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On December 23 2023 12:04 gobbledydook wrote:Show nested quote +On December 23 2023 11:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 23 2023 10:47 KwarK wrote:
We have a suburb that is suburbia hell. The layout is incredibly unfriendly to anything but cars. Big maze houses where to get to the plot that backs onto yours would be an hour long walk. No nearby churches, schools, shops etc., all at least a five minute drive to get out of the residential maze and onto one of the six lane uncrossable streets.
They don’t have so much homelessness because it’s completely unlivable if you’re homeless. Instead their homeless live in the hub city. Then they bitch about homelessness in the hub city as if they didn’t all work there and depend on it for their economic prosperity. It’s frustrating. This is one of the most important bits from this entire discussion, Mohdoo sort of eluded to it as well. We don't have a "homeless problem" we have (a whole lot of) societal problems of which homelessness is one way they manifest. There's plenty to unpack about it all, but people have to recognize that the threat of not being a "productive member of capitalist machine" meaning you're going to be homeless, desperate, and in danger of incarceration/death is an inextricable feature of capitalism. If you want to do more than shuffle the problems around localities, you have to dismantle and move beyond capitalism. Since we haven't invented Star Trek replicators yet, this might be the least bad system we've had so far. In the past, those that had such mental problems might have just disappeared and died of starvation.
"least bad" would definitely depend on the parameters and metrics, but nothing you said changes anything about what I said. It's just another iteration of a standard retort supporters of capitalism reflexively say when this stuff is pointed out in their presence.
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On December 23 2023 12:04 gobbledydook wrote:Show nested quote +On December 23 2023 11:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 23 2023 10:47 KwarK wrote:
We have a suburb that is suburbia hell. The layout is incredibly unfriendly to anything but cars. Big maze houses where to get to the plot that backs onto yours would be an hour long walk. No nearby churches, schools, shops etc., all at least a five minute drive to get out of the residential maze and onto one of the six lane uncrossable streets.
They don’t have so much homelessness because it’s completely unlivable if you’re homeless. Instead their homeless live in the hub city. Then they bitch about homelessness in the hub city as if they didn’t all work there and depend on it for their economic prosperity. It’s frustrating. This is one of the most important bits from this entire discussion, Mohdoo sort of eluded to it as well. We don't have a "homeless problem" we have (a whole lot of) societal problems of which homelessness is one way they manifest. There's plenty to unpack about it all, but people have to recognize that the threat of not being a "productive member of capitalist machine" meaning you're going to be homeless, desperate, and in danger of incarceration/death is an inextricable feature of capitalism. If you want to do more than shuffle the problems around localities, you have to dismantle and move beyond capitalism. Since we haven't invented Star Trek replicators yet, this might be the least bad system we've had so far. In the past, those that had such mental problems might have just disappeared and died of starvation.
In the past, vast majority of people worked their own or their family land and / or business and owned their own home. People also generally had more free time and less pressure to 'hustle.' Considering how much higher productivity is in the modern times, it's downright criminal that our working hours not only didn't go down, but actually increased compared to pre-industrialization days. To claim that we'd need Star Trek replicators to live in a less oppressive way is dumb as shit. And don't get me started on the scam that is the modern approach to home ownership.
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United States44243 Posts
On December 23 2023 12:45 Salazarz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 23 2023 12:04 gobbledydook wrote:On December 23 2023 11:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 23 2023 10:47 KwarK wrote:
We have a suburb that is suburbia hell. The layout is incredibly unfriendly to anything but cars. Big maze houses where to get to the plot that backs onto yours would be an hour long walk. No nearby churches, schools, shops etc., all at least a five minute drive to get out of the residential maze and onto one of the six lane uncrossable streets.
They don’t have so much homelessness because it’s completely unlivable if you’re homeless. Instead their homeless live in the hub city. Then they bitch about homelessness in the hub city as if they didn’t all work there and depend on it for their economic prosperity. It’s frustrating. This is one of the most important bits from this entire discussion, Mohdoo sort of eluded to it as well. We don't have a "homeless problem" we have (a whole lot of) societal problems of which homelessness is one way they manifest. There's plenty to unpack about it all, but people have to recognize that the threat of not being a "productive member of capitalist machine" meaning you're going to be homeless, desperate, and in danger of incarceration/death is an inextricable feature of capitalism. If you want to do more than shuffle the problems around localities, you have to dismantle and move beyond capitalism. Since we haven't invented Star Trek replicators yet, this might be the least bad system we've had so far. In the past, those that had such mental problems might have just disappeared and died of starvation. In the past, vast majority of people worked their own or their family land and / or business and owned their own home. People also generally had more free time and less pressure to 'hustle.' Considering how much higher productivity is in the modern times, it's downright criminal that our working hours not only didn't go down, but actually increased compared to pre-industrialization days. To claim that we'd need Star Trek replicators to live in a less oppressive way is dumb as shit. And don't get me started on the scam that is the modern approach to home ownership.
