Survival of the laziest!?

[tp6626]

This could have gone in the science threads, but is equally applicable here. My assertion is this:

With all the social support of late that the government throw at the unemployed, teenage mums and homeless etc, it could be argued that there is in some cases incentive for a significant proportion of the UK population to prefer being 'on the dole' over working. I assume there is a similar situation the US, though I'm not sure. Is this nanny-state molly-coddling having an effect on general societal standards as a whole, and could it be cheating Darwinian natural selection, by manipulating the environment to the advantage of bums and layabouts?

Even most of the media appears to be 'dumming down' greatly, and I wonder if this is a related phenomenon. Is it necessary, and is it a good or bad thing?

(I don't intend to sound bigoted on this, and am totally open minded about the topic, but would like to hear your views).

[sriv]

As Ool wisely said somewhere else, socialism is the cooling system of the engine that is capitalism.

In the New Deal, the farming acts told the farmers to stop planting maximum crops. Instances like this are examples of why too much competition is not good.

Back on topic, the laziest should reap the least benefits. A bad work ethic won't get anyone anywhere.

[anul]

They will also breed the most , which is even more horrifying.

[Karamazov]

Though I doubt most would really argue against helping the homeless, I'm at a crossroads on this subject. There are people who genuinely need the system to provide in order for them to stay alive, yet it's abused regularly, unabashedly by some. Perhaps the widespread abuse of the welfare "queen" is just another exaggeration perpetuated by our idiot media.

Other than that, I don't see a nexus between the media and what you've observed.

[Rick]

They will also breed the most , which is even more horrifying.

And this is exactly the situation - independent of race. Poverty breeds itself whereas wealth doesn't.

It is the same in the US. We are a welfare state.

[tp6626]

Yes that's one of the main strands of my argument. If you have no income of your own, I don't think people should be having children and starting families. This could perpetuate the problem as the undereducated replicate themselves with the help of government support.

In England, one of the many 'options' a young girl has when she can't get a job is to have a few children and live off the resulting child support, job seekers allowance and housing benefits for which they are made a priority case, just because they have children.

I can't help thinking that if these 'incentives' weren't present, then this problem would be much less prevalent, and after a few generations the population on the whole would be a much more well educated and there would be much less crime and poverty.

[Tenacious B]

When laziness and inactivity are rewarded competition to lazy and inactive will ensue. Luckily, for these people, there are people who work hard and are successful that can be taxed for support.

I believe it was de Tocqueville that said democracy and freedom will come to an end when the people realize that they can vote themselves payment from public funds.

[Jakalwarrior]

Since I work for a non-proffit that helps the poor and homeless in America I know how it goes ;)
A lot of people honestly do need help. They are just in a bad situation. Think of it this way... we NEED people to work crappy jobs, those jobs need to be done. We dont pay those people enough to put away for a rainy day though. When they have an illness, their house burns, etc.. they are up a creek. Thats when they call us and we see what we can find to help them. A single substitute teacher gets cancer and cant work for 6 months. She has no insurance and gets paid crap. We have to take care of the people that do the thankless low pay jobs. We need them.
What about the people that just plain dont want to work and want to live off the system? These people live very crappily, but at the same time they don't really care. Some of them have a sense of entitlement and will fight you for some charity. Others know that if they act nice and polite they are more likely to get something. Either way they know that if they breed we wont let their children die so its pretty much like picking up a very low pay daycare job. Heck some of them make it a full time job working the system trying to get all they can. We try our best to be discriminate and not help the people who are just working it. The government has no such qualms though since its just a matter of meeting requirements and filling out paper work. I see people every week that are on disability collecting a check, have one or two of their kids on it too, and I just go... WTF!!!!!!!!!!!

*disclaimer, ive only been in this field for about 5 months and im already getting bitter :embarassed: thats an INTJ for you lol.

[Ool]

Survival of the laziest, sneakiest, fastest, most honest, whatever is not cheating the Darwinian natural selection.

It's survival of the fittest, no more, no less.

