A friend once gave a talk at the chaos congress whose title, IMHO, captures the essence of those laws: If you want to live outside of the law, you have to be honest.
To this day, words I live by and they never failed me.
Agreed. Hobos are more like migrant workers, with heavy emphasis on the 'migrant' part. They try to live outside the norms of society, but not (necessarily) outside the law.
"hobo is an itinerant worker, a career which sprang up during the depression. A hobo, unlike a bum or a tramp, is more than willing to work, but mostly for a short duration, as their main impetus is travel, the love of the journey above the actual destination. A bum is stationary, feeding off of those unfortunate enough to cross his path; a hobo merely travels from town to town, finding work when he can, but only for the sake of financing his next adventure. NEVER call a hobo a bum...they'll kick your sorry no-bo ass!"
I think the terms are synonomous mostly. Though I understand Nomads mainly follow their heard of cattle as it follows the rains to graze. So for short term contract workers perhaps hobo is more apt.
Which recalls the term "Bobo" .. which is the original term for a hipster: Bourgeois Bohemian
An expression is that a hobo travels and works. A vagabond or tramp travels but doesn't work. A bum neither travels nor works. In reality the terms were quite fluid. A hobo might have been "on the bum" meaning he couldn't find work and was begging.
For anyone intrigued by this sort of thing - that is to say the ethics of hobo culture - I would highly recommend reading `You Can't Win'[1], the autobiographical account of Jack Black's train hoppin', bank robbin' life as a yegg.
I was going to mention that. But I gather that yeggs were a distinct group from (or maybe subgroup of) hoboes. They didn't abide by at least one of the rules:
> 2. When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be a gentleman at all times.
I gather that it was a steal-from-the-rich thing. Banks were OK targets. And jewelry shops. But not hard-working folk.
The rich don't have to vote for wealth redistribution, they outright buy the politicians to continue their class warfare. Which is of course much more efficient.
The rich are only rich because they steal from the poor, either directly by scams or indirectly by theft of wages and labor productivity. Capitalism unfortunately enshrines this behavior in the law so it's seen as a good thing, while a poor person "stealing" from the rich is seen as bad.
> The rich are only rich because they steal from the poor, either directly by scams or indirectly by theft of wages and labor productivity. Capitalism unfortunately enshrines this behavior in the law so it's seen as a good thing, while a poor person "stealing" from the rich is seen as bad.
I think you might need to look up the word "steal" in a dictionary. That or you're deliberately skewing the definition for your own agenda. I'm hedging my bet on the latter.
The first definition provided when Googling "steal": take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.
If a good or service is provided that is needed or desired by either a group or an individual there is a cost regardless of whether that cost is absorbed by the individual or group procuring the good/service (as in Capitalism) or by society. The provider of that good or service should somehow be rewarded or incentivized to continue providing the service so as to keep that service provided.
You made a blanket statement that "rich are only rich because they steal from the poor...". That's wrong, true in some cases, but far from a universal truth, if I'm wrong please prove it. If you're good a something society deems valuable, shouldn't you be compensated adequately for that? Should a good jeweler be compensated well for producing a necklace of spectacular quality if someone is willing to pay for it? Should a good neurosurgeon who went through probably a decade of intense schooling be adequately compensated for extracting a tumor? Are either of these people stealing from someone? The answer is no. They are providing a service that the recipient or society (in the case of universal healthcare) willingly compensate them for.
This is in direct contradiction to your point of a "poor person \"stealing\" from the rich", which brings me back to my first statement. You used quotes around "stealing" which deliberately attempts to invert or misdirect the actual definition of the word. Taking something from someone without their permission is "stealing", not providing a service for compensation. In the case of the jeweler, that jeweler bears the cost of materials and time the spent to both learn how to make the commodity when their product is stolen. In the case of the neurosurgeon, when their product is stolen, it's very equatable to slavery.
