How does welfare possibly hold people back when they're required to look for a job on it?
Someone who risks homelessness may have more incentive to find a job, but they're also going to have more difficulties. It's easier to look for a job on a full stomach; it's easier to look for a job with a roof over your head; it's easier to look for a job with internet access; it's easier to look for a job when you're not constantly worried about losing it all. Welfare gives you a stable place from which to find employment.
If your argument is that people abuse the position of welfare, and don't look for a job, then that's a criticism of its enforcement, not welfare itself.
Holding people accountable for their actions is important, but we're still at a point where the internet is considered by most to be inherently benign. Putting all our attention on a few individuals allows us to pretend that the internet isn't a complete Pandora's box for society -- that it's just Zuckerberg's fault.
I suppose I'm not an 'advanced musician', but I've been playing piano for 22 years and have never practiced a scale in my life. I think it's a detestable, anti-creative task and heavily rooted in the rigid, mechanistic classical tradition.
I still know and remember all of the Western "scales" by improvising music based on the notes contained within them. A scale is just a collection of notes. They really, really don't need to be played in one particular order over and over.
1. Live with other people. Hopefully you should already be doing this. Every sane single person in their 20s in New Zealand does.
2. Go further, and share your room with another person. It's not so bad. You can put a curtain in the middle of the room. I've done it and it was fine.
3. Pay someone a small weekly fee to freely use their kitchen and toilet, and sleep in a van in the carpark. If you insulate your car and have a mattress, as well as find someone game, you'll learn to enjoy it.
I don't consider any of this to be "hardship". You might. I think many of us have a hard time accepting how possible it is to be comfortable with less.
If these really are unthinkable, then just find a cheap place.
That's actually an extremely fascinating experience. I only have two comments, both of which you've probably already considered:
1. Become a freelance web developer
2. If fish oil helped you, then avoid consuming vegetable oil (which is sadly used for 99% of takeaway/restaurant meals) and eat lots of salmon. It's possible that chronic inflammation and Omega 3/6 are related. I wouldn't be saying this if fish oil didn't help -- the fact that it helped says a lot.
- I'm on disability support (for high-functioning autism), which means that...
- Working is tricky (income cap), and as a result...
- I'm on 10 year old hardware that doesn't like Chrome too much. (I also have insufficient disk space to do anything useful. While scrambling to move some stuff around I hit 800KB free on / and I had to SIGSTOP chromium so it wouldn't crash. xD)
I've learned a lot about the benefits of designing stuff on older hardware from the get-go, but nobody really does that sadly.
Along with the autism are some cognitive and attention-span issues that mean that, while I try to emphasize as much on practically implementable ideas, I'm a lot better at starting stuff than finishing it - and most of the ideas I do have are limited by my hardware.
--
Regarding vegetable oil, I completely agree - but in my case, because I'm a blood-type O, my body can break down canola (!) oil really well, so taking into account the quality levels used by at-scale manufacturing, provided the oil is properly extracted/stored/used/etc, I can actually use (break down) stuff made with canola oil quite well.
I can agree with eating tons of salmon (which is also okay for blood type O), but actually finding good quality sources of fish in general is quite hard: I don't know about salmon in particular, but I've heard that deep-sea fish are generally healthier. I'm not sure if this is because less toxins sink to lower depths, because the toxns can't survive at those depths, or what.
Farmed fisheries are tricky, both because of rampant inbreeding†, and also because of the food made artificially available to the fish in the farm may be... interesting.
(† Cheetahs had some kind of major event many thousands of years ago that wiped almost all of them out. They rebounded, but if you take any two cheetahs from anywhere in the world, they're so identical it's almost confusing.)
Omega3 and Omega6 oils bind to the same receptors and compete for the same processes, with the optimal ratio (supposedly) 1:1, but western diet closer to 1:10; Canola oil, as almost any seed or vegetable oil, is almost pure Omega6.
Fish oil is mostly Omega3 in the most readily available form; Flax oil is mostly Omega3 in a less available form; Almost every other oil (including rapeseed, aka canola) is mostly Omega6.
You can love something to pieces, yet still find yourself unable to do it, merely because the draw of the internet is too powerful. We are not optimized to deal with the stimulus of the internet. I have found that unfettered access to it is reducing life quality, and I'm not waiting for twenty double-blind peer-reviewed studies to show this obvious reality.
It is much healthier to admit that we have limits, that we are fallible in the face of such overwhelming pleasure, and accept the approach of physically distancing ourselves from the internet.
By this logic, all humans are incapable of performing any task due to the existence of the internet. Some yearn for a simpler time, when all humans were incapable of performing any task due to the existence of television, radio, books, friends, meteorology, the opposite sex, or beer.
But if you would rather be distracted by trees and bugs, remarkable vistas and epic adventures, feel free to continue using this narrative to get what you want.
Firstly, the internet does not permanently and completely eliminate our agency, it reduces our agency due to the fallible nature of self-control.
Secondly, all of the other activities you listed do not reduce our agency to the extent that the internet does. Some things are more addictive than others. To claim that meteorology and the internet have the same risk to our agency is absolutely absurd.
Thirdly, establishing distance from the internet (e.g. not involving computers when they aren't necessary, using the computer at the library instead of keeping one at home, adding restrictions to a smartphone or using a dumbphone) is not the same as giving it up altogether.
> Firstly, the internet does not permanently and completely eliminate our agency...
> You can love something to pieces, yet still find yourself unable to do it, merely because the draw of the internet is too powerful.
Which is it? Is the draw of the internet simply too powerful to ignore? Or is it possible to partially ignore this distraction?
> Secondly, all of the other activities you listed do not reduce our agency to the extent that the internet does.
Internet access reduces your agency? Sorry to hear that. Internet access increases my agency.
> Thirdly, establishing distance from the internet (e.g. not involving computers when they aren't necessary, using the computer at the library instead of keeping one at home, adding restrictions to a smartphone or using a dumbphone) is not the same as giving it up altogether.
> We are not optimized to deal with the stimulus of the internet.
You're excusing convenience. If the internet is so harmful, why risk any contact? And are all parts of the internet equally harmful?
Back to the original point, if you don't want to use the internet, then don't. But if you don't want to use the internet, why are you using it to tell other people that you don't want to use it?
I read about it in the newspaper for the small town my parents live in, and I have a completely non-technical friend duped into a weird Bitcoin ponzi scheme. It's getting there.
1. How much does an electric guitar cost? Comparatively, how much does it cost to pirate music software on the device you already own?
2. How many people do you need to form a rock band? Comparatively, how many people do you need to start producing?
3. How many sounds can an electric guitar make? Comparatively, how many sounds can a computer make?
Using a computer is cheaper, easier, more versatile, and more original than an electric guitar. Let it die.
The only argument to be made for the electric guitar is that you actually play it, and this applies to every other instrument, so I see no reason to mourn for the electric guitar in particular.
Someone who risks homelessness may have more incentive to find a job, but they're also going to have more difficulties. It's easier to look for a job on a full stomach; it's easier to look for a job with a roof over your head; it's easier to look for a job with internet access; it's easier to look for a job when you're not constantly worried about losing it all. Welfare gives you a stable place from which to find employment.
If your argument is that people abuse the position of welfare, and don't look for a job, then that's a criticism of its enforcement, not welfare itself.