I plead Poe's Law.

Yes, the little people are idiots for not spending the money they'd otherwise waste on things like food and rent on buying themselves privileged treatment. Because that's totally a choice they are stupidly making and not an economic necessity.

If you find your condition limiting then I agree it's fine to call it a handicap or a disability or an illness or what have you. I'm just supportive of people who might have similar conditions and like being that way and not want to be any different -- people who'd find that becoming 'normal' would be tradeoff that's not worth it. (And contrasting that with something like blindness or deafness, where it's not like you get Daredevil-like powers by being blind, or X-ray vision from being deaf... there's nothing you would lose from gaining an ability others have and you lack. It's not a different emphasis or optimization of different traits like many mental conditions can be, it's just a deficit in one).

Yes but he was not any specific Asian ethnicity (on purpose), and as some people find offense in lumping all Asians together I felt it necessary to note that I wasn't just unsure of what Asian ethnicity Sulu was, he specifically didn't have a definite one.

I wonder if the people who take offense at references to nonspecific "Asians" take offense at Sulu being one, rather than say, Japanese or Korean or something.

I was just thinking about something similar to this earlier.

Geordi LaForge was included in Star Trek: The Next Generation as the token disabled character, so that disabled people would get representation in the inclusive vision of the future that show painted -- similar to how the Original Series depicted a Russian, a (nonspecific) Asian, and a black woman, all serving on the bridge in a show targeted at a predominantly white male American culture, to show how different nationalities, races, and sexes could all work together in harmony in the future.

But in an idealistic utopian future like Trek presents, shouldn't all disabilities be cured? Disability isn't some harmless difference like race or sex or nationality or whatever that we want to show all integrated and coexisting in the future. Showing a future where somehow all blacks had become white, all women had become men, and so on, would be ridiculous and dystopian. But showing a world where all disabled people were as able as anyone else... isn't that what we're aiming for? Isn't that the point of medicine?

Why isn't there a token poor character on the bridge of the Enterprise? Every series depicts nothing but well-to-do people with all their material needs met, pursuing science and such for the intrinsic fulfillment of those activities -- nobody's struggling just to make ends meet, like many people do in real life. Sound the cries of "class discrimination!" then, shall we? Against the erasure of the lower classes?

No, that would be stupid. The reason there's no poor people serving on the bridge of the Enterprise is because in Star Trek's utopian future, poverty has been eliminated. Why is disability any different? Why does it show a somehow better future to have a token disabled character, but not a token poor character?

Mental issues are different from physical ones. I can't rightly comprehend how someone who is physically unable to do something that other people can do (like see or hear) could consider that something worth preserving, but there are large communities of people with autism spectrum "disorders" who consider the way that they think and feel to be not less capable than how other people think or feel, but just different.

It's more akin to if society said raw strength was the standard of physical ability, and agility or stamina were neat bonuses to that, but not really important; and then there were other people who were weak by the social standard but had their own physical talents less-valued by that standard, elegant dancers or endurance runners in a world where only power lifters were valued, who refuse to accept that their body's different kind of physical ability is a "disability". (We've actually got something akin to that in body-image discrimination: different healthy body types are usually adept at different kinds of physical activity, but we tend to call e.g. the stocky guy who can lift a car or walk for many miles without even tiring "fat", because he doesn't have a lean body built for running and jumping that we think of as "fit").

In the end, if someone doesn't suffer intrinsically from a trait (thus excluding suffering due only to society's reactions to that trait), then the trait shouldn't count as a "disability" or an "illness".

And whether it does or not, the person with that trait is still a person deserving of the same respect either way.

People like you are what break every kind of socioeconomic system yet devised. "I had it tough and got fucked over but some day I'll be the one fucking everyone over so it all works out in the end!" -- except for everyone scrupulous enough not to buy into the fuck-other-people-over contest, and all the innocent bystanders getting fucked over in the crossfire.

I don't quite see an argument in all of that, but your overall point seems to be that you can better yourself and learn and work hard and move up the socioeconomic ladder and that's how it should be. I agree completely that that's how it should be; what I have been arguing is that rent counteracts that, makes it so it's not enough like that; it lets some people float up effortlessly on the work of others, and conversely puts a great weight on others making their climb up inordinately difficult.

We wouldn't let some people make a living outright stealing from others, and excuse it by saying "well if you're clever and good at fighting or hiding or otherwise avoiding getting robbed, you can become a robber yourself!" We recognize that we need to provide a fair arena for the competition, providing equal opportunities for everyone. I'm saying that rent allows for an unacknowledged equality of opportunity.

It's like if in a race, getting closer to the front gave you a speed boost, and getting further behind gave you a slowdown. I'm not arguing that anyone up front should be held back so that people in the back can catch up to them. I'm arguing that nobody should get speed boosts or slowdowns based on their current race position. It should not be possible to get to a point where you can just coast along on your speed boost and stay in the lead forever; you could coast for a while without falling behind because you're already so far ahead, but that should come at the cost of your leading distance. If the guy in back is running at all harder than the guy in front, their respective speeds should reflect that, and he should eventually catch up. As is, it's much easier to maintain your position near the lead than it is just to keep from falling further behind near the back, and I've identified rent (including especially rent on money, i.e. interest) as the culprit behind that problem.

