I think the problem here is that the guy who can now afford a non zero number of things is counterbalance by the person who is just outside of the threshold for receiving the $1000 stipend. The person who previously could afford very few things that is now able to afford even less. It averages everyone out which is good for those who have nothing it is a horrible slap in the face to people who are only slightly better off
The idea behind a UBI is that it’s given to everyone (Universal), not just the poorest. So this wouldn’t be a problem with a true UBI
EDIT: I notice in the article that it was only given to certain people. In that case it’s not really a UBI, but maybe I’m just getting pedantic about the Universal bit
“Universal” means for everyone, no threshold. If there is a threshold, that’s a subsidy, not a UBI.
To keep content the likes of “I earn my money, so fuck those who don’t”, some subsidies complete people’s income “up to” some amount, like up to $1000/month. Guess it’s a slap to the face of those working to earn $1050… and maybe they deserve it, for not negotiating a better pay.
I believe they’re referring to an undefined threshold of buying power. E.g. if I earn $3000 but my take home is $200 after taxes, rent, food, utilities, and student loan repayments, abusive price hikes on basic needs could reduce my take home below the point of sustainability, even factoring in an extra $1000 on top of that. Basically, if rent, food, and utilities go up by 50% but I’m only earning 33% more.
Might be an extreme example, but I think it’s certainly a consideration that needs to be made when putting together the legislation. There needs to be some form of price control, otherwise those UBI checks could basically just become a free gift from the government to exploitative corporations and landlords.
The abusive price hikes scenario, is what happens when subsidies are tied to a specific purpose and income threshold: the providers of that particular service can increase their prices by the subsidy amount for everyone, while only those qualifying get the actual subsidy, and everyone else gets swindled. (This has also been tried, and proven)
There needs to be some form of price control
The price control with an UBI, is the lack of a single provider who can blindly increase prices without getting undercut out of the market, meaning the increase would get spread over all services, particularly those someone earning $0/month would spend their money on, like rent, food, and utilities.
Basically, if rent, food, and utilities go up by 50% but I’m only earning 33% more.
They wouldn’t go up “by 50%” (or more precisely, the % is irrelevant), they’d go up, taken together, by less than the UBI amount, which you’d also be receiving. Otherwise, those earning $0/month wouldn’t be able to afford them, and since it means a direct increase to provider margins, anyone trying to rise them more, would get undercut out of business by someone else who’d be fine with a slightly lower margin increase.
That means, the basic services you worry about, would increase by at most the same UBI amount which you’d also be getting, leading to a net zero or barely positive effect.
Your $200 take home wouldn’t change, and only if you wanted more rent, food, utilities, or whatever an UBI-only person would buy, you’d find those $200 would get you less of those… but only of those, not of services an UBI-only person wouldn’t purchase.
A jet ski would still cost almost the same, only increased by the extra amount business owners could pay due to increased profit margins.
Overall, it would mean a huge influx of cash to the top 1% through “trickle up”, which they could spend on more expensive toys, but it would still mean a night-and-day difference to those below the UBI level, little difference to non-business owners earning barely a few times above it, and a slight margin increase to business owners.
I do want to believe all of that, but I am also not going to underestimate the tendency for de facto oligopolies like ISPs to continue colluding on prices, or landlords disproportionately raising rents to “keep out the (probably non-white) poors” who have been gifted greater economic mobility.
I’m just not keen on any policy which assumes that the market can be trusted to course correct itself in a way that is healthy and fair for consumers, because that is so often not the case. I would honestly prefer a system with no UBI, where people simply do not need to buy basic necessities at all. Shelter, food, and utilities should be fundamental rights that people shouldn’t need to pay for in the first place, and income would just allow people to improve the quality of those things should they desire.
Funny how capitalism seems to always stand in the way of doing anything objectively good. I guess the homeless will just have to hold on until we figure out how to do welfare in a capitalist economy.
Yeah, I’m definitely glad we don’t have UBI that’s proven to help a lot of people people because if we did, landlords and corporations would theoretically raise rent. Instead, landlords and corporations are constantly raising rent in excess of inflation and we also don’t have UBI.
Every time I see this it’s a small group within a larger capitalist society. So of course the results are beneficial to the recipients; it’s not really proving anything in that respect.
The problem as I see it is how to make it work as its own self-sustaining economic system.
That’s a worthwhile point. However the whole trick with capitalism is to have some counterbalances in it so it doesn’t become an absolute jungle. The SNAP program is a minor program within the scope of capitalism but it’s aimed at preventing the absolute worst of the worst outcomes.
So small anti-capitalist programs are actually an essential part of capitalism. Unless you want to have absolutely no floor and watch 5-10% of people literally starve.
But programs such as the one in the OP are supposed to be prototypes for a universal basic income. I’ve seen a number of these experiments crop up in the news, and it’s always just proving that the recipients thrived more. Which, ok, is good in and of itself.
But wasn’t it obvious? Was it ever even really the question for UBI? Or is the real question about whether and how it can scale up and become self-sustaining?
Well the outcome might seem obvious to you but there are definitely those that say “they’ll just waste it on drugs and booze” or “if they knew how to manage their money they wouldn’t be homeless.” I’m not saying these are good arguments but they’re common. And I think there’s a reasonable amount of doubt that even compassionate people might have.
And aside from that, even if you believe totally in people’s good intentions and desire to thrive, there are many questions about how much is enough, who thrives more or less, how long it takes to show results… Many things we should rightly study to inform any future efforts.
