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@paninid The image features a black background with white text centered in the middle. The text reads: "It fascinates me that giving to charities is considered noble and praiseworthy, but creating a society that doesn't require charity is considered socialist and bad." The font is bold and sans-serif, making the text easily readable against the dark background. The overall layout is simple, with no additional images or graphics, focusing solely on the message conveyed by the text.

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@paninid The charities get better PR because the rich use their donations to them to offset taxes they would otherwise owe the government they both control and despise.
@steter @paninid ๐Ÿ’ฏ๐Ÿ‘†๐Ÿป
@paninid @malcircuit Its because the charity model oppresses while the human rights model liberates, and what the 1% cannot tolerate is liberation: after all, the subjugation of the working classes and the otherwise disenfranchised is what empowers them
@paninid Churches LOVE โค๏ธ a monopoly on charity.

@markvonwahlde @paninid

Ask an Irish Catholic from back in the 1800s how well that works out.

@Uair @paninid Well...churches love glomming onto an autocratic power structure even more!
@paninid
This is what I keep coming to when people complain about the government handling things like food security. And all I can conclude is that private charities get to discriminate.

@paninid

Great point. A society filled with charities, and people needing charity shows (pretty obviously) that the economy is not working.

@paninid I had a big boss that would always wear high end fashion brands and probably made $$$$.

After we closed on the acquisition of a small company, she said to a small group of us: "You know what I'd like to be? A philanthropist. My work would just be to do good things!"

Younger me was thinking WTF you're rich as hell. But that was also when I realized that whatever she was being paid was nothing compared to her bosses and the truly, truly wealthy.

So yeah, we should tax wealth and make sure no one has to live in poverty.

@paninid Rich people--ie, the owner class--are *desperate* to be seen as benevolent saviours and also will fight with their dying breath to avoid being legally obligated to give their money to the poor.

Trump is just one particularly obvious example of this pathological state.

@paninid
"When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist."

- Hรฉlder Pessoa Cรขmara

@paninid I don't want charity, I want a society that treats people like they're inherently worthy of existence.
@paninid cc @codinghorror I'm not sure this will please you, but I'm sure you already know it

@paninid

It's what I call the Refrigerator Problem. Socialism works great with one refrigerator in a family.

But as the size of the cohort increases, soon enough, everyone starts in with "that's mine and you can't have it"

Look at these Nordic countries. They were exceedingly kind to many refugees, but now that load on the social network has increased - there is grumbling.

@tuban_muzuru @paninid Is that a problem with socialism scaling to a larger population, or a problem having socialism while other countries persist with less just economic systems?

@grumble209 @paninid

Now this is just my theory, having done some consulting for USDA, an agency much loved by rural America.

There's a USDA outpost in every farming county in the USA. It's not some faceless bureaucracy in "Washington" - in truth it has a large and hugely motivated bureaucracy in Washington and St Louis, but for the farmers, it's as close as the USDA office in the county seat.

It's a perceptiom problem.

@paninid One can be used for tax evasion, the other requires to pay taxes...
@paninid Even then, especially in the US, charity is presumed good, even if it is a corporate shell-company to avoid taxation and pays for services the parent org would get sued over, or a religious group funding political actions that don't help a single impoverished person. So out here, it's a crapshoot if you are helping at all.

@paninid Yeah that's because when you give to charity you get to decide who deserves help, and if help is offered indiscriminately people of whom one does not approve might get it.

I remember when the ACA was being introduced in the U.S., surveys said white people would rather have less good healthcare coverage themselves if it meant Black people didn't benefit.

@paninid A socialist society doesn't allow to show you are a good person by giving away a small percentage of your earnings.

In a socialist society you would have to *gasp* do some meaningful work to prove it!

@paninid very much in line with the late Rev Oscar Romero of El Salvador quote, โ€œWhen I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint; when I asked why they are poor, they called me a communist.โ€

@paninid

Reminds me of Henning Wehn

@NovaNaturalist @paninid
Off topic, heโ€™s a fantastic comedian.

@NovaNaturalist @paninid It can be dangerous to do it on your own too. You want to help homeless people out but some can get violent. Some aren't even in trouble and are trying to scam (I was stupid and stopped for someone needing "help" in Vegas). It really is something that the government should be doing. Tithing is a tax. We don't need to prop ourselves up by giving food to people in need and calling it "charity" do we? It really should just be expected or f-off.

Yeah, agree 100%.

@NovaNaturalist @paninid
Agreed! The only purpose of government is to take care of its constituents.