4 ms·

I don't want employment, and hell no I definitely don't want full employment, just the opposite. I want us as a species to transition to a leisure society with

I don't want employment, and hell no I definitely don't want full employment, just the opposite. I want us as a species to transition to a leisure society with the ick automated away, and the only jobs humans do being ones humans would love to do for the sheer fun of it. Because a minimum wage has a loophole for "not employed at all", it isn't good enough. A Basic Income has no such loophole, and will allow poor people to reject awful jobs, forcing them to be automated.

djrogers 11y ago
I'm curious about this. In your ideal above, how would one go about pursuing their dreams without an ability to earn excess capital through labor? For example, my goal is to have a nice house on 50-100 acres. I also really enjoy jet skiing and boating with my family - especially from a nice lakefront rental with a private dock. I can't fathom how I would pursue those goals in a 'leisure society'... Or as a prole would I be expected to just accept my assigned housing, only use public transportation, and put my name in an annual lottery for one of the state run vacation compounds?
- JulianMorrison 11y ago
  An approach I've considered is, that the living allocation by default is just comfortable. You'd be able to get allocated a city apartment or a rural house. But this is coupled to a delegation based "liquid" direct world democracy where you can either direct your surplus yourself, or delegate it to someone (or some organization). And recursively they can delegate it too. So suppose you were Elon Musk and you said, I want to build a colony on Mars, you'd probably be able to draw the interest of large delegating entities who would grant resource priority to the program so it could make rockets, and other entities would have projects that needed launching, and so forth. Or compare a smaller project, if you were a marine biologist and you wanted to equip a boat and go study penguins, there would be some delegating entity that would care about penguins, and you'd get your boat. Perhaps even if you just wanted a particularly beautiful house, you'd be able to draw enough aesthetes to your cause. But if you were just a jerk who wanted a mansion, well, probably not. [Edit: for clarity, you could conceptualize this system as something like crowdfunding, except global, recursively delegated, and directing resources directly instead of money.]
  - pink_dinner 11y ago
    your approach would devolve into basically a bartering system of labor for goods. Something we had many centuries before currency exchange. I think our current system is still better.
  - djrogers 11y ago
    So that doesn't really answer any of the scenarios I posed. You do manage to imply that I'm a jerk for wanting a nicer house/vacation/recreational vehicle than I'm allocated by the state, so that tells me something... Sounds to me like if I wanted to buy a jet-ski in your world, I'd have to find a bunch of people to 'delegate' their 'surplus' to me. Perhaps I could perform some function for them in return? Say, that sounds a lot like labor... So I could work for money. Got it.
gamerDude 11y ago
In a total leisure society, how do we pay for Basic Income? Where does the government get the money to give out to everyone? I agree with you. But I think its not about Basic Income, but the idea of Basic Utility/Survival where we can supply basic needs for free, via automation etc.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  > Where does the government get the money to give out to everyone? The exact same place they get it right now - they pull it out of thin air by fiat. (involving a quasi-government agency ("the fed") as a proxy is optional) Money hasn't been zero sum up since the gold standard. Governments already define most aspects of money, and they can change it as needed, such as when Nixon declared that the dollar was no longer convertible to gold.
  - LunaSea 11y ago
    Congratulations on writing the most retarded comment I have ever read on HN.
    - pdkl95 11y ago
      If you think that's "retarded", I suggest studying more macroeconomics and the history of the dollar. I suspect money doesn't work they way you think it does.
    - dang 11y ago
      You can't comment like this here, regardless of how wrong or ignorant another commenter seems. We ban accounts that do personal attacks. Please re-read the guidelines and post only comments that are civil and substantive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
LunaSea 11y ago
How do you finance a basic income when a majority of your population has no job and thus no taxable income ?
- reirob 11y ago
  Make new taxes on automation, robots, AI, Internet business?
  - LunaSea 11y ago
    Companies already pay taxes and even with automation their revenue will dwindle when their consumer base will shrink due to automation.
    - unprepare 11y ago
      why would their consumer base shrink if the consumer base is being handed basic income?

djrogers 11y ago

I'm curious about this. In your ideal above, how would one go about pursuing their dreams without an ability to earn excess capital through labor? For example, my goal is to have a nice house on 50-100 acres. I also really enjoy jet skiing and boating with my family - especially from a nice lakefront rental with a private dock. I can't fathom how I would pursue those goals in a 'leisure society'... Or as a prole would I be expected to just accept my assigned housing, only use public transportation, and put my name in an annual lottery for one of the state run vacation compounds?

JulianMorrison 11y ago
An approach I've considered is, that the living allocation by default is just comfortable. You'd be able to get allocated a city apartment or a rural house. But this is coupled to a delegation based "liquid" direct world democracy where you can either direct your surplus yourself, or delegate it to someone (or some organization). And recursively they can delegate it too. So suppose you were Elon Musk and you said, I want to build a colony on Mars, you'd probably be able to draw the interest of large delegating entities who would grant resource priority to the program so it could make rockets, and other entities would have projects that needed launching, and so forth. Or compare a smaller project, if you were a marine biologist and you wanted to equip a boat and go study penguins, there would be some delegating entity that would care about penguins, and you'd get your boat. Perhaps even if you just wanted a particularly beautiful house, you'd be able to draw enough aesthetes to your cause. But if you were just a jerk who wanted a mansion, well, probably not. [Edit: for clarity, you could conceptualize this system as something like crowdfunding, except global, recursively delegated, and directing resources directly instead of money.]
- pink_dinner 11y ago
  your approach would devolve into basically a bartering system of labor for goods. Something we had many centuries before currency exchange. I think our current system is still better.
- djrogers 11y ago
  So that doesn't really answer any of the scenarios I posed. You do manage to imply that I'm a jerk for wanting a nicer house/vacation/recreational vehicle than I'm allocated by the state, so that tells me something... Sounds to me like if I wanted to buy a jet-ski in your world, I'd have to find a bunch of people to 'delegate' their 'surplus' to me. Perhaps I could perform some function for them in return? Say, that sounds a lot like labor... So I could work for money. Got it.

gamerDude 11y ago

In a total leisure society, how do we pay for Basic Income? Where does the government get the money to give out to everyone? I agree with you. But I think its not about Basic Income, but the idea of Basic Utility/Survival where we can supply basic needs for free, via automation etc.

pdkl95 11y ago
> Where does the government get the money to give out to everyone? The exact same place they get it right now - they pull it out of thin air by fiat. (involving a quasi-government agency ("the fed") as a proxy is optional) Money hasn't been zero sum up since the gold standard. Governments already define most aspects of money, and they can change it as needed, such as when Nixon declared that the dollar was no longer convertible to gold.
- LunaSea 11y ago
  Congratulations on writing the most retarded comment I have ever read on HN.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    If you think that's "retarded", I suggest studying more macroeconomics and the history of the dollar. I suspect money doesn't work they way you think it does.
  - dang 11y ago
    You can't comment like this here, regardless of how wrong or ignorant another commenter seems. We ban accounts that do personal attacks. Please re-read the guidelines and post only comments that are civil and substantive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

LunaSea 11y ago

How do you finance a basic income when a majority of your population has no job and thus no taxable income ?

reirob 11y ago
Make new taxes on automation, robots, AI, Internet business?
- LunaSea 11y ago
  Companies already pay taxes and even with automation their revenue will dwindle when their consumer base will shrink due to automation.
  - unprepare 11y ago
    why would their consumer base shrink if the consumer base is being handed basic income?