I agree that pushing people toward conventional ways of life isn't necessarily in their best interest, but you're glossing over realities in the article. First, Twitch sounds pretty miserable to me. He's not living on the marginalized edge out of any sense of principle, he's basically just given up on himself. Secondly, he's only managing this subsistence lifestyle by qualifying for disability, so he's not off doing his own thing on his own dime, he's drawing from the societal coffers. At the very least, it's cases like Twitch that give the Republicans fodder for cutting disability programs. People with low-levels of happiness and full employment tend to bristle at subsidizing men like Twitch, whose claim to disability is slightly dubious.
From my own perspective, given that men like Twitch and McLeod are not only unemployed but also pretty obviously unemployable in our current society and what it demands from workers, I'd rather fund them through disability than leave them to rot. Some people really just can't function in the modern job market and it's our national responsibility to care for them or to reform our country. Since the latter isn't going to happen, the former is the only humane alternative.
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