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idle_zealotlast Monday at 9:16 PM1 replyview on HN

This doesn't sound like a meaningful critique. You're basically arguing for a culture-first approach to a systemic problem, but insisting that that culture should be one of individual responsibility. I contend that it's exactly that culture that divides the oppressed and justifies exploitation. You've decided a priori that people get what they deserve. I see injustice and try to spread understanding of how our systems create that injustice in hopes that people will change these systems to rectify them.

I'm not at all opposed to the concept of personal responsibility and accountability. In one's personal life it's important to be responsible for yourself. It's also important to understand the context you exist in, and how your actions affect others. It's bad to, say, litter on the streets, and I'll reprimand someone interpersonally for doing so. But if you live in a world where a company comes by and dumps truckloads of trash into your park every week and your government lets them, no amount of personally refraining from littering or scolding your neighbors will get you a clean community. In this case those who need to be held accountable are whoever decided on the dump-trash-in-the-park policy and whoever was supposed to stop them and didn't, and the only solution is a change of policy and creation of accountable enforcement mechanisms.


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Barrin92last Monday at 10:45 PM

I'm not just talking about individual responsibility, but collective responsibility emerges from individual responsibility. You start with yourself, then your family, then your community, then your state, then your country, bottom up.

When the company dumps garbage in the town you don't blame the company, you and your neighbors go and put a stop to it. If you're both individually and collectively indifferent then you indeed get what you deserve. That' not an a priori assumption, that's a logical fact. You either take control and self-govern or you're governed. This idea that education or social life works like McDonald's where you yell for the manager if something broken is pathetic.

Vague complaints about 'the system' or crying for some hero CEO, strongman president or influencer or activist of the week to save us poor souls isn't how a free people act. These are problems that can be solved locally from the ground up. You don't need to wait for 'policies' to change, you and your neighbors drag whoever is responsible for that out, or even organize the garbage disposal yourself if need be.