Saw this topic had been bumped and was hoping for news on the John Oliver Sanitation Plant. Because that is a thing that needs to happen. C'mon Danbury, let's see some follow-through.
Saw this topic had been bumped and was hoping for news on the John Oliver Sanitation Plant. Because that is a thing that needs to happen. C'mon Danbury, let's see some follow-through.
Never once have I ever accepted that we just allow homeless people to suffer in America. Cody's right, we do it on purpose too.
It's one of the greatest sins of this country.
I read a really good book recently - Utopia for realists, by Rutger Bregman (https://www.amazon.com/-/de/Utopia-Realists-Build-Ideal-World/dp/0316471917). In it he talks about poverty and universal basic income. He also cites alot of studies. Among them an experiment Utah did in the early 2000s - giving homeless people what they needed most. Housing. No questions asked, just give them a roof over the head. And all of a sudden the homeless crisis was solved in Utah - up until they ran into the housing market crash in 2008.
America is rich enough to just end poverty in the country. It just choses not to do that.
The single biggest thing holding back universal housing (and other common good ideas) is that it requires people to accept that Capitolism is a flawed concept from the 19th century that simply hasn't held up well. Like, once you are homeless the simple fact is that it becomes borderline impossible without exterior assistance to get back on your feet; you have no mailing address, no way to make yourself presentable, protect yourself from the elements, store your belongings, have a contact address... you're basically screwed. So of course giving people housing is a net benefit. It doesn't have to be a white picket fence 4 bedroom condo, but basic housing is a net good for society.
Good luck convincing third generation millionaires that though.
It's more that it requires people to accept giving people shit for free. There's a lot of people with a knee-jerk negative reaction toward people getting free shit, especially in a systematic way from the government.
It's more that it requires people to accept giving people shit for free. There's a lot of people with a knee-jerk negative reaction toward people getting free shit, especially in a systematic way from the government.
Again, because people have been brought up with a skewed view of Capitalism; the idea that the only reason you don't succeed is because you didn't work hard enough.
The thing is, a terrifying number of people don't see outgroups suffering as a problem, but rather a feature, and so whether we're talking SocDem style patches to minimize the impact of capitalism's flaws or alternative systems, they oppose it all.
We could turn capitalism into the game the wealthy treat it as, through taxation and social programs, but people like to know other people, "lesser" people, have less.
Those same people would be pursuing the same outcomes through soft power and invisible hierarchies if we had a system that didn't allow them to be overt.
Homeless people are treated especially shitty because hey, at least you're not a crazy homeless person! You're not quite at the bottom, you have people to look down on too. And that feels good for a lot more people than we like to admit. Even if people think of it to themselves in a marginally more positive way, like "I worked hard and kept myself off the street" a certain resentment is waiting to erupt if suddenly the schizophrenic guy who begs on the corner has a house too.
...which all means our best hope for helping the homeless is to probably to convince people they will personally be better off if we help the homeless, i.e. with the reduced crime rate statistics and reminding them that they won't be bothered by them in public and whatnot. Though as we've seen before, it's harder than you would think to make someone give up the comfort of hate and disdain for more tangible personal benefits.
It's more that it requires people to accept giving people shit for free. There's a lot of people with a knee-jerk negative reaction toward people getting free shit, especially in a systematic way from the government.
Again, because people have been brought up with a skewed view of Capitalism; the idea that the only reason you don't succeed is because you didn't work hard enough.
Nah. This goes well beyond capitalism. Shit, one of the main groundings of it in the US context you would usually see cited would be religious.
It's more that it requires people to accept giving people shit for free. There's a lot of people with a knee-jerk negative reaction toward people getting free shit, especially in a systematic way from the government.
Again, because people have been brought up with a skewed view of Capitalism; the idea that the only reason you don't succeed is because you didn't work hard enough.
The flip side of this is Boomers (and elder GenXers) having grown up with "socialists" being The Enemy. I was 12 when the Berlin Wall fell; my dad was almost 40. That's a lot of programming to undo and for many it's just not gonna happen.
