I think of myself the same way. While it’s true that I had some significant psychological issues as an undergrad, I was also really lazy.
On the other hand, my former flatmate in Scotland is from a rural farming village in Poland. He moved to England from Poland knowing zero English, grinded it out in some shitty job in Birmingham for about 10 years, became (almost) fluent in English during that time, and now works for a drilling company in Scotland while owning his own home.
Lucky. There are already not many ways to find happiness, satisfaction and purpose in life. If you take away anything you get from helping other people it’d be a huge loss.
I guess it has to be culture and upbringing. I’m not opposed to UBI as a floor for everyone. But then as far as who gets helped from that point, it would be good to start with people who are eager for the help and motivated to improve themselves.
My god that Cindy McCain own goal. It’s a nice reminder that most of these oligarch heir people are absolute fucking morons.
If your only interest in life is money and power over others it seems like having the ability to feel empathy would be a hindrance. It sure seems like psychopaths and sociopaths are living the high life, shitting all over people, and getting away scot-free. I guess it’s lucky if you’re a decent person and unlucky if you’re a POS who views other people as a means to an end to be used for your own benefit and discarded. I brought the subject up with a counselor yesterday telling him that since 2016 I’ve been trying to find a way to circumvent my conscience so I can fuck people over for profit, but I haven’t figured it out yet. Still looking into it, but my gut is telling me I’d be fucking miserable. That said, fucking over inhabitants of The Villages for profit sounds like something I could do and still look at myself in the mirror every day, possibly with some Ron Swanson-esque giggling thrown in every once in a while.
This is exactly why they have to be imprisoned when decent people are in charge. It is the only deterrent for a shameless, selfish person.
It’s like the people who think they’re great at monopoly but they just got to go first and bought up all the properties before anyone else had a chance to land on the damn things.
It can make you more than just miserable.
I’ve sold timeshares for a few years of my life. It made me so physically ill that I had to quit.
Saw thread title change. Realized this is where the (((((UP global elite))))) must post. Here for the gangbang.
Hold on, I need to order furniture.
In another thread someone brought up how a sense of belonging is a huge driver for literally every person’s actions and decisions. In this case, here in USA#1, for decades we’ve emphasized jobsjobsjobs so much that a person’s job becomes a fundamental part of their identity. They get a sense of belonging, of community, and of purpose from their job.
We look at a coal worker, for example, and see someone working in a dying industry who should accept retraining so they can feed their families and make a better life for themselves. The coal worker sees himself as a coal worker, it’s in their blood and bones, and these big city folks coming in to take away their LIFE and community and belonging can go pound sand. It’s why when we say “why do they vote against their self-interest?” we are wrong. They aren’t, because their self interest is, in fact, their sense of self.
It’s also why so much of the industrial midwest veered hard into racism and populism and to Trump as their jobs went away. they lost their sense of self, of community, of belonging that had been wrapped up in their job at the factory, and it left a void that was easily filled by bad things.
Until our high-minded “retraining” programs can fill those voids, they will never work as well as we think they should.
It’s just like how when all the mills and metal fabrication and furniture manufacturing left the northeast for the south the northeast basically went to shit. Oh wait, no it didn’t it transitioned into and in some cases created new industries based on new technology and healthcare. In other words, toughen up buttercup.
But it’s distributed over a much larger (and shittier) land area. Have you ever been to, like, Mansfield, Ohio?
No, but can it be any worse than say, Fitchburg, MA?
I dunno, but there is basically no industry there now and they have a Bible-themed wax museum featuring Tom Cruise as Jesus. So I’m gonna say yes?
Ha sounds like you got me with that one.
My argument is mostly about geography. You could easily commute to Boston from Fitchburg, right? Towns like Mansfield are usually an hour or more from the big cities. They were never sustainable being based entirely on manufacturing. Like Jimi Hendrix once said,
And so castles made of sand
Melt into the sweet Capitalist sea
Eventually.
Now they are dystopian film noir hellscapes comprised of crumbling factories, opioid zombies, and this:
It’s not actually that bad. They have a good coffee shop downtown called Relax, It’s Just Coffee and some of the old architecture is cool. The Shawshank / Air Force One prison tour is on the same road as Tom Cruise Jesus Wax (which is actually 6 tours spanning 4 hours). If you’re driving between Columbus and Cleveland it’s probably worth a stop for a glimpse of postmodern America.
To the greater point of how to bring these areas back into play, I dunno what the answer is. Manufacturing is not returning. I think it’s probably some combination of WAAWFH and high speed rail. We really don’t need yet another starry-eyed tech bro dreamer moving to San Jose.
Manufacturing is absolutely returning but it requires a tiny fraction of the employees it used to, and they tend to look almost nothing like old school factory workers.