So you seem to be objecting to running such a trial because “duh of course” but I disagree that it’s that simple.
And yes beyond that there are of course issues with how to scale it up. Personally I don’t consider UBI to mean that 100% of the population gets income. As with the COVID stimulus checks, we should exempt the affluent.
That’s because they often focus on those that just needed a few grand to get off the street which isn’t the cause of most homelessness. We should be doing this for those that need it but a program like this won’t help the chronically unhoused who tend to be mentally ill and/or have addiction issues.
I think part of it is that these might not have an effect on perception of homeless people quantity.
The people who are helped by the $1k were likely able to show up for it and otherwise be stable enough. If see them on the street walking around you might not realize they are homeless.
When people complain about homeless, they usually are talking about ‘mentally ill homeless people’. These people probably can’t finish this program
Complete what program the money was provided with no strings attached. I also saw no selection criteria so I don’t know why you think this group was hand selected for maximum results. Any decent study would randomize the participants so I’m sure a statistically proportional number of mentally ill homeless also got the payments.
And as for the part about it not effecting the perception of homelessness, directly from the article:
The guaranteed income also dramatically reduced visible homelessness
Simply put, a lot of people hate socialism aka “I’m paying so you can get something for free”. I’m all for it.
My 73 year old father supports Trump (not one of the crazy people, just misguided) and hates Biden. He said one of the biggest things that Biden did that pissed him off was student loan forgiveness because my dad said he had to work 3 jobs in the early 70s to put himself through college (which he dropped out of and went into the electrical trade), so everyone else should have to struggle like he did, regardless of the fact that college cost him like $2,000 a semester and it costs like $12-15 grand now, assuming you’re not living on campus.
I hate that THAT is the argument against loan forgiveness. No one is making the actual argument - that this doesn’t fix the systemic issues that caused the debt in the first place and will actually make it worse for future generations.
Student loan reform is what we need. Loan forgiveness without reform will cause tuition prices to increase for future generations.
It’s millenials doing a “fuck you, gen z, I got mine” and we should be better than that.
It most certainly did not cost him $2000 per semester in the early 70s. It cost about $2000 for a full year at a private university. Around $500 if he went to a public school.
And that’s in 2007 money! $500 in 2007 converted to the early 70s is $90 to $100. Minimum wage was $1.60 per hour, so he would have to work 2 weeks at minimum wage to afford public school. 7 weeks for private school.
What a burden! He might have to give up part of his summer!
That’s such a sad argument. I heard a great counter to that line. Imagine we discovered a cure for cancer. This line of reasoning would say “well my mom suffered and died of cancer so why should others get a cure?”
What causes you to go to school? Generally a hope to fulfill your basic survival functions these days, like eating, safety, and temperature regulation. Are those needs choices?
And what causes having those needs? Being born. Was that one's own choice either?
I think this argument won't work well on those who came of age when a highschool degree would cut it, but it is logically rather sound based on present realities.
That is quite a selfish viewpoint. Perhaps reconsider what you mean. Are you really stating that all people should have the same fate as you regardless of their starting conditions?
No. But lots of people are bad financially and get themselves into too much debt without a way out and I don’t think I should be responsible for bailing them out.
A 17 year old kid is forced into taking on debt to attend college with, at the time they agree to it, no way of paying it off. It’s a gamble any which way you slice it. And they have no frame of reference to understand the decision they’re making.
The school isn’t on the hook to ensure they get gainful employment that would pay them enough to manage that debt. The loan servicer isn’t either. Only the kid is going to be held to anything, yet the shitty take is always, “They knew what they were signing up for, so fuck em. I want them to suffer for their bad decision.”
With all sincerity, I hope you encounter misfortune through no fault of your own that ruins your financial security for the next 20 years.
A 17 year old kid is forced into taking on debt to attend college
No they’re not! No is forced to go to college, and no is forced to go into debt to do it! Those are both choices they made! The premise of your whole argument is not true!
With all sincerity, I hope you encounter misfortune through no fault of your own that ruins your financial security for the next 20 years.
Unlikely, I plan ahead and don’t make stupid financial decisions.
This shit is bad for society, and by extension you. Loan services and schools suck up vast wealth that… goes into rich pockets and widens the income gap. Money that could go to purchasing goods and services, or supporting businesses of any size, or buying houses, or having kids, or paying taxes that could be used on useful things like decent roads (how taxes are used specifically is outside the scope of this discussion, just an example).
Your whole world could be better through loan forgiveness, just not specific to you. Just everything around you better. Just requires a little less “got mine”.
I love this argument. Absolutely no empathy for anyone who had different options and experiences, just straight up “I did it so anyone else can too.” You’re making the world a better place. /s
What’s your opinion on bailing out Mega Corporations who didn’t responsibly save their money? Or is it ok to bail out Mega Corps but not ok to bail out your mechanic?
it’s not my responsibility to bail them out of their problems.
Counter argument: Yes it is. As much as any responsibility exists at all, you have a responsibility to your fellow people.
“Well it’s not my responsibility” leads to a shittier world. And since you apparently have a degree and no debt, you can spare the energy to be better.
I’ll just assume your family is penniless, sent you to poorly funded K-12 schools, and kicked you out on your ass onto the street the day you turned 18 with no warning or support of any kind, and you still somehow got a degree without debt.
Otherwise, you’d be a raging hippocrite born on third base crowing like you hit a triple! Clearly though that can’t be the case.
I’m sorry your family did you like that though, that’s rough.