And it doesn't mean "fit" in the sense of "lean, mean fighting machine." It means fit in the sense of, whatever fits best into the natural niche it's in. And if preserving energy by adopting a strategy of laziness makes you fit better then that's where natural selection will go, if that's where the black swans are headed. And if preserving calories by using less brains makes you fill a less cerebrally demanding niche better then that's where the species will be going.

There is a theory that our brains shrank when we learned to cooperate with canines for hunting. So did the wolves', later the dogs' brains, because each one of us could specialize on certain tasks and didn't need the processing power for the other ones any more...

Now the other question is, should we steer natural selection in a different direction if we can, in which people are smarter, busier, overall slightly overqualified for their position in life? There are advantages to having a certain surplus in resources, just in case our environment changes and we suddenly need capacities we could previously do without. There is the disadvantage that being overqualified and underemployed breeds a certain dissatisfaction and low-level discontent, which may lead to depression or mischievous behavior out of boredom.

And that's as far as I'm in the mood to go into this argument...





Ool added to this post, 36 minutes and 4 seconds later...

As Ool wisely said somewhere else, socialism is the cooling system of the engine that is capitalism.

Yes, and if you drive that metaphor of comparing society with thermodynamics a little further you should take into account that the bigger a body becomes the more prone to overheating it actually becomes. That's because while volume increases cubed with the diameter of an object, and with it the number of potential heat-producing elements of a system, the surface of the object increases only squared, and with it the oportunity to vent any excess heat.

Why do you think the Earth is still liquid inside, after billions of years...?

So when you increase the size of a system you can no longer be sure that what worked on a small scale will still work on a large one. You can solve the problem of excess waste heat two ways:


Either you scale down the activity of the individual elements considerably. I.e. in a society that means you actually embrace people's laziness, tardiness, lack of a life...
Or you find new, ingenious ways of venting the excess heat. But that takes planning and engineering on a huge, system-wide scale. You can't expect certain problems to solve themselves any more--at least not in ways that don't involve destruction and suffering...

[tp6626]

Yes Ool I understand how natural selection works. I guess I am more questioning why the environment we inhabit appears to be set up to allow laziness to be a trait that allows effective 'success' (I mean success in the sense of natural selection too, as in the successful reproduction of genes).

Should our society be directed more towards encouraging an alternative set of standards, such as better education, better work ethics, more altruism etc...etc... how difficult would it be to create a soceity where these are the things that favor a 'species'?

[zoophilia]

Do you also take the view that the rich are subsidizing stupider, uglier, lazier, etc children than they would be able to if they had less financial means? Perhaps those children should be stripped of their artificial support blankets in order to allow only those that are truely fit to survive?

[Ool]

Do you also take the view that the rich are subsidizing stupider, uglier, lazier, etc children than they would be able to if they had less financial means? Perhaps those children should be stripped of their artificial support blankets in order to allow only those that are truely fit to survive?

There’s, of course, a deeper problem in all of this. It’s the mammoth in the room, and no one notices it any more because it’s been in the room since the dawn of time:

Why do we have to spawn new generations at all? Why do we have to die and leave everything to them (or not)? Why can’t we simply survive indefinitely and enjoy the fruits of our own labor? If we like to have children, why can’t we implant our memories into them so they are truly ourselves, as if we had merely shed an old body?

If we meet somebody we like then why can’t sex involve the exchanging of memories, like paramecia exchange genetic material?

The screwed up nature of our existence is what happens when you have a non-self-aware process bring forth a sentient being. So much is wrong. Everything’s half-baked.

And rather than solve this problem, bringing social Darwinist notions into it is going to exacerbate it even more…

[PRBori]

I don't like couch potatoes or lazy people who choose to be lazy and depend on others. I've met many people who choose to do so and they drive me crazy. Therefore, I wouldn't encourage laziness at all. If all humans where to be lazy there would be no development at all, the world would be boring, and people would die of hunger for nobody would bother to farm food.