We’re not working more hours than preindustrial times, that’s a myth based on the assumption that household labour isn’t work.
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On December 23 2023 12:50 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On December 23 2023 12:45 Salazarz wrote:On December 23 2023 12:04 gobbledydook wrote:On December 23 2023 11:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 23 2023 10:47 KwarK wrote:
We have a suburb that is suburbia hell. The layout is incredibly unfriendly to anything but cars. Big maze houses where to get to the plot that backs onto yours would be an hour long walk. No nearby churches, schools, shops etc., all at least a five minute drive to get out of the residential maze and onto one of the six lane uncrossable streets.
They don’t have so much homelessness because it’s completely unlivable if you’re homeless. Instead their homeless live in the hub city. Then they bitch about homelessness in the hub city as if they didn’t all work there and depend on it for their economic prosperity. It’s frustrating. This is one of the most important bits from this entire discussion, Mohdoo sort of eluded to it as well. We don't have a "homeless problem" we have (a whole lot of) societal problems of which homelessness is one way they manifest. There's plenty to unpack about it all, but people have to recognize that the threat of not being a "productive member of capitalist machine" meaning you're going to be homeless, desperate, and in danger of incarceration/death is an inextricable feature of capitalism. If you want to do more than shuffle the problems around localities, you have to dismantle and move beyond capitalism. Since we haven't invented Star Trek replicators yet, this might be the least bad system we've had so far. In the past, those that had such mental problems might have just disappeared and died of starvation. In the past, vast majority of people worked their own or their family land and / or business and owned their own home. People also generally had more free time and less pressure to 'hustle.' Considering how much higher productivity is in the modern times, it's downright criminal that our working hours not only didn't go down, but actually increased compared to pre-industrialization days. To claim that we'd need Star Trek replicators to live in a less oppressive way is dumb as shit. And don't get me started on the scam that is the modern approach to home ownership. We’re not working more hours than preindustrial times, that’s a myth based on the assumption that household labour isn’t work.
Without getting into the semantics of "work", the point is that the time/energy/productivity we obtained through advancing technology and such wasn't returned to the people it was advertised to help. It was (almost entirely, but not exclusively) captured by capitalists to extort more profits and leave people in various gradations of a perpetual state of plaintive but necessary suffering.
This is veiled by vacuous consumerism, ostensible democracy, and illusions of choice in both.
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I think ultimately the economic problem boils down to this:
In terms of IQ, there are about one fifth of the population with an IQ below 80. Unfortunately that is an intellectual disability where they would have difficulty doing modern work requiring thinking. In the past, labourers were always wanted and it didn't matter that you were dumb as a brick, but nowadays even labourers need some specialist skills.
What we do with this one fifth of the population that is unfortunately just not productive enough in the modern world for anyone to hire for a living wage is the real problem. And as society continues to evolve, lower skill jobs will continue to disappear and the ratio of unemployable people will continue increasing.
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On December 23 2023 16:25 gobbledydook wrote:
I think ultimately the economic problem boils down to this:
In terms of IQ, there are about one fifth of the population with an IQ below 80. Unfortunately that is an intellectual disability where they would have difficulty doing modern work requiring thinking. In the past, labourers were always wanted and it didn't matter that you were dumb as a brick, but nowadays even labourers need some specialist skills.
What we do with this one fifth of the population that is unfortunately just not productive enough in the modern world for anyone to hire for a living wage is the real problem. And as society continues to evolve, lower skill jobs will continue to disappear and the ratio of unemployable people will continue increasing.
I don't think this is true. Why do you think 20% of the population has an IQ below 80? Isn't IQ approximately normal, with mean ~100 and standard deviation ~15? ~68% of a normal distribution is within +/- 1 SD, with the remaining 32% split between below (lower IQ, who you're referring to) and above (higher IQ). Therefore, about 16% would be below an IQ of 85, right?
An IQ of 80 would be ~1.3333 SD below the mean: (80-100)/15. I believe a Z-table would indicate that less than 10% of a normally distributed population would have an IQ of 80 or below, given those parameters. That would be a very signicant adjustment to your argument - millions and millions of Americans would have higher IQs (and, I suppose, be more capable) than you had originally stated.
