The Harm Caused By Charity (Video)

Charity is nice, but it doesn't fix the problem, it only alleviates the symptoms. If I want to make the world a better place, I'd rather donate to a political organization will tackle the problem at its source. I basically agree with Zizek, though I'm in no way opposed to people donating to charities.

in a sense it is when the point of trade is to get the most you can while giving the least,
being fair is not part of trade.

Zizek is a hack, a fraud, a charlatan — the end-point (I hope) of the deconstructionist/postmodernist gibberish that passes for profound thought in the humanities departments of elite universities. As Edward R. O'Neill wrote, Zizek's writing includes “a dizzying array of wildly entertaining and often quite maddening rhetorical strategies [that] are deployed in order to beguile, browbeat, dumbfound, dazzle, confuse, mislead, overwhelm, and generally subdue the reader into acceptance.” http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol5-2001/n17oneill

This particular Zizke effort is more Hegelian, leftist twaddle: “charity only treats the symptoms; the real problem is democracy/capitalism/globalism/fill-in-the-blank … and only The State can fix it!”

That's what bothered me, too. The Unabomber used the same logic in his manifesto–we want people to suffer more, so they'll overthrow the system. I don't have high expectations of any system whose architects are okay with dispassionately using people like pawns.

that is every system

Right on! DOWN WITH GRAVITY! oh wait…

I think his point is that these things are designed to make us go 'oh, well that makes it okay, then. Phillip-Morris can keep hawking poison as long as they 'contribute' to a 'cure'.' Wal-Mart brags about how much it's 'given to the local community' while it destroyed and keeps destroying any kind of local alternative for many, many areas where it's hard NOT to shop there. Kind of how GM and Ford talk about 'American Jobs' while most of the components and many of the cars themselves are made in foreign factories. Though this has been the case for a couple of decades now, many insist on 'buying American' even though they haven't a clue what that means. “Can't we revolt next week? I'm tired, and my kid's soccer game is this weekend…” The kind of warm fuzzy bullshit that makes it ok to 'just get through the week', live with the system, look the other way. “Fixing the problems are hard, so let's feel good about the useless band-aids we're putting on the bullet wounds”, etc.

This society is like a motor which leaks oil so bad, you essentially have to keep pouring oil down the valve cover just to keep it from seizing, and not only do we do this for this long-in-the-tooth machine, but we fuel it, too, all of us who continue to go along with what it takes to keep it running as-is. Better to STOP, and let the damned thing grind to a halt; you can't rebuild a running motor.

No More Fuel For The Death Machine.

Most annoying lisp in the trucking world, can even listen to is. Like a bad gay movie accent. I like to pour steaming hot starbucks on my genitals

rtb61 – you sound like you are one of the recepients of the government's largess. What you are saying is tantamount to extortion. Either we pay “protection” or we get our legs broke. You are a loser and an idiot.

Extortion or not, it is a brutal truth. It doesn't matter how twisted and wrong the situation is – the fact is that capitalist societies with inadequate or non-existent welfare support systems will inevitably feature a class of citizens who will fail or refuse to find productive employment and subsequently turn to crime for survival. This is especially true in cultures with an overpopulation problem. Perhaps there are many lazy poor in America who would never try to build an honest career – but there are also, doubtless, some who would work diligently but never find a job due to poor market conditions or lack of education, certification, or experience. There will always be people in any society who do not become a part of the working class. Crime is simply a more direct way to make money in this nation. Welfare pacifies this population segment by providing a mode of survival that is easier than both the work they don't do and the crimes they would normally commit. To think that a capitalist society can avoid crime without using tax money to mollify the welfare class is idealistic and illogical. And face it – a working American demanding lower taxes is tantamount to demanding that other humans starve so that you can have a bigger TV. If you are in a low-income tax bracket, there is no way that taxation hinders your ability to survive. The only citizens losing any significant amount of money are the upper class – and those bloated, self-obsessed, vindictive leeches don't even deserve that money in the first place. Take away all the fast-talk and euphemisms, and such a belief renders down to simple greed and a total lack of compassion.

In a truly free society (as we essentially had in the early days of the US (slavery notwithstanding), people can rise up beyond their class as my father did (going from a farmer to a physician) or as my father in law did (going from a rancher to a Professor of Engineering). But today – why excel? If you do, you will be taxed out of existance to pay for the leaches on the jugular of society.

You cannot lift up an underclass by bringing down the upper class. All you do is encourage aberrant behaviour.

You must be as ignorant as a cat. Have you looked at the costs for social welfare and the associated cost for drug treatment. When people had to work, they were held responsible for their actions. Today, people are not held responsible for their actions and therefore we have high crime and social welfare costs.

This is what the media is refering to as “Trickel Up Poverty”.