Memes

Which was the point of civilization. To isolate us from that hell.

I would say most of them are working harder than the people above them.

I mean it does make sense if you keep in mind that we traded having to hunt and forage for a system that let's you buy these things indirectly with currency.

You just need to leave out the whole thing of empathy and morality and reduce the whole system to a exchange of goods and services for money.

There is a difference between believing everyone owes a debt to the society and civilization you participate in to support those who cannot support themselves, and not deserving to live if you didn't fit into the rigid hierarchy structures we've built for work. But often these sentiments get mixed together.

It’s more like you haven’t earned the right for other people to do the work of keeping you alive.

Human life requires work to sustain. Someone has to do that work. The most fair system is one in which that responsibility falls on the person benefitting from it.

ie, to be alive, you must contribute work. Because your life requires work to maintain.

"Earning a living" doesn't state that people should die if the choose to be a grifter or a thief or some other dishonest person that takes from others and doesn't contribute to society. It just means those people didn't earn their living.

In a functional society everyone should contribute to better the society. "Earning a living" is a statement of pride in contributing to society value equal to or greater than the value you get from it. If someone is making a living through dishonest means so isn't earning a living, it can be something they should be ashamed of

Note that socialist societies have similar expressions like "from each according to their ability to each according to their need". The intent is the same, encourage people to contribute to society. What if I don't contribute according to my ability and just want to take what I need? Does that statement imply I'll be sent to a gulag if I don't contribute according to my ability? OMG socialism says I don't deserve to live!!!

This is where the idea of "personal responsibility" is useful for liberals. Flatly admitting that they want a desperate underclass is too mask off for them to feel like good people so they invent a way of blaming individual victims rather than the economic system.

The poor has a theoretical opportunity to pull themselves up by the bootstraps so when they don't do that it's really their own fault. Of course that theoretical opportunity doesn't translate into actual opportunity for most people but that's fine, as there's enough window dressing of meritocracy to make the opportunity look real if you are careful not to go into too much detail.

This is also the reason why liberals hate discussing real-world examples. Their logic only works in abstract thought experiments where they get to control the variables. Saying that everyone has the opportunity to succeed is a lot easier than saying that Bob, who has a set of very concrete and undeniable material conditions, has the opportunity succeed.

If able, you should provide enough to society to make it worth meeting your basic needs. They give you food, water, shelter, you give them back enough to compensate them for that effort.

At its root, this is what cash should be, a measure of what society owes you. You make other people's lives X much better, and they do the same for you.

We should really be trying harder to get cash to meet this goal. A person making 60k a year for 45 years is $2.7 million dollars. You can buy a person's lifetime of effort for $2.7 million.

Bill Gates is worth $131 billion. That's the lifetime effort of 48,500 people. He hasn't improved our lives that much. Something is clearly out of sorts. There's nothing one person can do to deserve the lifetime effort of a thousand people.

It's also true in the woods, if you don't do anything useful you'll just die.