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> Ironically, just last week the Green New Dealers said the entirety of the US should move to high speed rail. It also said we should get rid of cars, planes,

> Ironically, just last week the Green New Dealers said the entirety of the US should move to high speed rail. It also said we should get rid of cars, planes, "farting cows", and provide for people "unwilling to work"... while also being anti-nuclear, and pro-government involvement in Tesla. [0] I'm surprised the DNC allowed that to stay up as long as they did! [0] https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=5729035-Green-New-Deal-FAQ https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=5729035-Gree... edit: Um... you can think it was bad PR because it was, but those are true things that were in there. I didn't write it :)

geofft 8y ago
Yes, the original document that was posted was too politically incorrect for the right-wing faction of the DNC to be comfortable with it. Providing for people even if they're unwilling to work is a defensible strategy, and is rather popular on HN under the name of "universal basic income" and among rich people under the name of "inheritance".
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  >right-wing faction of the DNC Wha? >Providing for people even if they're unwilling to work is a defensible strategy .... Ok... Go on then. Please expand on how providing for people unwilling to work is defensible. I'm open minded, convince me.
  - nemothekid 8y ago
    How is UBI anything other than "providing for people unwilling to work"?
  - pjc50 8y ago
    >right-wing faction of the DNC Parties have an internal spectrum and much of the Democratic party occupies the same space as what Europe calls "center right", like Merkel's Christian Democrats. > providing for people unwilling to work is defensible Whereas: 1) There is no perfect test between "unwilling" and "unable" 2) People who are unable to work and are not provided for experience a range of adverse outcomes 2a) this includes the negative extenralities of homelessness that everyone always complains about in SF 2b) this may include death 3) Coercion into work with the threat of starvation is corrosive to human dignity => we should stop trying to draw a harsh demarcation between the deserving and undeserving, and ensure everyone is provided for.
    - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
      You moved the goal post to unable. The discussion is on unwilling - stick to it. Able bodied people that just don’t want to. You defend that. And yes, if you are unwilling to work; you are unwilling to live. That’s your choice friend, not mine, it’s against your biological directive, but it’s not my business.
      - pjc50 8y ago
        > There is no perfect test between "unwilling" and "unable"
      - geofft 8y ago
        > And yes, if you are unwilling to work; you are unwilling to live. How do you propose to enforce this on recipients of trust funds?
        SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
        Are you making a false argument about trust funders? The argument is clearly about providing economic security to those unwilling to work. People with trust funds don't need economic security, they have it. You know this though.
        geofft 8y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean by "false argument." I'm definitely making an argument you don't like, but those are different things. How is it justifiable for trust fund kids to have economic security while being unwilling to work while also being unjustifiable for non-trust-fund-kids to have economic security while being unwilling to work? What is the difference? You are claiming that it is a moral principle, perhaps even wired into our biology, that those unwilling to work are unwilling to live. Yet this is clearly not true in the case of those with trust funds. What is your defense of this fairly glaring exception? (One perfectly coherent answer is that this exception should be closed and inheritances to adult children should be disallowed; if you're an adult unwilling to work, having had parents who were willing to work does not save you. There are other defenses, too. I'm curious what yours is.)
  - geofft 8y ago
    > I don't think that's what UBI is supposed to be. What do you think UBI is supposed to be? I thought it was a universal basic income, i.e., an income that is applicable to all people as opposed to an income from a job. > Please expand on how providing for people unwilling to work is defensible. The US Declaration of Independence says all people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says all people have the right to life, liberty and security of person. And so forth. None of these rights are excluded to those unwilling to work. In order to live, you generally need to have a roof over your head and food on your plate and access to basic medical care. Providing those to all people who have the right to life seems pretty reasonable to me.
    - zdragnar 8y ago
      > I thought it was a universal basic income, i.e., an income that is applicable to all people as opposed to an income from a job. That's implementation specific; several "UBI" schemes have focused on providing supplemental income, rather than paying whatever the person in particular actually needs (which will vary geographically, even neighborhood to neighborhood). > The US Declaration of Independence says all people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The full clause is "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." The rights are inherent to being human, not provided for by the government. It was never intended to state that the government had an obligation to secure those rights, only that it ought not infringe upon them. Edit: This is not to state that I disagree with programs intended to help those who need it. Rather, I'm simply pointing out that a legal justification for doing so should (and can) be found elsewhere. The moral justification is prima facie for most.
