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Comment by jakelazaroff | Hacker News Reader

> Calling work non-voluntary reveals more about the author than it does about the system they describe: that they feel that they have no choice.

Assuming I don’t want to starve to death, what are my other options?

I could beg, although that’s still work in the sense that I’d be trading my time for money. I could go around to places that offer free meals to homeless people, but that seems unreliable. And I could steal money or food. That’s about all I can think of.

I suppose that’s technically a “choice”, but only by the most ruthlessly literal definition.

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> Assuming I don’t want to starve to death, what are my other options?

Welfare in most developed countries is enough not to starve and not to become fully homeless. But in many countries, it does not go one inch beyond this. Subsisting on welfare is indeed a very uncomfortable life. But it is not literal starvation to death.

As far as I’m aware, all welfare in the US (e.g. SNAP and unumeployment benefits) have some sort of work as an eligibility requirement.

I suppose you could add “move to a country with a better social safety net” to the list. But it doesn’t change the overall point, which is that every alternative to work requires you to turn your life upside down.

> very alternative to work requires you to turn your life upside down.

Oh, yes, absolutely. But this is moving the goalpost. The question was not whether one could stop working without having to make changes to their lifestyle. The question was whether one could stop working without literally starving to death. In most developed countries, the answer is yes. No one really starves to death due to poverty in developed nations anymore.

I am not too familiar with the situation with the poverty in the US. Do people there still die from poverty-induced starvation in the 21st century?

Check out the correlation between poverty and lower life expectancy, and it will become clear that poverty is indeed a death sentence (not to mention its effects on quality of life).

Again, you are absolutely right, but moving the goalpost once more. The lower life expectancy is not due to starvation to death. It is mostly a result of health issues, which is in all likelihood more due to the lack of access to healthcare than food.

> It is mostly a result of health issues, which is in all likelihood more due to the lack of access to healthcare than food.

Is it? What statistics do you have to support that? And do those statistics track poor nutrition due to poverty as a component, or do they just ignore that?

Correlation is not causation, it doesn't really explain anything... I thought that by 2020 at least people on HN get that.

My entire contribution to this thread has been an attempt to move the goalposts :) If the question is “is it possible to stop working without literally starving to death?” the answer is trivially yes, but I don’t think that’s particularly interesting.

Getting thrown in jail will get you fed without working. But most people would consider that an absurd tradeoff. So we pretend it’s not an option, moving the goalposts in order to have a more interesting discussion about how to stop working without upending your life or withdrawing from society.

Seconded. Move the goalposts, because the question without moving them is absurdly uninteresting. I can live a horrible, miserable, shorter life, but it's not a literal death sentence? So, OK, that's better than them taking me out and shooting me, but...

So we concede. smnrchrds wins the point. It's not a point we cared about, though, and we're going to move on to talk about a question we find more interesting: Can a person live a decent life without working?

> Can a person live a decent life without working?

Here is how I read this:

"Can I live a decent life?" - > Can other people make sure I have what I need when and where I need it?

"...without working?" -> ...without me doing anything for them in return?

Sounds awesome. For me.

I'd prefer not to have to keep making the "life or death" argument but people continually bring it up, probably to try to conflate it with the question of "should you be able to live comfortably without working?"

I would argue you can already live a comfortable life with a minimum of work (say 20h per week part time at big city minimum wage, $13/hr). For example, in Chicago you could rent a room with heating and AC, cook your own basic but flavorful meals, have healthcare through Medicaid and basic transportation on the bus/trains, thrift store clothing and a cheap cell phone with data plan for internet.

>I am not too familiar with the situation with the poverty in the US. Do people there still die from poverty-induced starvation in the 21st century?

I think the question needs to be a little more nuanced than that. Here are a few resources to get you started:

https://hungerandhealth.feedingamerica.org/understand-food-i...

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-in-...

https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/food-insecu...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/11/23/hungry-at...

https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/54-million-people-america...

Welfare is a full time job. Anyone who thinks otherwise has never had to get the right forms filled out, wait hours on end every x weeks at some govt building that takes hours to get to without a car and then fight the bill collectors that buy junk debt to be collected from the poor.

The point of welfare is to make not working so unpleasant that a minimum wage job is less work to hold down.

This is true across the whole developed world, the majority of which I have lived in.

I have been on welfare in the developed world and it wasn’t like that at all - I’m very skeptical that you’ve managed to get significant personal understanding of welfare across even a majority of the developed world. It sounds like you’re not thinking of pensioners, for one, who generally don’t have many recurring forms to fill out.

I was not aware 20 year olds could be pensioners.

I'm not sure how that's relevant.

You are using a welfare system available to under 20% of the population (in the best countries) to argue that the majority have access to a system that is well designed. This is moving the goalposts at best and outright intellectually dishonest at worst.

No, I'm not. The comment about pensioners was a throwaway note at the end of my comment about having been on welfare and knowing that your sweeping claims are simply wrong.

I don't know what this website is, it might be bs but google found this:

> more than a third of the country still lives in an area where able-bodied adults are exempt food stamp work requirements.

https://thefga.org/waivers-gone-wild/

> I suppose you could add “move to a country with a better social safety net” to the list.

How many countries allow people to move there for the purpose of collecting public assistance?

Just board a boat in Turkey and you will see. Somewhat risky, true.

>> Welfare in most developed countries is enough not to starve and not to become fully homeless.

Right, because even that requires someone do work to support people on welfare.

>> Subsisting on welfare is indeed a very uncomfortable life. But it is not literal starvation to death.

It would lead to quick death if we all tried to live that way at once.

> Assuming I don’t want to starve to death, what are my other options?

Well that's the rub, you don't want to work, you want to eat. The food has to come from somewhere. Even if you were a forager, other animals want to eat the same food.

> I suppose that’s technically a “choice”, but only by the most ruthlessly literal definition.

"Technically correct, the best kind of correct." More seriously we are talking about survival and food. Its hard to imagine a more ruthless domain of inquiry.

Buy a one way ticket to Southern California, buy a tent and apply for SNAP and Medicaid.

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