way. If you get, say, a basic income check that's a function of the income you make, that function scales all the way from 0 income/max UBI to >= max UBI income/0 UBI.
Not that that's like ... a policy slam-dunk or anything. Even putting aside the massive hurdle of getting UBI enacted into law, you'd still have to cope with sources of unreported income, asset/gift valuation, and so on. But that second category are, at least, tractable problems as evidenced by most countries' tax codes having contingencies to deal with them.
I'm very sorry to read of the author's experiences; a permanent disability can be a terrible thing to have to live with.
I would, however, encourage the author that maybe the answer to their question at the end of the article lies in the very world view they rejected half-way through: Christianity. Yes, in the Christian scheme of things, hard work is a virtue and laziness a vice. But to see this as the direct root of ableist capitalism is a severe twisting of the actual Christian teaching.
On the contrary, the Bible simply resounds with two truths, throughout the Old and New Testament:
1) We are to care for those who cannot care for themselves. We have a God-given duty to provide for our family members, community members, and fellow citizens who (for whatever reason) are dependent on our help.
2) Our worth as humans does not depend on who we are, what we can do, how much we own, or any other property residing in ourselves (which may change at any moment). Our worth comes directly from the fact that we are created and loved by an unchanging God. We have worth because we are valuable to the One who made us!
It’s sad to see people in the thread conflate capitalist greed with the “Protestant work ethic.” Despite the popularity of prosperity gospel teaching in the US, Jesus’ actual teachings clearly condemn greed and oppression of those who have less. A work ethic is still valuable, because goods have to be produced, but the reason we can’t solve worldwide poverty by just writing a check is that oppressive leaders at some point in the chain will use that money to enrich themselves, or they will take it from those who can’t defend themselves.
This isn’t to say that the purpose of Christianity is to fix these social problems, but it’s easy to forget how central generosity and compassion are to the Christian message. “Money Cult” by Chris Lehmann is a good exploration of how American Christianity corrupts these truths.
The author blames capitalism and religion while greatly indulging in his pride, I think.
It is so much beneath him to ask for help from others, he’d rather change the world so that he doesn’t have to ask — instead of expressing some humility.
I also have a lot of pride in myself, and I feel deeply for the author. However it looks to me that he’a banging on the wrong door, and instead of waiting for all the people in the world to change a lot, he could change himself a little.
> If your worth is not determined by your productivity, then what remains of you underneath it all?
Worth and productivity are synonyms in direction, wouldn't a better phrase not track either? It's difficult to answer anything other than naught without some mental gymnastics because the words themselves are implicit.
How about happiness? That is one human quality that is not directly tied to any of worth, value or productivity.
> Capitalism has defined ‘health’ itself as a capacity to submit oneself to labor
People keep mindlessly saying this but I have never seen evidence for it. Before money was ever invented the idea was already there that if you're healthy you can sustain yourself. All 'capitalism' did was saying "and most people nowadays perform abstract services in trade for an abstraction of a promise of a pinky swear saying "if you trade this pinky swear to me you'll get some food".
It's not 'economic systems that are fundamentally hostile to bodies that cannot produce consistently', it's a fundamental reality of life. Either you are capable of getting enough food for you and your family, either directly by farming, gathering or hunting, or you are not.
You're missing my point. Shortage and conflict is the default. It's not a fault unique to capitalism, and to say that it's its fault is missing the mark.
I'm not saying it's an ought situation or even an is situation; it's that I disagree with his diagnosis of what causes it.
Well right now there isn't a food shortage so what should we do while there isn't a food shortage? Should we perhaps say, that we only jettison the disabled people once we're actually running out of food and are forced to make a tough decision about who to keep alive, instead of doing it 20 years in advance just because there might be a shortage one day?
Absolutely. It's a gray area though when you become partially able to support yourself. I think this is what the article is pointing out. You have to come to grips with this grim economic reality and it's hard and your future prospects are almost entirely based on where and to whom you were born. The author is simply lucky that they have a safety net. If you are lucky enough to have time to prepare for these things, you can build your own. If you don't prepare, given the opportunity, that's a 'you' problem.
Capitalism reinforces individualistic cultures. The reality is humans aren't so different from ants or other social insects. Individuals don't instantly die when alone, yet we survive better and longer together.
I bristle a bit when it comes to discussing productivity an an ill that is _specific_ to capitalism. It's certainly an ill of capitalism as well, but I don't know many other systems where productivity is not valued and lack of productivity does not come downsides.
As another commenter has pointed out, the surest ally in this case is family. Not all families are tight, but families are largely the ones who will take care of the indigent in a compassionate, long-term way.
The productivity topic is interesting. From my view, it really is _people_ that require you to be useful. Different social or political systems can be better or worse about this, but all of them are sort of playing with the same base human behavior.
Try being the one who constantly needs help from your friend. That friend will leave eventually. And they'll leave in an emotional sense. They'll sort of think less of you, or be a bit disgusted.
Try getting a woman to be sexually attracted to you if you constantly need her help or support. Outside of a few interesting fetishists, you're out of luck.
You don't even need to imagine the workplace scenario -- you already know how that works.
But picture a pre-industrial, barter economy. How well would you do when you're not able to contribute? There is history of people caring for the old, infirm, and indigent ... but remember that when you go that far back you're talking about kin-groups. You're taking care of your grandfather, or your great uncle. Not some random guy you happened up.
