4 ms·

> what if an uncomfortably large part of the population just really doesn't have anything economically worthwhile to offer in the modern context? They and thei

> what if an uncomfortably large part of the population just really doesn't have anything economically worthwhile to offer in the modern context? They and their skillsets must evolve or perish. This is nothing new, ever since at least the Industrial Revolution.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
It shouldn't be quite that stark. I view society as "spending" people, rather than "employing" them. We used to spend a huge chunk (35%?) of our population on agriculture. Then we industrialized agriculture, and now we spend something like 2% of our population on it. The rest could go make that farm equipment, and washing machines, and thousands of other things. Society as a whole became better off. As a society, we need to find useful things for these people to do. Maybe we'll have to train them. But just leaving them where they can't do anything useful is a huge waste. We're leaving an enormous amount of progress on the table here.
- mmirate 8y ago
  But who is "we", and who is anyone to decide which of the 35% should be retrained, or which new field to retrain them in, or how to allocate resources to such retraining? Those are the difficult questions that are most deftly answered by the Dead Hand when we grant each "35-percenter" the responsibility for their own retraining; they either retrain ("evolve"); figure out how to stay relevant in their old field (also "evolve"); or fail, and in doing so, demonstrate that they were unwilling to be "spent" in any way that society was willing to spend them ("perish"). Which is to say, I do not quite understand how you are disagreeing with me.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    I suggest that we should grant each "35-percenter" (wherever that term came from) not only the responsibility for their own retraining, but the resources to do so, and maybe even some suggestions (not orders!) as to what direction they should go in. Just giving them the responsibility without the resources sounds like the worst kind of "Social Darwinism".
    - mmirate 8y ago
      Again: who is "we" and -more importantly - how do we decide which/how-much resources to grant? Write a nice letter to the Gates Foundation? Steal from the productive and call it "taxation"?
      - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        "We" is society as a whole. (Moderately careful reading of my first post should have made that clear, but you seem more interested in arguing than in understanding.) How do we decide? The process wasn't specified. (How does society as a whole make decisions? These kind of decisions it makes through the political process.) The point wasn't the mechanics of the decision-making process. The point was that we should view these people as an under-utilized asset rather than a liability, and figure out how to use them for the progress of our society. > Steal from the productive and call it "taxation"? You want to let people starve (judging by your posts in this thread) rather than pay taxes, which you regard as theft? You need to replace your moral compass; it's a bit defective... Do you feel the same way about taxes to pay for, say, highways and airports? Or do you give those a pass because it's infrastructure, from which you benefit? If we can get these people able to contribute to society, we'll benefit, in at least two ways. One is that they'll pay more taxes, which could lower yours. Second, they'll do things that are useful, and some of it we'll personally use.
        mmirate 8y ago
