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> ``drumroll`` scaling back shit that nobody needs. Maybe, but what do you do with people whose livelihood depend on those superfluous bullshit jobs? Until we

> ``drumroll`` scaling back shit that nobody needs. Maybe, but what do you do with people whose livelihood depend on those superfluous bullshit jobs? Until we have a system that guarantees a right to life even if you do nothing productive, those busyworks are used to justify giving food, shelter and healthcare to those people.

netsharc 7y ago
The sane/benovelent governments will probably switch to universal basic income, i.e. go deep into debt and just pay everyone money to live. And no, actually going into debt is not a huge problem, ask Keynes, or what happened in WW2; it was an emergency and governments borrowed and borrowed with no fear.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  The real bullshit is the idea of debt in the first place. There is no debt. There's only the use of "debt" and "lending" as a thinly disguised pretext for feudal tribute used for political advantage. If we don't work through this it's going to kill us as a species. Doing strategically useful stuff that generates invention and opportunity instead of making plastic toys that end up in landfill is a different but not entirely unrelated problem.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    The fact that we have collectively chosen to prioritise designing, manufacturing, distributing, promoting, and selling, the volume of plastic bullshit that we do, surely says something about us that warrants deep collective reflection.
- 101404 7y ago
  UBI could be possible in a closed society, but not if you are open for uncontrolled influx of people from outside your society. Because the offer "get free money" is just too good. There was the choice what to focus on, and we decided we wanted uncontrolled immigration. Fair choice, but the consequence is that UBI won't work anymore.
  - cyphar 7y ago
    > we decided we wanted uncontrolled immigration The US definitely has an immigration policy. Not to mention that no serious politician today (despite what some media outlets may claim) is running on a platform of open borders.
  - tomp 7y ago
    That's why I've been arguing for a while that open immigration into Europe is unfeasible... EU countries already have forms of UBI, in the sense of strong social safety net, (mostly) free medicine, etc. Open immigration might be easier on the US as it provides less unconditional benefits to its residents.
    - 101404 7y ago
      In fact, the US too once had a better welfare system. Uncontrolled migration is a thing that started in the 70s. Confidentially around the same time the welfare state was destroyed.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    I’m not aware of any place that has a completely open boarder. What are you referring to here?
    - 101404 7y ago
      I am not aware that I claimed any place would have completely open border. I am certain that you know what I am referring to, but want to avoid a serious discussion by playing with technicalities. No thanks.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
        I’m genuinely not aware of what you’re referring to. I live in a relatively small city on the island state of Tasmania, and am probably way behind on some aspects of global politics.
    - 7y ago
- tomp 7y ago
  I never understood this logic, and I understand it even less now. If we have the industrial / economic capacity to provide everyone with necessities of life (food, water, heat, shelter, ...), why not just provide that directly?! No need to go via the "money -> essentials" route... that way you're only indirectly making landlords and grocery store owners rich. For this crisis, people are saying, give $1000 to everyone... that money is mostly going to find its way into the pockets of already rich people, and/or those companies that should have collapsed because of bad planning, but now won't. Instead, you could legislate things like food stamps for everyone (with the government paying grocers directly, while at the same time ensuring the money isn't spent on shit like alcohol and cigarettes), and a few months of rent amnesty for everyone (including businesses) (it's not like houses will disappear if somebody doesn't pay the rent).
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    I don’t see there being any material difference in providing cash vs providing food stamps / rent amnesty. Either way, government money (ie. tax money) will be funnelled to, in your words, “already rich people”. Your way is probably worse, because it forces governments to pick winners, which they are notoriously bad at doing.
  - Splatter 7y ago
    > and a few months of rent amnesty for everyone (including businesses) (it's not like houses will disappear if somebody doesn't pay the rent). This is being proposed where I live. I'm curious to know who, in this situation, pays the owners of the rental properties for the use of the house, for the expenses and maintenance, for the employees, plumbers, electricians, and contractors, etc. And what about lost profits due for the assumption of the risk of buying properties for the purpose of providing homes for people to live?
  - jnwatson 7y ago
    There’s a lot of research on this in the effective charity set. See [1]. First, it is highly paternalistic to tell people what to spend money on. Second, it takes a huge bureaucracy to manage and enforce controls. Folks still sell their food stamps. 1: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/541609649/how-to-fix-poverty-why-not-just-give-people-money https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/5416096...
- kkwteh 7y ago
  Going into debt is a big problem if it eats up all of your tax revenue to service it. The WW2 debt was managed by growing the economy to the point where the debt became a small fraction of tax revenue. It seems impossible for modern economies to grow like that today.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > The WW2 debt was managed by growing the economy to the point where the debt became a small fraction of tax revenue. The WW2 debt problem in the US was managed by roughly tripling the share of the economy taken in in taxes, not just growing the economy. Taxes aren't fixed. > Going into debt is a big problem if it eats up all of your tax revenue to service it It's a big problem if it eats up all of your productive output; tax revenue is an arbitrarily-adjustable figure. OTOH, if your debt is denominated in your own currency, so is (in real terms) the debt itself.
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
The Wikipedia reference OP provided claims Universal Basic Income as a solution.
titzer 7y ago
> those busyworks are used to justify giving food, shelter and healthcare to those people. IMHO, even as a recovering laissez-faire libertarian type, the real reason for those jobs is to create funnels of money to the top of society to make a very tiny fraction of the population obscenely wealthy. The bigger scale and the glitzier the funnel, the bigger the fountain of cash for the execs to splash around amongst them. Billionaires are a mathematical anomaly, and those busywork jobs are their payment for us not decapitating the bastards like it's 1789, coupled with an absolutely stunning propaganda blitz that hoodwinked us mere techie upper-middle classers into believing they earned it, deserved it, worked hard for it. It's a lie; a lifetime is not long enough to learn 120,000 lifetimes worth of wealth, and I don't give a shit how many warehouses or webpages your minions make. (sorry, this whole thing isn't directed at you; more like the Bezoses of the world).
reportgunner 7y ago
Maybe, but what do you do with people whose livelihood depend on those superfluous bullshit jobs? Give them work in production of things people need or delivering things people need. > system that guarantees a right to life even if you do nothing productive How could such a system work? Wouldn't that motivate everyone to stop being productive ?
- frosted-flakes 7y ago
  A right to life is not a right to a comfortable life. I'm not arguing either way, but most people would still work to make their lives better. I'm assuming OP means something like a universal basic income, which I don't know what to think about.

