Seems like there's plenty of entitled wealthy people in this thread. People who don't understand what it's like to be systemically pushed down into the mud; what it's like when all of your choices are either bad or worse.

"But you can recycle..." Shut the fuck up dude, recycling doesn't feed my fucking family. Recycling doesn't replace the years spent in an education system that's designed to make you a factory worker. Recycling doesn't bring living-wage-paying jobs to my hometown.

When the bills are in the mail, the tax man is coming, the landlord's raising the rent, and the bossman is driving a new car every year but can't pay you enough to keep your bank account from overdrafting, sometimes you have to do "immoral" shit.

Sometimes you have to kill an animal with no hunting license, sometimes you have to find a place to stay warm for the night, sometimes you have to feed your kids when all you have is cardboard and that might mean stealing bread from the dollar store.

I think it was Mark Twain who said that in order for a man to be moral he needs to be well-fed first.

Yes, being poor is bad.

My interpretation of this might be different, but I agree wholeheartedly with my interpretation.

Being morally just doesn't just mean "not causing harm" directly. It means striving to not cause harm both directly and indirectly. As someone who lives in the USA, our entire society is built off of exploitation. The less expensive something is, the more heavy the exploitation likely is. The cheapest manufacturing is done in countries where labor is exploited or even enslaved, where the manufacturing process can pollute and poison the area with little consequence (to the manufacturer), and where the powerful can force deals on the government to let them extract valuable resources and pay a fraction of its value - depriving the locals and nation prosperity. Even when buying US food products, the food industry mostly relies on extremely poor conditions for the animals it keeps, taking advantage of farmers it buys from or employs, and may even employ migrant children for dangerous slaughterhouse labor.

Avoiding these kinds of practices throughout most supply chains is sometimes impossible and usually more expensive the more thoroughly you manage to avoid the practices. Even then someone has to check in and constantly verify that the practices are legitimately avoided and not just greenwashing or fraudulent.

It's really quite depressing.

According to Lemmy poor people who have done not harm to others have the same morals that poor people that hurt others.

I personally know a homeless person that have never steal or hurt. And several poor people with homes but small income that have stab and stolen other people, probably justifying their shit behavior in being poor.

According to some out of touch lemmings those two people are morally equivalent.

Being poor doesn't justify being a shit person. And defending that is insulting to honest and moral poor people.

Honestly, rich people are pretty shitty themselves.

I understand where you're coming from, because many societies are being structured in ways that make it feel like you are only hurting yourself by not being just and moral. It's truly horrible when trying to live a life following "the good" puts you in the path of pain all the time, working jobs you don't want to afford not to be put out on the street (and God forbid you want to have kids if you're in a high cost of living area).

With all that being said: I'd fear becoming an evil person more than dying poor. I hope that we can work together to make a world that isn't run by greedy, bad people.