Then don’t call the police when your house gets robbed because you chose not to build the walls and doors out of nearly unbreakable titanium, build the windows out of nearly unbreakable 6 inch plexiglass, and install the best available security system in the world. I don’t want to be paying for your choices, and this is your problem now.
Don’t call the fire department when it burns down, either. Especially if you didn’t install a halon fire suppression system in every room and closet. Sorry for the loss of your house, neighbor, but your choices, your problem.
Quit driving on public roads. Getting around without using them is your problem and I don’t want to pay for it.
You’d better send your kids to private schools. It’s expensive, but hey, that’s your problem.
Fortify the hell out of your home. If we ever get invaded, I don’t want the military defending it. It would suck if it got attacked and destroyed, but that’s your problem; I’m not bailing you out.
In fact, you know what? You should just drop out of society, go buy your own island, and declare yourself sovereign. There, you will only ever have to deal with your own choices and problems. You’ll never have responsibility for anyone else’s, and no one will have responsibility for yours.
The rest of us will be over here enjoying something called civilization, where people join together for their mutual benefit and aid.
A choice typically made by 17 year old kids after having spent their entire life having it drummed into them that college is the correct step to take after school
Also 17 year old kids, the vast majority of which have never taken on significant debt and have no frame of reference for the scale of obligation they’re taking on.
It blows my mind that we look at an 17 year old and, as a government, we say, “Alcohol? Too young and immature. Handguns? Too young and immature. Tobacco products? Too young and immature. Voting? Too young and immature. Enlisting in the military or want to take on 5 or 6 figures of debt that will drive your major life decisions for the next few decades? Sign here.”
I guess you’re against COVID treatments too because coming in contact with other human beings is also a choice. Lung Cancer cure? No thanks, they chose to smoke those cigarettes so I would like them to suffer.
Does he have any grandchildren? Sometimes people feel this way only about “others” and have considerably different feelings about how “we” should be treated.
“Uplifting news” that once again hilights the absolutely infuriating conservative psychology of “I give absolutely zero fucks about this topic until and unless it affects me personally”.
I am glad the dude changed his ways, don’t get me wrong, but fuck me if it isn’t depressing to consider that this behavior pattern is absolute cancer, and really hard to work constructively with on a societal scale.
I agree, but I think it’s more than just not liking something. There’s an active component to it, like if through your hatred of mayo you were trying to ban its use on sandwiches and in sauces.
It’s hard for me to understand someone who would call the police on a kid mowing yards. You hear all these complaints from the older generation about kids these days not knowing the value of hard work or being too “soft” because they spend all their time in front of a screen. This is an example of a young person going out and offering useful manual labor to their neighbors in order to earn money for something they want. It’s exactly how kids learn the value of hard work. Who could have a problem with this? I’m glad the police were willing to help him out, but I feel like at least one of his neighbors needs a slap to the face.
Honestly, just racism. I know a group of people who were knocking on doors advertising a community event and the cops were called on the one black dude they had with them. He always has a big smile on him and doesn’t look threatening at all, so I find it hard to believe that it’s not just racism.
I doubt the neighbor that called said they were just mowing lawns. More likely along the lines of “suspicious black person has been walking around peoples houses” as they conveniently leave out that they are walking behind a lawn mower.
It’s hard not to be cynical these days. The article didn’t specify what neighborhood this took place in, but I’m sure this was a case of a kid who didn’t “look right” for the neighborhood.
People shoot black kids for ringing bells, calling the cops is actually pretty mild. They want to scare minorities away from their neighborhood, and this is the legal way to do it.
I can understand not wanting to pay a kid for lawn work, I’ve been broke before. Just say no thank you and go on with life.
That being said, we hire kids in our neighborhood all the time.
We have two girls (9 and 6, I think, never met them, grandma drives and “supervises”) who come pick up dog poop, and we’ve had a kid for a couple years who turned mowing yards in the summer into an LLC and he just hired his first employee to help out with client growth.
I know if he wasn’t a white blonde kid who looks halway decent (long hair, which just makes me jealous, but boomers would have a fit) then the Karen’s would call the cops.
Someone in the neighborhood called the cops about a black woman going through mailboxes. It was a postal worker, in uniform, in a clearly labeled mail truck. I just don’t get it.
Too much paranoia in the world. People are posting videos all the time on nextdoor from their ring cameras or whatever of completely innocent behavior as if it's some kind of thief trying to rob them and fuck their wife/husband. I'm sure it's the same on the facebooks too.
“Kids these days stay inside too much” kids go outside and they’re calling the cops. Gee wonder why the kids don’t go outside anymore.
You know, nothing summed it up quite like the whole Pokemon Go craze. It was wild, people of all ages were out like it was a festival every day. I’ve never seen main street so active before or since, and the parks too. That was like the best four weeks, perhaps a feeling I haven’t had since being a kid on summer vacation, it really felt like summer meant something again.
And oh my god the old folks were livid. At kids playing. In the park. There are people in the city park, there aren’t supposed to be people there, it’s supposed to be empty and dilapidated.
Man it’s wild to me how hard people hate on kids having areas to play. I live near an empty lot that used to be a pool and the city wanted to turn it into a skate park. There’s some old grump with a homemade sign slung over their fence with “WE DON’T WANT A SKATE PARK” scrawled on it like?? Come on, give the local kids a safe place to play that isn’t a parking lot. I’m for it and I don’t even have kids!
