LogFAQs > #960858150

Muscles posted...

Uhh, that's necessary for all forms of government, you can't just have all your people laying around doing nothing.

I wouldn't say necessary for "government" in particular....the right word is probably "communities". For most of human history effort was necessary for survival, so it didn't need to be policed. Natural selection and all. Modern humans have communities which make for pleasant living conditions and offer some support to those who can't work, but yes: it still needs to be understood that effort is expected of anyone who wants to live in a community and is able to help...otherwise it can't be maintained.

I vote Democratic 100% of the time, but they start to lose me when they imply that effort/skill should be more or less irrelevant in today's society. (They don't say that directly, but it's not a large leap) There are reasons that effort/skill can't be applied by some people, certainly, and we need to help them/address that: but effort is still the foundation of society.

People naturally deserve not to be abused and to be treated respectfully, but I would not say that everyone naturally deserves to be respected: there's an important difference there. In our modern society I believe we can certainly afford to provide people with a basic living standard, but we shouldn't go communist and pretend that we could have a society where everyone is rewarded the same regardless of skill/effort.

In the big picture we are in a decadent period where we are happy to largely live off the effort of past generations. That is not the fault of one class/tribe of people, as our politics would like to believe. It is going to take a large threat to our way of life to kick us out of this. Something much larger than COVID. Significant war, great depression, etc.