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You do realize that efficiencies in agriculture means our country alone has more than the capacity to feed the entire world? Second consideration, no one opts

You do realize that efficiencies in agriculture means our country alone has more than the capacity to feed the entire world? Second consideration, no one opts in to capitalism. You are simply born into a situation with scarce access to natural resources (fenced off by the rich and powerful). Now, it only seems fair to me that a person has to ability to opt out, if we wanted to level the playing field between workers and owners. That is the price of civilization.

mjfl 10y ago
So who's going to grow your food while you "opt out"?
- nothrabannosir 10y ago
  The people who labeled the earth we were given as their property, and who deny us access to it? I'm a staunch free market supporter, but OP is right: you're lucky if you like this competitive society we were born in. If you don't like our rules, we screw you. You can't just up and move to a fertile plot of land without anyone bothering you, anymore. The least we can do is recognize that.
  - wernercd 10y ago
    But the technology IS approaching that can make a basement a place to grow food. How much longer until we can literally grow food anywhere that has electricity?
- chillwaves 10y ago
  There is a cost to the existing world order. Right now it costs on average over $40,000 a year to put someone in jail in America -- for breaking the social contract. It seems fair to me that the rich, in return for being the few who own so much, pay for someone to live and not die in the streets if they do not want to work (a pittance). We have the resources as a society, so scarcity is not a compelling retort. Secondly, the resources are being used anyway (welfare, prison, police), arguably inefficiently and can be done without needless suffering and waste of human potential. If the owner class is going to close access to resources we need to live, it is the right of the worker class to break the social order. Your assertion that people who recognize this hierarchy of power as "childish" seems unfair. And the real reason why basic income is untenable for the rich is that it gives too much negotiating power to those who work for a living, because they would not die in the streets if they were to opt out. That reality greatly undermines any notion of freedom in the economic sense. Time is money and it seems the rich get to take both from the poor with impunity. edit since I can't reply: Did you read my comment? Somehow you are under the strange perception that the rich people, who own literally almost everything are at the worse end of the deal wrt to subsidizing sustenance living for the poor. To answer your question: anyone can grow the food, but no one will be forced to. Does it occur to you that the owners are actually doing nothing (if they choose) while everyone else grows THEIR food and provides an endless list of goods and services? I see you don't have a problem with this system, which is strange since you are so insistent that everyone must work for their food.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - literallycancer 10y ago
    >it is the right of the worker class to break the social order This line of reasoning isn't very useful, since it doesn't matter what is "right" or "just", only what's realistic or at least possible. The "worker class" can't break the social order, or at least not in a way that improves their situation.
    - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
      Sure they can. Torches, gasoline, and guns do wonders to motivate social change.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - literallycancer 10y ago
        And then everyone's quality of life will drop, including the people who initiated the changes.
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      So sure? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storming_of_the_Bastille https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storming_of_the_Bastille https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
    - chillwaves 10y ago
      It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the rest of what I wrote, specifically why owners are exempt from working for what they consume while consuming so much.
    - gaius 10y ago
      The "worker class" can't break the social order, or at least not in a way that improves their situation. It's far too soon to say how Brexit and Trump will ultimately play out. Scrapping the TPP for example (the TTIP already having been killed by the same forces).
- allenbrunson 10y ago
  you seem to be making the assumption that there have to be crap jobs, and that somebody has to do them. the only reason there are crap jobs is because there are people to do those jobs who don't have any choice. suppose for a moment that everybody has fulfilling work in their lives, or they are independently wealthy. suddenly, nobody wants to be garbage men, or work the counter at mcdonalds, and so on. in the case of the garbage men, local communities won't have much choice: they will either have to pay more, or make the job more attractive somehow: better trucks, better working hours, and so on. and maybe fast food places just won't be economically viable anymore, if you can't get high school kids to work for you for practically nothing. no big loss. and if it turns out that some people do perceive that as a big loss, then prices are going to go up, instead. there doesn't have to be soul-crushing jobs. that's just a consequence of the societal rules we live under right now.
  - mjfl 10y ago
    > you seem to be making the assumption that there have to be crap jobs, and that somebody has to do them. the only reason there are crap jobs is because there are people to do those jobs who don't have any choice. Actually, the only reason that there are crap jobs is that someone needs to do the crap job. If that wasn't the case, no one would pay you to do it. The whole point of money is to make people do things they wouldn't normally want to do - like farm, clean toilets, kill a cow, or build buildings in the rain. And it's a good thing that money does that, it keeps us fed. It keeps society moving.
    - chillwaves 10y ago
      Is that why the people that do the crap jobs get paid the least? Or maybe there are systemic power imbalances and threatened violence for the poor.
badsock 10y ago
Just to further your point: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS Employment in agriculture (% of total employment) of the USA: %2. If we could provide shelter and clothing with similar efficencies, the question of having to work just to survive ends up in a very different place than it has done historically.
- mjfl 10y ago
  I mean, what's stopping you? Just pool some money, buy some plots of land, and then 2% of you at a time can rotate into doing the farm work - the rest of you can just do poetry. Utopian society in an instant. Wow, modern technology! Also: shameless plug for my blog post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467783
pjlegato 10y ago
You can absolutely opt out of capitalism, and many have: you can get some likeminded people together and start a commune, or you can go sleep on a park bench and panhandle, or you can just leave and move to Cuba or North Korea. Nobody will stop you or hinder you in any way. However, you cannot opt out of socialism. "Not having a job" is illegal in socialist countries. Don't like the job that was assigned to you by some bureaucrat? Want to start a mini-free market with your friends? Too bad, the alternative is the labor camps. The border guards in capitalist countries are there to prevent illegal immigration into the country. The border guards in socialist countries are there to keep people from escaping.
- audunw 10y ago
  FYI, there's nothing inherently socialist about what you describe. It's an artifact of countries that tried to implement communism in one way specifically. Socialism at its core is simply the social ownership and democratic control of the means of production. It's pretty common to consider social democracy a form or derivative of socialism, and personally I think its the form of government that has come closest to the socialist ideals, even though they didn't fully implement it the way classical socialists or communists imagined. Communism just replaced the capitalists with a political elite. There's no difference between communism in practice, and simply one big corporation running everything. The people didn't gain social ownership, and certainly not democratic control. Planned economy was naive. But having a democratic state have majority ownership in large, key corporations that compete in an otherwise free market gets to the social ownership/democratic control part, but without the oppressive government part that inevitably results from the naive approach to achieving socialist ideals. > you can get some likeminded people together and start a commune You still have to buy the land. Probably you wouldn't have too much trouble finding relatively cheap and fertile land still, but it might be getting harder. It's not like you can just settle down wherever and live off the land. I think the main problem here is that if you'd like to grow a non-capitalist economy, you have absolutely no state support. All laws are written with capitalism assumed. So non-capitalist approaches have little chance to grow beyond a single commune. In fact, even if you tried to grow a new capitalist economy (in the sense of doing trade, not in the sense of Marx' definition), which isn't the state sanctioned variety of capitalism, you'd probably get jailed. Try starting a set of communes that trade goods with your own gold-standard currency, see what happens. So no, you can't opt out. You, personally, if you have enough money, can perhaps do a big one-time purchase which will let you partly opt out for just you and maybe a few other people. But you don't really get to have any economic activity with more than a handful of people. > or you can go sleep on a park bench and panhandle I don't think that's what the parent post had in mind. That's not really opting out at all. You're completely dependent on capitalism for surviving that way, even if you don't have a job yourself.