There's nothing wrong with valuing productivity and unvaluing unproductivity, but capitalism fetishizes it to the extreme, kills people who don't have it, and defines the One True Productivity that you have to meet to not be killed. A lot of artists suffer from this last point where they are being productive but not in ways that capitalism values.
>A lot of artists suffer from this last point where they are being productive but not in ways that capitalism values.
I'm just not convinced. If there's not a market for your art, yes you will not be able to sell it and make a living. But, in other systems:
- Your art disagrees with the soviet government, so you are sent to a torture / labor camp to work until you die.
- The soviet government does not care about your art, but you're still in the soviet union and everyone is poor so no one can pay for your art anyhow.
- It's the 1600s Europe, and you're only sort-of in a capitalist society given modern definitions, but the Church doesn't like your writing so you've been locked up.
- Your are a subsistence farmer, and have absolutely no chance of creating art whatsoever given how busy and poor you are.
- You're a subsistence farmer, and somehow you manage to make art, but the only people you have access to are the ~2,000 people in your immediate vicinity, and none of them have any money to pay for your art to support you, and they are not willing to trade a chicken for a song.
vs.
- You have the most niche art you can imagine, (eg: Dark Souls analysis, or Harry Potter fanfiction where Snape gets pregnant and is constantly embarrassed by it) but due to (lousy, imperfect) platforms such as Patreon and the internet you can get enough patronage to support yourself, even if it's just barely.
I'm just not convinced that artists are doing worse now (in terms of per-capita artists) than other times in history, or under other systems.
My situation is similar. I'm exhausted from life, and I don't even have a disability
I got scammed and lost all the money I had saved up. AI reduced my workload, and because of the war, factory expansions were canceled, so for a while I had no work at all.
I've worked 96-hour weeks for six months at a time. Even working nonstop, I can't save any money. I don't have enough to buy a house, and I'm exhausted. I've done so many different kinds of work, but no matter how much I work, the money just doesn't accumulate. It's not that I haven't tried.
Good jobs are only in big cities, and to live in a big city, you have to pay rent. If I pay rent, my salary doesn't accumulate. I can't even think about getting married.
I really gave it my all, but I don't know anymore. Why is my life like this? By the time I paid off my student loans, I was already in my mid-30s, and I still can't even think about marriage.
I just work and try hard, but the money doesn't add up. It feels like my life has gone wrong. I used to laugh at people who gambled or traded coins, but now I feel like a fool for working so diligently
You gotta start prioritizing 'the soul' over what you think you're supposed to be doing. "Can't even think about marriage?" I bet marriage will take you further than you think. Maybe. But you gotta try. Try coming at it from a different angle. The answer doesn't leap off the page when you tick enough boxes. The answer becomes apparent when you take it.
The claim that the link between human value and productivity originated in capitalist societies (or via Protestant work ethic) is such bullshit. You think hunter-gatherers valued each other for their "inner worth"? Keep dreaming.
At any rate, judging by the author's 4.3k subscribers, he is doing fine. Whether you react with a heart emoji or revulsion, broadcasting sob stories into the internet is productivity -- in the attention economy, something that only exists in rich, capitalist societies.
The author lays most of this at the feet of capitalism, and I agree that the system has excesses that have contributed to the atomization of society, which can cause people to slip through the cracks, but...has any other system been obviously _better_ at supporting those with disabilities? Did feudalism or communism do this better?
(I think about the "worst system, except for all the other systems" quote often)
Democratic socialism. The US has quite a few such experiments like the New Deal. And they've been quite a bit better than the grinding, unbridled industrialism that consumed and spat out young and old alike.
Read up on "democratic socialism" because it was a term I wasn't familar with. I have to say people should be mindful of words and ideas meaning different things in different places.
"Capatalism" means something different in the USA than it does in say France. In the USA, any attempt to keep check of or reign in capatalism is seen as socialism, and governemnt overreach. In France it's seen as common sense, though they would still say they practice "capatalism". Similarly, taking care of people that can't take care of themselves is obvious in France, but seen as nearing socialism in the USA.
It's important to note, because when people go for things like "democratic socialism", they may not be against what they think they're against.
>the ones most countries implement don't work very well
I guess this is the basis of my critique: the author seems to be writing as though capitalism is robbing him of some ideal that would otherwise exist: invoking the so-called "Protestant work ethic" to describe a system that took over the world and made us all worse off.
That doesn't feel right to me because I don't think previous economic systems did better at protecting the vulnerable. (But I'm not sure, that's why I framed my comment the way I did!)
Most replies to me are framed more as either "do what Europe does" (but the author lives in Europe!) or "we haven't gotten there yet" - which...sure! We shouldn't accept the status quo. But that's a different argument.
Why limit the discussion to the current system and past ones? That's like saying memory safety is bad because before C++ there was assembly code and that was even less safe.
I think most people conflate the 2 things the current problems are not just because of capitalism but rather the capture of the government by capitalism.
I mean... I'm sure it's not easy being a disabled artist but this feels a lot like undeservedly blaming the rest of society.
The benefits cliff is a real problem (and the UK seems intent on making it worse). But "ooo nasty capitalism doesn't force people to pay for art"... Come on. And disabled people have it better than at any time in history. The UK is bankrupting itself to pay for PiPs and other benefits (and pensions unfortunately).
