Tell me the value the willful unenployed would hold if America became communist.

[brainiac3397]

This is why a militarist society is best. Everyone will have some use to the glorious Army of the State.

[True Strasserist]

There is nothing wrong with making use of the welfare system to cover what can't be covered by your job. But when you refuse to lift a goddamn finger to contribute to society, you are literally worthless. Less than worthless, you are a goddamn drain. A dead end. A gangrenous entity upon our society. Something that must be cut off.

[brainiac3397]

What if cutting off costs more than leaving the unemployed alone?

[Absnt]

(07-22-2014 02:35 PM)vitralizer Wrote:  There is nothing wrong with making use of the welfare system to cover what can't be covered by your job. But when you refuse to lift a goddamn finger to contribute to society, you are literally worthless. Less than worthless, you are a goddamn drain. A dead end. A gangrenous entity upon our society. Something that must be cut off.

There's a limit to how long one can even collect unemployment, so it's not like people get unlimited support just for not having a job. Also there's rules about showing you're looking for a job, etc. Pre-recession the time you could collect unemployment as far as the federal government is concerned was pretty small, but they extended, and rightfully so, during the recession.

Also as I've already shown there are very few who intentionally exploit the unemployment system, and most of those who do do it because they grew up in and around poverty and it seems pretty normal, and it's really hard to get out of.

[brainiac3397]

In NJ, there is a maximum time period in lifetime you can get welfare(food stamps etc.)

I think it's six years total in a lifetime.

[True Strasserist]

(07-22-2014 03:28 PM)Absentinsomniac Wrote:  

(07-22-2014 02:35 PM)vitralizer Wrote:  There is nothing wrong with making use of the welfare system to cover what can't be covered by your job. But when you refuse to lift a goddamn finger to contribute to society, you are literally worthless. Less than worthless, you are a goddamn drain. A dead end. A gangrenous entity upon our society. Something that must be cut off.

There's a limit to how long one can even collect unemployment, so it's not like people get unlimited support just for not having a job. Also there's rules about showing you're looking for a job, etc. Pre-recession the time you could collect unemployment as far as the federal government is concerned was pretty small, but they extended, and rightfully so, during the recession.

Also as I've already shown there are very few who intentionally exploit the unemployment system, and most of those who do do it because they grew up in and around poverty and it seems pretty normal, and it's really hard to get out of.

Unemployment benefits imply having held a full time job. Go fuck your strawman.

[Absnt]

One can have had a job and lost it and be unable to obtain another m8
Hell, it's not uncommon for someone to have a full time job and still be broke as fuck

[brainiac3397]

Also known as full-time slavery.

[SwiftEscudo]

(07-22-2014 12:00 PM)Absentinsomniac Wrote:  It surprises me that so many on this site and DnE seem to think that this is not the case. Back in my days on /ss/, it was generally understood that school crushes creativity and drive out of students, and the outcome has always been a cookie cutter factory people who cannot think critically or follow their passions and pursue their own goals. That's always been the base of the anti-school / educational reform movement. We've always had a belief that our surroundings, e.g school and the current climate was bad for folks... So why here do we reject that notion? Why here do we say it's innate in humanity for people to be lazy, to give up, to need authority figures?

Nah, I think the facts here are on this side.

Some users have actually become (Or always were) 'Dark n Edgy', in an unironic sense.

Because of the big libertarian presence around both of these websites (Although it is greater in DnE), many of us now only think of freedom in economic terms. It seems that legitimate freedom no longer matters to some of us and anti-schooling has become a minor issue or one for minor reform.

A lot of us believe in reforming the school system and funnily enough, tend to forget the reasons schools are so awful in the first place. I think being anti-school does not have to be a political thing with an ideology cloaked around it and that goes for my views too. I mean, just remember that moronic 'male feminist' who simply said 'mras and libretarians go together' when I mentioned how the purpose of our website was to be a group for anti-schoolers. But it isn't like that at all. You don't have to be a libertarian, a marxist or an anarchist to be anti-school. People take their ideology way too seriously sometimes and everything must somehow tie into it. I once had a discussion with a comrade where he complained about hell's kitchen tying into capitalist oppression and being some shitty capitalist tv show that aims to make the proletariat look like a fool who gets yelled at by his hilarious boss. Except it was just a damn tv show, you could get political about it but come on.

