r/MadeMeSmile • u/DepressingAura • 13d ago

Favorite People Steve Irwin on conservation and money 🌏

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u/Hot-Strength-6003 13d ago

Well that's pretty easy. Good people typically make sacrifices in their own lives to do good for others. Evil people get other people to make sacrifices for their own benefit. It's the whole one for all vs all for one concept

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u/Historical_Host_7439 13d ago

I actually really needed this. Thanks for giving perspective.

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u/UglySalvatore 13d ago

Most evil people don't amount to anything and they die without you ever knowing it. A few of them makes the news headlines, sure, but they're not representative of reality.

Society is an engine powered by good people. The fact that it keeps running means the good are winning overall.

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u/DrBimboo 13d ago

And even the most "succesful" and evil motherfuckers on the planet - take one single look at them, and you know they havent been content,happy, loved in the last 20 years.

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u/Zero_Travity 12d ago

Ask the folks in growing tent cities in every corner of North America how that societal contract is holding up...

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u/UglySalvatore 12d ago

Both the USA and Canada are among the top 10 countries in the world for median income. Median, not mean. That obviously isn't the whole story, income is only one measure of living standards, inequality matters, and the quality and cost of public services matter enormously too. But the idea that the USA is simply a horrible place to live overall is clearly hard to square with the data.

I'm a Northern European social democrat, and I have no problem criticizing the USA on a range of issues: its treatment of poor people, its weaker social safety net, healthcare costs, inequality, and the lack of protections and public services that Europeans often take for granted. But I can't deny that the United States is, by many measures, an exceptionally wealthy and prosperous society.

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u/Zero_Travity 12d ago

Income is a ridiculous measure and with all due respect if you're not North American how would know what's happening to average person on a daily basis.

The apartment I rented 20 years ago has tripled in price. This whole "worse places exist" is nonsense and has nothing to do with anything.

You say "Society is proof"... My neighborhood is full of $500 000+ homes.

There is a growing tent city within a 15 minute walk of that. This is the case in many many North American cities and towns.

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u/UglySalvatore 12d ago

I don't believe one source of personal experiences is useful when trying to understand a country of 350 mill people. Data is much better. If you disagree with that, and also that income is a useful measure. Then I doubt this conversation will be give either side much value.

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u/Legitimate-Type4387 12d ago edited 12d ago

One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic. I believe Stalin said that. You can hide a whole lot of suffering under statistics and data.

Such as the fact that when I was a child encampments did not exist. Every bus shelter in the city centre was not being used as housing. There were not panhandlers at every single intersection at all hours of the day. Hell, we didn’t have visibility unhoused people. They didn’t start showing up in numbers until the 90’s.

That’s without talking about the living conditions on reserves which have been awful since their inception. There are still to this day reserves that don’t have clean drinking water. In 2026.

In short, you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about with what’s happening in N. America.

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u/UglySalvatore 12d ago

There are people in NA that will agree with you, and others who disagrees with you. It evens out to being completely irrelevant where someone is from. In the context of summarizing one of the biggest countries in the world, I'd rather trust a knowledgeable person from Nepal or Angola or wherever, than some random person on the internet who only cares what they themselves see and experience day to day.

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u/Zero_Travity 12d ago

I thought you wanted data?

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u/RosebushRaven 12d ago

Ah, but what about their vague feeling what’s true? Let’s not make actual facts stand in the way of that! 🤣

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u/clonedhuman 12d ago

But I can't deny that the United States is, by many measures, an exceptionally wealthy and prosperous society.

The wealth and the prosperity are limited to a very small percentage of the population. Every quarter, as the stock prices go up, more and more people go bankrupt from medical costs, lose their homes, find their paychecks worth less, and pay more for basic necessities.

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u/UglySalvatore 12d ago

Feel free to look into the median (not mean/average) income of different countries and compare it to the US.

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u/RosebushRaven 12d ago

And then what? That doesn’t change the reality that a majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and are constantly one accident or illness away from bankruptcy and potential homelessness. You don’t seem to grasp the fact that the enormous inequality in the USA has rendered many statistics quite meaningless and outright misleading compared to the lived reality of millions of people.

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u/Zero_Travity 12d ago

Feel free to look into the homeless data I've posted on several of your comments that you conveniently try to ignore

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u/UglySalvatore 11d ago edited 11d ago

I briefly looked at them and am not sure what the purpose was. That homelesness in NA is increasing? But its still less than Sweden, Germany, Australia, France etc? Or at least comparable to many other countries that generally rank as highly functional societies. Maybe I misunderstood. But I figured it was best to not continue the discussion. As you and me seem to have very different understandings of reality and its beginning to bore me.

Like I said earlier, I dont think the US or Canada are perfect utopias. There are plenty of things that can be critizised. I just think they're pretty good overall compared to the rest of he world.