Survival needs work, and being unable to work means outsourcing your survival to somebody else. This will always take a toll to your psychology irrespective of the economic system, unless you are psychopath who believes that you are entitled to other people's labour just by virtue of having a heartbeat. We used to rely on family so that the guilt of that is lessened somewhat, but modern societies are actually hostile to this mode of operation and tell you that you have to rely on the state instead.
Moreover, actions have consequences. Instead of traveling and having fun when you are able bodied, you can work more, save and invest your money for the future and safe-guarding against situations like these. Other people have chosen to do that. In the end of the day, all that outcry about capitalism is the classic "I made the wrong decisions and I want society to bail me out of them".
The wrong decision is not being insured for disaster and not saving enough when you were able to work, electing to spend the money instead. Not being unlucky with your health or having an accident. That's clearly stated in my original response if you care to read and not knee-jekingly respond.
For someone who has been born disabled, the conversation should be moved to the people who brought them to life and are responsible for their survival.
Look at all those people worldwide “electing” to spend their money to feed and shelter themselves and their families with barely anything else left afterwards. The should’ve elected otherwise!
It’s insane how some people here are disconnected from the realities of the majority of people worldwide. All those years of education and the infinite access to information and still it’s an enigma to them the fact that the majority of people worldwide are just shit out of luck for having been born in places where a full time job just barely gets you by.
So you got lucky, thought it was because you were a genius and now you think everyone who didn't get lucky is just stupid.
A common thinking pattern. To prove it's luck, though, your great-grandchildren will be poor again - that always happens - they say rags to rags in three generations.
Sorry, I misread. Your parents were the first generation to escape poverty. They are the ones who worked hard and got lucky. You are the second generation, the one who grew up middle-class and takes it for granted, and wouldn't be able to climb up out of poverty. Your children will be the ones you spend all the money on and won't have any inheritance left for, and their children will grow up poor. This happens every single time.
"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel."
Almost everything in this universe wants you dead, including the species you belong to yourself, including the oxygen you so desperately need. The sooner you realise that the living time you have left is a careful balance of sheer luck and some preparations (money, food, shelter, love, the whole Maslov pyramid) the sooner you realise a standard job or labor is just a tool.
The universe doesn't "want" you dead. It just happens that life is always on a precipice, a little bubble carved out from an endless sea of unlife. But when you live underwater in an air dome, the sea doesn't "want" to flood your dome - that implies malice. The sea will flood your dome if you aren't careful, but you can maintain this air pocket as long as you want.
Sadly (arguably this is the greatest possible sadness) biology doesn't work that way. I think at our current rate of advancement we'll have practical immortality within the next 500 years, which is far too late for any of us alive right now, but it's not like a 90-year lifespan is an irreducible fact of reality. We've already found several genes that control certain aspects of aging and death. Interestingly, it seems to have evolved on purpose, and there are other animal species with indefinite lifespans.
> For someone who has been born disabled, the conversation should be moved to the people who brought them to life and are responsible for their survival.
Please explain exactly what you are suggesting or advocating for here.
I mean that the people who brought the person to life are responsible to make choice that will ensure theirs long term survival.
e.g my grandmother had a brother who their brain stopped developing at a very young age (afaik 5), the parents ensured and my grandmother ensured that my uncle lived a full (but sadly difficult) life living and been taken care of by them and then my grandma after they passed.
Individuals cannot afford to insure themselves in a vacuum. That's why social safety nets were created as a sort of forced and collective insurance. It's cheaper for all of us to ensure no one starves or becomes permanently homeless regardless of their choices.
Everyone that doesn't die early will become disabled, that includes you. You just hope it happens after you've made some money, but maybe between now and then you end up with a cancer or two.
My best friend married the love of his life. Had amazing kids and a nice job. Then he got cancer.
He had amazing insurance, a very supporting family, a job at a company who totally understood his situation. Everything was taken care of. The only thing left was hopefully getting better.
Which he did not. All that was left was pain. I literally watched him die. I heard his last breath. I saw the life leave his eyes.
That was it. His book of life will never have any more pages. It's done. The only thing left is to remember him.
No, democracy is just rule by the people. It says nothing about requiring proportional representation or about how disagreements are arbitrated. In ancient Athens you weren’t elected, you were randomly appointed by sortition into a council. Voting for representation is a fairly new concept, and so is direct democracy. Democracy is more about everyone having input that is accepted. What you’re proposing is tyranny by the majority.
Interesting how this is always post-hoc justified. It's always "you made bad decisions in the past so now you deserve cruelty". It's rarely "you are making a bad decision right now so you should stop that before you deserve cruelty in the future".
> "you made bad decisions in the past so now you deserve cruelty"
Somebody will have to endure cruelty when someone makes bad decisions. The question is whether the cruelty will be received by the person making the bad decision or somebody else.
> It's rarely "you are making a bad decision right now so you should stop that before you deserve cruelty in the future".
So it's the economic system's fault that you weren't stopped before making a bad decision? It's the economic system's fault that schools teach gender theory instead of personal finance, economics and rational decision making?
"They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words."
Sartre didn't respect your kind and I don't either.