And also, I don't know how functionally useless or unteachable someone with an IQ of 80 or 85 actually is. Please provide some sources for context, thanks!
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I believe it was stated somewhere that the US Army won't accept any recruits with an IQ of 80 because they are so dumb they would be counterproductive, and the argument was made that the army already basically accepts anyone with a pulse. I might have gotten the percentages wrong, it's around 10% not 20% - but still there is a large group of Americans who are not worth a living wage based on their ability. Just paying them unemployment money doesn't solve the problem. What are they to do with their lives? Sit around and do nothing and feel bad?
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IQ scales can have different values of SD. I guess 20% population falling below 80 is roughly accurate for Cattelle scale. Though being too dumb to serve with IQ below 80 doesn't fit Cattelle, more like Wechsler which has different distribution. Or maybe US army is using some more obscure scaling system..
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oh yeah dumb people dont deserve to get a living wage...
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On December 23 2023 22:07 Silvanel wrote:
IQ scales can have different values of SD. I guess 20% population falling below 80 is roughly accurate for Cattelle scale. Though being too dumb to serve with IQ below 80 doesn't fit Cattelle, more like Wechsler which has different distribution. Or maybe US army is using some more obscure scaling system..
In the United States, it's scaled to be a normal distribution. I assume that's the country we're referring to 
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On December 23 2023 21:57 gobbledydook wrote:
I believe it was stated somewhere that the US Army won't accept any recruits with an IQ of 80 because they are so dumb they would be counterproductive, and the argument was made that the army already basically accepts anyone with a pulse. I might have gotten the percentages wrong, it's around 10% not 20% - but still there is a large group of Americans who are not worth a living wage based on their ability. Just paying them unemployment money doesn't solve the problem. What are they to do with their lives? Sit around and do nothing and feel bad?
I don't know if I agree with you that serving in the military is absolutely the dumbest, simplest job possible, and that if you can't even join the army then there's nothing productive you can do with your life.
You don't need a college degree to be a soldier, but there is a standardized test called the ASVAB that interested individuals often need to pass. Perhaps there are other jobs available to people who don't meet those requirements?
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Regardless of the specific number of low IQ people, a measure I’m not sure helps explain much anyway, there’s no question that there are a significant number of people who will throughout their lives have trouble finding productive things to do that enable them to make a place for themselves. We absolutely have the resources to provide for those people and we should endeavor to do so for both practical and ethical reasons. What that looks like is up for debate, but it’s a helpful starting place.
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United States24793 Posts
There's a company that hires primarily people with significant disabilities (I won't try to describe it more specifically, but relevant to this discussion), provides them extra training and oversight while they learn, then has them do janitorial work or perhaps other jobs that are less desirable. They require a bit of patience from everyone but it gives them work to do and they get work done that I don't want to do so it seems like a good model.
edit: We even got some of them security clearances to work in a secure building haha
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On December 23 2023 22:50 farvacola wrote:
Regardless of the specific number of low IQ people, a measure I’m not sure helps explain much anyway, there’s no question that there are a significant number of people who will throughout their lives have trouble finding productive things to do that enable them to make a place for themselves. We absolutely have the resources to provide for those people and we should endeavor to do so for both practical and ethical reasons. What that looks like is up for debate, but it’s a helpful starting place.
I think that's what's important, yeah.
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On December 23 2023 22:53 micronesia wrote:
There's a company that hires primarily people with significant disabilities (I won't try to describe it more specifically, but relevant to this discussion), provides them extra training and oversight while they learn, then has them do janitorial work or perhaps other jobs that are less desirable. They require a bit of patience from everyone but it gives them work to do and they get work done that I don't want to do so it seems like a good model.
edit: We even got some of them security clearances to work in a secure building haha
Those people hiring disabled employees are saints honestly but the world doesn't have enough of them.
We do need a society wide approach to this, but relying on charity and goodwill is not going to cut it.
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On December 23 2023 12:50 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On December 23 2023 12:45 Salazarz wrote:On December 23 2023 12:04 gobbledydook wrote:On December 23 2023 11:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 23 2023 10:47 KwarK wrote:
We have a suburb that is suburbia hell. The layout is incredibly unfriendly to anything but cars. Big maze houses where to get to the plot that backs onto yours would be an hour long walk. No nearby churches, schools, shops etc., all at least a five minute drive to get out of the residential maze and onto one of the six lane uncrossable streets.