Whatever the Danbury city council decides, it seems John has an open invitation to a Hat-Tricks game, where a man in a golden tuxedo will present him with a Nailed-It-audition-quality cake.
Wasn't that wholesome and delightful?
Are you refreshed and ready to give that Showdy one more go.. dee?
It's more that it requires people to accept giving people shit for free. There's a lot of people with a knee-jerk negative reaction toward people getting free shit, especially in a systematic way from the government.
Again, because people have been brought up with a skewed view of Capitalism; the idea that the only reason you don't succeed is because you didn't work hard enough.
Nah. This goes well beyond capitalism. Shit, one of the main groundings of it in the US context you would usually see cited would be religious.
This. It isn't just Capitalism--it's Puritanical Capitalism. Whether we acknolwdge it or not, our entire society is imbued with the idea that poverty and homelessness must be because of a personal failing of that person. This is a direct result of how imbued the "Puritan Work Ethic" and the idea that doing right things will result in material blessings is as well. We scoff at prosperity gospel preachers (and hell, almost all of the very conservative and even fundamentalist Christians I grew up around would loudly condemn such overt application of Purtian ideas), but our entire social view of poverty, homelessness, and social welfare is the exact same ideology, just less overtly stated. And I don't think a broad recognition of the flaws of Capitalism in society is quite enough--we also need to name and directly confront the vicously Puritanical way we think about poverty, homelessness, and social welfare as concepts first. As long as "but what if they don't really need/deserve [X]" is the prevalent social thought, we aren't going to get very far.
Even outside poverty as punishment, the wealthy have won the messaging war to the point where:
Any funding to assist the less fortunate is going to primarily come from taxes of the middle class and working poor
Because if we try to tax the wealthy they will either dodge it with accounting tricks, or somehow move and take away the jobs from the middle class and working poor.
Until we can get elected officials that aren’t beholden to the wealthy to a level where we can honestly push for wealth redistribution you won’t see massive popular support for increasing social safety net spending
The thing is, a terrifying number of people don't see outgroups suffering as a problem, but rather a feature
...
Even if people think of it to themselves in a marginally more positive way, like "I worked hard and kept myself off the street" a certain resentment is waiting to erupt if suddenly the schizophrenic guy who begs on the corner has a house too
I believe, for many, what may present as bitterness toward the uplifted would come from a genuine, and understandable, feeling of betrayal; of being conned and lied to for basically their whole lives.
Resentment is an externalization of negative feelings, but those feelings aren't necessarily rooted in entitlement, spite, or cruelty. Those that have built their idea of self worth around the ideal of financial achievement may have only done so because our society doesn't give us a lot of examples on how to see ourselves differently.
If you raise the floor far enough, those achievements are reduced to participation ribbons; perhaps not in their own minds, but, they will fear, certainly in the minds of those they had hoped to impress. That's an existential crisis by any measure, and one I can imagine both parties being eager to avoid directly discussing for a number of reasons; some shared between them, and some that I wouldn't entirely disagree with.
All that said: I am adamantly for universal housing.
It's more that it requires people to accept giving people shit for free. There's a lot of people with a knee-jerk negative reaction toward people getting free shit, especially in a systematic way from the government.
Again, because people have been brought up with a skewed view of Capitalism; the idea that the only reason you don't succeed is because you didn't work hard enough.
Nah. This goes well beyond capitalism. Shit, one of the main groundings of it in the US context you would usually see cited would be religious.
