I figured this out during the pandemic

What about us folks that don’t care about others and also don’t care about shame?

Run for office?

I swear to fucking god that it’s not even that; it’s people that care for others, and people that are willfully ignorant that it’s actually pragmatically cheaper and more efficient to care for others than to treat them like shit.

Pandemic as an example : the more you stay indoors and try to stop the spread of the virus, the faster the pandemic ends and the faster YOU can get back to normal. FORGET that it also stops people dying and protects the vulnerable, it’s in YOUR SELFISH INTEREST.

Or having a basic system of social welfare : giving bread to a poor person costs the price of the bread. Having to imprison them, pay for cops, repair of broken things, investigations etc costs more fucking money. even if you hate people and want them to die, it’s fucking CHEAPER FOR YOU.

it’s actually pragmatically cheaper and more efficient to care for others than to treat them like shit.

Pandemic as an example : the more you stay indoors and try to stop the spread of the virus, the faster the pandemic ends and the faster YOU can get back to normal. FORGET that it also stops people dying and protects the vulnerable, it’s in YOUR SELFISH INTEREST.

Or having a basic system of social welfare : giving bread to a poor person costs the price of the bread. Having to imprison them, pay for cops, repair of broken things, investigations etc costs more fucking money. even if you hate people and want them to die, it’s fucking CHEAPER FOR YOU.

there is a spectrum of how much comfort are you willing to give up to help others (including your future self). some people are against to give up even slight comforts in order to make things better (like, people visceral reactions to some “meatless mondays” proposals. or people being unwilling to reduce on-street parking even when by any meaningful metric it improves the quality of life for everyone)

Others are willing to give much more, but most people still have limits (for example, being willing to die for a cause is much rarer than people who are willing to go to a peaceful protest)

Why are we all looking for witches to burn at the stake in the fields of labor. It’s schadenfreude from the kayfabe theatrics. As long as we poors fight each other, we don’t address the bourgeois. There is no war but the class war. Don’t take the bait. We all know people we care about on the other side of the aisle, stop acting like they are the enemy. They are being tricked as well. The world is being sucked dry by wealthy vempire gammons.

Others are willing to give much more, but most people still have limits (for example, being willing to die for a cause is much rarer than people who are willing to go to a peaceful protest)

right, but I’m saying this in the context of things that are literally more beneficial. Dying is not literally more beneficial.

Like it costs $3 to give someone a loaf of bread. It costs $10k or something to shove them in jail for theft.

I always think of this scene from A Beautiful Mind when I think about people who can’t comprehend that being selfish can be more effective if you accommodate the needs of others:

Youtube Video

Unfortunately, the scene hinges on the objectification of women. I’ve been searching for a less problematic example. But, I do kinda think this example might be effective with male selfish asshole.

I have never been able to find it but long ago I read an article in a magazine from AAA insurance about how driving should be a dance. I remember it being along the same line of thinking, but I’m not sure.

The problem is how these people view “fairness.”

To them it’s “unfair” that “I have to work and buy my own food, while you take my hard earned money and give it to someone who doesn’t work!” (Not my mentality, just providing their argument)

They don’t care about the cost to imprison because “they broke the law. If I break the law I go to jail.” at that point cost doesn’t matter to them.

There is no war but the class war.

Overlooks the third and largest group: “Leave me alone.”

So close

Get rid of billionaires

Without billionaires we’re all or the majority of all of us get to compete on a level playing field and have fewer problems. It won’t create a utopia because we’re just a bunch of messed up monkeys but at least it would be a better situation than what we have now.

I know that you’re explaining the argument and not actually endorsing it, so this isn’t directed at you:

You know that they just get given food at jail, right? And it’s still your money paying for that. And now those people are literally restricted from participating in society. If we fed them without jailing them, they could hold a job and spend money and provide to their community; instead we are paying for a punishment hotel to house and feed them in isolation. So if you subtract the cost of food from both sides since we’re feeding them either way, you just want to pay a lot of money to make them miserable, and also waive any benefit that society could recoup from having them be fed.

“leave me alone” is often freeloaders. Like, “I want to benefit from society, from roads and the Internet and medical research and fire departments, but I don’t want to pay my share”. Very few people actually live off the grid

People follow their emotions. It feels bad for a poor person to get a “handout”, and it feels good for a “bad” for a bad person to be punished. That’s pretty much it. Multiply it by “my in-group is good and my outgroup is bad”, and you get conservatism.

Notice that it’s a stupid world view. It’s at the level of toddlers.

If we want to change how these people act, we need to reach them on their level. Facts won’t do it. They’re not listening to facts. You need to make them feel good when they do the right thing.

It does feel like being held hostage by a cranky toddler, yes. We have to pander and beg and appease them because they’re too selfish and stupid to realize it would be better for everyone, including them, if they just cooperated.

100% I’ve been saying this for such a long time. I believe the saying is “cutting of your nose to spite your face” or something.

Yep, that’s the correct phrase.

“I’m gonna teach my face a goddamned lesson!”

“How’re you going to do that?”

(pulls out hacksaw)

“holyshitwtflolandimout”

For a lot of people, they feel better being able to put “those people in their place.” Sure it costs them more to throw these people in jail, but then they get to feel superior. This is Donald Trump’s main policy – you, a mediocre white man, can now look down on other people, which makes you feel better about yourself.

“This nose has had it too good for too long! Enough is enough!”

This is insidious Soviet Mathematics.

You provide general goods and services at cost and leverage economies of scale to grow your GDP despite suffering a comparatively small population in a largely pre-industrial country. You exploit camaraderie and inventiveness and curiosity rather than press-ganging serfs or periodically looting colonies full of ambitious, talented, and productive people. You educate the public en mass, instead of just relying on the gentry to pioneer scientific research and development. You build at scale, rather than doing vanity projects restricted to a handful of elites. You pursue projects that appeal to the general public, rather than following the whims of a handful of aristocrats and military commanders.

Only problem is that this can take a generation or more to show real material progress. And even as you’re improving your own community, you may have wealthier neighbors who can outrun you, at least in the short term. You might not be welcome into the network of post-colonial trade if you don’t have friends in the imperial core. And so you become increasingly self-reliant and nationalistic, which others claim signals your hostility to a global rules based order.

If people in your community can be bribed, coerced, or duped into turning on their neighbors, the network of self-reliance can fail. Your economy can drag. You don’t reap all those benefits of scale. You’re exposed to the violent intrusion of foreign militaries and the looting of the colonial era. And people lose faith in your system of social welfare, because they fail to see it benefiting them in the modern moment.

The hard math of capitalism is that there’s more easy money to be made fucking over ten neighbors than helping one out. And while the long term trajectory of such a society is decay, an insulated tier of individuals can bring in windfalls over the course of their adult lives that make life significantly easier and more luxurious.

For folks in their prime years, there’s a real economic incentive to use your superior strength and that of your immediate circle to loot your elders and tyrannize your kids. This feels justified when you were abused as a child. And by the time you’re an elder, there’s little you can do to protect yourself from the next generation, save to pit them against one another with your accrued savings.

Pragmatically, you need people who understand the bigger picture and have a sense of place within the community over the longer term. For folks who don’t see a future among their neighbors, playing nice isn’t pragmatic at all. It’s a sucker’s game.