this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
401 points (89.9% liked)

Unpopular Opinion

6363 readers
570 users here now

Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!


How voting works:

Vote the opposite of the norm.


If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.



Guidelines:

Tag your post, if possible (not required)


  • If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
  • If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].


Rules:

1. NO POLITICS


Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.


2. Be civil.


Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...


Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.


5. No trolling.


This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.



Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

A society in which it's everyone for themselves, that refuses to care for one another, is no society at all. Then everyone acts shocked and horrified at someone who understandably snaps, like modern western culture doesn't run entirely on schadenfreude.

That was the crux of the idea of a social contract, which is long dead in the US. Now people line up to revel in the suffering of their fellow citizens with "well you were stupid to do xyz in life, so you deserve your suffering haha."

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Being oppressed isn't the same thing as being ignored. So if I simply refuse to help you, that doesn't mean you should feel free to take my stuff.

[–] AllonzeeLV 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That doesn't make sense.

If you make it clear you don't care about the basic needs of your fellow citizens, what reason do they have to care about your property rights beyond the threat of violence by you or the state?

Why should they be responsible for respecting your property rights when you decline any responsibility for the basic well-being of your fellow citizens and human beings?

It sounds like you want the benefit of having your property rights acknowledged and respected while disrespecting, ie ignoring, the basic human rights of those you expect it from. Why shouldn't they ignore your property claims in the same way?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think I see where you're coming from - "I respect your property rights, you respect my property rights" might sound equal but in practice what does a person with no property have to gain from such a rule? As the saying goes, "the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." My answer is twofold:

First, I consider respecting property rights a moral obligation. (You might find it strange that I think it's a more important moral obligation than helping people in need, but I do. I suppose that's why no one likes libertarians.) I wouldn't take from someone who had more than me unless I sincerely believed that he obtained it by unjustly exploiting me, not in the abstract sense of "the rich have rigged society in their favor" but rather in the concrete sense of "that guy stole my bike so I'm stealing it back." I imagine I would violate this principle if I was in desperate need (e.g. stealing a loaf of bread to feed my starving family) but I would feel pretty bad about it.

Second, I think everyone (including people who don't share my morality) is better off if we don't resort to violence. It's not just a personal matter of people stealing from me and my attempts to stop them via violence - individual acts of violence add up to create a violent society. I used to work with a guy from Brazil - he was trying to get residency in the USA because he felt like his upper-middle-class income was putting him in danger. In Brazil, people with money run the very real risk of being violently robbed or kidnapped. But people without money are also subject to more violence! Compare a slum in the USA with a Brazilian favela. So maybe if I'm rich and you're poor, you help yourself if you mug me but you're contributing to the creation of a society where no one except brutal organized criminals would be better off than they are in the USA right now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If only the rich had elected to share. You would never have felt any need to make your "contribution" to society and the entire problem would have been avoided.

The lesson here is that the rich need to make sure no one suffers.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think your logic is similar to the logic of someone who would say

If only you weren't a criminal (or looked like a criminal, or lived in a neighborhood with a lot of criminals), then you wouldn't have been brutalized by the police.

This sort of class warfare is not only unfair but also bad for the poor. I think people on here believe that this time they'll get communism right, but the historical pattern is that usually "peasant rebellions" are crushed and in the few cases where they aren't, they make things worse.

(IMO this belief has to do with how the American Revolution is taught in schools - too much focus on how it went well and not enough focus on how it inspired people in many other countries to have revolutions that didn't go well at all. I think the difference was that the the wealthy upper class led the American Revolution.)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Sharing? That's communism! You must be angling for revolution! Don't you know poor people die in revolutions??

Good grief what a ridiculous retort.

Believe it or not our current system (in western countries) is actually very close to what I suggested. Despite the fact that most of us are dirt poor compared to the ultra wealthy, we still have pretty much everything we need, and most of us don't feel any need to commit crimes.

There is a small segment that does commit crimes out of necessity, and that segment needs to be cared for by the wealthy as part of securing the society they live in. Like we're this close, they only have to do a tiny bit more and there would be no homelessness. They only have to do a tiny bit more and there would be no hunger. And instead they're allowing the desperate to be desperate, and thus mar our society with crime.