I’ve been thinking about this after another discussion completely spiraled.

I’m not talking about everyone earning the same amount, abolishing private property, eliminating businesses, or making luxury goods free.

I mean something much more basic: in an extremely wealthy society, should there be a floor below which we simply don’t allow people to fall?

Healthcare when you’re sick. Enough food to eat. Basic shelter. Utilities. Access to education. Things you realistically need to participate in society and stay alive.

You can still work harder and make more money. You can own a nicer house, travel, buy expensive clothes, start a company, become wealthy, whatever. I’m not particularly bothered by inequality above the floor.

What I struggle to understand is the hostility toward establishing the floor itself.

Whenever this comes up, the conversation seems to jump almost immediately to “communism,” “nobody will work anymore,” “government tyranny,” or arguments about whether somebody deserves assistance.
And I find that really interesting.

Why does another person having healthcare or enough food register as a threat to some people?

Is it a belief that hardship is necessary to motivate people? A sense that benefits have to be earned to be fair? Distrust of government? Fear that providing one thing inevitably leads to the state controlling everything? Or is there something psychologically uncomfortable about reducing the distance between people at different levels of the hierarchy?

I’m genuinely interested in the deeper reasoning here because “people shouldn’t be destitute in a country with enormous resources” feels like a fairly modest moral starting point to me, yet apparently it’s an extremely controversial one.

UPDATE: I’m not proposing UBI or saying the government should hand everyone enough cash to maintain some predetermined lifestyle. I’m asking whether we can structure a wealthy society so that people don’t become homeless, go hungry, lose access to healthcare, or otherwise fall into destitution simply because they’re poor. And assume nobody’s taxes have to increase. Would you still oppose guaranteeing everyone basic necessities? Why?

UPDATE 2: What I learned from the responses

After reading hundreds of comments, I think the most interesting finding is how rarely people engaged with the narrow question I actually asked.

I asked whether a wealthy society should maintain a floor beneath which people are not allowed to fall. I explicitly separated that from equal incomes, abolishing markets, luxury provision, and UBI. Yet the proposal was repeatedly translated into “paying people not to work,” communism, unlimited taxation, or government control.

That translation seems psychologically important. It is easier to reject an imagined system of forced equality than to say directly that food, shelter, or healthcare should depend on whether we judge someone deserving. The objections were less about one policy than about deservingness: Did they work hard enough? Did they make good choices? Why should I contribute if they did not?

I also noticed how often another person’s security was experienced as a personal loss. A floor was described as lowering someone else’s ceiling, even though I never proposed a tax rate and asked people to assume no tax increase. Several people still could not evaluate the principle without returning to “my money.” That suggests the tax argument is carrying something emotional about autonomy, status, fairness, and resentment.

The hardest part for me is the moralization of hardship. Some responses effectively said that because they worked, struggled, or went without help, other people should not receive relief too easily. But if one person was forced into the coal mine while another was allowed to be a child, my question is not how to make the second child suffer equally. It is why the coal mine was accepted as necessary.

Of course implementation/logistics matters. Housing must be built, healthcare staffed, programs funded, incentives designed, and fraud managed. But those are solvable policy questions, and working models already exist at different scales. They do not answer the prior moral question: Do we want to organize society around preventing destitution, or do we believe destitution must remain available as a punishment and labor incentive?

Supportive comments used a different moral frame. They treated food, shelter, and healthcare as prerequisites for participation rather than rewards for performance. They also redirected resentment upward toward structural conditions and concentrated wealth instead of downward toward recipients.

My takeaway is that this isnt really about capitalism versus socialism. It is about if dignity establishes an unconditional minimum, or whether survival itself must remain conditional on productivity and perceived deservingness.

I still believe we can start small, learn from what works, and build upward. Cynicism is not realism simply because it refuses to imagine improvement.

Thank you all for responding and for the thoughtful insights, even for the ones I disagreed with.

This is a very strange question to ask, and I’m not sure how best to phrase it, but it’s something I’ve wondered for a very long time.

So, Reddit in particular has a high concentration of autistic users, but that’s true for most anonymous online spaces that allow for people to chat about niche interests.

However, I’ve noticed that in many cases that these users wear “autism” like a badge of honor. They put it in their bios, and bring it up constantly as not an excuse for their odd behavior, but as a sort of justification for it. They’re proud of their personality quirks, they believe it to define them.

I suppose that there isn’t anything inherently wrong with that, but often times I’ll be engaging in a conversation and an openly autistic user will ease drop into the discussion with unrelated nonsequitars or opinions that are so outside the box that they borderline on psychotic behavior. Like, making statements that if said in public would catch side eye from every person within an ear’s radius.

Whenever I retort with something along the lines of, that’s a ridiculous statement, and not one that the majority of society would allign with I get pushback. Like, they double & triple down on the opinion that all men should have government mandated girlfriends, or something similarly batshit fucking crazy.

At what point does an openly autistic person stop to check themselves and be like “oh shit, maybe I’m acting autistic right now?”

Because talking to autistic people on reddit is like the meme of the dude driving the wrong way down the highway and then saying to himself “why is everyone else driving the wrong way?”

