While I agree with the sentiment I also think that it's best for society if everyone contributes while realizing that some are able to contribute more than others. Essentially no freeloaders.
I dont belong on this planet. That's why I have to rent space until I mercifully pass away. Giving birth is child abuse and the most selfish act possible.
Deserving to live and surviving are not the same. In the natural condition if you don't gather or hunt, you have no food. You die. You do not deserve anything.
Even in society you are not entitled to others working for you. However, in a civilised society we should provide for those incapable to provide for themself due to ethics.
Hey, you! The zebra on the right! Get in my belly, I deserve to live!
Gruesome how we have social darwinists even here in comments
Thank you. I have been saying this for years (more than a decade now).
Feminism fought for the independence of women from abusive husbands/partners, by making them earn their own money, so they can be free. I would not say that the majority of the population feels particularly free today, because the economic situation strangles them. There is a new dependency created in stead of the old one: The dependency from the employer. Especially with at-will employment, a manager or higher-up can fire you at any moment, which can cause homelessness and despair. These are not good things that we want to have.
The logical consequence of fighting for freedom and equality is to fight for economic equality: People should be able to eat and sleep in peace, without having to worry about their circumstances tomorrow. "Equality" does not mean that everybody has the same amount, but that everybody has the chances they need to succeed in life.
We need a universal basic income, or any equivalent of it such as handouts in various forms.
Or, hear me out, we create a socialist government that make food, water and housing human rights and that works towards a communist world where everyone gets what they need and give what they can.
Our society (with US at the forefront) is built on contradictions. On one hand, capitalism says you don’t deserve anything, you have to earn it. On the other hand, consumerism says you deserve every new gadget, luxury, treat.
I believe both are false: everyone deserves a reasonable standard of living (UBI?), nobody inherently deserves more than that but it should be possible to earn it. And we should acknowledge that earning something is not a matter of moral superiority, but a combination of some effort and some luck.
Capitalism is sold by liberalism as a grand system where everyone is on equal footing as buyers and sellers of goods and services, including labor. Consumerism is pushed by capitalists to increase the purchase of commodities beyond what would naturally happen (no need for a new phone every year), a sign of capitalism's inefficiencies.
Earning more through labor isn't wrong, but the problem is that the system is built off of the theft of value created by workers, and parasitic capitalists sitting at the top siphoning off vast amounts of material wealth. Every sale of a commodity continues this vast siphon from the working classes to the capitalist class. UBI doesn't fix this, what would fix it is moving onto socialism, where public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, the working classes are in control, and production and distribution are aimed at satisfying needs, rather than private profits.
You don’t deserve to be alive though, and it applies to everyone, even animals, if you don’t do the bare minimum you’ll die hot, cold, thirsty or hungry.
Yet I am to believe that Elon Musk deserves to be alive by a factor of several million times more than the people who grow my food?
The anti-natalist folks and the pro-natalist folks are clearly in some kind of competition to produce the shittiest ideology imaginable.
Congrats for putting points on your side of the board.
Good thing most of us don’t live like animals or think like you: we live in a society.
Even in the US, at least some effort is made to not let the disabled who can’t care for themselves or financially support themselves die in the street. https://legalclarity.org/what-does-ward-of-the-state-mean-for-adults/
The appointment of a state or public guardian is a measure of last resort, as courts prefer to appoint a family member whenever possible. State wardship occurs when the incapacitated adult has no spouse, willing family members, or a previously designated agent to take on the responsibility.
Well, l don't earn a living since I don't feel pressurised. But I ought to do something worthwhile just to feel that I am alive !!
The main thing is to remember what is worthwhile is not necessarily something that is imposed by mass culture, tv or the Internet.
Earning a living implies that you're not using passive income to mooch off people. It's contrasted to land lords and nobility who were simply entitled to money.
I mean…ya…but this “quote” doesn’t appear to me to be talking about the wealthy…but rather addressing the notion that poor people and the unemployed have no value if they don’t have employment/can’t find better employment.
Could be wrong.
Word smiths decided that "earning a living" implies anything other than you work for you're money. And I 100% support caring for anything who cannot work. But i'm not desperate enough for "likes" that i'll read into something that isn't there
ITT: guys who probably consider themselves too smart for religion thinking in terms dictated by the church.
"Deserving" and "undeserving* are made up concepts disconnected from any concrete reality, just shards of Christianity preserved in the amber of American civic religion and exported throughout the capitalist-dominated world. If you talk about who "deserves" this or that, you might as well be talking about who's holy and who's a sinner. The truth is, we are just animals who banded together tens of thousands of years ago to help each other survive. Many anthropologists say that society began when we started taking care of those who could no longer contribute as much physically: the old, the sick, the injured. But hey, if you want to be less socially evolved than a bunch of cave-dwelling hunter gatherers, that's your choice. Just don't expect the rest of humanity to entertain your rotten ideas about useless eaters, and don't act surprised when you find yourself put out on the ice.
You know, when i originally read this, the way i interpreted it was that he was saying that if you need to earn money to live you don't deserve to live.
I much prefer the version that is an indictment of the phrase "earn a living" as implying you don't deserve to live if you aren't "working" in the modern sense of earning money at a modern job vs doing what's necessary to stay alive like all nature's critters.
It means by default you have to contribute to the society that you live in. And this is required in order for there to be a functional society to live in. It's not an arbitrary rule, just a logical requirement.
Not true in capitalism, capitalists don't contribute but instead serve as elaborate parasites plundering the wealth created by the working classes.
Memes
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