I am 23 years old. I studied hard, went to college, got good grades, etc-- "did everything right," as far as older people in my life told me. At 19 I became disabled from a sudden rare condition such that I am now very ill and mostly housebound. I thought exactly as you did before becoming disabled. Everyone thinks sudden, rare, lightning-strike style things just happen to others until one day they happen to you.
I don't agree with railing against capitalism either-- it's not clear to me that there's any other system I would do better in, given my disability-- but the idea of, "if you do everything right, nothing bad will happen to you" is basically a comforting lie people tell themselves to feel safe. I believe in the value of hard work, and I am trying my best to better my situation-- switching my entire career from humanities to IT-- but I still am not fully sure how I am going to be able to support myself, and I don't think that's my fault.
> I don't agree with railing against capitalism either
I say we should all give it a shot. Capitalism has had its time to prove its value and its report card has left too many wanting. I think now is a good as time as any to re-evaluate alternatives to capitalism and its overwhelming role within our societies.
When a machine breaks, the best engineers find out what's wrong and fix it, no matter how many political feelings it hurts and what theories are shattered along the way. Chernobyl is a great show, btw.
> "I made the wrong decisions and I want society to bail me out of them".
The irony of you using this in a negative sense when capitalism has profited mightily from exactly this dynamic is not lost on me, in that insurance companies are insanely profitable things. And that's without getting into what b3lvedere notes in the other comment about disability and the absolute, fundamental dependency capitalism has on socialized risk, e.g., limited liability as a corporate model, bankruptcy protection, even the dependence on national military and economic strength to create the conditions for private profit. Note that I'm not even dinging capitalism here. Not at all. It's just that capitalism wouldn't work without whole social risk networks to create the conditions for private profit.
> In the end of the day, all that outcry about capitalism is the classic "I made the wrong decisions and I want society to bail me out of them".
What's the point of society if not being a buffer for bad individual decisions? If I can't count on y'all when I'm down, why should I help y'all when I'm up?
> Moreover, actions have consequences. Instead of traveling and having fun when you are able bodied, you can work more, save and invest your money for the future and safe-guarding against situations like these. Other people have chosen to do that. In the end of the day, all that outcry about capitalism is the classic "I made the wrong decisions and I want society to bail me out of them".
People don't choose to be born blind, or with a deformed limb, or with a genetic blood disease.
What fucking choice were they ever given?
It's always somebody that got lucky that wasn't born with a disability that makes these statements.
Why would you wait to travel and have fun until you are no longer able-bodied? If we go for QALYs as people with this ideology usually do, isn't it better to front-load your high-quality years so you'll at least have the memories for longer?
Very much better than having something bad happen to you, having no money and being a burden to society, while never having experienced joy.
You're treating it as if it goes on forever, but in reality, the end of your life is going to suck no matter what you do, and the beginning is set by your parents, but you get to control the middle, from about 20 to 60 years old if you're doing averagely well.
Everything else. You are worth so much more than your productivity.
I'm glad I never got sucked into the protestant work ethic, since defining yourself based on your labour and the value you generate from that sounds woefully narrow-minded (this doesn't feel like quite the right word, but close enough).
It's probably helpful to at least expand 'productivity' to something beyond just what is useful for your work. Reading the classics is productive because it's enjoyable, even though it doesn't help with your work. Ditto spending time with friends and whatever else that doesn't have anything to do with work.
I hope we figure out what to do about disabilities, since the current status quo is inhumane in large parts of the world (and even in places with good benefits systems, getting that support isn't trivial).
Maybe it’s time that we worked together to gain that time back for you instead of you fighting for us to lose our free time.
How are you measuring this? Hopefully something better than stock prices.
Around 10% of houses in the US are vacant, although I'm sure a fair amount are that for good reasons (shitty locations, old and worn to high hell). This to me sounds like a resource allocation problem and not a lack-of-resources problem.
Energy could be free close to free if we made the right choices. The sun's right there. Unfortunately, we've been stuck in a political rut for a long while, making long term projects like 'do something about global warming' and 'transition away from fossil fuels' uninteresting.
Many medicines are only expensive due to patents and making up for research costs. Actual production is usually cheap as hell.
I don't have all the answers. People smarter than me might have them. But I do know that we can do better.
I agree we can do a lot better. And I have no moral qualms about giving the excess away to everyone who needs it. But I need people to admit that it will require a lot of work till we can sufficiently claim we have a real realizable "excess".
And that work requires the current system to work more "efficiently" and with "higher productivity", in the economic definition of the word, not as a personal valuation as OP defines.
[1]: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...
Or maybe, just maybe, we should do it because it's a thing that raises people's quality of life? I only care about the economy insofar as it helps actual people on the ground, so I'll be happy to ignore it for things like this, assuming that doesn't put us in an even worse rut than we are in now.
The cost (no profit) of 1 Million homes where people want to live (where your community is), would be roughly 0.5 Trillion to 1 Trillion USD [1]. So, I don't think this is true :(.
We simply don't have the construction workers and the supply-chains to make it happen. Again, these are fixable problems and I want this to be true. But it is not today.
[1]: https://medium.com/@dtxtransitposts/how-much-does-it-actuall...
That sounds worth it to me.
> We simply don't have the construction workers and the supply-chains to make it happen. Again, these are fixable problems and I want this to be true. But it is not today.
Sounds like something we need to fix then.
