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That you find their parasitism morally acceptable doesn't make it not-parasitism. The parasitism here isn't old people demanding expensive medicare; it's demanding to be subsidized in that. Generally I would consider pensions not-parasitism (since they're delayed compensation), but what I mentioned earlier -- unions getting pensions in "negotiations" where the other side of the table has been bribed through political support -- makes them something bad.
We can only know if they're a parasitical "class" if these people are actually representative of some class rather than being one-offs. The retired couple seems most likely to be such; surely there are many such couples similarly situated. The financially irresponsible DREAMER seems more unique, or at least I hope so.
But this includes the people in the videos you were complaining were just ragebait! Or, at least, it includes the absent single fathers who aren't in those videos. Sometimes there really is something to be mad about, and just trying to gesture at some other group who is worse doesn't help.
People collecting pensions they were promised as part of their work agreement is not parasitism. If you think workers should not receive pensions, you can advocate for ending pensions (and indeed, that is happening, and will probably happen even in the few places where pensions still exist, like government employment). You can complain about unions and their tactics, but the individuals who expect to collect on the benefits they were promised are not being parasites for expecting a legal obligation to be fulfilled.
As for old people demanding expensive medical care, we have discussed before the diminishing returns of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep Grandma alive for another month, and those are legitimate ethical debates, but an old person who wants health care and reasonably expects to receive it even if it is more expensive (because they are old) is not parasitism unless you're prepared to advocate for the ice floe health care plan.
If you actually read my post, instead of just rushing to chew on my heel as usual, you'd have seen I admitted I also feel the rage and find these people infuriating. My point is not "A worse than B, therefore you should not be angry at B." My point is if you're concerned about the broad dysfunction of society and how to fix it, A is actually more impactful than B and you should consider that B might be an emotive distraction. By all means, let's squash the parasites as well, but let's be clear about motives.
People who are net negatives are parasites irrespective of the method they've used to swindle the rest of society. If they have managed contracts which state they should receive more from the system than they have contributed, then these people are a drain. It makes little difference whether they then extract this tribute with sword and cutting throats or through the laws of a bullshit system of their construction. What obligation do later generations have to maintain a Ponzi scheme which they did not vote for, and in some cases was constructed before they were given the right to vote. If the elderly have unilaterally erected a contract in my behest, that I should be drained for their benefit, then what is this contract worth? Surely, tyranny by lawfare is still tyranny.
Indeed, let us then abnegate all prior agreements we no longer consider binding on us because we don't like the costs. This will be very reformative and beneficial.
Perhaps it would be. It seems to work for foreign policy. Tautologically if we remove contracts which are harmful to society, then society will benefit. Of course, you'd have to factor in the increase to future counter party risk evaluations. But perhaps we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with if boomers had operated under the assumption that future generations would annul any one-sided agreements that they should be robbed. And now is a good time as any to set new precedent. Surely, anything will beat continuing our civilizational death spiral in Boomertopia?
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If that obligation was obtained corruptly, I think they are.
Transfer payments are huge. Trying to point to some bigger but much more nebulous problem looks like a distraction to prevent doing anything about transfer payments.
If I join a union that negotiated a pension for me, let's say I agree with you for the sake of argument that the union used "corrupt" tactics to get that pension. Does that make me a parasite because I shouldn't have joined a union, or I should refuse the pension? As as a follow-up question, is there any union or pension scheme that @The_Nybbler does not think is "corrupt"?
Did I say don't do anything about transfer payments? So what do you want to do about transfer payments?
Maybe we should also look at what the biggest problems are and consider how to allocate efforts accordingly.
"Bigger but more nebulous problems" are indeed harder to "do" something about than raging at welfare moms on TikTok. I don't fault people for taking the ragebait and going for the low-hanging fruit per se. You don't want to fix transfer payments because you have a rational economic plan to do so and you want to make things better for anyone else. You want to fix transfer payments so you can laugh as Laquisha is kicked onto the street. And I'm not even completely faulting you for that! I have not become as blackpilled as you, though my heart is increasingly bitter, but I have started to accept that schadenfreude is one of the few satisfactions left to us.
But don't lie to yourself about your motives. Tell me you want to fix some other stuff that doesn't warm your culture warring heart and maybe I'll believe there is some principle involved.
You can join the union, just don't expect any portion of the contract that says something like "the guys we largely helped get elected have promised to let you enslave future generations" to be honored by future generations. You should have the same recourse as a southern slave owner when slavery was abolished, be glad we only take from you the future fruits of your corruption.
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You shouldn't have joined a corrupt union. The payment is not somehow cleansed of its corruption by the fact that it goes to you and not the union.
Cut them off or reduce them very significantly.
Or maybe we should look at transfer payments.
You didn't answer my question about whether any union would meet your criteria for being non-corrupt. And do you expect everyone who joins the union to do an investigation of its corruption and come to the same conclusions as you? Should we just take it as given that you think no one with a union pension should be able to collect on that pension because they're guilty of complicity in "union corruption"?
Okay. I say that glibly: at one time I would have been willing to take a personal hit in the form of reduced or no Social Security for myself if it would "fix" SS. Now I am too jaded to believe that's being anything other than a chump. But sure, at some point transfer payments are definitely going to have to be cut/reduced, and I bitterly hope it's not until after I'm dead.
Or we could look at both and not just go for your low-hanging emotionally satisfying culture war targets.
I don't know if any union would meet my criteria for being non-corrupt. Nor do I care if those who join the union do an investigation. These questions are irrelevant; if the pension was obtained corruptly, it does not become non-corrupt through either the honest or willful ignorance of the beneficiaries.
You can certainly start a thread talking about Afghanistan or peso-buying. But when transfer payments are brought up and you want to talk about Afghanistan and Argentina instead, it sure looks like a distraction away from transfer payments.
That's a fully generalizable statement. People can argue any benefit you receive is because of some form of upstream corruption. The point is not to whatabout the point about union corruption and whether or not any pension would meet your standards for legitimacy. The point is you can't just abdicate on legal obligations because you don't like how they were created.
Or rather, you can, but you will sometimes be the whom and not the who.
But I'm taking to the wind. We're now burning down anything and everything if it hurts people we don't like. This will end well.
That people can argue something doesn't make it fully generalizable; it's if the argument "works" regardless of the underlying facts which makes it fully generalizable.
Eh, I can't, but the government certainly can. The contracts clause is dead.
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