We're not anti-school because we're pro or anti-capitalist. We're not anti-school because we support *insert ideology here*. We're anti-school because the current compulsory education system stifles creativity and harms critical thinking. It makes students feel like shit and pretends that your intelligence is directly connected to your exam results. That isn't political and it doesn't need to be. We can connect it to our own ideologies, but we shouldn't go too far as to see it as a purely ideological issue. We cannot just fix things by having a worker's revolution or handing over all education to the private sector. We have to fight against schools and that is something we should all be thinking about. Regardless of what ideology individuals subscribe to, we should be thinking about the reasons why we hate school and the solutions. And then, whether our solution really fixes the problem or it just makes it a little better, or it doesn't and it merely ties into your political views.

I can sit around all day figuring out a materialist analysis for the school system and indeed I have. And I believe it does provide a good explanation for why schools are the way they are, but at the end of the day it still doesn't matter. I'm not going to ignore my anti-school comrades because they have different political views, we have the same goal at the end of the day. We are united by our cries against the current schooling system and we cannot let our politics get in the way of that.

[True Strasserist]

(07-22-2014 05:14 PM)Absentinsomniac Wrote:  One can have had a job and lost it and be unable to obtain another m8
Hell, it's not uncommon for someone to have a full time job and still be broke as fuck

Then they can take up part time and collect even more money. The point is to work. That is life.

[Ky]

(07-23-2014 01:06 AM)vitralizer Wrote:  Then they can take up part time and collect even more money. The point is to work. That is life.

Then you have a shitty - and incredibly incomplete - definition of life.

You're glorifying labor, and the truth of that is you're playing right into the hands of "the bourgeoisie". They want you to think that our nation's poor are a drain - they promote their "virtue" of hard work to make people feel better about producing it (and ignore the fact that in many cases, these people really are being exploited), and have successfully managed to demonize the inherently neutral state of inaction.

Men in Marx's time didn't have to put in as many hours to support their lifestyles, but he created an ideology dedicated to supposedly freeing them from their shackles anyway. Now that we're nearly two hundred years past that, with no sign that communism can possibly succeed at all, we are deaf to the point he was trying to make. I don't know whether a dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary (though I suspect it isn't), but what I do know is that by promoting labor and demonizing those who don't (though more likely can't) work separates you from your movement.

Life is how we as individuals define our state of existence. By seeing life as work, you are demonstrating that you are (and choose to be) no more than a tool of another man's enterprise. If you look to the state of affairs of the poor and choose to abhor their lethargy rather than sympathizing with their plight, that's when you can be fairly certain you're not really a communist at all.

My advice? Change what it means to you, personally, to live.

[True Strasserist]

They are living the good life off the backs of the working and the middle class. I do not like it.

[Absnt]

Except that's not the case...

Also how can someone get a part time job if they can't get a job.

Also if you're going to be mad about taxes be mad about taxes that go towards defense instead of fucking welfare that people actually need.

[Ky]

(07-23-2014 06:39 AM)vitralizer Wrote:  They are living the good life off the backs of the working and the middle class. I do not like it.

You're totally right, if by "living the good life" you mean being victims of an unfair class divide, barely having enough of anything to scrape by, and, in many cases, being ostracized by their respective communities. You try being poor - I dare you to tell me that it is a good life.

Isn't the point of communism to address this issue instead of complaining about it like many members of the middle and upper class do?

[True Strasserist]

(07-23-2014 11:10 AM)DoA Wrote:  

(07-23-2014 06:39 AM)vitralizer Wrote:  They are living the good life off the backs of the working and the middle class. I do not like it.

You're totally right, if by "living the good life" you mean being victims of an unfair class divide, barely having enough of anything to scrape by, and, in many cases, being ostracized by their respective communities. You try being poor - I dare you to tell me that it is a good life.

Isn't the point of communism to address this issue instead of complaining about it like many members of the middle and upper class do?

I've already made the separation of the working poor and the verminous plague that is the uncaring, violent, savage underclass. Be it trailer park fucking hicks or ghetto you-know-whats, they are all equally worthless and they present not only a danger economically but also physically.

Perhaps the best way to address the issue is an ultimatum - be worthy members of society, or lose the gimmedats. All it would take to eradicate them is to stop giving to them. To stop cleaning up after them. To stop putting out their fires. I despise all of them for making use of the safety net as a hammock, weighing it all down and allowing those who need it to fall through as they sit in luxury. I hate it. I hate them. I hate them so goddamn much.

