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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25740 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 20, 2025

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Re the Little Red Hen, if she had built a device which allowed her, with 1% of her previous efforts, to produce a pile of bread the size of Kilimanjaro, I would think she would be morally obligated to share it.

I would agree, provided the other animals accepted they were inferior to the Little Red Hen and accepted their place as lesser beings relative to her.

I do not believe that it is possible for one human, or animal acting as a narrative stand-in for a human, to be inferior to, or a lesser being relative to, another; this applies even if there is a difference in their abilities.

Then what good is your conception of equality? In what actual sense can two people ever be equal?

Equal in dignity or by religious creed perhaps.

Yet that's still a redistributionist philosophy at its core- to what degree do we limit Abel to serve Cain?

(Realistically, this is generally related to how much murder power Cain has.)

No. That's where it starts, and from there we go to ever lesser thresholds until I'm obliged to part with >45% of my salary even though I own no property and have no savings and have two dependents and nobody else paying into the household and no welfare helping out either and costs of living keep rising, but obviously I am morally obligated to prop up welfare systems that give millions of immigrants cause to come here to slack off and the same for millions of native leeches, and the redistributionists call this "solidarity".

No, the little red genius should ask an appropriate price for her transformative invention. There is more than enough perverse incentives in this world.

Slippery slopes are very easy to see once you've slipped halfway down, aren't they?

You'd think so, but welfare advocates keep assuring me that there is no slope.

They’d be saying the same thing even if they saw it themselves first hand. They’re too committed to their privileged free riding to part with it at the expense of logic or moral consistency.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his-"

"NO."

I have never hit the upvote button harder.

AFAI can recall, anyways.

I think the market price for bread would drop to the point where a rat could probably afford a loaf or two from a few hours of whatever work rats can do.

And if she achieved THOSE kinds of efficiency gains, the very least we could do to reward her is make her a multi billionaire.

And if the Device can do anything the rats can do?

A sudden increase in the demand for cats.

Keep in mind that the rats are a stand-in for human beings.

I took the "device that can do anything the rats can do" reference to be aimed at AGI, which to me means the value of humans suddenly plummets to zero-if-not-negative.

So are the cats.

This should be mandatory independent of rats.

Why? The rat, the cat, the dog, and the pig did nothing to make the pile of bread any more than they did the loaf. They were given the opportunity to buy in through sweat equity, and they refused. If they want any of that bread, they can trade the hen something of value for it. Otherwise she can sell the patent for her device to Bimbo and live in luxury while the others get the just reward for their indolence, which is nothing.

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