Vacancies in most major cities is near-zero. As a market-rate renter, when someone says "we have so much excess", I have no idea what you're talking about.
Insulin costs ~3 USD to make per vial. People not being able to afford ~30 USD insulin is not because we have too little medication. It's because there are leeches all over the healthcare system.
And if you genuinely cannot afford it, you should get it for free, as part of a proper healthcare system, which the US famously lacks.
Its everybody for themselves in US, fuck the rest, the more the better. Some 'society' it is. The more miserable and poor others are, the better you can exploit them right. How horrible the world would be if those folks stocking shelves in shops or trimming your hair would also have a shot for a decent life.
Middle class is for mediocre suckers, either your are a star (at least from financial perspective, usually the rest of life is very opposite of it) or a loser. Can't say I can respect that system, but as long as I am not part of it nor bombed by its military industrial complex to death I simply don't care. Folks can stay and be part of that system or leave, that part of freedom is still sorta there.
The able do. The disabled would love to work hard and earn a nice paycheck. It's a privilege to be able to work and be in good health. Hopefully you don't have to learn that the hard way.
I am certainly sympathetic to people who are genuinely disabled.
That doesn’t mean we have to lie to ourselves that they are being productive by sitting around reading books.
You could say the same thing about software engineers. But someone spending their days just creating JS frameworks is oh-so-productive and paid enough money every month to buy several years’ worth of food and shelter.
Now you can go to Mercado Libre (the local version of Amazon) compare prices and see the reviews and buy them in 15 minutes. There are a lot of more choices and the prices are lower (or higher if you like fancy stuff). It arrives home at the afternoon.
Some software engineer has to program it. Does s/he deserve a few bucks for the time s/he saved all of us?
If someone is willingly paying money for their labor then I see little point in questioning the worth of that exchange.
When JS engineers start asking for public money to support them writing JS frameworks that no one wants to pay for, we can revisit this topic.
At least what OP says produces no harm at worst.
This doesn't mean 4 hour workweeks or majority of people not needing to work, but it means that some of you can be social media managers, others can integrate AI chatbots in apps that don't need an AI chatbot, some can rewrite existing software in whatever the language of the week is, etc. Without offloading all that farming to machines, we'd never have what we now consider for "normal" and "must have".
Those few farmers left (2-3% of the workforce, depeding on the country) want to earn money too, so they can buy smartphones, watch netflix and have that smart toilet seats that open automatically and wash your butthole. If all those replaced-by-machines workers don't produce all that, where's the point in farming food for them?
But since you ask, also many victims of late stage capitalism explored in modern forms of slavery without work rights, so that richer nations can enjoy cheap electronics and clothing.
What if we make a better world for everyone, instead of a planetary crab bucket?
Most people can't. They just assign everyone to the bucket of unwilling.
It's productive in that it is hard and a sign of high intelligence. Don't believe me and swap it out with Candy Crush. Is playing Candy Crush productive?
This obsession about people with disabilities is weird. Yes, people with real disabilities exist. But focusing on pathologizing every day life is extremely harmful. This constant focus on "mental health" ironically worsens mental health. For instance, any mild discomfort is "anxiety". Most of these things are pretty normal range of emotions. Roughly 20% of undergraduate students at Ivy Plus institutions (including Harvard, Brown, and Cornell) are registered as disabled and receive accommodations. This figure has surged dramatically over time, rising from fewer than 3% at Harvard and under 6% at Cornell in 2015. This is obviously partly cheating the system, but it's also this harmful over-focus on "mental health"
Hard work is a good in it of itself. People pay lip service to the idea that we shouldn't be productive or measure our "worth" (whatever that is) by productivity but they don't live it. For instance, I don't know any parent that doesn't push or at least hope their children work hard at something. Anything. Do something hard. Play a sport. Learn an instrument. Study math. This is common sense.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/opinion/mental-health-exe...
If you enjoy it, then yes.
> Hard work is a good in it of itself. People pay lip service to the idea that we shouldn't be productive or measure our "worth" (whatever that is) by productivity but they don't live it. For instance, I don't know any parent that doesn't push or at least hope their children work hard at something. Anything. Do something hard. Play a sport. Learn an instrument. Study math. This is common sense.
Hard work is good insofar as you enjoy it or it leads you to things that you do enjoy. Do those things if you enjoy them. Hard things are enjoyable too. I stopped doing most of them because I didn't enjoy them.
In Praise of Idleness
https://ia801002.us.archive.org/27/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.4...
This is something that needs to change at the cultural level but is incredibly hard to change because in order to do so you need to convince most people that the foundational understanding of their worth as a person needs to come from somewhere else.
I'm not sure we are interpreting this right,based also on reactions and troll references in clear contrast to your other comment.
"I've considered suicide because I was unable to make ends meet. I don't want others to experience that. Is that too much to ask?"
was important and extremely insightful, wanted to ask what you meant with "was unable to nake ends meet" which type of ends?
Good vibes are nice and all, but affirming each other isn't going to actually make the world more comfortable. Looking after disabled people requires an enormous productive surplus from the rest of us and a recognition that the people creating the enormous surplus are in practice worth quite a bit more than the people who are on the receiving end of charity. Playing pretend on this topic is just going to lead to people being worse off.
Life is not about how much you make or how much you're worth. It's about being worth something to someone. It's about having meaningful relationships.
