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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   13977 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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If you're spending your thoughtspace seething about a fat lady getting groceries for free, you're not making decent money.

I can walk and chew bubble gum.

Or more plainly: this is not a situation with meaningful opportunity cost. I'm not a profligate wasting precious mental resources on noticing.

I hate this kind of argument. You notice something being done in a stupid or wrong way, you say "X is wrong because of reasons A and B, this really should not happen this way in a proper society". And people come out of the woodwork and say "oh, so you are obsessing about X, like you don't have anything else to do with your life, you must be some special kind of stupid loser". This can be done about anything with zero effort - whatever X is, there's an infinite number of things in the universe that are not X, and near infinite number of problems one can be concerned with, so being concerned with anything in particular inevitably turns anybody to a stupid loser. This is completely useless low-effort snarl, that's how I see it.

Note that I did not and do not claim that not making enough money to ignore the costs of groceries makes one a stupid loser.

I do, however, find this whole waffling distasteful - not merely noting the brokenness of systems but expressing the "chumpitude" of following the rules. Pick one, damn it - either start stealing from self-checkout stores or find some dignity in being a productive and honest member of society.

Nope. I can be a productive and honest member of the society, and at the same time be furious at non-productive leechers and moochers that abuse the system, originally designed to cater for rare and grave exceptions, to live lives of careless uselessness and no worry without contributing anything to the society - and often actively and deliberately harming it. It's not either or, it's both at the same time. I don't want to stop following the rules, I want others to start to be held to the same standards I am held to.

Source: you made it up and it sounded too good to check.

A couple months ago Elon Musk reposted this tweet including: "Be very, very strict with SNAP, Section 8, and EBT. Force these do-nothings to get up and go to work." This might say questionable things about his thoughtspace or his priorities, but not his money. The net worth of the world's richest man increased by $200 billion last year.

Decent is in the eye of the beholder, and seeing as Elon hasn't stopped making money he clearly doesn't have enough.

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