I figured this out during the pandemic

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.

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.

Run for office?

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.

ok, then fuck everything, don’t even bother having a society.

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.

great, have them just kill and gang rape everyone they want to, it’s cheaper that way.

“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

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.

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.

The standard that “you must be in total exhile to not be a freeloader” is clearly totalitarian, because A) if we apply the same absolutism to the other categories we get the idea that the first group must all care absolutely and about the exact right “meaningful” things (which is clearly not true), and that the Shameless group must equally be absolute in their evil, and can have no redeeming facts.

And because B) even using the term “freeloader” is totalitarian.

Not only are their people who societies exist in order to support and have “freeload” on them, such as orphans, the disabled, the elderly, babies, children, the poor and incapable, the uneducated and deprived. The huddled masses.

But also because: everyone makes some contribution. It’s impossible to exist in society and not. Whether it’s artistic, spiritual, intellectual, consumer based, no matter how minor, be it buying shampoo and thus contributing to GDP and taxes, or making someone think via a comment… Or wearing a lovely outfit on the street…

Human existence is a contribution.

So I disagree with your outlook, I think it’s totalitarian, anti-humanist, and ugly. I disagree with anyone who uses terms like loser or “freeloader”, and I concede that even people I strongly disagree with, are still contributing in their small humanistic and social ways (which all people naturally have).

So I’m not sure you understand the meaning of human society. Why it is, and how it inevitably will continue to be. Where ever we are, it is - “freeloaders” most definitely included.

P.S By the way, most poets, artists, actors, and comedians - cultural workers that is to say - are unemployed bums and “freeloaders”. There is no humanity without them. Stop demonizing the poor and people who just want to be left alone.

It’s crazy to me that the people around me would rather “accidentally” harm someone that doesn’t deserve it than accidentally help someone that might not deserve it

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.

You misunderstood what I meant, so I must have communicated badly.

I meant, people who often say “leave me alone” are “libertarian” types who want to benefit from society without contributing as they’re able (with money or labor). Think of the kind of guy who says “leave me alone! I don’t want to pay taxes for some school. I don’t even have kids.” They benefit from public education, but they don’t see it that way, and they’d rather keep that 20% of their paycheck than have a fire department. I wouldn’t call a baby a “freeloader” because they’re not really capable of doing much. It’s when people can contribute but selfishly and self-destructively choose not to that I’m scornful.

In other words, when someone says their politics are “leave me alone” I am very suspicious of their understanding of society. They want the privileges of society without the obligations, typically.

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.

The Tragedy of the Commons is very tragic and very common.

don’t even bother having a society

Societies are the mechanism used to pass down historical accounts and ingrain in future generations the value of current cultural practices. The only way you have a functional state is with a current society of people who advocate, educate, and lead us towards its replication and expansion on behalf of future generations.

have them just kill and gang rape everyone they want to, it’s cheaper that way

There’s more to life than its spot price at auction.

I really don’t know how to convince people they should care about others.

I don’t know how to teach empathy.