mjfl 10y ago

So who's going to grow your food while you "opt out"?

nothrabannosir 10y ago
The people who labeled the earth we were given as their property, and who deny us access to it? I'm a staunch free market supporter, but OP is right: you're lucky if you like this competitive society we were born in. If you don't like our rules, we screw you. You can't just up and move to a fertile plot of land without anyone bothering you, anymore. The least we can do is recognize that.
- wernercd 10y ago
  But the technology IS approaching that can make a basement a place to grow food. How much longer until we can literally grow food anywhere that has electricity?
chillwaves 10y ago
There is a cost to the existing world order. Right now it costs on average over $40,000 a year to put someone in jail in America -- for breaking the social contract. It seems fair to me that the rich, in return for being the few who own so much, pay for someone to live and not die in the streets if they do not want to work (a pittance). We have the resources as a society, so scarcity is not a compelling retort. Secondly, the resources are being used anyway (welfare, prison, police), arguably inefficiently and can be done without needless suffering and waste of human potential. If the owner class is going to close access to resources we need to live, it is the right of the worker class to break the social order. Your assertion that people who recognize this hierarchy of power as "childish" seems unfair. And the real reason why basic income is untenable for the rich is that it gives too much negotiating power to those who work for a living, because they would not die in the streets if they were to opt out. That reality greatly undermines any notion of freedom in the economic sense. Time is money and it seems the rich get to take both from the poor with impunity. edit since I can't reply: Did you read my comment? Somehow you are under the strange perception that the rich people, who own literally almost everything are at the worse end of the deal wrt to subsidizing sustenance living for the poor. To answer your question: anyone can grow the food, but no one will be forced to. Does it occur to you that the owners are actually doing nothing (if they choose) while everyone else grows THEIR food and provides an endless list of goods and services? I see you don't have a problem with this system, which is strange since you are so insistent that everyone must work for their food.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- literallycancer 10y ago
  >it is the right of the worker class to break the social order This line of reasoning isn't very useful, since it doesn't matter what is "right" or "just", only what's realistic or at least possible. The "worker class" can't break the social order, or at least not in a way that improves their situation.
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    Sure they can. Torches, gasoline, and guns do wonders to motivate social change.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - literallycancer 10y ago
      And then everyone's quality of life will drop, including the people who initiated the changes.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    So sure? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storming_of_the_Bastille https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storming_of_the_Bastille https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
  - chillwaves 10y ago
    It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the rest of what I wrote, specifically why owners are exempt from working for what they consume while consuming so much.
  - gaius 10y ago
    The "worker class" can't break the social order, or at least not in a way that improves their situation. It's far too soon to say how Brexit and Trump will ultimately play out. Scrapping the TPP for example (the TTIP already having been killed by the same forces).
allenbrunson 10y ago
you seem to be making the assumption that there have to be crap jobs, and that somebody has to do them. the only reason there are crap jobs is because there are people to do those jobs who don't have any choice. suppose for a moment that everybody has fulfilling work in their lives, or they are independently wealthy. suddenly, nobody wants to be garbage men, or work the counter at mcdonalds, and so on. in the case of the garbage men, local communities won't have much choice: they will either have to pay more, or make the job more attractive somehow: better trucks, better working hours, and so on. and maybe fast food places just won't be economically viable anymore, if you can't get high school kids to work for you for practically nothing. no big loss. and if it turns out that some people do perceive that as a big loss, then prices are going to go up, instead. there doesn't have to be soul-crushing jobs. that's just a consequence of the societal rules we live under right now.
- mjfl 10y ago
  > you seem to be making the assumption that there have to be crap jobs, and that somebody has to do them. the only reason there are crap jobs is because there are people to do those jobs who don't have any choice. Actually, the only reason that there are crap jobs is that someone needs to do the crap job. If that wasn't the case, no one would pay you to do it. The whole point of money is to make people do things they wouldn't normally want to do - like farm, clean toilets, kill a cow, or build buildings in the rain. And it's a good thing that money does that, it keeps us fed. It keeps society moving.
  - chillwaves 10y ago
    Is that why the people that do the crap jobs get paid the least? Or maybe there are systemic power imbalances and threatened violence for the poor.

