Because you can't survive playing video games. If the final goal is sort of hedonistic lifestyle, it is sometimes best to do the exact opposite of what you want to end up doing to maximize the time actually enjoying the lifestyle.
Sort of like you see a person setting up a hammock to lie in comfort and enjoy the beach. You tell him to stop setting up the hammock and just start enjoying the beach.
Assuming that the monetary restrictions no longer apply is not useful for almost any hedonistic outcome.
Sort of like you see a person setting up a hammock to lie in comfort and enjoy the beach. You tell him to stop setting up the hammock and just start enjoying the beach.
Isn't this basically, "you're enjoying yourself wrong" moralizing condescension? And frankly, if I had a hammock available on the beach I would use it and skip the sand in my crack.
Yes of course you can't survive playing video games, because you also have to eat. I don't think that was in question.
I think in the beach example we can take for granted that having a hammock is better than not. The question is whether having the hammock is worth giving up some time to set it up.
You probably can survive almost just playing video games. Get on welfare, live in a trailer park in the southern US. You probably have to be classified as "disabled" but doctors hand that out like candy these days.
My aunt gets about $900 a month from the government and lives in subsidized housing, so that she only has to pay about $200 a month in rent. So income-wise she's doing a lot better than me (I am a grad student).
So I'm curious, is this nonsense made up just to give bad advice to potential competitors or is it to stimulate an endless smoldering far right rage at imagined crimes in a fabicated world?
Second, I gave this advice because it would be incredibly sad to think, "I want to play video games all day, but unfortunately, I have to have a job." That is no way to live. I was trying to encourage the person above me to think about what he really wants.
Third, please don't go around snarkily second-guessing people's comments. My comments deserve to be taken at face value. I am tired having having to defend myself from unwarranted personal attacks.
Can I ask what you think happened to all those people who stopped getting Welfare after it was "reformed" in 1996? Did they all pull themselves up by their bootstraps and march off to Walmart to get minimum wage jobs?
javert's comment is patently false statement designed to create intense hatred of a vulnerable group for political ends.
A now deleted comment posted a link to a rambling diatribe as "evidence" (which just further proves my point). And mentioning any of this is described as a "personal attack". It's an interesting mixing of John Galt and Horst Wessel.
To answer your question, I presume eliminating aid to incapacitated people creates homelessness not walmart jobs.
Now can I ask you: what drives extremists to so thoroughly propagandize themselves that they derail their own ability to think clearly and do such demonstrable harm to their societies?
While javert's comment might have been un-sympathetic, its narrative is true. People have gotten on disability in proportion to the reduction of people on welfare. Check out this awesome Planet Money piece: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
This does not mean that these people are bad or that we should end disability aid. But it's true... people are becoming "disabled" as a means of surviving.
While your link is at least an intellectually honest attempt at analysis, the graph you link to shows that disability claims were flat just when welfare was falling the fastest (1996 – 99)
And were rising the fastest when welfare also rose the fastest (1990-94). This would run contrary to even correlation let alone a causal relationship.
While it is certainly an interesting theory, apparently the situation is even more complicated.
And mentioning any of this is described as a "personal
attack".
javert's post was based on his personal experience with his aunt. You said it was made up nonsense. This is essentially calling him a liar, which is probably why he took it as a personal attack.
I presume eliminating aid to incapacitated people
creates homelessness not walmart jobs.
You accused javert of making things up to support his political narrative, and then you proceed to simply "presume" that the facts instead support yours. Also, welfare was not for the incapacitated, it was for anyone with low income.
what drives extremists to so thoroughly propagandize
themselves that they derail their own ability to think
clearly and do such demonstrable harm to their
societies?
I don't know, but that's not what is happening here. Claiming that disability is the new welfare is not the same as claiming there shouldn't be disability or welfare. See for example the other reply to your comment. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9132570)
>javert's post was based on his personal experience with his aunt
No, the language "to get on welfare" you have to be "classified as disabled" but "doctors hand that out like candy" is not about anyone's aunt, it is designed to provoke hatred toward vulnerable people to further a political agenda.
Is the anecdotal evidence that uses the word "about" twice and is written to provoke yet more hate true? Well there are hate mongering anecdotes about Jews, priests and gays too. They are of equal value and are repeated with the same intent. Was he offended when this was pointed out?
>>..what drives extremists to so thoroughly propagandize themselves..
>..that's not what is happening here..
On the contrary, it is the only thing happening here.
Well, you probably can't survive off playing video games, but you could certainly restructure your life around them. You simply stop and ask yourself before any life decision, "How does this maximize my gaming?" Your day-job, your social calendar, your home, your diet -- everything can be optimized to give you the most time and the highest-quality gaming.
Now, maybe games aren't your thing, but this ultimately applies to anything, hedonistic or industrial or altruistic. Whatever is most important to you -- gaming or family or mountain climbing or mathematics or civil rights -- you can restructure you life to maximize the amount of time or impact you have on that one thing. It doesn't really matter if it pays the bills.
It basically says to spend your time doing something you're passionate about. If that's video games, then so be it.