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> You just want to be able to dictate how other people live. People can choose to not work, but that also means they choose to not earn money. It's pretty simp

> You just want to be able to dictate how other people live. People can choose to not work, but that also means they choose to not earn money. It's pretty simple. Freedom is about choice. But choices have consequences. You cannot choose one thing, but then still expect to not have the drawback of that choice. If you like freedom so much, then why do I have to pay for people that don't produce anything for society? You are taking my freedom away from earning the money that I earn. And if the majority of people would not work, who will make your bread, your computer, your computer games, your electricity, your car, ... ? Good luck in a world full of consumers, but no producers.

skybrian 8y ago
Are you also against trust funds? Same thing, really. Whatever their parents did, it's todays' workers doing the work to provide any goods and services they use. Enough people need to be willing to do the work to get the work done. Doesn't need to be everyone; that's a fallacy.
- koonsolo 8y ago
  You might not realise this, but their trust fund does offer a service. Any investment always has another end. You have a person that has too many resources, and you have a person with too few. They are both making a deal where one rents out the resources. So although these kids do not "work", their money is working for them, offering other people rented resoures. That's how that works. Else there would be no return on that investment. This is very different than taxes. Not everyone needs to work indeed. But again it has 2 sides that are equal: you can only consume what you produce. This works on a large scale, but also on a small scale. Communism has shown that if you take away the small scale, and people are able to consume no matter how much they produce, that production goes down. Which is pretty logical if you think about it.
  - skybrian 8y ago
    Anyone with kids knows that it's not true that you can only consume what you produce. Also consider how insurance works. Or a lottery. Or someone who got lucky by picking the right startup. If an economy enforces some constraint, it's a choice. There are other choices of constraint that would also work.
    - koonsolo 8y ago
      Kids act on a family scale, which is still pretty small. Insurance is spreading risks, lottery is gambling. These have nothing to do with production or wealth creation. The successful startup does create a huge amount of wealth, and therefore the owner can probably capture a large part of that wealth.
- adwn 8y ago
  > Are you also against trust funds? Same thing, really. Not the same thing. For a trust fund, the parents voluntarily decided to give part of their wealth to their children. For a UBI, I would be forced to give part of my wealth to people who choose not to work. You could argue about whether it should still be done, but those two cases are not equivalent.
onion2k 8y ago
You cannot choose one thing, but then still expect to not have the drawback of that choice. Except you can, and these guys are doing exactly that. They're not doing anything criminal. They're not doing anything immoral. They're not doing anything wrong. They're living entirely within the bounds of what society has decided is acceptable. They're living exactly how society allows them to live. You may believe that welfare is a bad thing, and that society would be better if we just let people who don't have jobs starve to death or something, but society has decided as a collective group that we don't want that. Consequently we allow people to choose not to work. We pay their bills. That's how society works - the majority decides what is or isn't acceptable and enables that behaviour. My belief if that society is richer by a long way if people can live life on their own terms. I would much rather people lived life on welfare playing video games all day than force those people to work jobs they hate. Sometimes you're just not in the right headspace to work. I took a couple of years off once and lived on my own money because I just didn't want a job any more. If I need welfare to do that again in the future then I will be very glad of it, and I will happily use it without any guilt that I'm not contributing. And if the majority of people would not work.. Then the system would break down. But please note that hasn't happened. Most people choose to work, because living on welfare kind of sucks. Most people want more than that life affords them. The "what if!" argument doesn't work here because if it was going to happen it would already have happened, and it hasn't.
- adwn 8y ago
  > You may believe that welfare is a bad thing, and that society would be better if we just let people who don't have jobs starve to death or something, but society has decided as a collective group that we don't want that. You're conflating two groups here: A) people who are unable to work or can't find work, and B) people who would be able to work, but choose not to work. Most modern societies have decided to provide welfare to group A, but not group B. > The "what if!" argument doesn't work here because if it was going to happen it would already have happened, and it hasn't. You're wrong: No such experiment has been tried (i.e., a UBI guaranteed over many years, to a diverse set of people, sufficiently high to live on), so you can't claim "it would already have happened".
  - 8y ago

skybrian 8y ago

Are you also against trust funds? Same thing, really. Whatever their parents did, it's todays' workers doing the work to provide any goods and services they use. Enough people need to be willing to do the work to get the work done. Doesn't need to be everyone; that's a fallacy.

koonsolo 8y ago
You might not realise this, but their trust fund does offer a service. Any investment always has another end. You have a person that has too many resources, and you have a person with too few. They are both making a deal where one rents out the resources. So although these kids do not "work", their money is working for them, offering other people rented resoures. That's how that works. Else there would be no return on that investment. This is very different than taxes. Not everyone needs to work indeed. But again it has 2 sides that are equal: you can only consume what you produce. This works on a large scale, but also on a small scale. Communism has shown that if you take away the small scale, and people are able to consume no matter how much they produce, that production goes down. Which is pretty logical if you think about it.
- skybrian 8y ago
  Anyone with kids knows that it's not true that you can only consume what you produce. Also consider how insurance works. Or a lottery. Or someone who got lucky by picking the right startup. If an economy enforces some constraint, it's a choice. There are other choices of constraint that would also work.
  - koonsolo 8y ago
    Kids act on a family scale, which is still pretty small. Insurance is spreading risks, lottery is gambling. These have nothing to do with production or wealth creation. The successful startup does create a huge amount of wealth, and therefore the owner can probably capture a large part of that wealth.
adwn 8y ago
> Are you also against trust funds? Same thing, really. Not the same thing. For a trust fund, the parents voluntarily decided to give part of their wealth to their children. For a UBI, I would be forced to give part of my wealth to people who choose not to work. You could argue about whether it should still be done, but those two cases are not equivalent.

onion2k 8y ago

You cannot choose one thing, but then still expect to not have the drawback of that choice. Except you can, and these guys are doing exactly that. They're not doing anything criminal. They're not doing anything immoral. They're not doing anything wrong. They're living entirely within the bounds of what society has decided is acceptable. They're living exactly how society allows them to live. You may believe that welfare is a bad thing, and that society would be better if we just let people who don't have jobs starve to death or something, but society has decided as a collective group that we don't want that. Consequently we allow people to choose not to work. We pay their bills. That's how society works - the majority decides what is or isn't acceptable and enables that behaviour. My belief if that society is richer by a long way if people can live life on their own terms. I would much rather people lived life on welfare playing video games all day than force those people to work jobs they hate. Sometimes you're just not in the right headspace to work. I took a couple of years off once and lived on my own money because I just didn't want a job any more. If I need welfare to do that again in the future then I will be very glad of it, and I will happily use it without any guilt that I'm not contributing. And if the majority of people would not work.. Then the system would break down. But please note that hasn't happened. Most people choose to work, because living on welfare kind of sucks. Most people want more than that life affords them. The "what if!" argument doesn't work here because if it was going to happen it would already have happened, and it hasn't.

adwn 8y ago
> You may believe that welfare is a bad thing, and that society would be better if we just let people who don't have jobs starve to death or something, but society has decided as a collective group that we don't want that. You're conflating two groups here: A) people who are unable to work or can't find work, and B) people who would be able to work, but choose not to work. Most modern societies have decided to provide welfare to group A, but not group B. > The "what if!" argument doesn't work here because if it was going to happen it would already have happened, and it hasn't. You're wrong: No such experiment has been tried (i.e., a UBI guaranteed over many years, to a diverse set of people, sufficiently high to live on), so you can't claim "it would already have happened".
- 8y ago