        > Do you feel the same way about taxes to pay for, say, highways and airports? Or do you give those a pass because it's infrastructure, from which you benefit? I don't give them a pass. Not by a long shot. Right now I'm only benefiting from one particular nearby highway, and even then only a few miles of its vast length. Of the two nearest airports (both of which are at least an hour's drive away), I have never used one, have not used the other in at least a year, and have no intention of using either for at least a couple decades; yet I am still forced to pay for them, beyond the length of any "professional's retainer" term that I might have voluntarily chosen. (I correctly predicted which airport usage would be my last, several years prior to it.) But of course there are others who feel differently - they'd like to have a different stretch of that highway, a different highway, an airport with nonstop roundtrips to Podunk, Alabama, you name it. And I do not wish to quarrel with them. In a properly-functioning free market, when there is a selection of alternative goods available and different people have different preferences, the result is that the people who prefer one good purchase it, and the people who prefer another good purchase it instead of the previous. Both goods end up being sold to the people who prefer them. The anomalous situation in any of certain markets (e.g. infrastructure of a given kind; security; morals; laws) wherein people must coercively prohibit the sale of all goods except one, the one to be chosen by all manner of unpleasant quarrels - be they the heated vitriol before an election, or the cold hard bullying might of dynasties and coups d'etat ... it only results when there is a localized monopoly on the use of unprovoked force - also known as a government.
usrusr 8y ago
Any implementation ideas for that perishing? Starvation? In the streets or organized in ... camps? Or something quicker, the arena perhaps? Suicide booths? "Perish" is such a comfortably abstract term... Personally, I suspect that one day, unlikely within our lifetime, ethics will evolve to the point where it becomes acceptable to pay people for getting sterilized. This could turn into the biggest boost to average education since mandatory schooling.
- mmirate 8y ago
  > Any implementation ideas for that perishing? Starvation? In the streets or organized in ... camps? Or something quicker, the arena perhaps? Suicide booths? "Perish" is such a comfortably abstract term... If a given person is smart enough, they will see that their strategy isn't working, sell their tools and use their remaining resources to learn something new. Not-so-smart types will try out crime; that's what police, courts and prisons are for. Even-less-smart types will indeed starve. Thing is, anyone who reaches this point is clearly incapable or unwilling to perform any valuable task. (Or in the meta-sense, to learn how they can perform a valuable task... w.l.o.g.) At which point the obvious question arises: what is gained by doing anything more than getting such people out of society's way as efficiently as possible? Or: why are you loading your question in exactly the wrong direction? The obvious answer is "whatever method is most efficient". Perhaps whoever runs an arena can collect enough admissions fees to offset cleanup, land, and other expenses. But it's all - as are so many things - a question of facts-we-don't-have. > Personally, I suspect that one day, unlikely within our lifetime, ethics will evolve to the point where it becomes acceptable to pay people for getting sterilized. This could turn into the biggest boost to average education since mandatory schooling. I already hold these beliefs; I merely lack the resources to do this and everything that is more important. (Which is quite significant, really; "improve society-at-large, effective after I am dead" is about as far down the priority list as I can think of.) Provided that the exchange is voluntary, mind you - if this scheme were to be conducted via government then dystopia could easily follow suit. But in the absence of such a downfall, this is the only form of "danegild" that I think is really feasible.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