For those who became homeless against their will, I would offer other ways for them to succeed.. A second chance. I've always though of a way to deal with them but I've never put in practice and I know nobody has done it either. Is a bit stringent but it will get them back to a stable environment... although it really depends on their own will to succeed. I have though about it for many years, so the idea is very clear and I'm 100% sure it would work. I may put it in place next year when I'm more settle. I know there are programs that would support the cause and what I have in mind.... so yeap...maybe next year I begin the process of putting it into place.

Anyway, I see two types of homeless and I only approve of one. The one that decides to be homeless and have no will to go out and work, which of course I don't approved off; and the one that becomes homeless against his will, which can be helped if they are still willing to pull out from the situation.

[md21017md]

I absolutely agree.

There was a science experiment done in which a number of mice - lets say 5 female 5 male were placed in a cage and fed a diet to support 10 mice. After 1 month the population hovered right around 10. It might have dropped but a few would be born, maybe a small population explosion but the overage would quickly die off and come back to around 10.

They upped the diet to enough to support 20 mice and quickly the population followed. After a month or 2 they dropped the diet back to 10 and sure enough the population dropped to 10.


I may have the details wrong, but you get the idea. In my opinion welfare is nothing more than raising the diet everytime more mice are born - guess what you will have more mice - or any other biological organisim - until predation or disease comes into play.

One could also argue that the over population of the world is the same thing - we've provided more food than would normally be available through technology. If that technology breaks down (i.e., depletion of oil) then you will see a mass die off of people supported by that technology. I think we are seeing a beginning of this in certain areas, africa being the prime example. Imagine a world with no oil - you will see africa on a world wide scale.

[Ool]

I don't like couch potatoes or lazy people who choose to be lazy and depend on others. I've met many people who choose to do so and they drive me crazy. Therefore, I wouldn't encourage laziness at all. If all humans where to be lazy there would be no development at all, the world would be boring, and people would die of hunger for nobody would bother to farm food.

Not that I'm saying that there isn't merit to your reasoning, but the "if everyone did it" argument has a certain flaw, which is "all or nothing" thinking.

You could make the same argument in other respects: "If I ate no food at all I would starve. And that's why I should eat the entire contents of my refrigerator right now, even if it kills me."

You see, just because too little of something is harmful doesn't mean that too much of it wouldn't be equally disastrous. Just because too much laziness would bring everything to a halt doesn't mean that too much business couldn't be just as destructive by using up resources prematurely and unwisely.

Also the whole point of life is to enjoy ourselves. It isn't to produce or to be active. If production and activity leads to enjoyment--ours and others'--then that's great. But if it doesn't then you're doing something wrong.

[yondyr]

Instead of being paid to breed, people should have to post a bond in order to have children. $10,000 would be a good start.

[schwartzie]

This could have gone in the science threads, but is equally applicable here. My assertion is this:
With all the social support of late that the government throw at the unemployed, teenage mums and homeless etc, it could be argued that there is in some cases incentive for a significant proportion of the UK population to prefer being 'on the dole' over working. ...and I wonder ... Is it necessary, and is it a good or bad thing?

According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the tax cuts announced in 2003, proposed or envisioned by the Bush administration will cost $2.3 trillion in federal revenues over the next 10 years. ... When added to the $1.9 trillion cost of the 2001 tax cuts, the administration’s plan amounts to a shift of $4.2 trillion in resources, the lion’s share going to the richest fraction of the American population. This is a wealth transfer without precedent in history. In the US, one has the best chance of receiving welfare if you own, for example, a large corporate farm, Halliburton or any other Iraq contractor, a piece of Bear Stearns, WalMart, Lockheed, or are simply an heir of a recently deceased filthy rich person.

[Erika Redmark]

Even most of the media appears to be 'dumming down' greatly, and I wonder if this is a related phenomenon.

People say most of the media has a reading level (or the equivalent for TV) low enough for the average 13-year-old. Sad if that's what's needed to get the majority of the adult population to understand it. But the schools are dumbing down, too–they cater to the lowest common denominator and often fail to encourage excellence.

[zoophilia]

And rather than solve this problem, bringing social Darwinist notions into it is going to exacerbate it even more…

I was being intentionally outlandish.