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Absolutely horrifying point of view. I get it, we don't like leeches. But forcing people to work or else not get benefits meant for the poorest (i.e. let them

Absolutely horrifying point of view. I get it, we don't like leeches. But forcing people to work or else not get benefits meant for the poorest (i.e. let them starve or go homeless)? Wow. It's work camps without fences. Driving around and/or delivering things to people that are better off then they are? How is that helping people build their own human capital? The only people that helps are the people consuming those services at exploitative wages. Why exploitative? Because if this option wasn't exploitative and it actually helped them beyond making sure they don't die, they'd have chosen it for themselves. Yes. Train bureaucrats that administer this programs and deal with those seeking welfare about these gig economy options. Make sure that those who want to engage know about them and have the ability to engage, but let's not force them 'or else'. Imagine losing your job, having to get on welfare to feed your family, and being told (probably through an impersonal text) "15 min foot massage at 111 Anywhere street. $5. $20 an hour equivalent. Appt. in 45 min. Confirm or lose benefits." We're better than that.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
They build human capital by demonstrating an ability/willingness to create value for other humans. More concretely, working gigs demonstrates the ability to show up reliably for appointments and perform work as directed, thereby making a person less risky to hire. Why exploitative? Because if this option wasn't exploitative and it actually helped them beyond making sure they don't die, they'd have chosen it for themselves. It's true that many people will choose free money + watching TV over doing things beneficial for others. It's kind of funny how expecting welfare recipients to work is "exploitative" but expecting workers to involuntarily support welfare recipients is not. Could you explain that?
- clavalle 11y ago
  >They build human capital by demonstrating an ability/willingness to create value for other humans. Are you willing to create value for other humans at less than your time is worth? Because that is what you are asking them to do. If it was worth their time we wouldn't have to threaten them with pain or death to incentivise them. Value for humans works both ways...people value their own time (your watching TV example) it is true. But if they were sufficiently incentivised with added value, they would create value for others in order to improve the remainder of their own time. That's how it works. Enlightened self-interest, and all that. > I assume that you also believe taking money from others involuntarily and giving it to non-workers is not "exploitative"? Yes, I do because of the marginal utility of money. Taking $1000 from someone who has $10 mil. to feed a family a four for a month is not exploitative. The person with $10 mil. will not die or be in physical pain without that money. That money is worth less to them than it is to the family that very well might die, or at least be in pain, without it. Telling someone on the brink of total poverty, where they very well might starve over the next month, that they must work or die is exploitation. Exploitation is not about taking money it is about extorting someone with the threat of pain or death. It is a sure way to destroy value in a transaction. The alternative is to entice someone to create value for other humans through a value add transaction -- they end up with more value for themselves rather than bargaining to limit their loss through death or pain -- you know, why the rest of us that happen to be more wealthy choose to create value for others. The way to guarantee such a transaction is to make sure the person agreeing to that transaction is not making the decision to engage based on a physical threat. I don't know why this concept is so foreign. It is the same reason protection rackets are illegal.
  - danjayh 11y ago
    > Are you willing to create value for other humans at less than your time is worth? Because that is what you are asking them to do. If it was worth their time we wouldn't have to threaten them with pain or death to incentivise them. Friend, hunger pain and risk of homelessness are what motivate many people to drag themselves to work. Without that threat, many people choose to be unproductive, and it makes society as a whole poor. If you take too heavily from those who are productive to enable this, it dicencentivises them. This has been demonstrated repeatedly -- in the USSR, in China's old system, in Cuba, in the DPRK, in Saudi Arabia (who, with less oil money, are having serious problems), and even in the Internet's beloved Denmark ... literally over and over and over. (ref for Denmark, since I know that will be one of the more contentious entries on my list: http://www.businessinsider.com/free-universities-and-no-student-loan-debt-is-hurting-denmarks-economy-2014-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/free-universities-and-no-stud... ) Asking them to take what someone else is willing to give them for their work, without the threat of imprisonment from the government to motivate the giving, is not asking them to work for less than they're worth. Quite the contrary, it's asking them to work for an amount that exactly reflects the value other humans assign to their labor.
    - creshal 11y ago
      So what exactly is Denmark's problem? Unemployment is still lower than average. Gini, HDI, GDP, all metrics you could wish for are excellent. Companies not finding enough engineers is a complaint you hear world-wide, from Germany to the US, usually followed by "so please reduce immigration restrictions so we can get Indians for half the wage instead".