I’ve come to the conclusion that conservatives are just people whose sense of empathy is broken. Over and over I hear about conservatives who held bigoted beliefs and only changed their minds when confronted by someone they love becoming the target of other people’s identical bigoted beliefs. These people just can’t empathize enough to think “what if it was my child/spouse/friend?”
Yes, selfish and shortsighted. Far too often their selfishness manifests in behaviour that actually hurts them too. Even if they can’t be taught empathy, I’d settle for teaching them enlightened self interest.
Indeed, although I would say it’s a more broad lack of cognitive ability. Low empathy, low intelligence and low capacity for abstract and critical thought. All of these make them easy to manipulate.
Sadly, some of them have issues so severe that they will even reject their own children.
Luckily, this father was capable of letting the love of his child overcome.
Sometimes I think that someone should start some kind of religion to help manipulate them in a way that they love their children, neighbours and love peace.
Then I think, that Jesus dude already tried, but with mixed results.
Are the kites potentially a next level of efficiency for sail? Not in an overall sense, but as a supplement and in the sense that you can still design boats for maximum hauling.
Gotta wonder how much a kite would add in terms of lowering the fuel usage really though, doesn’t seem like it would make much of dent. Nor are the ships designed to take that weird force angle presumably
Also the kite in the photo would only be able to pull the ship as fast as the wind speed. The idea behind a proper sail is that you can go faster than the wind speed if it comes at you sideways.
This isn’t accurate. The kite is typically moving in the air, generating drag. This can easily surpass wind speed. You see the same effect in kiteboarding (both water and land varieties.)
Ships designs are good for a variety of strains - they’re built to get tossed around in storms after all.
Also about the sails comparison - I think the kites are retractable and redeployable, ending up with a variable, lower ship profile.
Water also has super high drag forces - it sounds efficient to counteract the constant water drag using constant air drag instead of constantly burning fuel.
Good to see that Lemmy has just as good reading comprehension as Reddit lol. Would love to see a click through rate for posts to see how many people just open straight to the comments without reading the linked article.
“What differentiates it from other wind solutions,” says Bernatets, “is that the wing is not just pulled by the wind and countered by the ship.” Instead, it flies in figure-of-eight loops, which multiply the pulling effect of the airflow to give what he calls “crazy power.”
“Plus, we fetch the wind 300 meters above the sea surface, where it’s 50% more powerful,” adds Bernatets. The combination “explains why the power is tremendous for a system that is very compact, simple on the bow of the ship, and can be retrofitted on any ship, not just new ships,” he says.
Honestly, Mark Cuban seems like kind of a cool guy, for a billionaire. I’m sure he’s done nasty shit, it’s basically inevitable that even the most morally and ethically conscious person would have to do something bad in order to become a billionaire; however he doesn’t come off as being sociopathically greedy like Musk or Bezos.
I can basically prove with scratch paper and a pen that any average American consumer is a slaver, environmental terrorist, and imperialist. We’ve all done or supported or ignored bad shit, and actually the worst shit ever.
He’s the one Shark who is almost a decent person. IIRC, he’s the one who ended the policy that people presenting on the show had to give up part of their company no matter if they had an accepted deal or not. He made the very good point that anyone halfway decent at business would be very hesitant to take that offer, and they were losing out on good possibilities because of it.
Still, fuck him. You can’t be a billionaire without doing shady shit somewhere.
I really dislike how much he espouses hustle culture. Like, it’s crazy to applaud children who are spending every free minute they have on a business idea as if that has no negative impacts on their childhood if they aren’t failing school. Or that he won’t buy in if the business owner has a day job because entrepreneurs should only be successful if they gamble all of their savings apparently.
Eh, he has set ways of thinking that his life experience tells him is “correct” and no need to question those findings. Kinda gross, but understandable to my mind.
And an often overlooked downside of all the tax loopholes is that asshole billionaires don’t pay tax, so they have a competitive advantage against someone like Mark Cuban.
Basically, with billionaires we are evolving them to become nastier with each generation.
It’s weird because why would billionaires even need to compete amongst eachother? You don’t even need to get close to a billion to exist in what amounts to a personal, post-scarcity paradise.
I NEED an impractical EV that corrodes from coughing on it from a guy who also posts Doge memes so they can use that money to put a car in space and buy a social media platform to crash it into the ground harder than any of their space projects.
I was just reading about a billionaire earlier and the wikipedia article literally takes a paragraph about him being sued by the attorney general for wrongdoing and tries to turn it into a feelgood story.
As a settlement to the lawsuit, he (graciously) agreed to donate millions of dollars to organizations (as long as he got to choose them).
Let us bow down to the greatest altruistic human to ever roam the earth! /s
I think one of the ways we can get this to happen more often is by celebrating these wins. That’s sorta a way to get good things to continue happening. It’s someone making the correct moral choice. Let’s support that while continuing to demonize the bullshit the other billionaires do.
I mean, I kind of like the fact that he’s flexing paying his taxes to other billionaires, signaling that he’s better than them for doing so. It would be kind of nice if every billionaire started flexing on one another like this and started trying to one up one another to showcase “whose the better person” sort of thing. Pipe dream, I know, but a girl CAN dream after all.
It’s a nice dream, but I prefer my dream of IRS agents blasting open a mansion door with C4 and arresting the billionaire who pays less tax than me. Oh and while civil asset forfeiture is a thing, they can do that too. Charge the mansion with a crime and turn it into affordable housing.
That's because you haven't extracted 95 times that first.