This. It isn't just Capitalism--it's Puritanical Capitalism. Whether we acknolwdge it or not, our entire society is imbued with the idea that poverty and homelessness must be because of a personal failing of that person. This is a direct result of how imbued the "Puritan Work Ethic" and the idea that doing right things will result in material blessings is as well. We scoff at prosperity gospel preachers (and hell, almost all of the very conservative and even fundamentalist Christians I grew up around would loudly condemn such overt application of Purtian ideas), but our entire social view of poverty, homelessness, and social welfare is the exact same ideology, just less overtly stated. And I don't think a broad recognition of the flaws of Capitalism in society is quite enough--we also need to name and directly confront the vicously Puritanical way we think about poverty, homelessness, and social welfare as concepts first. As long as "but what if they don't really need/deserve [X]" is the prevalent social thought, we aren't going to get very far.
The interesting thing is, Nixon came actually pretty close to implementing UBI, but didn't get it through the senate I believe. And all that "poverty is a character flaw" mainly came about after Nixon. Bregman lays this out in his book, I don't remember all the details, though.
It's more that it requires people to accept giving people shit for free. There's a lot of people with a knee-jerk negative reaction toward people getting free shit, especially in a systematic way from the government.
Again, because people have been brought up with a skewed view of Capitalism; the idea that the only reason you don't succeed is because you didn't work hard enough.
Nah. This goes well beyond capitalism. Shit, one of the main groundings of it in the US context you would usually see cited would be religious.
This. It isn't just Capitalism--it's Puritanical Capitalism. Whether we acknolwdge it or not, our entire society is imbued with the idea that poverty and homelessness must be because of a personal failing of that person. This is a direct result of how imbued the "Puritan Work Ethic" and the idea that doing right things will result in material blessings is as well. We scoff at prosperity gospel preachers (and hell, almost all of the very conservative and even fundamentalist Christians I grew up around would loudly condemn such overt application of Purtian ideas), but our entire social view of poverty, homelessness, and social welfare is the exact same ideology, just less overtly stated. And I don't think a broad recognition of the flaws of Capitalism in society is quite enough--we also need to name and directly confront the vicously Puritanical way we think about poverty, homelessness, and social welfare as concepts first. As long as "but what if they don't really need/deserve [X]" is the prevalent social thought, we aren't going to get very far.
The interesting thing is, Nixon came actually pretty close to implementing UBI, but didn't get it through the senate I believe. And all that "poverty is a character flaw" mainly came about after Nixon. Bregman lays this out in his book, I don't remember all the details, though.
Read an article (accuracy unknown) on it that said that one of his advisors talked him out of supporting it.
One man began to realize where all this was heading – to a future where money was considered a basic right. Martin Anderson was an advisor to the president and was vehemently opposed to the plan. A great admirer of the philosopher Ayn Rand, whose utopia revolved around the free market, the concept of a basic income ran counter to everything Anderson believed in: the smallest possible government and maximum individual responsibility.
Any Rand, the best argument against immigration ever. God she was such a horrible person.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
It's more that it requires people to accept giving people shit for free. There's a lot of people with a knee-jerk negative reaction toward people getting free shit, especially in a systematic way from the government.
Again, because people have been brought up with a skewed view of Capitalism; the idea that the only reason you don't succeed is because you didn't work hard enough.
Nah. This goes well beyond capitalism. Shit, one of the main groundings of it in the US context you would usually see cited would be religious.
This. It isn't just Capitalism--it's Puritanical Capitalism. Whether we acknolwdge it or not, our entire society is imbued with the idea that poverty and homelessness must be because of a personal failing of that person. This is a direct result of how imbued the "Puritan Work Ethic" and the idea that doing right things will result in material blessings is as well. We scoff at prosperity gospel preachers (and hell, almost all of the very conservative and even fundamentalist Christians I grew up around would loudly condemn such overt application of Purtian ideas), but our entire social view of poverty, homelessness, and social welfare is the exact same ideology, just less overtly stated. And I don't think a broad recognition of the flaws of Capitalism in society is quite enough--we also need to name and directly confront the vicously Puritanical way we think about poverty, homelessness, and social welfare as concepts first. As long as "but what if they don't really need/deserve [X]" is the prevalent social thought, we aren't going to get very far.
