Today's Random News

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Originally Posted by Vasteel

For unskilled workers and the unemployed, I fail to see what changes.
Again, I fail to see how this is any different for the unemployed now. Or the employed who can't afford something they want.

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So, are you saying the problem is fixed?

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Originally Posted by Vasteel

They may have time to civilize their children instead of working that second job now though.
We probably would see a lot more people investing time into raising their children properly since they don't have to spend their nights behind the fryer at Bojangles though.

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What proof do you have that this will happen? Some middle and upper middle class people that got fired and spent their time raising their children? What about the people that are bottom middle class and poor, or those on welfare now that do not put any extra effort in raising their kids? Or is there some magical poverty in 'over yonder' where all these people are wonderful great parents and it is because they have so much free time?

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Originally Posted by Vasteel

There are many people who derive great satisfaction from their work. There are some who need the catharsis of their labor. .

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So? Can you keep a society afloat with that? Are you going to get clean water, power, roads, raw materials for construction, etc, by rounding up all the people that love those jobs? How long is it going to take to find those people? Are you willing to wait for power while they gather together people that love running power plants? What if there is a shortage of people that love that work? What about garbage pick up? Are you going to wait for your trash to be picked up while they gather up a city's worth of people that love garbage?

And you still haven't answered my question. In your world of 10 hour work weeks and basic income checks, how does anyone do anything great?

Don't cop out and tell me that people should settle for little.

How would anyone get together the resources to do something great? Something large? Something complicated?

If it isn't by getting ahead in a capitalist economy, then what? If there are 50 bars, and someone wants to restore an old building and turn it into a bar, where do they get the money? Do they ask the state? What if the state will not approve it because they say they've met the bar limit for that city? So that person just has to do without? And the building further decays? What if his bar would have been better than those other 50? What if that building should have been preserved?

And what if you got your way and it didn't really fix anything? Russia has tried a lot of what you suggest, and yet a capitalist underbelly remains. So much more has to be approved by the state, and often those approvals are only obtained by padding requests with bribes in addition to a good ole boy system where friends and families of the officials get approvals and nobodies get squat.

You do realize, before you make a bigger ass of yourself, that we are not talking about some communist utopian scenario where nobody works or has an incentive to? We are discussing the concept of a guaranteed basic income in light of the irrefutable fact that we now live in a society where there simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone, and the number of those jobs is always dwindling as the population is always increasing.

You said this won't work. I asked you to substantiate why. You brought up this "but how could people pay for their hobbies?" nonsense which implies you may not comprehend the initial discussion. One of 3 things will happen, basic income is in my opinion the only one likely to work and the least likely to happen.

Although, your bar example is surprisingly similar to how a whole lot of American municipalities do handle their alcohol priveledge licenses.

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Originally Posted by A Robot Bit Me

So... "someone cares when he cares?"

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Someone who cares will take action.

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Originally Posted by YellerDog

Funny how we used to pay 2k+ for a humble VHS deck but now almost refuse to spend 1/10th of that on a device that can, on demand, stream every film ever created from space.

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Thank advertising.

You could buy more Apple products. They prefer you just pay them rather than long tail your data and shove ads in your face.

Also to the tech and jobs discussion:
The world is changing. At some point we will teach rudimentary programming in elementary school. With that and an open network like the Internet you will have work.

The jobs available tomorrow haven't even been invented yet. Though I admit unskilled work will become less important but still necessary.

I myself am trying to stoke an industry around machine designing. Some designers don't like it much... but they always seem to be the ones who aren't very creative.

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Hig...291570361.html

Car thief gets fucked up by family because he rear ends their van.

Don't mess with Texas or the Simpsons' time slot in Bolivia.

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Originally Posted by Vasteel

You do realize, before you make a bigger ass of yourself, that we are not talking about some communist utopian scenario where nobody works or has an incentive to? We are discussing the concept of a guaranteed basic income in light of the irrefutable fact that we now live in a society where there simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone, and the number of those jobs is always dwindling as the population is always increasing.

You said this won't work. I asked you to substantiate why. You brought up this "but how could people pay for their hobbies?" nonsense which implies you may not comprehend the initial discussion. One of 3 things will happen, basic income is in my opinion the only one likely to work and the least likely to happen.

Although, your bar example is surprisingly similar to how a whole lot of American municipalities do handle their alcohol priveledge licenses.

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That is why it won't work, or shouldn't work. It does not account for the richness of life and replaces it with something limiting and dreary.

Or we just get more of what we already have, expanded unemployment programs and one or both parties will demonize those that partake as inferior so the people that still have jobs will work them out of a sense of superiority.

Hell, maybe that is what is happening right now.

We are talking about a radical upending of the economy on par with the industrial revolution (but in reverse, sort of). Nobody said it would be painless or consequence free.

Great, we can look like silent hill, I mean russia.