I guarantee you - even if you haven't paid a single penny in tax your entire life, by virtue of not being a billionaire, you have contributed significantly more to society than this leech ever has or will.
It's scary how good a job the billionaires have done in convincing you (and many many others) it's somehow the other way around.
Let’s imagine a village a few thousand years ago, at harvest time. There’s one guy who’s physically much bigger than the others, didn’t do any work for the crop, and stands there with a sword to steal 80% of everything everyone else has harvested.
Then a day later he holds a gathering where he gives back 10% of what he stole and people cheer him for being charitable, because in the other villages the people who steal the grain don’t give any back at all.
Crazy.
There’s practically no other issues on Earth than ones caused by greedy rich people. We have the resources and technology to end world hunger and do other such things, but they aren’t being done because there’s no immediate profit to be extracted from it. Even though on a global, socioeconomic level, it would have massive effects, which would actually translate to better markets and profits even for capitalists, but they just need to get immediate profit, the blind ignorant fucks.
I buy my meds from his online store that he set up solely to compete with the absurd pricing of pharmaceuticals in the us. Saving a good bit too. He also made millionaires of most of the employees from his first successful business before he was a billionaire. I hate billionaires and he has surely done some fucked up things, but Mark Cuban does seem to be cut from a different cloth. I definitely appreciate his pharmacy.
The thing is, there was only ever one good billionaire and he gave his money away to such a degree he was no longer a billionaire. While Mark Cuban has done good, surely even saved and improved many lives, he still has a billion more ways to do so. Plenty of good millionaires out in the world, there are no good billionaires.
The mere concept of a billion anything is so hard to comprehend that it serves repeating.
One million seconds is 12 days. One billion seconds is 32 years.
Actually the opposite. I love coming here and watching the anti-capitalist screech about “rich man bad poor man good”. I have no feelings against billionaires one way or the other.
I was simply pointing out the hypocrisy of calling billionaires bad guys, but giving millionaires a pass.
It’s not hypocrisy. A billionaire is orders of magnitudes richer than a millionaire. A millionaire doesn’t have nearly the same capacity to do overwhelming good as a billionaire does.
A millionaire who chooses not to use their money to help isn’t good but a billionaire who chooses not to use their money to help is decidedly evil.
Much like how you not giving half your sandwich to a homeless guy isn’t good but a restaurant that throws out perfectly good food at the end of the night directly next to a homeless shelter is decidedly evil.
I love how you decide what good and bad means. If I am in possession of, say, $500 million, I’m not a bad person if I don’t use it to help others. It is not an individuals responsibility to give away their money to “make society better”. That’s your government leaders job. Nor am I a bad person for eating my 12" hoagie while I walk past a homeless guy. It’s my sandwich. I paid for it.
Yep, I do decide what good and bad means. The fucking concept of taxes disagrees with everything you said so kindly fuck off back to your hole, corpo rat.
The California Catholic Conference opposed the law, arguing the state is “engaging in ideological colonization against states and citizens that do not want abortion.”
Who tf does the catholic church think they are talking about “ideological colonization”? That’s the whole point of religion. Catholics are masters of “ideological colonization”. They’re just bitter it’s not working for them anymore.
Anyone who reads my full comment will understand I’m pro-choice but I understand the need to preface comments like this. Otherwise I’m repeatedly downvoted after a sentence.
So:
I am pro-choice.
I get what you’re saying, but unfortunately if you’re looking at this through the catholic worldview/lense of thought, the doctrine they were raised to believe is the only right way to live, so it’s the same as someone saying to you “citizens who don’t want to murder can just… not murder people. Like, that’s not that hard. We don’t need laws against murdering people though”
Thanks for the preface, but the ending is exaggerated. Abortion does not equal murder. It causes no harm to society or others, unlike murder or guns. It would be more accurate to say it’s like gay marriage. If you don’t agree, don’t get gay married.
That’s his whole point though. To a lot of Christians, abortion literally is comparable to murder. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s just how they see it. That’s why the arguments up thread don’t work on them.
That sounds great and all, but the vast majority of anti-abortion Christians are pro murder. They hard core believe in the death penalty, and don’t care that innocent people have been murdered by the state. They would rather let children die of starvation rather than let even one person “take advantage” of the system. They have created programs to sterilize the poor and minorities, which is just abortion before the sex. They are hypocrites who only care about power and controlling others.
Growing up without the Catholic dogma and worldview thrust upon you from birth (and consequently playing a part of every action you ever make {unless you lose your faith}, and many thoughts you think) and trying to use the argument that abortion does NOT equal murder is like arguing with an alien. Because from a personal worldview lense, they absolutely do believe abortion = murder with every fiber of their being. It’s not enough to just say “no it’s not” or make really any argument that leads to that debate. It even affects the views of many ex-catholics who have religious trauma and have been through extensive therapy for it.
No, to you and I, abortion is not murder. But trying to argue that is equal to them arguing to people like us (I assume) that gay people are not just, existing and normal, and not making a conscious decision to be gay. They think it’s due to trauma and all gay people are mentally ill and can be cured. However there’s no curing necessary. But they’ll argue until they’re blue in the face that it is. It’s the same level of worldview solidification.
They were trying to explain the religious view. For those groups abortion is murder of an unborn child. It doesn’t matter that there’s no harm to the society - they see it as a harm to the child. Comparing it to murder was spot on, because that’s exactly how those people see it.
