this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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Freedom to take a third job to repay that medical debt

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[–] Spendrill@lemm.ee 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why is this framed as opposing ideas?

To be clear the question was framed as "Which is more important: Freedom to pursue life's goals without state interference or State guarantees nobody is in need."

Life's goals are ill defined, freedom from need is also a life goal.

This is fucking nonsense

[–] AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I'm American.

Here, "Freedom to pursue life's goals" is often a euphemism used by our owner class to make as much capital as they want without taxation, to exploit as many people as they want, and to not be held responsible for the damage to the commons or the environment their pursuit causes. There's very little about our culture that doesn't revolve around greed and greed worship. "Freedom to pursue life's goals" doesn't mean bird watching or pottery here.

And in that sense, yes, they do conflict, because the freedom for a few (that many poor people defend against their own interests in the self-delusion of one day becoming) to exploit and hoard as much societal value as possible leaves that society without the resources to have other citizen's basic needs met.

[–] Spendrill@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I agree with everything you say but I feel that for the Pew Study to have any intellectual weight they'd have had to step beyond euphemism and make all of that explicit to their respondents. Or one might conclude that, at least in this case, Pew are complicit with the lies that are being told.

[–] AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not sure of their methodology, but I consider the meaning taken from the proposition of "freedom to pursue life's goals" in itself is one of the fundamental differences in the American vs. European cultural mindset, before you even get to the answer.

[–] Spendrill@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I do see what you mean but you'd need to drill down in the questioning into "How do you define those freedoms?" or "What do you understand life's goals to mean?" before you could get to meaningful data. I think that this is poor survey design but I agree with your point and I think the survey may have been designed poorly on purpose.

[–] AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

Agreed, this isn't useful.