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Post by Andrei_X on Mar 10, 2004 15:48:47 GMT -5
In my AP Macroeconomics class today we had to watch a video called "The Blame Game", which claimed that America was a "nation of victims" who "couldn't take responsibility for themselves". It used some rather outrageous examples (the woman who sued McDonald's when she spilled coffee on her lap or people who get disability coverage for being drug addicts), but it made me think: how much of the problems in today's society are the system's fault, and how much is our own fault? Do we really not take enough responsibility? Are we always looking for "someone/something else" to blame for our problems? Or is it the opposite: Does the system blame all this shit on the masses?
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Post by redstar2000 on Mar 10, 2004 19:29:55 GMT -5
I think the mythology of "personal responsibility" is just a derivative of something that bourgeois ideology has maintained from its inception: success is "your achievement" and failure is "your fault".
If you are a "superior" person, then you will "overcome all obstacles" and succeed. If you are an "inferior" person, then no amount of assistance will suffice...you will "always fail".
Thus, unlike feudal aristocracies, the aristocracies of capital "really deserve" their exalted positions and financial rewards.
For the ordinary working person, who is injured on a daily basis in thousands of ways by capital, the lawsuit is a kind of "lottery ticket" -- if you win, you get out of the shit zone. If you win big, you escape wage-slavery altogether.
Contrary to the media image, I suspect the vast majority of personal injury and product liability suits that go to trial are lost -- just as almost all lottery tickets are worthless. Usually a token settlement is offered...and accepted. (You may sue for $2,000,000 but you settle for $100,000...of which the lawyer takes $30-40,000.)
To suggest, as the media often does, that filing a lawsuit violates the canons of "personal responsibility" is to say that ordinary people should "just walk away" from a (small) chance to get out of the shit.
That's just crazy. Capitalist law rarely offers the ordinary person a chance to recover some of what s/he has been robbed of over a lifetime...few are dumb enough not to grasp that chance (however small it might actually be).
If I found a lottery ticket on the sidewalk for next week's drawing, you'd better believe it will go in my pocket.
It could be a winner.
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Post by urz on May 1, 2004 5:14:04 GMT -5
Mythology of "personal responcibility" ?
My view is different. Here is my take on what it means
to have personal responcibility:
If we have a vision, the only way it will come to be is
if we take action to bring it about. We should take
action to solve our own problems. Simply asking the
government to solve social problems can not be expected
to work. Assess your needs and take action.
Taking direct action is not always easy (there are
sometimes external barriers which in a utopia wouldn't
be there) and usually, in the absense of experience,
requires the courage to explore. It is fear that holds
most of us back, and causes us to look to some
authority to help. This is a natural result of our
upbringing, but it is something that we should seek to
overcome.
Your post, in suggesting there is no personal
responcibility, seems to offer a rationale for somebody
to use against themselves in justifying not facing
their fear. They can blame the government for their
discontentment, or "the system", or whatever outside
force, and in doing so be excused from taking any
direct action.
And I think this *does* happen. Keep a person caged
long enough and they will fear freedom. Oppressed
people sometimes fall into a self-defeating habit of
thinking of themselves as victims. Oportunities are
missed because courage is lacking to defy, not external
opressors, but internal ones. And the internalized
opression may have been due to actual outside
oppression at some point in the past, but no outsider
can overcome it for them. Sometimes people lash out in
anger at representatives of their perceived oppressors
when in actuality, it is they themselves that carried
out the oppression.
To realize that we have a responcibility to overcome
our fears is not to condem ourselves harshly as
inferior when we fail to do so. Past punishments lead
to reasonable caution in future actions. A harsh
disciplinarian environment can stunt a person's
development and keep them forever in a child-like
dependent state. This is what happens to most all of
us and it is not a sign of inferiority. We should not
expect ourselves to be supermen. But we should
actively, but compassionately, seek to improve our own
self-confidence.
On a side note, the seeking to shirk peronal
responcibility by the population is probably a big
sociological factor in the rise of harsh dictators.
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Post by Mcdonalds on May 2, 2004 23:50:27 GMT -5
The widely known story of the mcdonalds coffee case as an example of frivolous lawsuits is a myth. The reality is in this summation:
The “McDonald’s coffee” case. We have all heard it: a woman spills McDonald's coffee, sues and gets $3 million. Here are the facts of this widely misreported and misunderstood case:
Stella Liebeck, 79 years old, was sitting in the passenger seat of her grandson’s car having purchased a cup of McDonald’s coffee. After the car stopped, she tried to hold the cup securely between her knees while removing the lid. However, the cup tipped over, pouring scalding hot coffee onto her. She received third-degree burns over 16 percent of her body, necessitating hospitalization for eight days, whirlpool treatment for debridement of her wounds, skin grafting, scarring, and disability for more than two years. Morgan, The Recorder, September 30, 1994. Despite these extensive injuries, she offered to settle with McDonald’s for $20,000. However, McDonald’s refused to settle. The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages -- reduced to $160,000 because the jury found her 20 percent at fault -- and $2.7 million in punitive damages for McDonald’s callous conduct. (To put this in perspective, McDonald's revenue from coffee sales alone is in excess of $1.3 million a day.) The trial judge reduced the punitive damages to $480,000. Subsequently, the parties entered a post-verdict settlement. According to Stella Liebeck’s attorney, S. Reed Morgan, the jury heard the following evidence in the case:
By corporate specifications, McDonald's sells its coffee at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit;
Coffee at that temperature, if spilled, causes third-degree burns (the skin is burned away down to the muscle/fatty-tissue layer) in two to seven seconds;
Third-degree burns do not heal without skin grafting, debridement and whirlpool treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars and result in permanent disfigurement, extreme pain and disability of the victim for many months, and in some cases, years;
The chairman of the department of mechanical engineering and bio-mechanical engineering at the University of Texas testified that this risk of harm is unacceptable, as did a widely recognized expert on burns, the editor in chief of the leading scholarly publication in the specialty, the Journal of Burn Care and Rehabilitation;
McDonald's admitted that it has known about the risk of serious burns from its scalding hot coffee for more than 10 years -- the risk was brought to its attention through numerous other claims and suits, to no avail;
From 1982 to 1992, McDonald's coffee burned more than 700 people, many receiving severe burns to the genital area, perineum, inner thighs, and buttocks;
Not only men and women, but also children and infants, have been burned by McDonald's scalding hot coffee, in some instances due to inadvertent spillage by McDonald's employees;
At least one woman had coffee dropped in her lap through the service window, causing third-degree burns to her inner thighs and other sensitive areas, which resulted in disability for years;
Witnesses for McDonald's admitted in court that consumers are unaware of the extent of the risk of serious burns from spilled coffee served at McDonald's required temperature;
McDonald's admitted that it did not warn customers of the nature and extent of this risk and could offer no explanation as to why it did not;
McDonald's witnesses testified that it did not intend to turn down the heat -- As one witness put it: “No, there is no current plan to change the procedure that we're using in that regard right now;”
McDonald's admitted that its coffee is “not fit for consumption” when sold because it causes severe scalds if spilled or drunk;
Liebeck's treating physician testified that her injury was one of the worst scald burns he had ever seen.
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Post by Mcdonalds on May 2, 2004 23:51:04 GMT -5
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Post by disability myth on May 3, 2004 2:12:56 GMT -5
i have never heard of disability for being a drug addict or alcholism. In fact, there is a law that prevents SSI and SSDI from awarding benefits in these cases. See www.ssa.gov/pubs/10047.htmlDisability is pretty hard to get in my experience. You have to fight, appeal, fight, appeal, etc etc.. It takes forever in alot of cases - even over a year. |
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