You say it causes no harm to society but they’ll argue it causes immense harm to God’s plan, or whatever. They can also point to the plummeting birth rates which are now almost below the level to maintain the American system. It’s a problem that is being debated amongst the highest members of the house and Congress. Of course the reason isn’t abortion and is much more complex and societal and due to uncertainty about the environment and wanting to raise children when the parents are a decade a way from buying a house on two full-time incomes now and how much worse it’s going to get for their hypothetical children.
My point is you have to see it through their worldview, and understand how they believe it affects them, now only see it through yours.
I think you’re zeroing in on an example when it was meant to be an overarching example.
But to continue with your argument: if the workers aren’t being born, the class war will get seriously real, and that’s the last thing those at the top of the wealth inequality pyramid want.
Some people must have crippling abortion addictions. The kind of people that are like “I love being pregnant” and then soon after “Stairs my beloved ❤️” repeated indefinitely.
“Ideological colonization” makes it sound like the law encourages California doctors to leave the state, commit what’s considered a crime in another state, but then be shielded from prosecution. According to the article, the law does not apply in such cases.
California just wants to protect their doctors from the crusades of far right wackos. Good for them. Red states are doing everything they can to alienate people like doctors and teachers. It’s a race to the bottom.
That’s what masters do: dominate the game to such an extent that people don’t even know they’re doing it. And cry out if anyone else even tries to play, without irony.
Please do atheism and agnostics next. I finished all the way up to doing my eagle project, all I had left was to finish some paper work and I would have gotten my eagle. I quit right about then, because what was the point? They were just going to take it away from me later for not believing in some magic book, I wouldn’t be the first they did it too. Absolutely ridiculous.
Edit: Any magic book** they don’t even discriminate against other religions is the part that drives me even crazier. You just NEED to believe in one.
Would they have accepted The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Probably. Scouting America has been openly Deist for a long time and there is an official “Event” for Christians, Muslims, and Jews. So at least at the national level they don’t seem to care what Deity you jam too as long as you have one.
Sorry you didn’t get there, but you didn’t miss a once in a lifetime event either. Religion has no place in society or scouts. One day it will be gone and kids like you won’t have to deal with that.
If he’s going to be judging the dead when he comes back, why are Christians always talking about people currently being in heaven or hell? Shouldn’t they all be chilling in purgatory until Jesus gets around to judging them?
We have some really weak records that some dude existed.
That doesn’t mean anything about why your mythology is true. We also have records of lots of people who millions believed were divine.
But heres another thing: You are not a Christian because it’s Truth.
You’re a Christian because your parents were. That’s it. That’s the main reason you believe what you do and swear it is real. You happened to be born into it.
Same as how 99.9999% of Hindus are only Hindu because their parents were, or Muslims, or etc. They also believe what they do not because it’s the Real Truth. But because of where they were born. Which is a really, really weak reason.
…And anyway - there’s a whole lot more people alive today who believe in other religions; why should I believe yours over theirs?
They’re stronger than the records we have for most other historical figures.
Also I wasn’t born a Christian, lol. Weird assumption to make.
Jesus exists in basically every world religion, minus Judaism which had to make a whole entire book explaining how he apparently wasn’t the messiah and mocking Him in the process. They all hold inconsistent views. Islam claims that he was a prophet (not God) and his resurrection was merely an illusion, Judaism claims he was just a sorcerer (as did most roman sources from His time, because that’s the only way they could explain away the miracles) Hinduism sees him as a holy man, Buddhism sees him as a Bodhisattva. But Christianity follows His teaching directly which was simple:
I am The Way, The Truth and The Life, nobody gets to The Father except through me.
I was in a Mormon troop, and went through with it, though only by the skin of my teeth and my dad’s incessant badgering. 17.75 years old would have been right about the time I was muscling up the courage to go openly agnostic. They don’t exactly follow up.
Glad to hear about this change. I’m now somewhat less ashamed to mention it. I did the most cliche “picnic tables for the elementary school” project ever. I really didn’t give a shit about advancing, but a certain ex-marine father got a bug up his ass and decided he would be the troop leader until I finished the damn thing.
Spiritual and meditated would fall into that some kind of belief thing for me. Saying I was spiritual in any facet would still be me lying to them, and I was just as stubborn then as I am now haha
I just didn’t mention my beliefs. I think I was asked vaguely about it and I vaguely answered, but if you’re still able to I’d say to do it. Having the eagle scout behind you can open some doors. It can’t hurt.
TLDR: Scouts are about nature AND religion. Not just nature. There are many organisations that are just about nature. Feel free to join them.
Why should they not discriminate against atheists?
For real. Just because you believe it is about nature? Scout organizations are clearly about nature AND religion.
Join an organization that is just about nature.
In my country we have two strong scout organisations. One religious and one not. Religious one focused more on a personal growth and the other one more on nature skills. (Well some of my friends in religious one were atheists they just had to practice the same activities)
Churches do not accept atheists. Chess clubs discriminate against non chess players.
But if they would include non chess players, chess clubs would have no meaning.
One can see you do not hold religions in high regard, but please allow people with the same interests and believes to meet and express themselves together in a peaceful manner.
That might work in your country, but there isn’t some non-religious version here that’s popular. They also don’t advertise as religious at all, just the nature aspects. Religion wasn’t mentioned in the organization a single time until I was already in for… 6 or 7 years maybe?
That’s not true. You do not have to believe in a magic book. The BSA requires a belief in God, but does not define god. It requires religion, but does not define religion.
Why is the sky blue?
If you answer “because God wanted it to be blue”, you’re good.
If you mention something about physics and Rayleigh Scattering, you’re good.
