This blog is named after Paul Graham's wonderful essay What You Can't Say (www.paulgraham.com/say.html). It's going to be full of strange statements that normal society is likely to frown upon for some reason.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Basic Rights
So there you are, sitting at the train station, when you happen to overhear this guy talking on his cellphone. It seems like he's about to buy insurance against... I don't know, stubbing his toe on alien spacecraft or something equally stupid. Whatever it is, it's perfectly obvious to you at that moment that this person is about to waste his money, and... oh no, he's about to give the insurance salesperson his credit card details!
Naturally, without wasting a moment, you punch him in the face, grab his cellphone and throw it under an incoming train. Disaster averted, you grin proudly at the man you just saved, expecting some form of eternal gratitude. He seems a bit reluctant about it, but you're convinced that as soon as he realizes what a favor you just did him he'll lovingly embrace you and thank you for saving his money.
Today someone found a 56 years old man who hanged himself in his apartment and for some reason two separate teams of paramedics rushed to the scene. When the second team got there, the first team told them something along the lines of "Don't bother trying to resuscitate him, he's already in rigor mortis". The second team decided to ignore it, and after 7 stressful minutes without breathing or pulse, got the man back to life. They are, apparently, considered heroes for it.
Look, I realize that some people might be insane and decide to hurt themselves for some reason which us sane people might consider ridiculous. That's not even the point.
You wouldn't assume control over someone's money to forcibly prevent him from making a financial mistake that might ruin the rest of his life, would you? Forget the silly insurance example up there, suppose you caught someone in the middle of sending his bank account details to that good old Nigerian prince, would you tackle the guy and actually physically force him not to do it?
I sincerely hope that every single person reading these lines replied with "Dude, no, it's HIS money and he can do with it what he will".
So why is it that when it comes to someone's life instead of money, suddenly their most basic rights are forfeit?
A person's life is their own. For good or bad, the decision must be theirs. It doesn't matter if you think you're so much smarter than them that you know, absolutely know, that things will be fine in another few years and this person will be glad to be alive. Hell, it doesn't matter even if you know for a fact that whatever this person is going through is purely temporary. It's still their choice.
What if it were the other way? You find this guy who's so absolutely depressed, suffering from various illnesses, lost his job, his wife ran away with the kids and the dog, maybe he even gave his bank account to a Nigerian prince and all his life savings are now gone. This person, you can clearly see, is miserable and doomed. Does that give you the right to kill him just because you think that would be doing him a favor?
With all due respect to people who want to "help" other people, this sometimes involves too much arrogance. You don't necessarily know what's better for other people. And even if you do know, you can't just take control over another person. You just can't. It's the most basic of human rights.
If you could arbitrarily deprive others of their basic rights for their alleged good, where would you draw the line? If you're allowed to "save" someone's life when they made it perfectly clear that they don't want it, what else are you allowed to save?
Should people be allowed to spend their money in a sub-optimal way? Suppose I want this nice chair I found in a catalogue, but you, being smarter than me, know I might be just as happy with another chair that costs 10% less. Are you , a random person, allowed to forcibly take my money and spend it on the second chair?
Maybe the government should also tell people which job to work at, which house to live in, what food to eat, what to do in their spare time, whom to marry, so long as it's for their own good. It's scientifically proven that you can't trust people to choose their own spouses (e.g. domestic violence), perhaps it's time for the lawmakers to intervene.
The absolutely worst part here is that the analogy between life and money just doesn't cut it in this particular case. This guy up there had no pulse for at least 7 minutes while he was being resuscitated, and who knows how long before that. That's 7 minutes without circulation, without oxygen reaching his brain. This isn't "saving" someone and giving him a second chance for a bright future; this is taking a person who was already miserable enough to choose death over life, denying him this choice, and probably adding severe brain damage to his list of troubles.
You know, while some people who survive their suicide attempts eventually try again, I have never heard of a single person who successfully committed suicide and then regretted it. I think I'd give them the benefit of doubt before choosing to violate their most basic human rights by forcing life upon those who don't want it.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
God's Will
Let's suppose, for just one moment, that all them people who believe in some sort of organized religion have a point. Since there are several big religions, and each of them has approximately three billion different sects, let's give this benefit of doubt just to a few common points that Judaism, Christianity and Islam can probably generally agree about:
Let's take a random question that may have religious significance, for example, am I allowed to eat pork? Jews and Muslims would tell me that God wants me not to, whereas Christians would tell me that God doesn't mind it. In order to settle this disagreement, I suggest that we go directly to the highest authority.