As a typical software nerd, it took me decades to get that.
1. That's your assumption. They could really ask out of interest. They couldn't care less if that's your main source of income.
2. In some cultures this question will never be asked.
3. If they do ask and judge; what does that matter? If you dislike such personalities, avoid them.
I've read that German society, for example, is largely based on contracts between the family unit and the state. Sweden, as a contrast, is largely based on contracts between individuals and the state.
As an example, Germany treats a married couple as a fiscal unit, Sweden abolished joint taxation in the 70s. Swedish parental leave is allocated per individual, and is mostly non-transferable.
In a lot of ways, individualism is produced by state contract in Sweden.
Individual is part of nuclear family, nuclear family is part of extended family, extended family is part of tribe, etc. When one part is in need, the others jump in to help.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_the_Family%2C_Pr...
Ancient egypt? Roman times? Medieval times? Byzantine times? Pre-colonial Philippines? Pre-colonial America?
I think it may have started in the late 1800s at the earliest. I would need a bit more evidence to be convinced that your model of individual to nuclear to extended etc has been a thing longer than a few centuries, vs the vast majority of human life experience being in nomadic hunter-gathering, villages, farmland, and walled city-states. We just had clans which were all our family. A fellow villager wasn't much different than a cousin. The individual and nuclear family, not so much a thing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_Iddin-Sin_to_Zinu
[2] https://mymodernmet.com/ancient-egyptians-attendance-record/
Probably you're focusing too much on the parent comment's mention of nuclear family. Even that, despite only being named a few decades ago, is likely to exist to some extent. Even in some ancient tribe or village, most people would favour their spouse (or equivalent) or child over a cousin or niece/nephew if some dispute formed. That hardly seems controversial.
in which they lived in families, extended families and tribes as the primary units. I didn't understand your argument at all.
I hail from a culture that's decidedly Catholic, but at the same time shares this mindset.
To me it has more to do with farming and the culture around it.
On a farm you have to earn your keep and there's no space for "freeloaders". You work all day, every day and don't complain.
Attitudes are very different in places where there was a significant urban class in the renaissance era already.
For all who mis-interprent the post and focus only on the anti capitalistic view of it, don't worry your body will tell you soon!
Keep an eye for the signals, gut and digestive issues, back stuck and oain, sleeping problems, light sensitivity and irritability. When this will start remember that the problem is probably your work or your working environment not you! And you should react to it!
This article should be eye opening, and support for disabilities should be always there. The abandonment of human beings is the biggest failure of societes.
It's a policy where, if you become disabled to the point where you can't work, it pays out $X per month, every year until you're 65. And if you're partly disabled and have to cut back your hours, some policies compensate you for those lost wages.
These LTD policies are expensive, but they DO give you peace of mind about this possibility.
It’s good that our society is doing this, and we could do better! but why do we have to characterize this existing herculean effort as “fundamentally hostile to bodies that cannot produce consistently”
Are you saying we're providing those things instead of food? Or that if we provided food we wouldn't need to provide those things?
If so, that's patently false. A lot more than food is needed to give someone a better standard of living.
Or that an unproductive member of society wasn't always scorned or at least viewed negatively by those having to produce.
There absolutely is. Labor can be fullfilling and give joy, but for most people it is just an easy tool on how to survive and hopefully have some comfort as well. Do not ever feel ashamed of your labor and even more, do not ever feel ashamed of not doing labor if you don't want to. You have one life in this universe. Make it a nice one.
When you suddenly become unable to "give anything" to others and become the one who must be given to, you feel a disconcerting sense of loss and powerlessness.
I don't think it really has anything to do with capitalism.
My reading of this is that the threshhold for the USA government to withdraw financial (and other?) support for disabled people is too low, is that right?
This isn’t an argument to remove support—it’s an argument to remove binary thresholds with smooth ramps to incentivize people to work.
In general, step functions (earn 200 get benefits, 201 no benefits) are really really bad from a public policy perspective. If you want to get people out of these dependency traps then you need to taper them more effectively.
Even tapering them is problematic as you end up with astronomically high effective marginal tax rates, but it's better than a hard cut off.
Not that that's like ... a policy slam-dunk or anything. Even putting aside the massive hurdle of getting UBI enacted into law, you'd still have to cope with sources of unreported income, asset/gift valuation, and so on. But that second category are, at least, tractable problems as evidenced by most countries' tax codes having contingencies to deal with them.
I would, however, encourage the author that maybe the answer to their question at the end of the article lies in the very world view they rejected half-way through: Christianity. Yes, in the Christian scheme of things, hard work is a virtue and laziness a vice. But to see this as the direct root of ableist capitalism is a severe twisting of the actual Christian teaching.
On the contrary, the Bible simply resounds with two truths, throughout the Old and New Testament:
1) We are to care for those who cannot care for themselves. We have a God-given duty to provide for our family members, community members, and fellow citizens who (for whatever reason) are dependent on our help.
2) Our worth as humans does not depend on who we are, what we can do, how much we own, or any other property residing in ourselves (which may change at any moment). Our worth comes directly from the fact that we are created and loved by an unchanging God. We have worth because we are valuable to the One who made us!
This isn’t to say that the purpose of Christianity is to fix these social problems, but it’s easy to forget how central generosity and compassion are to the Christian message. “Money Cult” by Chris Lehmann is a good exploration of how American Christianity corrupts these truths.