It doesn't matter what economic model you prescribe to, if people providing a needed good/service aren't adequately compensated, the quality of that good/service degrades or becomes non existent. Unless, of course, you enslave or force those people to provided the good/service, which is not what anyone should be advocating.
does a person that has brain cancer really voluntarily pay a neurosurgeon for treatment?
does a person that gets paid a wage for menial labor that funnels into a value chain that some executive sells for much more than the wage really work voluntarily?
does someone that's manipulated by social media that buys worthless overpriced brand name items really pay voluntarily?
does someone that gets arrested on trumped up charges and values their freedom really pay a lawyer voluntarily?
do people that live in blighted, neglected neighborhoods really move to higher cost of living neighborhoods voluntarily?
I could go on.
Your post implicitly assumes that contracts between equals exist. They don't.
also "if people aren't compensated, the quality..." is an assumption of your model, not an implication
> does a person that has brain cancer really voluntarily pay a neurosurgeon for treatment?
Yes
> does a person that gets paid a wage for menial labor that funnels into a value chain that some executive sells for much more than the wage really work voluntarily?
Yes-ish... one can't really not participate in society in this day and age. One can't just go homestead anymore and subsistence farm. So I understand the argument.
> does someone that's manipulated by social media that buys worthless overpriced brand name items really pay voluntarily?
Yes... get TF off social media.
> does someone that gets arrested on trumped up charges and values their freedom really pay a lawyer voluntarily?
Yes
> do people that live in blighted, neglected neighborhoods really move to higher cost of living neighborhoods voluntarily?
Yes. It's entirely possible to live in a shit area and life a "good life," though there are mental costs associated.
You have free will. You can opt-out of "the system" but it will be painful given your desires and lifestyle. So, yes, these things are wholly voluntary.
If you want to live a modern, "easy" lifestyle then some of these things start to look rather coercive.
This was a major influence on the life and work of William S. Burroughs. I am overjoyed to find out this is still occasionally in print. I had always wanted to read it but been under the impression it was long unavailable. Thanks so much for reminding me of this and alerting me to its availability.
Very few of those who would use a pathetic excuse like "don't blame me blame the privileges inherent to the towering position of authoritarian power I have battled to attain" would be comfortable with the obvious rejoinder: let's get rid of that towering position of authoritarian power. So, it's difficult to take that excuse seriously, whether it comes from a CEO or LEO or whatever.
The forces shaping the society we live in are much deeper and more pervasive than 3 letter agencies and big corporations, bad as they may sometimes be.
I think the absolutism here is erroneous. Nomads/hobos may have less power, and therefore less incentive, but there is still plenty of opportunity to take advantage of opportunities immorally. That's mentioned in the code.
I've lived life travelling the world on a shoestring, hiking some of the world's most famous trails, living in cars, camping on beaches, etc. Of course it's a bit different as it's easy to do this and there are lots of backpackers about--most of them quite casual in their pursuit of freedom.
Anyways most people without lust to follow the dictations of the almighty dollar (or other forms of power over others, like becoming a police officer) but still have enough ambition and gumption to put in the effort to do this sort of thing, tend to be really wonderful people... Occasionally a bit of the rails, though.
Doesn’t sound like it. I think the parent is more likely insinuating skepticism that hobos would be able to maintain their moral clarity after being given all the power of a politician.
Chris Rock has a great standup bit where he points out that you can’t really know how faithful a man is to his wife if the man has never had the opportunity to cheat. Celebrities are often in the news for cheating on their wives. This may not be an indication that they have any weaker morals than ordinary men, but rather simply that they have far more opportunities to cheat than ordinary men. How many ordinary, faithful men would make the same mistakes if suddenly given all the wealth and social status of George Clooney or whoever?
I see. That's a good analogy. I'm not sure I understand the driving force of political corruption though. Obviously with sex, it's natures very powerful sex drive. With corruption, if the politician is already wealthy, what's the point in soiling their self worth by being corrupt? Maybe it was corruption that got them wealthy in the first place.
