[ExI] Homelessness (was Re: Social right to have a living)

Kelly Anderson kellycoinguy at gmail.com
Tue Jul 5 15:36:50 UTC 2011


On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 7:20 PM, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
> On 07/01/2011 04:43 PM, Jeff Davis wrote:
>>
> Thanks be unto Rand. :)

She is an interesting person with interesting ideas. She's pretty
rigid, but you would almost have to be to be consistent enough to call
yourself a philosopher. :-)

> Just because a human being is needy in various ways, even really serious
> ones, does not mean that person has an automatic valid claim on any part of
> the life or possessions of any other human being.   I don't think this is at
> all heartless.  I think it is the only view compatible with human freedom -
> with humans not being in involuntary servitude to others.

Yes. But maximum efficiency for a society can often be best achieved
by providing a mechanism to recover from temporary emergencies (using
Rand's term) with temporary external help. This help should be given
(in Rand's view) only voluntarily, by the person giving assistance.
And that giving "help" on an ongoing long term basis is evil.

In the Rand world view, helping others is a good thing only when in an
emergency. Giving help long term degrades the other person's humanity.

In this matter, I agree with Rand.

>> Homelessness IS the "end of the world" -- which is to say the end of
>> dignity and the beginning of a sanity-destroying horror -- for most
>> homeless folks, in the same sense that falling from a tall building is
>> "the end".  It's not relevant, but glib and heartless, to observe that
>> one remains perfectly healthy until impact with the pavement.
>>
>
> As someone who has been homeless (early 20s) that is a bit overstated.

I thought so too.

> Yes
> it was rough getting back on my feet.  The key was inside my own head.  As
> long as I thought I was the victim of something some "they" did to me I was
> stuck.   At one time I was even lame enough to think it was obvious I was
> better than "those people with a job, in the System" and that it was a major
> injustice I didn't have what I needed without bothering to trade any sort of
> values at all.

Being outside the system is liberating. The rat race is for rats.
There is great freedom in being a nature child. Unfortunately, it
makes it more difficult to eat regularly and reproduce, which most
people value enough to get back into the rat race.

> I am not saying that every homeless is like this but all too many liberals
> seem to look at the "plight of the homeless" from a position not that far
> removed from what I thought way back then.

Are you agreeing with the liberal viewpoint here Samantha? Just trying
to be clear.

-Kelly




More information about the extropy-chat mailing list