    - Kristine1975 11y ago
      That article about Denmark isn't proof of anything but that conservatives in Denmark don't like Denmark's welfare system.
    - clavalle 11y ago
      >hunger pain and risk of homelessness are what motivate many people to drag themselves to work. Without that threat, many people choose to be unproductive That, in my view, smacks of rationalization of widespread exploitation of an entire sector of human beings. This forum is full of people that will not starve if they don't work -- at least not for a while. But the vast majority are doing what they can to create value in the world. Are they just better human beings than the poor who must be threatened in order to create value? Or have we built enough capital of one type or another to make the transaction of our time and effort and application of our capital worth it? An improvement of our lot? If all of us more fortunate creatures were told that we'd never turn a profit for our efforts, how many of us would put in that effort? I would wager not many (a situation that plagued most of those socialist systems you mentioned). The poor are put in a situation where they are asked to work but never profit. They must work to limit their loss. They must work to merely not die. It is little wonder that we have people that prefer welfare and don't do much to better their position because the alternative is to spend their time and effort pushing for -- nothing. What I would push for is not Socialism -- which is where everybody owns the means of production which is dragging everyone down into that same pitiable state of never being able harvest your own profit for your own efforts -- but merely giving the poor a guarantee that they will not die or be in pain -- enough food, housing, medical care to live. Those that need their labor will then have to entice them to work. They have to look at how much their labor is worth to them and try and pay them based on how much profit they can wring from the value they can create -- like lawyers are paid, engineers, management, skilled workers, professionals...literally everyone else. It's not crazy, it is how 3/4s of the population in the US conducts business. It is just an extension of that strong bargaining position in the free market to those in danger of having to work for less than their time is worth for no hope of bettering their position just to merely not die. It may mean that I have to take it on a bit of faith, but I trust that 1/4 at the bottom will work to better their position just like the rest of us if given the chance. I don't think we're any better, when it comes down to it.
- yequalsx 11y ago
  Providing a base minimal level of living for each person tends to produce nice societies. What people with money get in return for supporting the deadbeats is definitely worth the, not large, cost. Having a massive security/punishment apparatus is the inevitable result of not doing this unless one doesn't mind living in a shitty society. Paraphrasing H.L. Mencken: U.S. Libertarians/Republicans can almost be defined as someone with the irrational fear that some poor person, somewhere is getting something they don't deserve.
  - danjayh 11y ago
    > Providing a base minimal level of living for each person tends to produce nice societies. What people with money get in return for supporting the deadbeats is definitely worth the, not large, cost. Hate to do this to you, but if you were on the other side of the issue someone would have asked, and I honestly haven't seen data on it. Do you have any stats/facts/references to back this up? To be blunt, I'm just old enough that I remember societies that tried this, and in their implementations it drove everybody's standard of living toward what we would consider poverty, so I am expressing a bit of doubt here. "They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work" (old Soviet political joke).
    - yequalsx 11y ago
      From what I know of world it appears that being a country that is a great place to live for the average person is strongly correlated with having a good social welfare system. (I understand that correlation does not always imply causation.) If this is true, and my perception of the world tells me it is, then it's reasonable to desire a society with strong social welfare programs. I think we all win when each of us, even the undeserving, get to live at a base level of existence without fear. Off the top of my head my understanding of history is such that societal stability is best accomplished when there are lots of people living in misery. It's worth the expenditure of tax money to ensure my neighbor is not living in misery. Solzhenitsyn said that the quality of a society can be determined by how it treats its prisoners. I expand upon this a bit by including the poor and powerless.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  "expecting workers to involuntarily support welfare recipients is not. Could you explain that?" Could those workers get a similar income and similar working conditions without a functional society? Unless those workers are subsistence farmers, the answer is "no". Society is supporting them, so forcing workers to support society is not exploitative.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    Could those non-workers on welfare get a similar income without a functional society? Society is supporting them, so forcing welfare recipients to support society is not exploitative.
    - creshal 11y ago
      Forcing is absolutely exploitative. Either you can pay them a wage worth working for, or you have a so crippling structural problem that this whole discussion is a distraction. If human labour is no longer worth the money it needs to sustain humans, should we really centre our whole society around it?