  - distances 8y ago
    > .... Ok... Go on then. But to start you off, I don't think that's what UBI is supposed to be. Please expand on how providing for people unwilling to work is defensible. I don't understand what the alternative would be? A civilized society already provides basic sustenance, housing, and healthcare for everyone that cannot or will not work. It's not a glorious lifestyle but we don't let people die just for not participating in the workforce.
  - CamperBob2 8y ago
    Ok... Go on then. Please expand on how providing for people unwilling to work is defensible. I'm open minded, convince me. We do that now. It's called "prison." The question is, could we spend a similar amount of money in other ways and get a better society in the bargain? It's analogous to how our private healthcare system costs us more money for worse results than other countries' "socialized" systems do. It's usually a bad idea to let politics and ideology take precedence over objective metrics.
    - geofft 8y ago
      (I agree with you mostly, but technically a) several prisoners are willing to work and just constrained, and may well have been imprisoned directly from an honest job, and b) prisoners in the US are often compelled to work as slaves. So prisoners are not a great example of people unwilling to work, though they are a great example of it being financially workable for the government to provide meals and housing for a set of people who are not in fact on the public labor market.)
    - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
      In what.... No. Prisons are not filled with people who were unwilling to work. Nor are prisoners prohibited from working. Why would you make that case that people in prison were put there because they were unwilling to work? Do you think prisons are filled with unfortunate souls who got caught stealing bread to feed their families? I suggest you try spending a weekend in lock up sometime, you'll get that idea fixed right away.
      - geofft 8y ago
        > Why would you make that case that people in prison were put there because they were unwilling to work? Do you think prisons are filled with unfortunate souls who got caught stealing bread to feed their families? You're contradicting yourself. Valjean was quite willing to work, it just wasn't enough to feed himself and his family. (And in fact he worked quite hard, both in prison and in the rest of his life.) If you think that prisoners are willing to work, then they are unfortunate souls who got caught stealing bread. On the other hand, if they are people who wish to work on the black market, or wish to work in ways that society deems impermissible (fraud, theft, etc.), or wish to engage in conduct on the job that society deems impermissible (perhaps conduct like theft that lets them avoid working), then they aren't unfortunate souls precisely because they aren't willing to work, at least as "work" is defined. If they are justly in prison, it is precisely because they brought it on themselves, and even so, society feeds and clothes and houses and heals them (though not very well, mind you), and this is generally believed to be a worthwhile thing for society to spend money on. If this is worthwhile for people convicted of a crime, why is it not worthwhile for people not even convicted of a crime, who are merely unwilling to work? (Unless your position is that society should be supportive of people who are willing to work in any possible definition of work, whether they choose to be a programmer, a hitman, or a drug lord, and instead of housing and feeding hitmen and drug lords in prison, it should let them earn their keep?)
- ummonk 8y ago
  A basic income provides to everyone, not specifically people unable or unwilling to work.
  - geofft 8y ago
    I mean, yes, but it's most valuable/impactful as a policy to those who are not working (for any reason). For instance, I make enough money that I probably won't even notice an additional minimum-wage-sized amount of money (especially at my tax bracket), so as a policy it won't affect my behavior one bit—unless I become either unable or unwilling to work, where the difference between zero and the minimum wage will become quite obvious. One of the key features of a UBI is that it's not a US-style welfare/disability/food-stamp program where there are tracked eligibility requirements and you can lose your eligibility. It's universal. It doesn't attempt to distinguish who is "really" unable to work. So in practice one of the most-affected categories under a UBI policy would be people unwilling to work. AOC's (internal, accidentally-posted) doc said this in an indelicate and politically incorrect way but it's not aiming for any policy goals that UBI advocates aren't also targeting.
nailer 8y ago
Sad to see this being modded down HN. It's factually correct, includes a reference. If you find it embarrassing then your issue is with the document, not those discussing it's contents.