As to your comments on my personal situation: a mobile home is a home yeah, but so is an apartment; the point is I'm still paying someone else for the privilege of living somewhere. Renting it out, if it was even legal on the land lease (hey we're back on topic again), would just let me break even. When I move on I plan on letting my disabled mother and possibly grandmother (if she's still around) live here, rather than renting rooms in other people's homes.

And I have no debt, and have never had debt (I do put everything on credit, but pay it off before any interest is ever due), so "learn about debt management" is not exactly helpful advice. I don't need advice on how to do better myself. I am doing well. I am doing better than any of my peers. I'm not complaining that poor me has life so bad. I'm complaining that I, and the majority of Americans doing less well than I am, face unfair challenges in doing better than we are, largely to the benefit of those who least need such benefit.

It's not a shortened form of "neither", but that makes your use of "and nor" nonsensical. "Either" goes with "or" and "neither" goes with "nor", though neither "or" nor "nor" need either "either" nor "neither" (respectively) in all cases, and neither do either "nor" nor "or" ever pair directly with "and" as you had them, though either "and either" or "and neither" can introduce an "or" or "nor" clause (respectively) into a larger "and" clause just fine.

TL;DR: Say "and neither should it be" or "nor should it be", but not "and nor should it be".

Right, because original thought equals "LOL masturbation". I think we know who the real 12 year old here is. But my apologies -- that comparison is an insult to quite a number of 12 year olds, many of whom are actually quite good at innovative thinking, not having had it beaten out of them by asshats like you yet. But give it time and continued emotional abuse and I'm sure most of them will come down to your level eventually, sad to say.

Yeah, and I stand by that. Where is anything crumbling? You really don't know how to make or even understand a logical argument, do you?

You asked where does a rentless world leave you if you want to go kayaking on the way home. I gave an answer as to how you can do that without rent, with only buying and selling.

My worldview is fine. You're just unable to imagine things from any worldview other than your own. "Oh noes, but if we didn't do everything exactly the way we do it now, everything would crumble!" No. The good things existing now that are currently constructed in terms of rent can still be preserved without rent, and I explained how. The bad things that rent causes meanwhile could be escaped if we abolished it -- and kept all of those good things in the ways I have just explained to you several times over.

You've yet to pose any problem for my proposition, and in fact I gave the solution to the problem you tried to pose in the post you replied to. You're evidently just too thick to comprehend the plain words in front of your face.

Yeah sure, a 12 year old with a philosophy degree, who throws around terms like "rentier" and rigorously constructs possible alternate economic structures in an attempt to synthesize an original solution to the still-unresolved antithesis between capitalist and socialist ideologies. Sure thing bucko.

You started in with the invectives. If you don't like it then shove your closed-minded unsympathetic head up your ass and eat shit you miserable fucktard.

I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make here, but at least you sound polite unlike half the other people in this thread.

It sounds like you're telling me to live cheaply and save and I'll eventually be a homeowner. Good advice, but beside the point. I'm now making twice the median personal income and still live barely less thriftily than I did as a college student. All of that excess income, nearly half of what I take home -- that is, nearly an entire median take-home income -- is now going towards savings. You're right, I will be a homeowner some day. (By some standards I technically am already. I now own mobile home, but I still have to rent the land it's on, which costs as much as apartment rent would, and that's what really counts -- I'm still stuck paying rent in the end, and a whole extended family is living a work-free life of leisure off of nothing but the rents collected from the poor people stuck in this trailer park with me).

All of that is beside the point. Yes, I am beating the system. It is possible. But I am also way above the median on every measure of intellectual ability I've ever taken, and my income is finally starting to reflect that, and still it is a colossal uphill battle even for me. What about the over half of Americans who make less than half of what I do, and don't have the ability to ever do much better than that -- whose children probably won't either, and so on. Should generation after generation after generation, an entire class of people, be stuck working to paying for the leisurely life of those who were by some means or another fortunate enough to get the upper hand on them, without ever working their way out of it even over generations of struggling to do so? It's virtually indentured servitude, except you get to pick who you are indentured to -- but in the end you have to pick someone, because you have to live somewhere.

You fuck off you parasitic sack of shit rentier. Or so I presume -- why else would you defend a practice robbing millions of people of a huge chunk of their hard-earned wealth generation after generation if you weren't benefitting from it? Work for your own damn living like a decent human being you pathetic fucking leech.

You are the one who brought up kayaks, as though my idea -- which is meant to solve real problems real people are really suffering from -- was unworkable because it would somehow impede your ability to get a kayak for short-term use for a reasonable amount of money. I'm just pointing out that that is completely possible to do without having to technically rent. Why the hell would you buy a kayak on the spur of the moment? The fuck if I know, you're the one who suddenly wanted a kayak on the ride home. I'm just pointing out that you could still get one, use it briefly, get rid of it, and pay the same amount of money in the same time frame as you would have renting it, without having to have the legal instrument of a rental contract involved. That's all possible using only sales.

As for put my money where my mouth is, sure thing. If I am ever in a position where I have property I'm not using that I want to make some money off of, I'll sell it instead of renting it out. No problem, I was already planning on it. As for implementing my ideas in the real world beyond that... I don't have the power to abolish the legal instrument of rental contracts all by myself. You might as well have told an abolitionist "put your money where your mouth is" -- ok, he doesn't own slaves, but there's still this big problem of all the other people who do, what more do you want him to do about it? All I can do is convince other people it would be a good idea to get rid of rent, and then maybe eventually enough people who share that opinion will actually be in a position to do something about it.