If you answer “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it”, you’re good.
Even If you answer “who cares?”, you’re good.
The only surefire way to answer this question “wrong” is something like “it’s not blue because of God, because there is no god.” While that statement is true (at least for any supernatural definition of “god”), you’re not being asked what you don’t believe, but what you do. You’re not being asked to rebut someone else’s belief; you’re being asked about your own.
Do you hold anything to be “true”? Are the laws of thermodynamics obeyed in your household? Maybe Descartes’s First Principle is more to your philosophical liking: “I think, therefore I am”. 1+1=2?
The sum of everything you hold to be true, BSA refers to as your “god”.
In theory, maybe. Many troops have meetings at church facilities where the local church beliefs are treated as superior to others. The second troop I was in had meetings at a Methodist church and there was bullying from two scouts working on their service projects for Eagle toward a Roman Catholic kid, for “worshipping saints.” Bringing it up to the Scoutmaster, who was the father of one of them, responded with the “don’t be a snitch” lecture. Eagle is supposed to be the point where you’re a pillar of your community, and both of those kids became Eagle scouts. “Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind,” just 1/3 of the scout laws right out the window with no repercussions.
I know people who have been kicked out for being an atheist, they didn’t really care to ask any of the questions you’re suggesting at the time. All they asked was if he believed in any higher powers and he said no. I wouldn’t say he was wrong, I don’t think science is a “higher power”.
I’m really sorry to hear this. One shouldn’t have to lie about this, but should be allowed to not practice any particular faith. It’s honestly one of the most frustrating elements for myself among the scouts.
This is one of the reasons why I have embraced my own magical book about my own magical being of my own making. When conversations inevitably go towards religion, I sometimes like to express my lack of faith by describing my mystical faith in the Cabra Cosmica. Yep, I’ve got mythos down and everything. Ironically, I really enjoy this form of make-believe faith. 😁
The tenants are very much in kind with those of secular humanism. And the Cabra Cosmica is as real as I wish it to be, which is both simultaneously very real and very not.
I often give thanks for my good fortune to the Cabra Cosmica as I do the Cosmos itself. I just wish to be thankful towards a thing at times and it can help to personify it. I mean, I did it most of my life to another false deity. Why not any other.
I know the Cosmos. I exist within it. Science describes it and defines its laws. Sometimes I give it a face. And sometimes that is the Cabra Cosmica.
I just wish to be thankful towards a thing at times and it can help to personify it.
That aspect reminds me of the Shinto belief that everyday objects have little spirits in them. I don’t believe in spirits, but I can see how this could be an interesting or useful mental exercise.
Best of luck with your religion. Have you fought any holy wars yet?
What? As a complete outsider (I’m from Sweden, scouts isn’t a thing here) what does scouting have to do with religion? Why would they discriminate against atheists?
I thought scouting was about natural sciences, and helping out in the local community? Which to me sounds pretty nice!
Edit: Scouts are a thing here in Sweden. Thank you for the corrections, I’m quite baffled I’ve managed to miss that.
I love that they’re called Speider’n over there. I can see how that can be read as scouts, but in my head, “spejarna” sounds more like some sort of spy school organisation. I’m also baffled there’d be religious parts of it even in Norway. Wonder if the Swedish organisation has it too, their website at least highlights that they really value diversity, it’d be strange if they were anal about religion.
Even then, religion seems like such a strange and unrelated thing to chuck in there.
Yeah religion is shoehorned into a lot of things here. Alcoholics anonymous is religion based which makes absolutely no sense to me. Going to AA and being force fed religious bullshit would make me want to drink more.
It was also forced into some kind of rehab my buddy had to go to (court ordered after being caught with weed years ago). He took WAY longer than he should’ve because he’s very stubborn, and said he doesn’t need god to not need vices. ¯\(ツ)/¯
For the scout law, reverant doesn’t have anything to do with God necessarily. It is usually used in reference to God, but it could be reverence of nature or other things.
In Canada they added a second option. Old: “On my honour; I promise that I will do my best; To do my duty to God and the King;…” New: “On my honour; I promise that I will do my best; To respect my country and my beliefs;…”
Ooh. I suppose this is the answer I was looking for, though it still strikes me as rather strange. Was scouts established a very long time ago and did the religious bit just kind of cling on? Is there any type of push for making it secular? Because what little I knew, learning about natural sciences, and getting hands-on experience in various situations, as well as helping out the local communtiy just strikes me as a very positive thing. Squeezing in religion among all that just feels so out of place and foreign to me. It’s like one of those “find the odd one out” situations.
A lot of people have mentioned that the reverence can be loosely defined and doesn’t necessarily specify a certain god, but also a lot of it depends, I’m sure, on which part of the country you are in, which organization charters for you, and the volunteers that are actually part of the organization. Many people have barely had to say what they are reverent to and move on.
In the US they never dropped the mandatory overtures to religiosity. In fact, there was a period in the 90s-early 2000s where one sizable religious group who had replaced their prior youth organization with the BSA got pretty involved at the national level to the detriment of the program as a whole. While it’s not really required in any real sense at the troop level, you do have to affirm a belief in some “higher power” as an adult volunteer. (I’m an Eagle Scout and now atheist)
In Sweden, the Svenska Scoutförbundet was an outgrowth from the original UK scouting movement, but I don’t know how big it was/is.
Oh, the Mormons were deep into Scouting well before the 90s, they just starting throwing their weight around as it became less popular to the general public and outside social pressures (i.e. not being dickbags) starting being voiced alongside the churchy bullshit.