- geofft 8y ago
  I did not downvote it (as you can see from replies I certainly don't find it embarrassing, and I am upset that AOC was forced to remove it), but a) it's not factually correct - the document in question, while legitimate/authentic, is not the Green New Deal, it is entitled "Green New Deal FAQ" b) it's clearly an internal document, not a public policy proposal: the very first line makes it clear this is internal strategy c) it's from one prominent person in the Green New Deal movement and the other sponsors of the bill may well disagree with the proposals to ban airplanes and cows d) I'm pretty sure the cow thing was a joke (of the form "of course we won't get rid of all emissions, obviously, cows are going to fart for as long as we have cows and nobody's getting rid of cows") - again, it's an internal reference sheet, the tone is obviously very different from a real, public proposal e) it's basically political flamebait, very little there has to do with the intersection of the Green New Deal and the topic of the article (high-speed rail) f) and as others pointed out, the actual Green New Deal is pro-electric-cars, so it's actively misleading for the tiny portion of relevance it has.
  - nailer 8y ago
    > it's clearly an internal document > it's basically political flamebait Why would the DNC produce a document that's flame bait? Or is discussing the contents of the document flame bait?
    - geofft 8y ago
      Sorry, my pronouns were unclear. In the first sentence, "it" refers to the document. In the second sentence, "it" referred to the comment to which you replied. Very little that's in the document is relevant to this conversation, and the comment itself was attempting to discredit a particular thesis (HSR is a good idea for the US) by discrediting other theses held or allegedly held by the same people (providing for people unwilling to work is good, bovicide is good, etc.). (I don't think it's unusual for politicians to, in the course of their legitimate work, produce internal documents that when brought to a technical discussion forum can be used to produce political flamebait. It's certainly not unusual for technical people to do the same - a Google internal strategy memo on some recent W3C discussion, with no context, can easily turn into flamebait if posted to HN.) Edit: to clarify my pronouns further, in my first sentence I meant "I did not downvote the comment (I don't find the document embarrassing)", and in (a) I meant that the comment is not factually correct in identifying the document with the Green New Deal. In (b), (c), and (d) I mean the document. ... Also, I think it's incorrect that the DNC produced it. AOC's staff produced it, did they not? And it starts off with a sentence about how they want to make sure other Democrats don't claim credit for it. (Remember, again, that we are talking about the document entitled "Green New Deal FAQ" that was briefly posted to AOC's website, not about the Green New Deal legislation.)

geofft 8y ago

Yes, the original document that was posted was too politically incorrect for the right-wing faction of the DNC to be comfortable with it. Providing for people even if they're unwilling to work is a defensible strategy, and is rather popular on HN under the name of "universal basic income" and among rich people under the name of "inheritance".

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
>right-wing faction of the DNC Wha? >Providing for people even if they're unwilling to work is a defensible strategy .... Ok... Go on then. Please expand on how providing for people unwilling to work is defensible. I'm open minded, convince me.
- nemothekid 8y ago
  How is UBI anything other than "providing for people unwilling to work"?
- pjc50 8y ago
  >right-wing faction of the DNC Parties have an internal spectrum and much of the Democratic party occupies the same space as what Europe calls "center right", like Merkel's Christian Democrats. > providing for people unwilling to work is defensible Whereas: 1) There is no perfect test between "unwilling" and "unable" 2) People who are unable to work and are not provided for experience a range of adverse outcomes 2a) this includes the negative extenralities of homelessness that everyone always complains about in SF 2b) this may include death 3) Coercion into work with the threat of starvation is corrosive to human dignity => we should stop trying to draw a harsh demarcation between the deserving and undeserving, and ensure everyone is provided for.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    You moved the goal post to unable. The discussion is on unwilling - stick to it. Able bodied people that just don’t want to. You defend that. And yes, if you are unwilling to work; you are unwilling to live. That’s your choice friend, not mine, it’s against your biological directive, but it’s not my business.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      > There is no perfect test between "unwilling" and "unable"
    - geofft 8y ago
      > And yes, if you are unwilling to work; you are unwilling to live. How do you propose to enforce this on recipients of trust funds?
      - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
        Are you making a false argument about trust funders? The argument is clearly about providing economic security to those unwilling to work. People with trust funds don't need economic security, they have it. You know this though.
        geofft 8y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean by "false argument." I'm definitely making an argument you don't like, but those are different things. How is it justifiable for trust fund kids to have economic security while being unwilling to work while also being unjustifiable for non-trust-fund-kids to have economic security while being unwilling to work? What is the difference? You are claiming that it is a moral principle, perhaps even wired into our biology, that those unwilling to work are unwilling to live. Yet this is clearly not true in the case of those with trust funds. What is your defense of this fairly glaring exception? (One perfectly coherent answer is that this exception should be closed and inheritances to adult children should be disallowed; if you're an adult unwilling to work, having had parents who were willing to work does not save you. There are other defenses, too. I'm curious what yours is.)
- geofft 8y ago
  > I don't think that's what UBI is supposed to be. What do you think UBI is supposed to be? I thought it was a universal basic income, i.e., an income that is applicable to all people as opposed to an income from a job. > Please expand on how providing for people unwilling to work is defensible. The US Declaration of Independence says all people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says all people have the right to life, liberty and security of person. And so forth. None of these rights are excluded to those unwilling to work. In order to live, you generally need to have a roof over your head and food on your plate and access to basic medical care. Providing those to all people who have the right to life seems pretty reasonable to me.
  - zdragnar 8y ago
    > I thought it was a universal basic income, i.e., an income that is applicable to all people as opposed to an income from a job. That's implementation specific; several "UBI" schemes have focused on providing supplemental income, rather than paying whatever the person in particular actually needs (which will vary geographically, even neighborhood to neighborhood). > The US Declaration of Independence says all people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The full clause is "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." The rights are inherent to being human, not provided for by the government. It was never intended to state that the government had an obligation to secure those rights, only that it ought not infringe upon them. Edit: This is not to state that I disagree with programs intended to help those who need it. Rather, I'm simply pointing out that a legal justification for doing so should (and can) be found elsewhere. The moral justification is prima facie for most.
- distances 8y ago
  > .... Ok... Go on then. But to start you off, I don't think that's what UBI is supposed to be. Please expand on how providing for people unwilling to work is defensible. I don't understand what the alternative would be? A civilized society already provides basic sustenance, housing, and healthcare for everyone that cannot or will not work. It's not a glorious lifestyle but we don't let people die just for not participating in the workforce.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  Ok... Go on then. Please expand on how providing for people unwilling to work is defensible. I'm open minded, convince me. We do that now. It's called "prison." The question is, could we spend a similar amount of money in other ways and get a better society in the bargain? It's analogous to how our private healthcare system costs us more money for worse results than other countries' "socialized" systems do. It's usually a bad idea to let politics and ideology take precedence over objective metrics.
  - geofft 8y ago
    (I agree with you mostly, but technically a) several prisoners are willing to work and just constrained, and may well have been imprisoned directly from an honest job, and b) prisoners in the US are often compelled to work as slaves. So prisoners are not a great example of people unwilling to work, though they are a great example of it being financially workable for the government to provide meals and housing for a set of people who are not in fact on the public labor market.)
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    In what.... No. Prisons are not filled with people who were unwilling to work. Nor are prisoners prohibited from working. Why would you make that case that people in prison were put there because they were unwilling to work? Do you think prisons are filled with unfortunate souls who got caught stealing bread to feed their families? I suggest you try spending a weekend in lock up sometime, you'll get that idea fixed right away.
    - geofft 8y ago
      > Why would you make that case that people in prison were put there because they were unwilling to work? Do you think prisons are filled with unfortunate souls who got caught stealing bread to feed their families? You're contradicting yourself. Valjean was quite willing to work, it just wasn't enough to feed himself and his family. (And in fact he worked quite hard, both in prison and in the rest of his life.) If you think that prisoners are willing to work, then they are unfortunate souls who got caught stealing bread. On the other hand, if they are people who wish to work on the black market, or wish to work in ways that society deems impermissible (fraud, theft, etc.), or wish to engage in conduct on the job that society deems impermissible (perhaps conduct like theft that lets them avoid working), then they aren't unfortunate souls precisely because they aren't willing to work, at least as "work" is defined. If they are justly in prison, it is precisely because they brought it on themselves, and even so, society feeds and clothes and houses and heals them (though not very well, mind you), and this is generally believed to be a worthwhile thing for society to spend money on. If this is worthwhile for people convicted of a crime, why is it not worthwhile for people not even convicted of a crime, who are merely unwilling to work? (Unless your position is that society should be supportive of people who are willing to work in any possible definition of work, whether they choose to be a programmer, a hitman, or a drug lord, and instead of housing and feeding hitmen and drug lords in prison, it should let them earn their keep?)