— — —

Edit: thank for all the replies. Very informative, I’ve been wanting to ask some variation of this question got about a decade now, but was quite literally too afraid to ask.

Are we the only country going 1984 mode?

My daughter is 5 years old now. She stopped breastfeeding when she was 2, but I’m still producing breast milk, and it just won’t stop.

My doctor told me not to touch or stimulate my breasts too much and to avoid sexual stimulation, but even then, the milk production hasn’t stopped.

If I skip the medication for even one day, the milk starts coming back. In fact, I seem to overproduce it. My breasts become full again within 6–8 hours.

Because of this, I’ve also been having severe back problems.

I’ve been practicing speedrunning the real life stone age, and I currently have the unofficial world record. This got me wondering, I know I could survive on an island very easily, but what exactly is stopping me from just taking out a loan, buying an uninhabited island, then never moving back or paying it off?

Maybe I’m wrong, but what exactly could they do about that? The government would have to spend thousands to even confirm that I am truly there, and even more to remove me.

What is legally stopping me from doing this?

My younger brother just got into Harvard, and I’m struggling with feelings I’m ashamed of.

I love him and I’m genuinely happy for him. I’ve also worked a lot on myself to stop comparing our lives, and I thought I had made a lot of progress.

But when he told me our mother cried when she heard the news, something really hit me. I immediately thought: Has my mother ever been that proud or emotional about something I achieved?

The fact that he is younger than me makes it harder. I suddenly find myself thinking: He is younger and already achieving something this big — what have I done with my life?

There’s another strange layer: I lived in the US for about 10 years and eventually left. I genuinely don’t want to move back because that life was too stressful for me. So I don’t actually want his life. And yet the fact that my younger brother is now going there, to Harvard of all places, really triggers me.

I think what I envy might not be Harvard itself, but what it represents to me: success, being “ahead,” and making our mother incredibly proud.

Then I feel guilty because I think a good sister should simply be happy for him.

Has anyone experienced this with a younger sibling? How do you stop their achievements from feeling like evidence that you are somehow behind?

I have a big problem with my girlfriend

Hello guys. The situation is pretty complex and there’s a lot to explain, but I’ll try my best! Me 20M, she's 18F.

For some context: my girlfriend and I have been together for about 8 months. We’ve had our ups and downs, but overall our relationship is really good. We love each other deeply, in a way that’s honestly difficult to explain.

However, throughout these months, my girlfriend has become convinced that I’m homosexual. Of course, I’m not, otherwise I obviously wouldn’t be in a relationship with her.

She brings it up quite often. During our relationship, I’ve made quite a few jokes about men, but they were obviously just jokes. Apparently, though, she takes them much more seriously than I ever expected.

There have also been a few situations that made things worse.

For example, we were dancing together at a club when a man approached me. He told me he was interested in me, asked for my name, and then asked something like, “Can we get to know each other better?”

I honestly didn’t know how to react. I was completely shocked, so I just stood there in silence. He asked for my name again, so I gave it to him, and then he left because I wasn't really responding to him.

Afterwards, my girlfriend got really angry because she said I should have immediately told him that I was in a relationship.

But honestly, I didn’t even know what to say in that moment. I was literally dancing and kissing with my girlfriend right in front of him, so I thought it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t interested.

Another time, I went out with a gay guy I had met through an online group for people looking to make friends in my city. He was a really nice and polite guy, and when I first met him, I didn’t even know he was gay.

I told my girlfriend about it, and she got really upset because she thought he might be interested in me. But he’s actually in a relationship himself, and there was absolutely nothing romantic or sexual between us.

She never explicitly told me that I couldn’t hang out with him, but I can tell that she feels very uncomfortable about it.

Then she told me something that honestly shocked me: “I’m more concerned about boys than girls — like 60% boys and 40% girls.”

I genuinely don’t understand that.

There have also been other things. For example, I once painted my toenails black. I liked how it looked, so I kept it. She reacted very strongly to it, and I was honestly confused. I don't see how wearing black nail polish has anything to do with my sexuality.

She also once saw an old photo of me wearing some of my mom’s clothes from years ago. I was doing it as a joke, but apparently that also contributed to her suspicion.

She has a lot of respect for the LGBT community, which I really appreciate. The problem is that she seems to have a hard time believing that I’m straight.

At one point, we even made a deal that I wouldn’t make jokes about boys anymore. I agreed to it because I understand that some of my jokes may have made her uncomfortable, and I want to respect her feelings. But at the same time, it feels pretty crazy to me that we even had to make this agreement.

And then there’s my hairdresser. He’s gay too. I simply told her that I had gotten my hair cut by him, and she got upset about that as well.

At this point, I genuinely don’t know what to think.

I understand that some of my jokes or behaviors might have contributed to her doubts. But I also feel like she’s interpreting completely normal things — having gay friends, wearing nail polish, joking around, or even having a gay hairdresser — as evidence that I’m homosexual.

What do you guys think? Am I doing something wrong here, or is she taking this way too far?

I'm in my 20s but sometimes I feel like a kid inside, because I've kept a few Pokemon action figures and Lego sets. They make me nostalgic and I would love to give them to my kid one day, but I know this does come off "man-child"-esque. Is this a red flag? Should I grow up and let them go?