The interesting thing is, Nixon came actually pretty close to implementing UBI, but didn't get it through the senate I believe. And all that "poverty is a character flaw" mainly came about after Nixon. Bregman lays this out in his book, I don't remember all the details, though.
Read an article (accuracy unknown) on it that said that one of his advisors talked him out of supporting it.
One man began to realize where all this was heading – to a future where money was considered a basic right. Martin Anderson was an advisor to the president and was vehemently opposed to the plan. A great admirer of the philosopher Ayn Rand, whose utopia revolved around the free market, the concept of a basic income ran counter to everything Anderson believed in: the smallest possible government and maximum individual responsibility.
Any Rand, the best argument against immigration ever. God she was such a horrible person.
That article is from the guy I was talking about (Rutger Bregman) and that quote is from the book as well.
I hope he's boring as fuck, and can do a 30 minute piece on the minutia of trade policy, or election politics in some random foreign country, and not have to cover the scandal of the week.
Cause that only happens if Trump is no longer President, and I'll take that trade.
Mychal Denzel Smith was on The Daily Show last night and holy shit. I think he may have broken my brain with how ridiculous he sounded.
Not verbatim, but basically:
"If Biden running on just winning, getting Trump out of office, and moving forward, then that's it. We're all doomed. There's not enough time to return to normal, and then move forward after that. We will be trapped in the delusion that we have done anything to address any problems. But if Trump wins, then there's going to immediately be a progressive revolution that will not only force Trump out of office before he can do anything, but that will also sweep in every progressive wet dream imaginable."
Mychal Denzel Smith was on The Daily Show last night and holy shit. I think he may have broken my brain with how ridiculous he sounded.
Not verbatim, but basically:
"If Biden running on just winning, getting Trump out of office, and moving forward, then that's it. We're all doomed. There's not enough time to return to normal, and then move forward after that. We will be trapped in the delusion that we have done anything to address any problems. But if Trump wins, then there's going to immediately be a progressive revolution that will not only force Trump out of office before he can do anything, but that will also sweep in every progressive wet dream imaginable."
Seen a lot of this dumb stuff on twitter. There are a lot of dumb people that want Trump in office like that will get us a better country and it hurts my brain.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
If they haven’t risen up and overthrown the government by now, they won’t be able to do it after November. The government still has a monopoly of force in the military and police.
If they haven’t risen up and overthrown the government by now, they won’t be able to do it after November. The government still has a monopoly of force in the military and police.
It's also a huge piece of privilege. Like currently with this admin, we have kids in cages, we have 200k dead, we have a burgeoning genocide with women getting hysterectomies against their will.
It's already worst case.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
It’s up there with Russell Brand and his don’t vote because that lends legitimacy to whomever wins, even if you don’t like them.
So by not voting you help them win by removing opposition and somehow make them less legitimate even though their opponents also get less votes under this galaxy brain idea
Mychal Denzel Smith was on The Daily Show last night and holy shit. I think he may have broken my brain with how ridiculous he sounded.
Not verbatim, but basically:
"If Biden running on just winning, getting Trump out of office, and moving forward, then that's it. We're all doomed. There's not enough time to return to normal, and then move forward after that. We will be trapped in the delusion that we have done anything to address any problems. But if Trump wins, then there's going to immediately be a progressive revolution that will not only force Trump out of office before he can do anything, but that will also sweep in every progressive wet dream imaginable."
"There's going to immediately be a progressive revolution" just invokes echoes of Reg Shoe in Terry Pratchett's Night Watch - convinced that there are hordes of revolutionaries who are biding their time waiting for exactly the right moment before rising up.
If they haven’t risen up and overthrown the government by now, they won’t be able to do it after November. The government still has a monopoly of force in the military and police.
It's also a huge piece of privilege. Like currently with this admin, we have kids in cages, we have 200k dead, we have a burgeoning genocide with women getting hysterectomies against their will.
It's already worst case.
In Trump's America, it can ALWAYS get worse.
Jailing/disappearing of political opponents.
Escalations in concentration camps.