It seems like US politicians are plagued with it. I consider constant giveaways to the wealthy while mostly ignoring the majority of the population to be corruption, like this recent tax bill.
It is probably not always as simple, or even as logical, as that. For one anecdote, Planet Money did an interesting piece following the motivations of an inside trader: 671 - An Insider Trader Tells All (https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/03/23/596533461/epis...). As mieseratte says in another comment thread here, "it's not black and white as you paint it." What I'm saying is, that one of the (perhaps uncountably many) driving forces of corruption might be misplaced altruism – a few skilled con men who know how to present the right argument to persuade others. To hack their neural network, if you will. Or another answer might be: "why not? it was possible to do". Another recent episode to follow a similar line of investigation would be "Episode 685: Larry vs. The IRS".
"If a baby were president, there would be no taxes, there would be no war. There would be no... government, and... things could get terrible. It actually, probably, it would be a better... screenplay idea than a serious suggestion."
- Michael Scott
Seems like some sort of fallacy. If an organization doesn’t have an ethics code, then critics can say that the organization needs to hold themselves up to ethical standards, if they do have an ethics code, critics can point out, like you have, that there must be a bunch of ethical violations which created the need for the code.
I think this kind of thinking seems to not be that harmful, but in reality it can lead to the absolute worst justifications and actions in human history, such as:
>The fact that such a law existed at all suggests that someone thought it was necessary. There must've been a fair number of unethical witches/gays/drug users/race of people.
But your example is a law against witches/gays, not a law against _unethical_ witches/gays. I don't think your example is a fair analogy. The first sentence does in fact imply to me that there must've been some number of people thought to be witches/gays/etc
I would guess that it would come from unethical hobos making regular society treat all hobos badly, which would make life more difficult for all hobos.
Whatever dogwhistling quoting the Protocols of Zion unattributed and replacing "GOYIM" with "CENSORED" is supposed to be, it's beyond the pale for HN. Such games are a bannable offense here, so please don't do it again.
Edit: it looks like you've been using HN for ideological and national flamewar, e.g. https://hackernews.hn/item?id=16943121. We ban accounts that do that, so please don't.
The real question is how to make a system with better incentives.
The only thing I've been able to come up with would be to dilute the expected reward of the political game with stochastic power structures. Democratically maintain a pool of candidates and then use some a random process to select from them.
Nobody will ever ask me, of course, but it's fun to think about.
That suggestion reminds of the system in Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth:
“For the last century, almost all the top political appointments on Terra had been made by random computer selection from the pool of individuals who had the necessary qualifications. It had taken the human race several thousand years to realize that there were some jobs that should never be given to people who volunteered for them, especially if they showed too much enthusiasm. As one shrewd political commentator had remarked: “We want a President who has to be carried screaming and kicking into the White House – but will then do the best job he possibly can, so that he’ll get time off for good behavior.”
Why does this article start out with unsupported claims of billionaires behaving badly?
When a writer puts down people who add enormous value to the world while putting those who extract value on a pedestal, I have to wonder about her motives.
Interesting take on freedom and the responsibility to be a good person and work for wages as compared to the freedom movement of the 1960's. Good take away is that bad things happen to good people and we should be kind to a fault at every opportunity we get
> When traveling, ride your train respectfully, take no personal chances, cause no problems with the operating crew or host railroad, act like an extra crew member.
Just what they need, a passenger who thinks they are crew.
I think what he actually meant with 'acting like an extra crew member' is minding your own business without interacting or bothering other people, including staff.
They won't accept it anymore (for other homeless) if they have multiple bad events, altercations etc.
Let's not forget the life of a Hobo was one of sexual assault, poverty, mental illness and a host of other problems (The article links to some of the major issues)
I'm all for Medieval societies where we dress up and pretend to kill, so have no problem with romanticising the Hobo life and trying to move it forward, but let's not take any actual lessons from the old way of life, keep it in the realm of fantasy.
To this day, words I live by and they never failed me.