ummonk 8y ago
A basic income provides to everyone, not specifically people unable or unwilling to work.
- geofft 8y ago
  I mean, yes, but it's most valuable/impactful as a policy to those who are not working (for any reason). For instance, I make enough money that I probably won't even notice an additional minimum-wage-sized amount of money (especially at my tax bracket), so as a policy it won't affect my behavior one bit—unless I become either unable or unwilling to work, where the difference between zero and the minimum wage will become quite obvious. One of the key features of a UBI is that it's not a US-style welfare/disability/food-stamp program where there are tracked eligibility requirements and you can lose your eligibility. It's universal. It doesn't attempt to distinguish who is "really" unable to work. So in practice one of the most-affected categories under a UBI policy would be people unwilling to work. AOC's (internal, accidentally-posted) doc said this in an indelicate and politically incorrect way but it's not aiming for any policy goals that UBI advocates aren't also targeting.

nailer 8y ago

Sad to see this being modded down HN. It's factually correct, includes a reference. If you find it embarrassing then your issue is with the document, not those discussing it's contents.

geofft 8y ago
I did not downvote it (as you can see from replies I certainly don't find it embarrassing, and I am upset that AOC was forced to remove it), but a) it's not factually correct - the document in question, while legitimate/authentic, is not the Green New Deal, it is entitled "Green New Deal FAQ" b) it's clearly an internal document, not a public policy proposal: the very first line makes it clear this is internal strategy c) it's from one prominent person in the Green New Deal movement and the other sponsors of the bill may well disagree with the proposals to ban airplanes and cows d) I'm pretty sure the cow thing was a joke (of the form "of course we won't get rid of all emissions, obviously, cows are going to fart for as long as we have cows and nobody's getting rid of cows") - again, it's an internal reference sheet, the tone is obviously very different from a real, public proposal e) it's basically political flamebait, very little there has to do with the intersection of the Green New Deal and the topic of the article (high-speed rail) f) and as others pointed out, the actual Green New Deal is pro-electric-cars, so it's actively misleading for the tiny portion of relevance it has.
- nailer 8y ago
  > it's clearly an internal document > it's basically political flamebait Why would the DNC produce a document that's flame bait? Or is discussing the contents of the document flame bait?
  - geofft 8y ago
    Sorry, my pronouns were unclear. In the first sentence, "it" refers to the document. In the second sentence, "it" referred to the comment to which you replied. Very little that's in the document is relevant to this conversation, and the comment itself was attempting to discredit a particular thesis (HSR is a good idea for the US) by discrediting other theses held or allegedly held by the same people (providing for people unwilling to work is good, bovicide is good, etc.). (I don't think it's unusual for politicians to, in the course of their legitimate work, produce internal documents that when brought to a technical discussion forum can be used to produce political flamebait. It's certainly not unusual for technical people to do the same - a Google internal strategy memo on some recent W3C discussion, with no context, can easily turn into flamebait if posted to HN.) Edit: to clarify my pronouns further, in my first sentence I meant "I did not downvote the comment (I don't find the document embarrassing)", and in (a) I meant that the comment is not factually correct in identifying the document with the Green New Deal. In (b), (c), and (d) I mean the document. ... Also, I think it's incorrect that the DNC produced it. AOC's staff produced it, did they not? And it starts off with a sentence about how they want to make sure other Democrats don't claim credit for it. (Remember, again, that we are talking about the document entitled "Green New Deal FAQ" that was briefly posted to AOC's website, not about the Green New Deal legislation.)