Comment by logicchains

2 days ago

>free universal healthcare, free public transport

There's no such thing as free things, there's just some people paying for other people's things, and surprise surprise some people don't want to use their hard earned money to pay for other people's transport and healthcare.

And yet too much zero sum thinking leads to a crabs in a bucket mentality were the greedy get less by being greedy instead of having an educated productive society around them.

  • > And yet too much zero sum thinking leads to a crabs in a bucket mentality were the greedy get less by being greedy instead of having an educated productive society around them.

    These are just your biases. Take Switzerland as an example - it doesn't have any of lefty fetishes OP mentioned ("cheap food, free universal healthcare, free public transport") yet it is highly educated, productive and leaves the door open for people who want to work hard and get ahead to do so.

    • Heh, we have cities bigger than Switzerland. Trying to use any particular small area without averaging out human behavior is silly because the model will fail.

  • A large portion (I think it's the majority, but would be happy to be wrong) of our fellow man is a net loss to society, with some smaller percentage being a significant drain.

    Giving more and more resources to those people does not make them magically more educated, productive, or congenial.

    So it's not a "crabs in a bucket" mentality in that the greedy (which I assume means the wealthy here, as they're the ones funding the public system in the US specifically and the western world for the most part) are trying to keep the lower classes beneath them, it's that they are not interested in wasting their resources to no meaningful end other than increased consumption of low quality or worse goods and services.

    • Correct, and I'm sure when you become the arbiter of who is or isn't worthy that you won't put those like you at the top.