They don’t have so much homelessness because it’s completely unlivable if you’re homeless. Instead their homeless live in the hub city. Then they bitch about homelessness in the hub city as if they didn’t all work there and depend on it for their economic prosperity. It’s frustrating. This is one of the most important bits from this entire discussion, Mohdoo sort of eluded to it as well. We don't have a "homeless problem" we have (a whole lot of) societal problems of which homelessness is one way they manifest. There's plenty to unpack about it all, but people have to recognize that the threat of not being a "productive member of capitalist machine" meaning you're going to be homeless, desperate, and in danger of incarceration/death is an inextricable feature of capitalism. If you want to do more than shuffle the problems around localities, you have to dismantle and move beyond capitalism. Since we haven't invented Star Trek replicators yet, this might be the least bad system we've had so far. In the past, those that had such mental problems might have just disappeared and died of starvation. In the past, vast majority of people worked their own or their family land and / or business and owned their own home. People also generally had more free time and less pressure to 'hustle.' Considering how much higher productivity is in the modern times, it's downright criminal that our working hours not only didn't go down, but actually increased compared to pre-industrialization days. To claim that we'd need Star Trek replicators to live in a less oppressive way is dumb as shit. And don't get me started on the scam that is the modern approach to home ownership. We’re not working more hours than preindustrial times, that’s a myth based on the assumption that household labour isn’t work.
I'm happy to be corrected on this if you have any quality sources to back this statement up, but as far as I understand at least, there was usually plenty for a peasant to do but very few tasks that had any urgency to them whatsoever and so the general pace of life was far more relaxed. Not easy by any stretch of imagination, but just much slower and likely less stressful despite all the challenges and dangers.
On December 23 2023 16:25 gobbledydook wrote:
I think ultimately the economic problem boils down to this:
In terms of IQ, there are about one fifth of the population with an IQ below 80. Unfortunately that is an intellectual disability where they would have difficulty doing modern work requiring thinking. In the past, labourers were always wanted and it didn't matter that you were dumb as a brick, but nowadays even labourers need some specialist skills.
What we do with this one fifth of the population that is unfortunately just not productive enough in the modern world for anyone to hire for a living wage is the real problem. And as society continues to evolve, lower skill jobs will continue to disappear and the ratio of unemployable people will continue increasing.
There are plenty of jobs that don't require specialist skills even today, not to mention that having a low IQ doesn't necessarily mean that a person is 'too stupid' to learn said specialist skills (some might be, but rare crippling mental disabilities aside, pretty much anyone can be taught to do at least some sort of a 'useful' activity, even for severely handicapped people it's more of a question of matching them with the right activity than them being simply too dumb to do anything).
The issue isn't that people aren't productive enough, it's that we've created a culture that prioritizes productivity and consumption rather than fulfillment and meaning, and on top of that this culture of consumption and productivity is ridiculously stratified with a tiny fraction of the population controlling the fruits of said productivity.
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I think you can trace a whole host of present day economic issues back to the divergence of productivity and wages that has been going on since the 80's
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On December 23 2023 23:09 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On December 23 2023 22:50 farvacola wrote:
Regardless of the specific number of low IQ people, a measure I’m not sure helps explain much anyway, there’s no question that there are a significant number of people who will throughout their lives have trouble finding productive things to do that enable them to make a place for themselves. We absolutely have the resources to provide for those people and we should endeavor to do so for both practical and ethical reasons. What that looks like is up for debate, but it’s a helpful starting place. I think that's what's important, yeah.
As farv said: A lot of this follows from the simple, yet highly destructive premise that people who need help need to prove to society that they deserve it. Unless and until we can reorient ourselves away from that obsession, real solutions are going to continue to prove elusive.
The premise/obsession farv describes is inextricable from capitalism. Recognizing that is basically the next step after acknowledging the premise farv articulated.
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On December 24 2023 04:28 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On December 23 2023 23:09 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On December 23 2023 22:50 farvacola wrote:
Regardless of the specific number of low IQ people, a measure I’m not sure helps explain much anyway, there’s no question that there are a significant number of people who will throughout their lives have trouble finding productive things to do that enable them to make a place for themselves. We absolutely have the resources to provide for those people and we should endeavor to do so for both practical and ethical reasons. What that looks like is up for debate, but it’s a helpful starting place. I think that's what's important, yeah. As farv said: Show nested quote +A lot of this follows from the simple, yet highly destructive premise that people who need help need to prove to society that they deserve it. Unless and until we can reorient ourselves away from that obsession, real solutions are going to continue to prove elusive. The premise/obsession farv describes is inextricable from capitalism. Recognizing that is basically the next step after acknowledging the premise farv articulated.
Are empathy and compassion inherently at odds with all forms of capitalism?
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EPT