Rubber/pepper bullets become live bullets at protests.
Further entrenchment of the Trumps into government (stick one or two on the Supreme Court, and see how fucked the country gets)
There's so much breaking of norms and commission of crimes, but they can always do more.
Posts
Pretty certain they're going to do it.
https://patch.com/connecticut/danbury/john-oliver-wants-danbury-mayor-make-good-sewage-plant-joke
“You mean a toilet or the sewage treatment plant?”
“First one, then the other.”
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Add the possessive to imply he needs his own treatment plant
I do so adore when he/his team picks a stupid fight for a good cause.
I'd like to see wax Warren G Harding just suddenly appear in the background of a piece, sporting Russel Crowe's jockstrap.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
It's one of the greatest sins of this country.
That maxed out my rage quotient in the first five minutes and I had to stop watching it.
I read a really good book recently - Utopia for realists, by Rutger Bregman (https://www.amazon.com/-/de/Utopia-Realists-Build-Ideal-World/dp/0316471917). In it he talks about poverty and universal basic income. He also cites alot of studies. Among them an experiment Utah did in the early 2000s - giving homeless people what they needed most. Housing. No questions asked, just give them a roof over the head. And all of a sudden the homeless crisis was solved in Utah - up until they ran into the housing market crash in 2008.
America is rich enough to just end poverty in the country. It just choses not to do that.
And Finland did something similar.
https://www.pressenza.com/2020/07/finland-ends-homelessness-and-provides-shelter-for-all-in-need/
Good luck convincing third generation millionaires that though.
Again, because people have been brought up with a skewed view of Capitalism; the idea that the only reason you don't succeed is because you didn't work hard enough.
We could turn capitalism into the game the wealthy treat it as, through taxation and social programs, but people like to know other people, "lesser" people, have less.
Those same people would be pursuing the same outcomes through soft power and invisible hierarchies if we had a system that didn't allow them to be overt.
Homeless people are treated especially shitty because hey, at least you're not a crazy homeless person! You're not quite at the bottom, you have people to look down on too. And that feels good for a lot more people than we like to admit. Even if people think of it to themselves in a marginally more positive way, like "I worked hard and kept myself off the street" a certain resentment is waiting to erupt if suddenly the schizophrenic guy who begs on the corner has a house too.
...which all means our best hope for helping the homeless is to probably to convince people they will personally be better off if we help the homeless, i.e. with the reduced crime rate statistics and reminding them that they won't be bothered by them in public and whatnot. Though as we've seen before, it's harder than you would think to make someone give up the comfort of hate and disdain for more tangible personal benefits.
Nah. This goes well beyond capitalism. Shit, one of the main groundings of it in the US context you would usually see cited would be religious.
The flip side of this is Boomers (and elder GenXers) having grown up with "socialists" being The Enemy. I was 12 when the Berlin Wall fell; my dad was almost 40. That's a lot of programming to undo and for many it's just not gonna happen.
This popped up in my feed after getting my weekly dose of Cody, perhaps it will help:
Whatever the Danbury city council decides, it seems John has an open invitation to a Hat-Tricks game, where a man in a golden tuxedo will present him with a Nailed-It-audition-quality cake.
Wasn't that wholesome and delightful?
Are you refreshed and ready to give that Showdy one more go.. dee?
This. It isn't just Capitalism--it's Puritanical Capitalism. Whether we acknolwdge it or not, our entire society is imbued with the idea that poverty and homelessness must be because of a personal failing of that person. This is a direct result of how imbued the "Puritan Work Ethic" and the idea that doing right things will result in material blessings is as well. We scoff at prosperity gospel preachers (and hell, almost all of the very conservative and even fundamentalist Christians I grew up around would loudly condemn such overt application of Purtian ideas), but our entire social view of poverty, homelessness, and social welfare is the exact same ideology, just less overtly stated. And I don't think a broad recognition of the flaws of Capitalism in society is quite enough--we also need to name and directly confront the vicously Puritanical way we think about poverty, homelessness, and social welfare as concepts first. As long as "but what if they don't really need/deserve [X]" is the prevalent social thought, we aren't going to get very far.
wish list
Steam wishlist
Etsy wishlist
Any funding to assist the less fortunate is going to primarily come from taxes of the middle class and working poor
Because if we try to tax the wealthy they will either dodge it with accounting tricks, or somehow move and take away the jobs from the middle class and working poor.
