There was a man who shot himself on the steps of a government(?) building, which is a town over from where I'm originally from, because he was laid off.

A friend showed me the note he left on Facebook before it got deleted. It was very clear that he had been struggling financially for years and the layoff was the final straw.

In a sense, the way he went out was his attempt to bring attention to the problems he faced and believes others were facing, too. While I'm not an advocate of martyrdom, it's kind of sad that the very act he thought would shine light on his suffering was disappeared from the record.

Facebook note: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1888367364...

"A Driver’s Suicide Reveals the Dark Side of the Gig Economy" : https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/nyregion/livery-driver-ta...

The Arab Spring revolutions were started by a suicide brought about by severe injustice and poverty.

The suicide was the spark, the tinder was almost literally brought about by a lack of water.

But yes, sad that it probably didn't get the attention he wanted. Was there no news article explaining his suicide and the causes?

I am more surprised this isn’t a everyday thing. This country has a bad mental health issue. But ok. Make sure the lock is on the plane.

What's unsettling is a cheerful disposition mixed with deep resigned sadness. In a weird way its like he had given up and was broken but yet wanted his last shot at some 'fun', and also a bit of a protest while he is at it.

It's feels both disjointed and coherent. He is another voice in a growing realization of the need to organize society around people and not markets.

- A carefully calculated series of beatings?

- The 'naughty step' for at least five minutes?

- Some sort of heavy-duty drug regimen involving intravenous lithium and/or ketamine?

- Maybe just pay someone to follow them around and prod them with a meter-stick whenever they seem to be getting a bit too excited? They could also hold up a warning sign, or maybe a color coded flag (as decided by either local church committee, or an act of parliament, depending on regional preferences) to warn people nearby (when not engaged employing the meter-sick, of course.)[0]

0. This last one is actually really good, as not only does it fix the sociopaths, it gets us closer to full employment, what with the flag people and all the committees, which will need planning meetings with secretaries and facilitators and note-takers and adminstrators, probably some sort of report will need to be generated after a while to see if the committees are working properly, or if we need more. And then there's the craftsmen who make the meter-sticks and flags as well. Probably the flag/meter-stick people will want a uniform, which adds a whole new layer of possibilities.

In fact, I can't see why everyone doesn't just get up NOW and grab a long stick and go out and prod some fucking sociopaths just to show them who's boss. I think that was the idea, anyway.

Literally anyone can snap. The only deterrent is precrime.

If a program errors into a non-recoverable state, and I see something in the stack trace, odds are it had something to do with the issue.

He showed intent to send a message. The fact he was about to end his life just amplifies it. Of all the things one could have focused on, that stuck out? Hardly dismissable.

He knew where his life was going either way. Either because he would have ended it regardless, or because he knew that doing anything drastic enough to hurt the "people" who he saw as the source of his hardship would forfeit his ability to live any semblance of a normal life afterward.

It’s like if my doctor asks me why I think my blood pressure is suddenly extreme. It would be the first time I reflected over it.

What evidence do you have that this is a trend?

>I'm sure an MBA will surface and tell me I'm wrong, but I've not encountered a workplace that didn't marginalize their workers and generated a tragedy of the likes that has become a hallmark of the last 50 years.

Isn't that every single employer that hasn't had an employee do this?

What is your response to the European pilot that crashed a passenger plane full of passengers working for an airline in a country that eschews free market capitalism and has strong social safety nets?

Hardly do they ever even discuss that maybe our current labor/employer power balance and paradigm is fundamentally unhealthy, and only exists to fuel the greed of rampant crony capitalism.

Just look at the situation in NYC with ride-sharing and all the taxi driver suicides.

To clarify this, it is not 'taxi driver' suicides, it is suicides by medallion investors.

Most drivers do not own medallions.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/06/taxi...

For those who defend the system, often enough the medallions are their life saving / insurance when they get old, and almost always financed by loans.

The medallions going worthless at the same time invalidates their retirement plans and STILL leaves them on the hook for the loan.

Would it not be just that, if we're going to rewrite the economic rules in some areas, we give partial compensation towards those we just screwed over?

Presumably we're changing the rules because of progress (e.g. Uber and Lyft showing on-demand rideshare has a market), which is good for everyone.

But say the human lifespan is 85 years +/-. 25 years for education to post-secondary graduation (e.g. bachelor's degree in US). Probably another 2-5 years of accumulating working capital for your venture.

So there's a set number of "shots" a person gets in their life.

In this instance, what's wrong with saying "We're doing away with the medallion system. Existing medallions will be repurchased by the government at a price proportional to ownership time. Funding will be accomplished by a tax on rideshare companies, that decreases yearly, and ends 5 years from now"?

Otherwise, I see the following sequence of events: (1) people get screwed by technological upheaval -> (2) people become resentful against technological progress -> (3) people vote in politicians / laws that retard technological progress, to the detriment of all

Why not also subsidize traders who lose on a stock?

If you want a society where people can't lose then you also get a society where no one wins.

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Poverty is the Lord's way of anointing the sinners for the righteous to cull.

Ephesians 1:11 “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.”

