i live on disability for a psychiatric condition. my background is complex - my early childhood was spent on welfare, whereas i was comfortably middle class in my teenage and early adult years. some of the things i have were given to me when i was a teenager. some of them, i worked for myself when i was a teenager. some of them, i bought as an adult, when i was employed, before i broke down. still others, i've arrived at through careful fiscal budgeting or good luck. kijiji is a useful resource.

regardless, i feel the need to challenge the premise. "you deserve what you worked for" seems reasonable on the surface, but if you break it down it becomes deeply tyrannical. it leads to a corollary of "you don't deserve what you didn't work for", which is a literal statement of economic slavery. once you realize this, the issue enters into a surreal realm where we, as the owned class, are attacking each other for being bad slaves. rather than show solidarity with our common struggles, we attack each other for not upholding the goals of our owners. could we be more brainwashed?

to an extent, it's easy to understand. we despise our own conditions so deeply that we lash out at those that seem like they're "getting a better deal". we interpret inequality based on our immediate perceptions, perhaps because we lack the ability to abstract the situation on our own, without prodding. why can't we see that the root of the problem is in our own shitty deal, rather than a perception that the other guy's shitty deal is less shitty? why can't we unite to fight a common oppressor rather than stab each other in the back?

i don't want to hijack this, so i'm not going to engage in a debate. i just want to ask people to think about the ideas underlying the system of "reward for work" a little more carefully in order to come to the conclusion that arguments like the one above are essentially an internalization of slavery and to ask if it is possible to build a truly free society while holding on to this kind of calvinist thinking.

http://themetapicture.com/do-not-judge-a-person-until-you-know-their-story/