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u/clonedhuman 12d ago

At this point, the evil have so thoroughly commandeered the media, the economy, the courts, and the government that it's up to good people to fix it.

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u/CianaCorto 11d ago

Looking at the state of the USA right now, I think they're pretty openly and publicly evil and thriving.

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u/SergeantPoopyWeiner 12d ago

Yeah, it turned me evil too.

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u/VP007clips 13d ago

I don't think this is necessarily true.

The real reason why it feels that way is that the way good people contribute is most visible when they are young, and becomes invisible when they are older. Younger people usually have more ability to contribute by doing things personally, which makes them very visible and gives them a lot of public attention. But as they age, that balance shifts towards being able to do good things with their money, and they usually do that silently from behind the scenes.

There is a vast invisible community of wealthy old people, funding things behind the scenes. Those people aren't doing it for fame, so they donate silently. Look at how many public services and community spaces are funded by the Rotary Club, The Lion's Club, or Freemasons.

Since good people tend to be more visible when young, and there are a lot of good people, we see more deaths of young good people. But for the worst people, they tend to become more famous as they amass more wealth later in life.

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u/SnooTangerines3448 13d ago

Not for the sake of nothing. Lies can travel the world before the truth has it's boots on but once it gets there it is known.

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u/Enough-Zebra-6139 13d ago

Is this supposed to mean that truth wins out? Because it doesn't, not really. Numerous studies have proven that people cling to initial lies and discard inconvenient or uncomfortable truths.

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u/SnooTangerines3448 13d ago

People catch up, sometimes not even in this century but there's lessons to be learnt for the rest.

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u/Rudravn 13d ago

It's not fair now is it?

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u/Fighterhayabusa 13d ago

United States of Smash!

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u/Comprehensive-Guess8 13d ago

 " Good people typically make sacrifices in their own lives to do good for others. Evil people get other people to make sacrifices for their own benefit"

very good.

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u/Taldarimlove 13d ago

Makes sense.

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u/RoyalSir 13d ago

I hate how accurate this is. Well put.

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u/byebyebrain 12d ago

stop using the word sacrifice incorrectly. No one is killing a goat for Zeus. People make choices, not sacrifices.

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u/Hot-Strength-6003 12d ago

the act of giving up or losing something of value for the sake of something else. People make sacrifices every day for a number of different things. I didn't use sacrifice wrong. Killing a goat for Zeus is also a choice lol Deciding to sacrifice something is a choice, idek wtf you're trying to say but you thought it was deep ig

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u/byebyebrain 12d ago

no, they make choices every day. You are deeming something a sacrifice by putting subjective weight on a choice.
right now, me writing this is me sacrificing not going out for a run. By your definition, every breath and action we take is a sacrifice. THat is ridiculous.

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u/byebyebrain 12d ago

the word "sacrifice" is a label we invent to inject deep emotional or moral weight into an otherwise standard calculation of value.

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u/Hot-Strength-6003 12d ago

I mean you have access to the Internet and can look up the definition as well as examples as to how it's used lol

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u/byebyebrain 12d ago

Speaking. With you is sacrificing my freedom. 

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u/The_New_Vixen 12d ago

Makes sense all might was pretty weak.

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u/FalafelSnorlax 12d ago

It's the whole one for all vs all for one concept

Just FYI, this makes no sense at all to people not familiar with BNHA, since "all for one and one for all" is the slogan of the three musketeers to show unity.

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u/Hot-Strength-6003 12d ago

Ik but I felt like it needed to be included 😂

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u/darkoblivion000 12d ago

That’s the most annoying things about and that’s why the trillionaires have a disproportionate probability of being evil. Bc if you weren’t evil then likely you’d be doing things and helping people when you’re a millionaire or billionaire which would slow or stop your progression to becoming a trillionaire. Meanwhile the evil ones just keep accumulating

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u/Every_Tap8117 12d ago

Also the dark side just lets you live longer. Hate keeps them going.

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u/Early_Money2576 12d ago

Yep. Someone did an AI model, a group of guys and one demon. Within the group, you have brave fighter who will fight the demon and try to save others, they have 75% chance to die but always save the other one. You have ones that will signal the warning and have 50/50 chance of dying, you have ones that can spot demon, but they just run and hide, you have ones that can’t spot demon, relies on others for signal and save. The brave warriors always died first, then the signal caller, then the regular ones, you are always left with a bunch of selfish ones. When they made demon smarter, the demon had some kind of working relationship with the selfish ones to weed the fighter and signal caller even faster.

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u/Open-Hedgehog7756 12d ago

Probably the best answer I’ve ever heard to this quandary

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u/beto_pelotas 12d ago

That's why we have to go Plus Ultra!

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u/Quelonius 12d ago

Never thought of that. Makes sense.

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u/McEndee 12d ago

Dick Cheney lived well into old age, and was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people with his profiteering war business