[SwiftEscudo]

(07-23-2014 01:02 PM)vitralizer Wrote:  

(07-23-2014 11:10 AM)DoA Wrote:  

(07-23-2014 06:39 AM)vitralizer Wrote:  They are living the good life off the backs of the working and the middle class. I do not like it.

You're totally right, if by "living the good life" you mean being victims of an unfair class divide, barely having enough of anything to scrape by, and, in many cases, being ostracized by their respective communities. You try being poor - I dare you to tell me that it is a good life.

Isn't the point of communism to address this issue instead of complaining about it like many members of the middle and upper class do?

I've already made the separation of the working poor and the verminous plague that is the uncaring, violent, savage underclass. Be it trailer park fucking hicks or ghetto you-know-whats, they are all equally worthless and they present not only a danger economically but also physically.

Perhaps the best way to address the issue is an ultimatum - be worthy members of society, or lose the gimmedats. All it would take to eradicate them is to stop giving to them. To stop cleaning up after them. To stop putting out their fires. I despise all of them for making use of the safety net as a hammock, weighing it all down and allowing those who need it to fall through as they sit in luxury. I hate it. I hate them. I hate them so goddamn much.

[School]

Though I do not agree with welfare through taxation that was a good post absent.

As for me, I prefer a system that maximizes freedom and makes accumulation of concentrated legitimized power difficult. I lean more toward the AnCap side feeling that the philosophy is about freedom and makes it difficult to accumulate power.

[Ky]

(07-23-2014 11:39 PM)School Wrote:  Though I do not agree with welfare through taxation that was a good post absent.

As for me, I prefer a system that maximizes freedom and makes accumulation of concentrated legitimized power difficult. I lean more toward the AnCap side feeling that the philosophy is about freedom and makes it difficult to accumulate power.

I completely agree, but I think that's another discussion entirely.

(07-23-2014 01:02 PM)vitralizer Wrote:  I've already made the separation of the working poor and the verminous plague that is the uncaring, violent, savage underclass. Be it trailer park fucking hicks or ghetto you-know-whats, they are all equally worthless and they present not only a danger economically but also physically.

Perhaps the best way to address the issue is an ultimatum - be worthy members of society, or lose the gimmedats. All it would take to eradicate them is to stop giving to them. To stop cleaning up after them. To stop putting out their fires. I despise all of them for making use of the safety net as a hammock, weighing it all down and allowing those who need it to fall through as they sit in luxury. I hate it. I hate them. I hate them so goddamn much.

People hate what they cannot understand.

There is no ultimatum to make; you're attempting to classify people into two groups that do not exist. It's not really a black or white situation; in truth, it's very difficult to tell whether someone is collecting welfare because they can't work or because they won't. But, having read your post, I don't think it's the welfare you're worried about.

You seem to have a hatred of the people our society deems "trash". What you fail to understand is that they were raised in a perpetual cycle of poverty. They don't use the safety net as a hammock, as you say, because they want to - they do so because they don't know any other way. You haven't walked in their shoes; they deserve sympathy, or at the very least, not scorn. Every human being is worth something.

Who knows; maybe your communist society will pop up somehow. But if that happens, you might just find they'll transition and shape up without need for an ultimatum. Why? Because they'll have found another way to live.

I would prefer instead that they adapt to our current system, of course; the only sides of it they've seen in detail are the side that gives stuff to them and the sides that forced them into their life conditions in the first place. Indeed, it's worth reminding all of us that there's a lot more to life than what we see. The reason they can't see it is because they don't want to - because people, much like you, have expressed hatred for them.

[True Strasserist]

I don't have a gun because of the bourgeoisie outside!

[Ky]

You're missing the point.

What I'm trying to say is, you're attempting to make a distinction between the working poor and the slothful underclass. I'm sorry to say that such a distinction does not exist; class divides have resulted in a rather ambiguous and motley assortment of people below the poverty line, and each one of them is suffering at the hands of those who choose to hate them. The fear that they will not work for you may be justifiable, but it is also inspired by avaricious elitists who are upset that these people do not work for them. This fear can be assuaged when you realize that they can be shown a better life path; it cannot, however, be presented from an angle of hatred.

