Olorinus the Ludicrous wrote:
jimbrown45 wrote:
Lucky breaks....only a spoiled brat thinks that the poor miracle themselves out of poverty (with a healthy dose of government cheese of course).
Wrong.
Why? You don't think you were just lucky, do you?
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I'm lucky because:
a) I wasn't born with fetal alcohol syndrome or any other severe disability
a) I wasn't born with fetal alcohol syndrome or any other severe disability
That's not just luck though. Your odds of suffering fetal alcohol syndrome is kinda directly related to the likelihood that your mother consumed large amounts of alcohol while pregnant with you. That's not "luck". It's the fact that if you make good decisions, your children will benefit from them. That should be an incentive to make those good decisions, right?
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b) I grew up loving reading and wanting to be a writer
c) A good number of caring people took it upon themselves to help me and teach me whatever they could
d) Because of my aforementioned literacy skills I was able to navigate government bureaucracies and advocate for myself
c) A good number of caring people took it upon themselves to help me and teach me whatever they could
d) Because of my aforementioned literacy skills I was able to navigate government bureaucracies and advocate for myself
Again, not luck. Your parents and other family members choose to provide you with a good environment which maximized your odds of success. That's not random, and it's not luck.
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e) I never developed a drug addiction
Again, not luck. You made good choices and thus had better outcomes. Why not take the credit for those choices instead insisting it was just random chance? I find that odd.
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f) I ended up with an excellent psychiatrist as a teenager who helped me break destructive behaviours before adulthood
g) A bunch of other very lucky breaks came my way professionally.
h) I'm white.
g) A bunch of other very lucky breaks came my way professionally.
h) I'm white.
Still not about luck. Statistics are what happen after the fact. Choices make those things happen though. You're running the logic backwards.
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Did I work for my luck, yes, I did.
And that was far far far more significant than the luck itself. Everyone gets opportunities in life. Not everyone takes them when they come. Saying after the fact that it was all luck is absurd. The guy who wasn't successful likely had just as many opportunities as you. He just didn't take them, or didn't put himself in a position to take them, or any of a number of choices that resulted in a lack of success.
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Even aside from "birth lottery" breaks like my intelligence and my lack of crippling disabilities, much of the success I enjoy today would be completely impossible without the good fortune I enjoyed in terms of people giving me a hand up.
Isn't it amazing how often people giving a hand up leads to success when those receiving it take advantage of that hand up? You get that right? You honestly think that people in prison, or with drug addictions, or other problems didn't have numerous opportunities to make different choices? You don't think that anyone ever tried to help them? That's crazy!
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It's not about expecting the poor to "miracle themselves out of poverty" - it's about recognizing that people who continue to be poor aren't there because they don't "work hard" enough.
You're looking at it backwards. No one's guaranteeing that hard work will get you out of poverty, but it's more likely than if you don't work hard. That's the point. The odds of succeeding by sitting on your *** not doing anything is vastly lower than the odds of succeeding if you get off your ***, get a job, work hard, and seize every opportunity that comes along. Get it?
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It's a freaking lottery. They might and probably do work incredibly hard. It doesn't make a difference if the only work that is available for someone with your skills pays starvation wages.
Sigh. Then it's not a lottery. If there's zero chance of success no matter what you do, then it's not a lottery. There's zero chance. If there is a chance to succeed, then that chance is always going to be based on your own choices. Period.
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Again, I'm not saying people who do succeed didn't also work hard, but hard work alone is useless.
No one said that hard work alone guarantees success. We're saying that hard work is an important component to success. Lucky breaks are more likely to happen for the guy who's out there trying than the guy who's sitting on his couch doing nothing. Your odds of success are vastly higher if you're trying to succeed and actively making choices and taking actions to make that success happen than if you're just waiting around for a random event to drop success in your lap.
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If hard work was what it took to be successful and comfortable all the factory workers in China would be millionaires. Clearly, that's not the case.
Yeah. Total False Dilemma though. Your argument is like saying that since not everyone will win a footrace that "running as fast as you can" has no effect on your odds of winning. Um.... It may not guarantee a win, but it's what will give you your best chance to. Similarly, while working hard to succeed doesn't guarantee success, it's what will give you your best chance at success. And it's frankly bizarre to me that people work so hard to argue against this (using really weird arguments to boot).
What's the point of making that argument? You want people to not try? How the hell does that help anyone?