badsock 10y ago

Just to further your point: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS Employment in agriculture (% of total employment) of the USA: %2. If we could provide shelter and clothing with similar efficencies, the question of having to work just to survive ends up in a very different place than it has done historically.

mjfl 10y ago
I mean, what's stopping you? Just pool some money, buy some plots of land, and then 2% of you at a time can rotate into doing the farm work - the rest of you can just do poetry. Utopian society in an instant. Wow, modern technology! Also: shameless plug for my blog post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467783

pjlegato 10y ago

You can absolutely opt out of capitalism, and many have: you can get some likeminded people together and start a commune, or you can go sleep on a park bench and panhandle, or you can just leave and move to Cuba or North Korea. Nobody will stop you or hinder you in any way. However, you cannot opt out of socialism. "Not having a job" is illegal in socialist countries. Don't like the job that was assigned to you by some bureaucrat? Want to start a mini-free market with your friends? Too bad, the alternative is the labor camps. The border guards in capitalist countries are there to prevent illegal immigration into the country. The border guards in socialist countries are there to keep people from escaping.

audunw 10y ago
FYI, there's nothing inherently socialist about what you describe. It's an artifact of countries that tried to implement communism in one way specifically. Socialism at its core is simply the social ownership and democratic control of the means of production. It's pretty common to consider social democracy a form or derivative of socialism, and personally I think its the form of government that has come closest to the socialist ideals, even though they didn't fully implement it the way classical socialists or communists imagined. Communism just replaced the capitalists with a political elite. There's no difference between communism in practice, and simply one big corporation running everything. The people didn't gain social ownership, and certainly not democratic control. Planned economy was naive. But having a democratic state have majority ownership in large, key corporations that compete in an otherwise free market gets to the social ownership/democratic control part, but without the oppressive government part that inevitably results from the naive approach to achieving socialist ideals. > you can get some likeminded people together and start a commune You still have to buy the land. Probably you wouldn't have too much trouble finding relatively cheap and fertile land still, but it might be getting harder. It's not like you can just settle down wherever and live off the land. I think the main problem here is that if you'd like to grow a non-capitalist economy, you have absolutely no state support. All laws are written with capitalism assumed. So non-capitalist approaches have little chance to grow beyond a single commune. In fact, even if you tried to grow a new capitalist economy (in the sense of doing trade, not in the sense of Marx' definition), which isn't the state sanctioned variety of capitalism, you'd probably get jailed. Try starting a set of communes that trade goods with your own gold-standard currency, see what happens. So no, you can't opt out. You, personally, if you have enough money, can perhaps do a big one-time purchase which will let you partly opt out for just you and maybe a few other people. But you don't really get to have any economic activity with more than a handful of people. > or you can go sleep on a park bench and panhandle I don't think that's what the parent post had in mind. That's not really opting out at all. You're completely dependent on capitalism for surviving that way, even if you don't have a job yourself.