nnfy

I understand that there are legitimate reasons that someone may need assistance.

My problem is with this nonsensical mentality that, without any actual statistics, people automatically assume that anyone struggling is a victim of circumstance. Or worse, that they have somehow been abused or stolen from by those with money. Which, by the way, I believe I'd a relatively new outlook in the history of the U.S.

The danger is that it encourages people to live haphazardly and in the long run is not sustainable. And, quite frankly, I have no desire to pay for people who lived selfishly in their own time.

> but when you're in a situation with no support things feel a lot different.

The fact that things feel different in hard times does not change whether objectively they are right or wrong.

Are you sure that the problem doesn't actually exist in Europe and Canada? Are you sure it isn't offset by a culture where the young are expected to care more for their elders?

>Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning

And so again we are expected to pay for the mistakes of others. What incentive is there to save if you know you have a social net to save you anyway?

Yes, I understand, it is a terrifying way to live, I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but if we deincentivize personal responsibility, what stops this from becoming a larger problem? How can this be sustainable?

Edit: please do not mistake my attempt at objectivity for callousness. One must divorce personal feelings of pity and empathy for individuals when discussing matters which affect hundreds of millions of people. There comes a point where there are more people requiring assistance than we are capable of supporting, and part of the solution is to discourage recklessness.

How long until Facebook literally asks for my soul?

Awesome, but to me this stuff is also terrifying, and I can't quite place why.

Something about dissecting intelligence, and the potential that our own minds process things similarly. Creepy how our reality is distilled into these uncanny valley type matrices.

Also, I suspect it says something that these images look like what people report seeing on psychedelic trips...

So leave Cali.

What is with this entitlement to live anywhere we want for any price we want?

Weird how you haven't considered population density, or housing safety regulations, or the state of the economy, or the average productivity of immigrants looking for a better life at the turn of the century compared to the homeless in modern cities...

Almost as if comparing NYC 100 years ago to modern Seattle is total nonsense.

Right, the solution is to give addicts more money to buy drugs. I suppose that'll solve the problem when they inevitably OD and we can stop wasting our money on them.

I'm not speaking from an ivory tower either, like many UBI supporters seem to do. I grew up with friends who were addicts. Ive known people who died of overdose. Plenty of kids are more than happy to throw away their lives smoking weed and shooting up, especially if they're getting their shit for free.

For the record, I support responsible drug use. But UBI is not the answer for the problems in our society, because it will hurt many if not most of the people it should protect.

Maybe some of us prefer not deincentivizing work and creating an even larger subpopulation which is entirely dependent on government and won't be employable for generations?

We live in a reality where resources still require effort and capital to extract from the environment. A society can only support so many through welfare before it collapses.

The subject is a little more nuanced than watching people die out of some kind of jealousy.

But you're ignoring the fact that bitcoin is about more than simply moving money. There is value in security and decentralization.

Further, GDP ignores consumption, it is gross product, not net product. Further indication to me that comparing bitcoin to power consumption of a small country is inappropriate. Apples to oranges.

Edit: after reading a couple articles on wikipedia, I'm confused. Gross implies product before subtraction of consumption (I.E. revenue), while wikipedia claims that GDP factors in so called intermediate consumption, which would make it more like a net value (I.e. profit). Do we have any economists browsing? Genuinely curious.

Everyone is happy to sentationalize the amount of energy that the bitcoin network uses, but no one ever mentions how much energy use is acceptable.

Nor does anyone seem to attempt a thorough cost/benefit analysis. How much energy from financial infrastructure could bitcoin free up?

Edit: vague comparisons like these really bug me, because while they make problems seem large by comparing them to A WHOLE COUNTRY, they actually offer little in the way of information. Most of us know nothing about Ecuador's energy use in comparison to any other country or industry, except perhaps that it is relatively small. But I guess it gets you the clicks...