Until we can get elected officials that aren’t beholden to the wealthy to a level where we can honestly push for wealth redistribution you won’t see massive popular support for increasing social safety net spending
MWO: Adamski
I believe, for many, what may present as bitterness toward the uplifted would come from a genuine, and understandable, feeling of betrayal; of being conned and lied to for basically their whole lives.
Resentment is an externalization of negative feelings, but those feelings aren't necessarily rooted in entitlement, spite, or cruelty. Those that have built their idea of self worth around the ideal of financial achievement may have only done so because our society doesn't give us a lot of examples on how to see ourselves differently.
If you raise the floor far enough, those achievements are reduced to participation ribbons; perhaps not in their own minds, but, they will fear, certainly in the minds of those they had hoped to impress. That's an existential crisis by any measure, and one I can imagine both parties being eager to avoid directly discussing for a number of reasons; some shared between them, and some that I wouldn't entirely disagree with.
All that said: I am adamantly for universal housing.
The interesting thing is, Nixon came actually pretty close to implementing UBI, but didn't get it through the senate I believe. And all that "poverty is a character flaw" mainly came about after Nixon. Bregman lays this out in his book, I don't remember all the details, though.
Read an article (accuracy unknown) on it that said that one of his advisors talked him out of supporting it.
Any Rand, the best argument against immigration ever. God she was such a horrible person.
That article is from the guy I was talking about (Rutger Bregman) and that quote is from the book as well.
https://www.boston.com/culture/entertainment/2020/09/06/danbury-mayor-agrees-to-name-sewage-plant-after-john-oliver-after-donation-on-one-condition
It should be manageable if they do a smallish outdoor ceremony with masks per CT law. Danbury is in pretty easy driving distance from New York.
LWT renewed through 2023.
Cause that only happens if Trump is no longer President, and I'll take that trade.
Not verbatim, but basically:
"If Biden running on just winning, getting Trump out of office, and moving forward, then that's it. We're all doomed. There's not enough time to return to normal, and then move forward after that. We will be trapped in the delusion that we have done anything to address any problems. But if Trump wins, then there's going to immediately be a progressive revolution that will not only force Trump out of office before he can do anything, but that will also sweep in every progressive wet dream imaginable."
Seen a lot of this dumb stuff on twitter. There are a lot of dumb people that want Trump in office like that will get us a better country and it hurts my brain.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Current progressives can't even win democratic primaries.
So some enormous hidden unactivated set of secret progressives are going to rise up and change society, but only if things get fashy enough.
Or maybe seeing fascists is supposed to scare all the centrists to the left, and then they'll be revolutionaries (instead of just...voting?)
Who knows, because it's all nonsense.
It's barely better than QAnon.
It's also a huge piece of privilege. Like currently with this admin, we have kids in cages, we have 200k dead, we have a burgeoning genocide with women getting hysterectomies against their will.
It's already worst case.
pleasepaypreacher.net
So by not voting you help them win by removing opposition and somehow make them less legitimate even though their opponents also get less votes under this galaxy brain idea
MWO: Adamski
Just take the hard boiled egg, Mychal.
In Trump's America, it can ALWAYS get worse.
Jailing/disappearing of political opponents.
Escalations in concentration camps.
Rubber/pepper bullets become live bullets at protests.
Further entrenchment of the Trumps into government (stick one or two on the Supreme Court, and see how fucked the country gets)
There's so much breaking of norms and commission of crimes, but they can always do more.
Side note. I miss Michael Clark Duncan.