It is so much beneath him to ask for help from others, he’d rather change the world so that he doesn’t have to ask — instead of expressing some humility.
I also have a lot of pride in myself, and I feel deeply for the author. However it looks to me that he’a banging on the wrong door, and instead of waiting for all the people in the world to change a lot, he could change himself a little.
Worth and productivity are synonyms in direction, wouldn't a better phrase not track either? It's difficult to answer anything other than naught without some mental gymnastics because the words themselves are implicit.
How about happiness? That is one human quality that is not directly tied to any of worth, value or productivity.
People keep mindlessly saying this but I have never seen evidence for it. Before money was ever invented the idea was already there that if you're healthy you can sustain yourself. All 'capitalism' did was saying "and most people nowadays perform abstract services in trade for an abstraction of a promise of a pinky swear saying "if you trade this pinky swear to me you'll get some food".
It's not 'economic systems that are fundamentally hostile to bodies that cannot produce consistently', it's a fundamental reality of life. Either you are capable of getting enough food for you and your family, either directly by farming, gathering or hunting, or you are not.
Yes, you need food. Guess what, we have plenty of food. But the system for allocating food says this guy doesn't get any because he's disabled.
I'm not saying it's an ought situation or even an is situation; it's that I disagree with his diagnosis of what causes it.
As another commenter has pointed out, the surest ally in this case is family. Not all families are tight, but families are largely the ones who will take care of the indigent in a compassionate, long-term way.
The productivity topic is interesting. From my view, it really is _people_ that require you to be useful. Different social or political systems can be better or worse about this, but all of them are sort of playing with the same base human behavior.
Try being the one who constantly needs help from your friend. That friend will leave eventually. And they'll leave in an emotional sense. They'll sort of think less of you, or be a bit disgusted.
Try getting a woman to be sexually attracted to you if you constantly need her help or support. Outside of a few interesting fetishists, you're out of luck.
You don't even need to imagine the workplace scenario -- you already know how that works.
But picture a pre-industrial, barter economy. How well would you do when you're not able to contribute? There is history of people caring for the old, infirm, and indigent ... but remember that when you go that far back you're talking about kin-groups. You're taking care of your grandfather, or your great uncle. Not some random guy you happened up.
I'm just not convinced. If there's not a market for your art, yes you will not be able to sell it and make a living. But, in other systems:
- Your art disagrees with the soviet government, so you are sent to a torture / labor camp to work until you die.
- The soviet government does not care about your art, but you're still in the soviet union and everyone is poor so no one can pay for your art anyhow.
- It's the 1600s Europe, and you're only sort-of in a capitalist society given modern definitions, but the Church doesn't like your writing so you've been locked up.
- Your are a subsistence farmer, and have absolutely no chance of creating art whatsoever given how busy and poor you are.
- You're a subsistence farmer, and somehow you manage to make art, but the only people you have access to are the ~2,000 people in your immediate vicinity, and none of them have any money to pay for your art to support you, and they are not willing to trade a chicken for a song.
vs.
- You have the most niche art you can imagine, (eg: Dark Souls analysis, or Harry Potter fanfiction where Snape gets pregnant and is constantly embarrassed by it) but due to (lousy, imperfect) platforms such as Patreon and the internet you can get enough patronage to support yourself, even if it's just barely.
I'm just not convinced that artists are doing worse now (in terms of per-capita artists) than other times in history, or under other systems.
I've worked 96-hour weeks for six months at a time. Even working nonstop, I can't save any money. I don't have enough to buy a house, and I'm exhausted. I've done so many different kinds of work, but no matter how much I work, the money just doesn't accumulate. It's not that I haven't tried.
Good jobs are only in big cities, and to live in a big city, you have to pay rent. If I pay rent, my salary doesn't accumulate. I can't even think about getting married.
I really gave it my all, but I don't know anymore. Why is my life like this? By the time I paid off my student loans, I was already in my mid-30s, and I still can't even think about marriage.
I just work and try hard, but the money doesn't add up. It feels like my life has gone wrong. I used to laugh at people who gambled or traded coins, but now I feel like a fool for working so diligently
At any rate, judging by the author's 4.3k subscribers, he is doing fine. Whether you react with a heart emoji or revulsion, broadcasting sob stories into the internet is productivity -- in the attention economy, something that only exists in rich, capitalist societies.
(I think about the "worst system, except for all the other systems" quote often)
"Capatalism" means something different in the USA than it does in say France. In the USA, any attempt to keep check of or reign in capatalism is seen as socialism, and governemnt overreach. In France it's seen as common sense, though they would still say they practice "capatalism". Similarly, taking care of people that can't take care of themselves is obvious in France, but seen as nearing socialism in the USA.
It's important to note, because when people go for things like "democratic socialism", they may not be against what they think they're against.
The author of this post apparently lives in Porto.
I guess this is the basis of my critique: the author seems to be writing as though capitalism is robbing him of some ideal that would otherwise exist: invoking the so-called "Protestant work ethic" to describe a system that took over the world and made us all worse off.
That doesn't feel right to me because I don't think previous economic systems did better at protecting the vulnerable. (But I'm not sure, that's why I framed my comment the way I did!)