For non Brits, almost all canals are only about a metre deep in the middle, and shallower at the sides, which is where someone would fall in, they do not have fast currents either, the water is still. Theres a load of articles in the uk about people falling in canals and drowning. This has never made much sense to me. British canals are almost always knee deep at the sides (where someone would fall in) and only around a metre deep in the middle. Makes me wonder if British canals have some sort of supernatural ability to prevent a person from standing up.

A notable incident was two men in Wigan fell into the Leeds and Liverpool canal, which like almost all canals is only about a metre deep in the middle. The two men fell in together and are said to have accidentally drowned.

inb4 people comment "you can drown in an inch of water!" yeah, but what leads a person to casually let themselves drown after finding themselves in knee deep water? If I fell into a canal I would simply stand up and step out.

17F here. My question is does Roblox have a lot of creeps (in both genders ik it's not only the guys that are creepy)?

My experience is that recently after a stranger saw me talking in Chinese on Roblox to my friend he kept asking me what I eat and told me to eat him. I felt very uncomfortable so I left the game. When I was 14 I also met a pedophile on Roblox that tried to groom me, I blocked him when he asked to see a pic of my chest and said other creepy stuff. Is it my fault because I use a girl avatar in Roblox so they know I'm a girl? I'm like kinda traumatized bc the pedo was rlly creepy he told me he wants to warm me up and other weird stuff and I really thought he was my friend till he said those. I know not all guys are bad but I just wanna know if Roblox has a lot of creeps. Sorry if I'm offending anyone! I know not all guys are bad! Some are good guys too! I also know women can be creeps too!

As context, been with the same man since I was 16 years old, so 28 years I am 44 now. He treats me well. Is kind, brings flowers. Does dishes and laundry occasionally to help However, he is very much a homebody and I want to live life. We have two kids under the age of 10 at Home. We don’t go on dates. He complains when I wanna go out and do family activities. Never swims with us in our backyard pool. He just wants to be in the house doing his own thing. Separate. I feel like I’m a single mom, but I have the benefit of having him here with the dual income. This is really starting to wear on me. I even have to attend church alone. When I somewhat forced my hand, he will throw in my face saying that I make him do things that he doesn’t want to do. Am I wasting my time? I feel like I’m gonna be dead before I get to enjoy my life. For once in a blue moon events like weddings and things like that he complains and acts like I’m killing g him.m when I ask him to go. if I go alone, he would probably just hassle me about who I talk to and who hit on me and put restrictions on how much I could drink since he wasn’t with me. It’s a whole thing so I usually don’t do anything outside the house unless it’s with the kids. When I wanna throw a family party here at the house with all of our family in the backyard drinking and barbecue he throws a fit. I just see myself getting older and more resentful towards him. I don’t think he’ll ever change. I feel like I’ve changed a lot for him. Giving up my wants and needs because they don’t align with his.

Long story short, my father was an abusive alcoholic piece of shit and every night my mother held me and my sister close to keep us safe and put us to sleep.

After the divorce I was still young so my mum still did that while my sister gradually drifted apart from her (puberty yk and later she moved out) it's rooted so deep inside her that she can barely sleep without me being in the same room as her.

I'm 18 now and idk how to tell her that she's not the problem and I'm just growing up and need space without hurting her.

I recently have started receiving disability payments and my disabilities are all mental health diagnosis’s so I am not physically disabled. I am so scared they are watching me and if I spend any money on the wrong thing they will cancel my disability. Or if they are following me they could see if I skipped therapy for a session and decide I wasn’t compliant with treatment and cancel my disability. What if I do something wrong and I’m not sure what exactly it is I can do wrong now that they are helping and watching. I really needed their help and health insurance and I am so thankful. Do they have access to my phone as well? How much are they surveilling me?

I don't quite know how to explain what I mean

I (20m) met this girl who seems nice (26f) and she told me she is ethically non monogamous and also married I don't personally have any issues with ENM however this would be my first relationship (probably a casual relationship) if we get along on a date... also I think ENM is typically fine (and I admire peoples honesty) however the fact that she's maired make me feel kinda weird and I'm not sure about someone practicing ENM being my first relationship.

What does this sound like to you are there any red flags or am I just getting cold feet. Maybe I'm just hesitant because I'm inexperienced and this could be the opportunity to gain the experience I need to feel confident?

Forgot to mention I definitely would not want to meet this guy that would be so weird.

I just think we are all manipulated by algorithms and we are only given 2 choices, both chosen by the big money tech elite and neither option includes any real changes to what has become a phoney democracy?

Like what is the logic behind a dad who is very controlling about how his daughter dresses. No talking to guys and no guy friends, only loose clothes, hair has to be covered, and she has to dress modestly even at home. And he’d call me a slut or any degrading term if any “unwanted” skin is visible through my clothes.

But at the same time he flirts with every woman, texts random women online, checks out women, and actively seeks out naked women on his phone? I’m having a hard time understanding how someone who behaves like this can be so controlling over what his daughter does. Like is he protecting me from men like him?