What I don’t know is when they started directly paying a negotiated rate in dues straight to BSA. I do recall when I was a little LDS kid bringing my dollar a meeting or whatever for Cub Scouts, but by the time in was in Boy Scouts in junior High they’d stopped asking for that and someone told me the church handled it.
I know. It just seemed to me that their influence began to ramp up even more (perhaps that was just my local troop though) when the LDS Church started paying registrations and activities fees in the early 90s but it truthfully happened slowly like boiling a frog over a long time.
The Boy Scouts of America is a Christian organization.
Although, as I was a scout myself that shit never came into play other than the occasional group prayer at big, national events. The individual stuff in our troop was agnostic af and my troop leader was Jewish.
I believe we have Christian led organisations here in Sweden as well, but they don’t necessarily push religion as part of their operations. It really depends though. I recall an after-school thing being held at a local church when I was a kid. Other than it taking place in a church from the 1200s, there wasn’t really anything religious about it.
Are the girl scouts also religious? All I’ve ever really heard about the girl scouts is that they sell biscuits, but I assume they engage in the same activities?
Vi har eller har haft (jag är inte uppdaterad) PMU Scout, KFUM/KFUK-Scouter, NSF-scouter och Svenska Scoutförbundet på rak arm, så scouterna har ganska många förbund i Sverige dock
Är religion en stor del av våra scoutförbund också? Måste medge att jag är lite paff att jag har lyckats missa att scouterna finns i sverige, så tack för korrigeringen. Vi svenskar är verkligen tokiga i att grunda förbund, föreningar, och folkrörelser så det känns ju rätt rimligt att scouterna skulle finnas här också.
Väldigt många har kristen grund men som så många andra sammanhang är det väldigt bredd på hur fundamentalistiska de olika patrullerna är.
Har mött scouter som ser kristendom som centralt i scoutandet medans andra ser det som survival training för ungar eller förberedande inför FBU, lump eller liknande
What? Sweden don’t have scouts? My daughter was on a scout camp there last year and I believe there were swedish scouts also.
Regardless, in Denmark we have a few scout organizations. One of them KFUM (which would translate to the same as YMCA) which is the christian boy’s scouting org, that also allows girls, and the similar one for girls that don’t allow boys. Both of them has Christianity as a pretty foundational thing and most of the clubhouses are in or near churches and they have church services on camps and shit. Then there’s DDS (dark blue uniforms) and they’re not connected to any faith, but are still committed to the “spiritual development” of the scout. However this can be done in other ways than inflicting religion on children. In 1973 they merged the boy and girl scouts, so it’s just one thing now. The yellow scouts branched from DDS in the 80’s, with a mission to go back to more traditional scouting values. Not sure what that means, but they’re a also non-religious and non-political organization.
Finally there’s some Danish Baptist scouts but I don’t know much about them other than they’re likely a more religious variant of KFUM, attached to another christian flavor.
Actually we do! I was corrected on this by @Droechai, and looking it up myself they’re actually quite prolific. Going by their website they exist in 220 out of the 290 municipalities here in Sweden. Honestly I’m surprised I’ve never heard of them before. They even have a folk high school.
Duty to God (adherence to spiritual principles, loyalty to the religion that expresses them and acceptance of the duties resulting therefrom)
Duty to others
Duty to self
When asked where religion came into Scouting and Guiding, Baden-Powell replied “It does not come in at all. It is already there. It is a fundamental factor underlying Scouting and Guiding”. Source
So unfortunately removing religion from the scouting would remove one of the core principle of the movement, I don’t think it would anytime soon.
Which is a shame because I really enjoyed my time scouting, I think it was a great balance of fun, education and learning responsibilities. But the religion aspect of it make me seriously reconsider to send my kids to do it or not.
Lets get 1 thing straight, no he most likely didnt invent this, a team at 3M did. You always see these stories about rich kids and how they did this amazing thing while at their internship where their dad is the lab manager/owner when in reality these companies just wanted a poster child who was just some intern that is still learning about what titration means. I would bet that the extent of this kids biochemistry knowledge is that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.
while you may not like the example, the truth is a lot of these types of things required organizations and teams to develop (modern word for invent, because I have had interactions with people that illiterate), but that doesn’t fit in the popular narrative of the genius inventor who through hard work and determination made the world better and got rich for it.
I stayed at a holiday inn last night thats how I know. Do you really need proof that a 12 year old in middle school figured something out that people with PhDs have not done?
If this kid did anything other than throw shit at the wall then ill deliver a video of me eating my entire stack of textbooks from college.
If you read the article, you’ll realize that he didn’t invent the active components that fight cancer. He invented a new vehicle to deliver such components - the soap.
For all intents and purposes, the headline is accurate. He invented the soap to treat skin cancer.
Little Bobby invents a robot that can peel potatoes. Will you say that little Bobby didn’t really do anything because he didn’t invent robots, blades or potatoes?
Little Bobby had an idea for a potato peeling robot and then somebody else took his idea and actually made it while Bobby is still daydreaming about it.
Will you say little Bobby invented a new kind of robot?
Considering I know someone, personally, who also made a scientific advancement at a young age, yes, it is possible.
They taught themselves python, then how to inference and train machine learning models, then used image recognition models to detect their sister’s illness, which had visual signs.
They had to get help from someone with a phd to test this on a larger scale, cuz resources, but I absolutely believe a middle/high schooler could do it.
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