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >It's kind of funny how expecting welfare recipients to work is "exploitative" but expecting workers to involuntarily support welfare recipients is not. Well, if the stream of incomes directed at rentiers were instead redirected towards welfare recipients, workers would have to do no more supporting than they do now. This could be done by: * Raising land taxes * Taxing wealth * Taxing yield bearing assets * Remove carried interest rule. And then paying for welfare with that. Or we could keep pretending that billionaire moochers aren't more expensive for society than welfare recipients.

yummyfajitas 11y ago

They build human capital by demonstrating an ability/willingness to create value for other humans. More concretely, working gigs demonstrates the ability to show up reliably for appointments and perform work as directed, thereby making a person less risky to hire. Why exploitative? Because if this option wasn't exploitative and it actually helped them beyond making sure they don't die, they'd have chosen it for themselves. It's true that many people will choose free money + watching TV over doing things beneficial for others. It's kind of funny how expecting welfare recipients to work is "exploitative" but expecting workers to involuntarily support welfare recipients is not. Could you explain that?

clavalle 11y ago
>They build human capital by demonstrating an ability/willingness to create value for other humans. Are you willing to create value for other humans at less than your time is worth? Because that is what you are asking them to do. If it was worth their time we wouldn't have to threaten them with pain or death to incentivise them. Value for humans works both ways...people value their own time (your watching TV example) it is true. But if they were sufficiently incentivised with added value, they would create value for others in order to improve the remainder of their own time. That's how it works. Enlightened self-interest, and all that. > I assume that you also believe taking money from others involuntarily and giving it to non-workers is not "exploitative"? Yes, I do because of the marginal utility of money. Taking $1000 from someone who has $10 mil. to feed a family a four for a month is not exploitative. The person with $10 mil. will not die or be in physical pain without that money. That money is worth less to them than it is to the family that very well might die, or at least be in pain, without it. Telling someone on the brink of total poverty, where they very well might starve over the next month, that they must work or die is exploitation. Exploitation is not about taking money it is about extorting someone with the threat of pain or death. It is a sure way to destroy value in a transaction. The alternative is to entice someone to create value for other humans through a value add transaction -- they end up with more value for themselves rather than bargaining to limit their loss through death or pain -- you know, why the rest of us that happen to be more wealthy choose to create value for others. The way to guarantee such a transaction is to make sure the person agreeing to that transaction is not making the decision to engage based on a physical threat. I don't know why this concept is so foreign. It is the same reason protection rackets are illegal.
- danjayh 11y ago
  > Are you willing to create value for other humans at less than your time is worth? Because that is what you are asking them to do. If it was worth their time we wouldn't have to threaten them with pain or death to incentivise them. Friend, hunger pain and risk of homelessness are what motivate many people to drag themselves to work. Without that threat, many people choose to be unproductive, and it makes society as a whole poor. If you take too heavily from those who are productive to enable this, it dicencentivises them. This has been demonstrated repeatedly -- in the USSR, in China's old system, in Cuba, in the DPRK, in Saudi Arabia (who, with less oil money, are having serious problems), and even in the Internet's beloved Denmark ... literally over and over and over. (ref for Denmark, since I know that will be one of the more contentious entries on my list: http://www.businessinsider.com/free-universities-and-no-student-loan-debt-is-hurting-denmarks-economy-2014-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/free-universities-and-no-stud... ) Asking them to take what someone else is willing to give them for their work, without the threat of imprisonment from the government to motivate the giving, is not asking them to work for less than they're worth. Quite the contrary, it's asking them to work for an amount that exactly reflects the value other humans assign to their labor.
  - creshal 11y ago
    So what exactly is Denmark's problem? Unemployment is still lower than average. Gini, HDI, GDP, all metrics you could wish for are excellent. Companies not finding enough engineers is a complaint you hear world-wide, from Germany to the US, usually followed by "so please reduce immigration restrictions so we can get Indians for half the wage instead".
  - Kristine1975 11y ago
    That article about Denmark isn't proof of anything but that conservatives in Denmark don't like Denmark's welfare system.