I simply decide to submit myself wholly to God's will, instead of the various people who claim to be his representatives, and let Him answer this question - whatever He tells me personally, I shall do.
So I toss a coin.
If God can create the entire universe and perform all the fascinating miracles that the bible is full of... and if God is so loving and merciful and we are all His children...and if He watches us every hour of every day... surely He can make the effort of making the coin fall on the right side for the sake of giving us this invaluable knowledge, no?
- God exists.
- God wants us to do certain things, and not do certain other things.
- God has supernatural control over natural events.
Let's take a random question that may have religious significance, for example, am I allowed to eat pork? Jews and Muslims would tell me that God wants me not to, whereas Christians would tell me that God doesn't mind it. In order to settle this disagreement, I suggest that we go directly to the highest authority.
I simply decide to submit myself wholly to God's will, instead of the various people who claim to be his representatives, and let Him answer this question - whatever He tells me personally, I shall do.
So I toss a coin.
If God can create the entire universe and perform all the fascinating miracles that the bible is full of... and if God is so loving and merciful and we are all His children...and if He watches us every hour of every day... surely He can make the effort of making the coin fall on the right side for the sake of giving us this invaluable knowledge, no?
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Wrong Way To Die
Every now and then you hear about someone (often young, male and Asian) found dead after spending too many days in a row playing some computer game (often by Blizzard Entertainment). Shortly afterwards, humans, being humans, start with a healthy mix of "video games kill" and "why didn't anyone save him" and the general "oh how terrible".
Common causes of death around the globe feature mostly cancer, heart disease, car accidents, and other terrible illnesses. Now, I can't speak for everyone here, but if I had to choose one of the following options...
Common causes of death around the globe feature mostly cancer, heart disease, car accidents, and other terrible illnesses. Now, I can't speak for everyone here, but if I had to choose one of the following options...
- A horrible slow death of some disease, full of agonizing pain and ever deteriorating systems.
- A quicker albeit painful and frightening death from a car accident or a faster disease.
- A quick, calm, peaceful death, while doing something that I love doing.
... well, whoever asks me that question would have to wait a long time until I could stop laughing in his face.
Besides, based on my ample experience in the fields of not-eating and not-sleeping, I find it impossible to believe that anyone could go that long without food, drink or sleep, and without feeling that something bad is happening. Ergo, it should be viewed not as some sort of accident, like some people say, but as a suicide, and even next to other forms of suicides it's still the best way to go, both for the happy "victim" and for the people who don't have to clean his guts/ brain/ blood from the floor.
I'd go on about why suicide is no more terrible than a person's decision to harm himself in another way (e.g. smoking, drinking, gambling, enrolling in a university, etc.) but I'll probably have an entire post about that. So let's just leave it with the headline "Today an Asian man chose to end his life in a much more pleasant way than nature originally intended".
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Welfare
Congratulations, you've just won the elections and have been named prime minister of the democratic nation of Smallland (somewhere on the west coast of Noplace). After accepting your hat of office in a modest ceremony, your seasoned president recommends that you start working on next year's budget.
Luckily for you, Smallland is indeed small, and you have an annual budget of $22,000. Likely candidates for a slice of the money pie are Richard the teacher, upon whom depends the future generation, and Brad the mad, who suffers from crippling mental disabilities and therefore can't work and needs the country to buy his food, medicine, TV, and other such necessities. What are you, the freshly sworn prime minister, going to do?
This is an obvious oversimplification of a very real issue. You always have the old, the sick, and the terminally lazy, who cannot earn their own money, and in modern times, for some reason, they are fully entitled to receive some amount of money from their country. But money, even though most of it is virtual nowadays, is still a finite resource; every penny you choose to give Brad up there will be taken away from Richard who not only works for it, but is using this money to do an important job and create a better tomorrow.
The money is short enough as it is; not only does Richard complain often that this tiny budget is not enough to buy textbooks for all his students, but he frequently has to argue with other factions who need their own funding such as Roger the soldier who defends the national border (all 27 meters of it). Additionally, the budget is always trying to shrink, because Eric the cleric considers himself too holy to pay taxes.
Yes, these taxes are very much a part of the budget discussion. After all, a country is a completely ethereal entity; it's not a person who shows up in the corn fields every morning and at the end of the month receives a sparkly paycheck. A country has no income of its own, and every penny that it spends is a penny that was earned by one of its citizens via actual work.
Which means that the question of social welfare boils down to: how much money are you willing to take away from people who worked hard for it, and give to a third party which is guaranteed to use it to produce absolutely nothing?