Most replies to me are framed more as either "do what Europe does" (but the author lives in Europe!) or "we haven't gotten there yet" - which...sure! We shouldn't accept the status quo. But that's a different argument.
The benefits cliff is a real problem (and the UK seems intent on making it worse). But "ooo nasty capitalism doesn't force people to pay for art"... Come on. And disabled people have it better than at any time in history. The UK is bankrupting itself to pay for PiPs and other benefits (and pensions unfortunately).
Moreover, actions have consequences. Instead of traveling and having fun when you are able bodied, you can work more, save and invest your money for the future and safe-guarding against situations like these. Other people have chosen to do that. In the end of the day, all that outcry about capitalism is the classic "I made the wrong decisions and I want society to bail me out of them".
After that, tell me how someone who became disabled after an accident which they themselves did not cause, made the wrong decision?
Thirdly, tell me how someone who lived perfectly healthy just happend to have some blood clot shot into their brain suddenly, made the wrong decision?
For someone who has been born disabled, the conversation should be moved to the people who brought them to life and are responsible for their survival.
My family until my parents generation were dirt poor in one of those countries you would also call piss poor.
A common thinking pattern. To prove it's luck, though, your great-grandchildren will be poor again - that always happens - they say rags to rags in three generations.
"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel."
Which wrong decision did the parents of a disabled person make? Not getting prenatal genetic testing and an illegal abortion?
Sadly (arguably this is the greatest possible sadness) biology doesn't work that way. I think at our current rate of advancement we'll have practical immortality within the next 500 years, which is far too late for any of us alive right now, but it's not like a 90-year lifespan is an irreducible fact of reality. We've already found several genes that control certain aspects of aging and death. Interestingly, it seems to have evolved on purpose, and there are other animal species with indefinite lifespans.
Please explain exactly what you are suggesting or advocating for here.
e.g my grandmother had a brother who their brain stopped developing at a very young age (afaik 5), the parents ensured and my grandmother ensured that my uncle lived a full (but sadly difficult) life living and been taken care of by them and then my grandma after they passed.
My best friend married the love of his life. Had amazing kids and a nice job. Then he got cancer.
He had amazing insurance, a very supporting family, a job at a company who totally understood his situation. Everything was taken care of. The only thing left was hopefully getting better.
Which he did not. All that was left was pain. I literally watched him die. I heard his last breath. I saw the life leave his eyes.
That was it. His book of life will never have any more pages. It's done. The only thing left is to remember him.
Somebody will have to endure cruelty when someone makes bad decisions. The question is whether the cruelty will be received by the person making the bad decision or somebody else.
> It's rarely "you are making a bad decision right now so you should stop that before you deserve cruelty in the future".
So it's the economic system's fault that you weren't stopped before making a bad decision? It's the economic system's fault that schools teach gender theory instead of personal finance, economics and rational decision making?
It's convenient when someone labels themselves as a propaganda poisoned shithead so thoroughly.
Sartre didn't respect your kind and I don't either.
I don't agree with railing against capitalism either-- it's not clear to me that there's any other system I would do better in, given my disability-- but the idea of, "if you do everything right, nothing bad will happen to you" is basically a comforting lie people tell themselves to feel safe. I believe in the value of hard work, and I am trying my best to better my situation-- switching my entire career from humanities to IT-- but I still am not fully sure how I am going to be able to support myself, and I don't think that's my fault.
I say we should all give it a shot. Capitalism has had its time to prove its value and its report card has left too many wanting. I think now is a good as time as any to re-evaluate alternatives to capitalism and its overwhelming role within our societies.
When a machine breaks, the best engineers find out what's wrong and fix it, no matter how many political feelings it hurts and what theories are shattered along the way. Chernobyl is a great show, btw.
The irony of you using this in a negative sense when capitalism has profited mightily from exactly this dynamic is not lost on me, in that insurance companies are insanely profitable things. And that's without getting into what b3lvedere notes in the other comment about disability and the absolute, fundamental dependency capitalism has on socialized risk, e.g., limited liability as a corporate model, bankruptcy protection, even the dependence on national military and economic strength to create the conditions for private profit. Note that I'm not even dinging capitalism here. Not at all. It's just that capitalism wouldn't work without whole social risk networks to create the conditions for private profit.
People are born with disabilities, which doesn't always show it's face until it is too late.
There are people who are completely incapable of saving and investing, because for them the "future" does not have any meaning in it self.
What is the point of investing if money by it self does not have any value?
There are also people who are born who will never be able to work a "normal" 9-5 job.
To put everything on their shoulders is what is wrong with the system.
Capitalism bears a heavy burden for causing a lot of angst.
What's the point of society if not being a buffer for bad individual decisions? If I can't count on y'all when I'm down, why should I help y'all when I'm up?
People don't choose to be born blind, or with a deformed limb, or with a genetic blood disease.
What fucking choice were they ever given?
It's always somebody that got lucky that wasn't born with a disability that makes these statements.
Are you having trouble with reading comprehension? Jesus.
You're treating it as if it goes on forever, but in reality, the end of your life is going to suck no matter what you do, and the beginning is set by your parents, but you get to control the middle, from about 20 to 60 years old if you're doing averagely well.
These are often the comments of a young, healthy man full of ego and feeling invincible.
I hope your wisdom grows as your years do. Best of luck.