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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  1876 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What great inconvenience

I will freely and happily argue for compassion but I can't endorse the justifications here. The author is arguing, effectively, "be the change you want to see in the world" which is never bad advice. But she's also arguing that if you're that change, the world will change enough for your conscience to be clear:

    If you’re actually serious about treating burnout — yours, your partners, your future children’s — you have to be serious about treating it for people you might not even know. If you want to actually make life better, more livable, less of a slog for yourself, that involves making it better for a whole lot of other people as well. For that, you don’t need a self-help book with an asterisk in the title to blunt the profanity. You don’t need a better organizational app. You just need to legitimately and actionably care about other people.

The core question - are your actions enough that you can consider others to be well-treated - is unanswered. Of course you overpaying for your pedicure restores order to the universe. Rush Limbaugh is a big tipper. It's how he can feel good about making a living advocating for the shafting of the poor and working class. There's a very big difference between "I want you to be well paid because I interact with you" and "I want you to be well paid because you deserve dignity and a living wage" and insulating yourself from the externalities of the economic inequality we all swim in does nothing about the inequality while numbing you to its effects.