Let's consider merely the old people, because the numbers are easy to come by: over 12% of the USA's population is 65+ years old, in France it's over 16%, and in Germany it's over 20%. Suppose you give each of these poor souls a mere minimum wage from the country's coffers; even that would immediately drain a ridiculous number of billions of whatever your local currency is.
These billions could pay teachers and doctors, they could build roads and bridges and houses, they could research a cure for cancer, they could do a great many things, and none of things is as useless as simply giving the money away to an ever-growing group of people defined by being unable to produce anything in return.
Because the problem won't end with this year's budget. The elderly slice of the population is growing at a steady pace, and a smaller and smaller part of the population actually pays those taxes that are supposed to do all of the above work. Agreeing to give a certain amount of money this year will make each old person expect a similar amount next year, but the number of people who expect this money is growing much faster than the actual budget, which means that either the salary-for-nothing they've grown to depend on will shrink and dwindle, or the amount of money that goes towards productive ends will.
Clarification #1: I have no problem with charity. A person has the right to give some of his money to people he cares about, should they become unable to provide for themselves. But this is not something that should be made compulsory by using a country's budget and drawing out of the people's taxes.
Clarification #2: Plenty of people could work if only welfare money wasn't discouraging them from it. There are many jobs that require only a working brain, and can be performed by any cripple, especially in the age of the internet. There are many jobs that don't require the spryness of a 20 years old youth and can allow the elderly to earn their keep. Maybe countries interested in social welfare would do well to match jobs to potential employees instead of sending people on a lifelong paid vacation.
Luckily for you, Smallland is indeed small, and you have an annual budget of $22,000. Likely candidates for a slice of the money pie are Richard the teacher, upon whom depends the future generation, and Brad the mad, who suffers from crippling mental disabilities and therefore can't work and needs the country to buy his food, medicine, TV, and other such necessities. What are you, the freshly sworn prime minister, going to do?
This is an obvious oversimplification of a very real issue. You always have the old, the sick, and the terminally lazy, who cannot earn their own money, and in modern times, for some reason, they are fully entitled to receive some amount of money from their country. But money, even though most of it is virtual nowadays, is still a finite resource; every penny you choose to give Brad up there will be taken away from Richard who not only works for it, but is using this money to do an important job and create a better tomorrow.
The money is short enough as it is; not only does Richard complain often that this tiny budget is not enough to buy textbooks for all his students, but he frequently has to argue with other factions who need their own funding such as Roger the soldier who defends the national border (all 27 meters of it). Additionally, the budget is always trying to shrink, because Eric the cleric considers himself too holy to pay taxes.
Yes, these taxes are very much a part of the budget discussion. After all, a country is a completely ethereal entity; it's not a person who shows up in the corn fields every morning and at the end of the month receives a sparkly paycheck. A country has no income of its own, and every penny that it spends is a penny that was earned by one of its citizens via actual work.
Which means that the question of social welfare boils down to: how much money are you willing to take away from people who worked hard for it, and give to a third party which is guaranteed to use it to produce absolutely nothing?
Let's consider merely the old people, because the numbers are easy to come by: over 12% of the USA's population is 65+ years old, in France it's over 16%, and in Germany it's over 20%. Suppose you give each of these poor souls a mere minimum wage from the country's coffers; even that would immediately drain a ridiculous number of billions of whatever your local currency is.
These billions could pay teachers and doctors, they could build roads and bridges and houses, they could research a cure for cancer, they could do a great many things, and none of things is as useless as simply giving the money away to an ever-growing group of people defined by being unable to produce anything in return.
Because the problem won't end with this year's budget. The elderly slice of the population is growing at a steady pace, and a smaller and smaller part of the population actually pays those taxes that are supposed to do all of the above work. Agreeing to give a certain amount of money this year will make each old person expect a similar amount next year, but the number of people who expect this money is growing much faster than the actual budget, which means that either the salary-for-nothing they've grown to depend on will shrink and dwindle, or the amount of money that goes towards productive ends will.
Clarification #1: I have no problem with charity. A person has the right to give some of his money to people he cares about, should they become unable to provide for themselves. But this is not something that should be made compulsory by using a country's budget and drawing out of the people's taxes.
Clarification #2: Plenty of people could work if only welfare money wasn't discouraging them from it. There are many jobs that require only a working brain, and can be performed by any cripple, especially in the age of the internet. There are many jobs that don't require the spryness of a 20 years old youth and can allow the elderly to earn their keep. Maybe countries interested in social welfare would do well to match jobs to potential employees instead of sending people on a lifelong paid vacation.
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