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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35661 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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Nice rant and all, but I wish you waited until tomorrow with it, because I have no idea what your point is supposed to be.

And Jesus said:

"Do not give bread unto the poor, as life is a repeated game, and the poor will learn that optimal strategy is not to source their own bread"

Hilarious! Really stuck it to those hypocritical Christians. But it's been a while since I read the Bible, what was the actual quote from Jesus? "Do not give bread unto the poor, but do give them a handful of candy, as long as it doesn't cut into your strip-club budget. Oh, and don't forget to be extremely judgmental of people who disagree with you!"?

I'm not religious, I'm for the welfare state, I'm even for small random acts of kindness towards people on the margins of society, but I have no idea what your point is, and your worldview is bordering on parody for me.

Welfare states are a way for people who love systems to also love people.

I tend to think of it the other way around: welfare states are a way to have a system for loving people, for people who regard benevolence as the primary (or even sole) virtue.

Welfare states are a machine for creating warm fuzzies in the hearts of their supporters (that's the "welfare" bit) and dollars in the pockets of the PMC/other government-privileged groups being hired to do the makework (that's the "state" bit).

There's an outsourcing element to it, where all the work that actually requires any amount of love is done by burnt-out social workers. I can understand how someone cynical could believe that that is the entire point.

That's definitely part of it, but a lot of those social workers also favour a (generous) welfare state.

Well, their jobs depend on it, so that's hardly surprising.

I see where you're coming from, and it's definitely a failure mode of theirs, but life is often about picking the least bad option.

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