[True Strasserist]

(07-24-2014 12:44 AM)DoA Wrote:  

(07-23-2014 11:39 PM)School Wrote:  Though I do not agree with welfare through taxation that was a good post absent.

As for me, I prefer a system that maximizes freedom and makes accumulation of concentrated legitimized power difficult. I lean more toward the AnCap side feeling that the philosophy is about freedom and makes it difficult to accumulate power.

I completely agree, but I think that's another discussion entirely.

(07-23-2014 01:02 PM)vitralizer Wrote:  I've already made the separation of the working poor and the verminous plague that is the uncaring, violent, savage underclass. Be it trailer park fucking hicks or ghetto you-know-whats, they are all equally worthless and they present not only a danger economically but also physically.

Perhaps the best way to address the issue is an ultimatum - be worthy members of society, or lose the gimmedats. All it would take to eradicate them is to stop giving to them. To stop cleaning up after them. To stop putting out their fires. I despise all of them for making use of the safety net as a hammock, weighing it all down and allowing those who need it to fall through as they sit in luxury. I hate it. I hate them. I hate them so goddamn much.

People hate what they cannot understand.

There is no ultimatum to make; you're attempting to classify people into two groups that do not exist. It's not really a black or white situation; in truth, it's very difficult to tell whether someone is collecting welfare because they can't work or because they won't. But, having read your post, I don't think it's the welfare you're worried about.

You seem to have a hatred of the people our society deems "trash". What you fail to understand is that they were raised in a perpetual cycle of poverty. They don't use the safety net as a hammock, as you say, because they want to - they do so because they don't know any other way. You haven't walked in their shoes; they deserve sympathy, or at the very least, not scorn. Every human being is worth something.

Who knows; maybe your communist society will pop up somehow. But if that happens, you might just find they'll transition and shape up without need for an ultimatum. Why? Because they'll have found another way to live.

I would prefer instead that they adapt to our current system, of course; the only sides of it they've seen in detail are the side that gives stuff to them and the sides that forced them into their life conditions in the first place. Indeed, it's worth reminding all of us that there's a lot more to life than what we see. The reason they can't see it is because they don't want to - because people, much like you, have expressed hatred for them.

I can look past their trashiness if they are actively working. You cannot help what environment you come from. But when they are leeching off my taxes, our taxes, with nothing to show, and living the petit bourgeoisie life while behaving as violent wretches, I cannot tolerate that.

Don't you start with that. I have family in West Virginia, and let me tell you, they don't like to use welfare. They do not glorify it. And they seek work in any form. They find it shameful, and rightfully so. And I'll bet you the majority of section 8 homes in Detroit are better than his dilapidated shit shack. Yet he tries. I remember him calling in to celebrate getting a job at the local Wal-Mart. That is exactly the type of person needed for the revolution. One who takes pride in work. One who wants to work. One who is civil even in squalor.

[Ky]

Maybe you can't tolerate that, but there's more than one way to respond to it. You are condoning retribution, whereas I am advocating mercy.

I'm glad your family has this level of pride, work ethic, and civility; it's precisely what is needed to progress society forward, whether for capitalism or for communism. You, your family, and many others have the capacity to lead by example, but it seems you want to make an example of people instead. Don't fall for that trap - it is elitism, and it makes you no different from the bourgeoisie except in terms of overall wealth. Instead, show the rightness of your virtues in such a way that inspires others to have them as well. Before a proletarian revolution of violence is possible, there must be a positive revolution of thought.

[True Strasserist]

(07-24-2014 01:33 AM)DoA Wrote:  Maybe you can't tolerate that, but there's more than one way to respond to it. You are condoning retribution, whereas I am advocating mercy.

I'm glad your family has this level of pride, work ethic, and civility; it's precisely what is needed to progress society forward, whether for capitalism or for communism. You, your family, and many others have the capacity to lead by example, but it seems you want to make an example of people instead. Don't fall for that trap - it is elitism, and it makes you no different from the bourgeoisie except in terms of overall wealth. Instead, show the rightness of your virtues in such a way that inspires others to have them as well. Before a proletarian revolution of violence is possible, there must be a positive revolution of thought.

I advocate mercy for those who are willing to work but cannot. And for giving those who are not willing but are able to just one last chance.

[Ky]

Well, that's a start. Just remember that some of these people weren't aware they had a chance in the first place.