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dheeralast Friday at 4:46 PM2 repliesview on HN

I wasn't trying to enforce reciprocity. I'm just saying that if you don't need help you shouldn't be asking for it from strangers.

If you have a job and income you can afford transportation. Behaving like a broke person when you are not is taking advantage of other people, and taking limited kindness resources away from people who actually need help.


Replies

oasisboblast Friday at 4:50 PM

Perhaps kindness isn't a zero-sum game

sfinkyesterday at 6:09 AM

If you are morally obligated to use your own resources if you have them, then you're stratifying society. The financially comfortable can never ride a bus. The rich cannot drive themselves. Nobody can ever learn what those less fortunate are like, and must necessarily look down upon them and use their imagination to figure out what "those people" care about and need.

So that's not a great outcome either.

(I don't exactly disagree with you either. Accepting a scarce resource from someone when you possess significantly more? That rubs me the wrong way too. Get their mailing address and pay it back later, in spades, if it deprived them of something!)