  - clavalle 11y ago
    >hunger pain and risk of homelessness are what motivate many people to drag themselves to work. Without that threat, many people choose to be unproductive That, in my view, smacks of rationalization of widespread exploitation of an entire sector of human beings. This forum is full of people that will not starve if they don't work -- at least not for a while. But the vast majority are doing what they can to create value in the world. Are they just better human beings than the poor who must be threatened in order to create value? Or have we built enough capital of one type or another to make the transaction of our time and effort and application of our capital worth it? An improvement of our lot? If all of us more fortunate creatures were told that we'd never turn a profit for our efforts, how many of us would put in that effort? I would wager not many (a situation that plagued most of those socialist systems you mentioned). The poor are put in a situation where they are asked to work but never profit. They must work to limit their loss. They must work to merely not die. It is little wonder that we have people that prefer welfare and don't do much to better their position because the alternative is to spend their time and effort pushing for -- nothing. What I would push for is not Socialism -- which is where everybody owns the means of production which is dragging everyone down into that same pitiable state of never being able harvest your own profit for your own efforts -- but merely giving the poor a guarantee that they will not die or be in pain -- enough food, housing, medical care to live. Those that need their labor will then have to entice them to work. They have to look at how much their labor is worth to them and try and pay them based on how much profit they can wring from the value they can create -- like lawyers are paid, engineers, management, skilled workers, professionals...literally everyone else. It's not crazy, it is how 3/4s of the population in the US conducts business. It is just an extension of that strong bargaining position in the free market to those in danger of having to work for less than their time is worth for no hope of bettering their position just to merely not die. It may mean that I have to take it on a bit of faith, but I trust that 1/4 at the bottom will work to better their position just like the rest of us if given the chance. I don't think we're any better, when it comes down to it.
yequalsx 11y ago
Providing a base minimal level of living for each person tends to produce nice societies. What people with money get in return for supporting the deadbeats is definitely worth the, not large, cost. Having a massive security/punishment apparatus is the inevitable result of not doing this unless one doesn't mind living in a shitty society. Paraphrasing H.L. Mencken: U.S. Libertarians/Republicans can almost be defined as someone with the irrational fear that some poor person, somewhere is getting something they don't deserve.
- danjayh 11y ago
  > Providing a base minimal level of living for each person tends to produce nice societies. What people with money get in return for supporting the deadbeats is definitely worth the, not large, cost. Hate to do this to you, but if you were on the other side of the issue someone would have asked, and I honestly haven't seen data on it. Do you have any stats/facts/references to back this up? To be blunt, I'm just old enough that I remember societies that tried this, and in their implementations it drove everybody's standard of living toward what we would consider poverty, so I am expressing a bit of doubt here. "They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work" (old Soviet political joke).
  - yequalsx 11y ago
    From what I know of world it appears that being a country that is a great place to live for the average person is strongly correlated with having a good social welfare system. (I understand that correlation does not always imply causation.) If this is true, and my perception of the world tells me it is, then it's reasonable to desire a society with strong social welfare programs. I think we all win when each of us, even the undeserving, get to live at a base level of existence without fear. Off the top of my head my understanding of history is such that societal stability is best accomplished when there are lots of people living in misery. It's worth the expenditure of tax money to ensure my neighbor is not living in misery. Solzhenitsyn said that the quality of a society can be determined by how it treats its prisoners. I expand upon this a bit by including the poor and powerless.
bryanlarsen 11y ago
"expecting workers to involuntarily support welfare recipients is not. Could you explain that?" Could those workers get a similar income and similar working conditions without a functional society? Unless those workers are subsistence farmers, the answer is "no". Society is supporting them, so forcing workers to support society is not exploitative.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Could those non-workers on welfare get a similar income without a functional society? Society is supporting them, so forcing welfare recipients to support society is not exploitative.
  - creshal 11y ago
    Forcing is absolutely exploitative. Either you can pay them a wage worth working for, or you have a so crippling structural problem that this whole discussion is a distraction. If human labour is no longer worth the money it needs to sustain humans, should we really centre our whole society around it?
crdoconnor 11y ago
>It's kind of funny how expecting welfare recipients to work is "exploitative" but expecting workers to involuntarily support welfare recipients is not. Well, if the stream of incomes directed at rentiers were instead redirected towards welfare recipients, workers would have to do no more supporting than they do now. This could be done by: * Raising land taxes * Taxing wealth * Taxing yield bearing assets * Remove carried interest rule. And then paying for welfare with that. Or we could keep pretending that billionaire moochers aren't more expensive for society than welfare recipients.