It shouldn't be quite that stark. I view society as "spending" people, rather than "employing" them. We used to spend a huge chunk (35%?) of our population on agriculture. Then we industrialized agriculture, and now we spend something like 2% of our population on it. The rest could go make that farm equipment, and washing machines, and thousands of other things. Society as a whole became better off. As a society, we need to find useful things for these people to do. Maybe we'll have to train them. But just leaving them where they can't do anything useful is a huge waste. We're leaving an enormous amount of progress on the table here.

mmirate 8y ago
But who is "we", and who is anyone to decide which of the 35% should be retrained, or which new field to retrain them in, or how to allocate resources to such retraining? Those are the difficult questions that are most deftly answered by the Dead Hand when we grant each "35-percenter" the responsibility for their own retraining; they either retrain ("evolve"); figure out how to stay relevant in their old field (also "evolve"); or fail, and in doing so, demonstrate that they were unwilling to be "spent" in any way that society was willing to spend them ("perish"). Which is to say, I do not quite understand how you are disagreeing with me.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  I suggest that we should grant each "35-percenter" (wherever that term came from) not only the responsibility for their own retraining, but the resources to do so, and maybe even some suggestions (not orders!) as to what direction they should go in. Just giving them the responsibility without the resources sounds like the worst kind of "Social Darwinism".
  - mmirate 8y ago
    Again: who is "we" and -more importantly - how do we decide which/how-much resources to grant? Write a nice letter to the Gates Foundation? Steal from the productive and call it "taxation"?
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      "We" is society as a whole. (Moderately careful reading of my first post should have made that clear, but you seem more interested in arguing than in understanding.) How do we decide? The process wasn't specified. (How does society as a whole make decisions? These kind of decisions it makes through the political process.) The point wasn't the mechanics of the decision-making process. The point was that we should view these people as an under-utilized asset rather than a liability, and figure out how to use them for the progress of our society. > Steal from the productive and call it "taxation"? You want to let people starve (judging by your posts in this thread) rather than pay taxes, which you regard as theft? You need to replace your moral compass; it's a bit defective... Do you feel the same way about taxes to pay for, say, highways and airports? Or do you give those a pass because it's infrastructure, from which you benefit? If we can get these people able to contribute to society, we'll benefit, in at least two ways. One is that they'll pay more taxes, which could lower yours. Second, they'll do things that are useful, and some of it we'll personally use.
      - mmirate 8y ago
        > Do you feel the same way about taxes to pay for, say, highways and airports? Or do you give those a pass because it's infrastructure, from which you benefit? I don't give them a pass. Not by a long shot. Right now I'm only benefiting from one particular nearby highway, and even then only a few miles of its vast length. Of the two nearest airports (both of which are at least an hour's drive away), I have never used one, have not used the other in at least a year, and have no intention of using either for at least a couple decades; yet I am still forced to pay for them, beyond the length of any "professional's retainer" term that I might have voluntarily chosen. (I correctly predicted which airport usage would be my last, several years prior to it.) But of course there are others who feel differently - they'd like to have a different stretch of that highway, a different highway, an airport with nonstop roundtrips to Podunk, Alabama, you name it. And I do not wish to quarrel with them. In a properly-functioning free market, when there is a selection of alternative goods available and different people have different preferences, the result is that the people who prefer one good purchase it, and the people who prefer another good purchase it instead of the previous. Both goods end up being sold to the people who prefer them. The anomalous situation in any of certain markets (e.g. infrastructure of a given kind; security; morals; laws) wherein people must coercively prohibit the sale of all goods except one, the one to be chosen by all manner of unpleasant quarrels - be they the heated vitriol before an election, or the cold hard bullying might of dynasties and coups d'etat ... it only results when there is a localized monopoly on the use of unprovoked force - also known as a government.

usrusr 8y ago

Any implementation ideas for that perishing? Starvation? In the streets or organized in ... camps? Or something quicker, the arena perhaps? Suicide booths? "Perish" is such a comfortably abstract term... Personally, I suspect that one day, unlikely within our lifetime, ethics will evolve to the point where it becomes acceptable to pay people for getting sterilized. This could turn into the biggest boost to average education since mandatory schooling.

mmirate 8y ago
> Any implementation ideas for that perishing? Starvation? In the streets or organized in ... camps? Or something quicker, the arena perhaps? Suicide booths? "Perish" is such a comfortably abstract term... If a given person is smart enough, they will see that their strategy isn't working, sell their tools and use their remaining resources to learn something new. Not-so-smart types will try out crime; that's what police, courts and prisons are for. Even-less-smart types will indeed starve. Thing is, anyone who reaches this point is clearly incapable or unwilling to perform any valuable task. (Or in the meta-sense, to learn how they can perform a valuable task... w.l.o.g.) At which point the obvious question arises: what is gained by doing anything more than getting such people out of society's way as efficiently as possible? Or: why are you loading your question in exactly the wrong direction? The obvious answer is "whatever method is most efficient". Perhaps whoever runs an arena can collect enough admissions fees to offset cleanup, land, and other expenses. But it's all - as are so many things - a question of facts-we-don't-have. > Personally, I suspect that one day, unlikely within our lifetime, ethics will evolve to the point where it becomes acceptable to pay people for getting sterilized. This could turn into the biggest boost to average education since mandatory schooling. I already hold these beliefs; I merely lack the resources to do this and everything that is more important. (Which is quite significant, really; "improve society-at-large, effective after I am dead" is about as far down the priority list as I can think of.) Provided that the exchange is voluntary, mind you - if this scheme were to be conducted via government then dystopia could easily follow suit. But in the absence of such a downfall, this is the only form of "danegild" that I think is really feasible.