The parts of US culture I am familiar with blur the lines between godliness and wealth pretty far. It is a common belief that the poor are being justly punished for their sins, and that only good things happen to good people.

From the Today's English Version,

Paul's Letter to the Ephesians: Chapter 1, verses 1-11

From Paul, who by God's will is an apostle of Christ Jesus-- To God's people in Ephesus, who are faithfulin their life in union with Christ Jesus.

2-) May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.

3-) Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! For in our union with Christ he has blessed us by giving us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly world.

4-) Even before the world was made, God had chosen us to be his through our union with Christ, so that we would be holy and without fault before him, because of his love.

5-) God had already decided that through Jesus Christ he would make us his children--this was his pleasure and purpose.

6-) Let us praise God for his glorious grace, for the free gift he gave us in his dear Son!

7-) For by the blood of Christ we are set free, that is, our sins are forgiven. How great is the grace of God,

8-) which he gave to us in such large measure! In all his wisdom and insight

9-) God did what he had purposed, and made known to us the secret plan he had already decided to complete by means of Christ.

10-) This plan,which God will complete when the time is right, is to bring all creation together, everything in heaven and on earth, with Christ as head.

11-) All things are done according to God's plan and decision; and God chose us to be his own people in Union with Christ because of his own purpose based on what he had decided from the very beginning.

Nothing in there screams "poverty is an affliction God amounts on the sinner."

You might get a hint of it around verse 14, but that verse is contingent on the Spirit granting complete freedom to the faithful.

The entire section is a call to praise God.

I don't know who this betterofchuck is, but he seems to have a penchant for cherrypicking verse to fit his argument. His interpretation is outright sickening, and bordering on the blasphemous.

Also, America DOES tend to see destitution as a self-inflicted condition, but the main way in which disgust is usually elicited is by the perception of those destitute who refuse to find a way to better themselves. A central American value is to FIGHT for one's own liberty, not to grovel at the feet of others to have it delivered. This disgust can be elicited just as easily by the wealthy as well.

Show me someone who makes an honest effort at lifting themselves up, and I'll show you someone living up to the American ideal.

It isn't pretty, but in my life, THAT is how America has worked.

I'd draw a distinction between those who risk their own capital for themselves, and those who risk capital through others (aka investors). It's not an easy distinction to codify, but it seems important.

Society needs people taking risks for themselves. To benefit themselves. And instead of paying after they've hit rock bottom, maybe it would be smarter to do a bit to keep that from happening.

Because change isn't slowing down...

Earning a livelihood is not gambling. The taxi drivers had entered the market for medallions under specific circumstances and IMHO should be compensated by government if government unilaterally breaks the deal.

A poster above me highlights one example of a livery driver whose income fell precipitously after the ride-sharing floodgates opened.

Even Uber/Lyft drivers themselves are being squeezed (which I guess is the whole point). Look at the conditions that many bay area ride-sharing drivers face... driving hours from their homes outside the bay to make barely above minimum wage (if that) driving 60-80-100 hours a week in the city.

Meanwhile all the marketing from these companies paint a rosy picture of "being your own boss" and earning "side-hustle" money, when in reality most of these drivers are, like taxi drivers, poor immigrants killing themselves trying to make a living (and without all the benefits and protections of a "traditional" job).

Nothing I'm saying is extreme or a stretch. If you live in a major urban area you can literally see it and experience it for yourself. I've made this same point across different threads and keep on getting down-voted, but as Sinclair once said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

That’s a stretch!

The fact is our society has a tendency to be unable to have meaningful discourse until someone provides framework for it. Just as the issue of Slavery back in the 1800's was fraught with the same types of rebellious antics and slaveowner hysterics, we're seeing the same patterns reserve at a time where inequality in the country has begun to reach a new perceived maxima.

You're also seeing the same sort of outpouring of sympathy that many workplace shooters saw after they snapped, even from some people they shot.

I'm not bringing the topic up lightly. I DON'T make a habit of bringing up the obvious or trying to find a way to turn things political. I've seen slices of life recently from the 1%, to teachers, to call center workers, to someone working the floor at a Tractor Supply, to an AM in a grocery store, to farmers, to the retired elderly for who the system worked.

Every last one realizes that something is going amiss right now after a bit of time spent talking. Every last one feels helpless to change anything about it. In this type of environment it is frequently the mentally ill who are best able to perceive the flaws inherent in the System, and the most likely to ACT because of them.

The 'crazies' in short, aren't the problem. The fact we as a society have normalized something so 'off' that even the 'crazies' are starting to get pushed over the edge by it is what we should be paying attention to.

As I said, I was quite confident my post would prove controversial, but I felt it needed to be said, as it has been left unsaid for too long.

P.S. It's godspeed, not "God speed".

Maybe spend less time on Reddit, Facebook, etc... Things probably aren't as bad as they look through the lens of social media.

Things are terrible, and putting your head in the sand does nothing but exacerbate the situation.

While I appreciate your view on my perspective, it comes from careful analysis of macroeconomic data, as well as discussing the issues with citizens who would eventually be my constituents when I run in the next election cycle.