netsharc 7y ago

The sane/benovelent governments will probably switch to universal basic income, i.e. go deep into debt and just pay everyone money to live. And no, actually going into debt is not a huge problem, ask Keynes, or what happened in WW2; it was an emergency and governments borrowed and borrowed with no fear.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
The real bullshit is the idea of debt in the first place. There is no debt. There's only the use of "debt" and "lending" as a thinly disguised pretext for feudal tribute used for political advantage. If we don't work through this it's going to kill us as a species. Doing strategically useful stuff that generates invention and opportunity instead of making plastic toys that end up in landfill is a different but not entirely unrelated problem.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  The fact that we have collectively chosen to prioritise designing, manufacturing, distributing, promoting, and selling, the volume of plastic bullshit that we do, surely says something about us that warrants deep collective reflection.
101404 7y ago
UBI could be possible in a closed society, but not if you are open for uncontrolled influx of people from outside your society. Because the offer "get free money" is just too good. There was the choice what to focus on, and we decided we wanted uncontrolled immigration. Fair choice, but the consequence is that UBI won't work anymore.
- cyphar 7y ago
  > we decided we wanted uncontrolled immigration The US definitely has an immigration policy. Not to mention that no serious politician today (despite what some media outlets may claim) is running on a platform of open borders.
- tomp 7y ago
  That's why I've been arguing for a while that open immigration into Europe is unfeasible... EU countries already have forms of UBI, in the sense of strong social safety net, (mostly) free medicine, etc. Open immigration might be easier on the US as it provides less unconditional benefits to its residents.
  - 101404 7y ago
    In fact, the US too once had a better welfare system. Uncontrolled migration is a thing that started in the 70s. Confidentially around the same time the welfare state was destroyed.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  I’m not aware of any place that has a completely open boarder. What are you referring to here?
  - 101404 7y ago
    I am not aware that I claimed any place would have completely open border. I am certain that you know what I am referring to, but want to avoid a serious discussion by playing with technicalities. No thanks.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      I’m genuinely not aware of what you’re referring to. I live in a relatively small city on the island state of Tasmania, and am probably way behind on some aspects of global politics.
  - 7y ago
tomp 7y ago
I never understood this logic, and I understand it even less now. If we have the industrial / economic capacity to provide everyone with necessities of life (food, water, heat, shelter, ...), why not just provide that directly?! No need to go via the "money -> essentials" route... that way you're only indirectly making landlords and grocery store owners rich. For this crisis, people are saying, give $1000 to everyone... that money is mostly going to find its way into the pockets of already rich people, and/or those companies that should have collapsed because of bad planning, but now won't. Instead, you could legislate things like food stamps for everyone (with the government paying grocers directly, while at the same time ensuring the money isn't spent on shit like alcohol and cigarettes), and a few months of rent amnesty for everyone (including businesses) (it's not like houses will disappear if somebody doesn't pay the rent).
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  I don’t see there being any material difference in providing cash vs providing food stamps / rent amnesty. Either way, government money (ie. tax money) will be funnelled to, in your words, “already rich people”. Your way is probably worse, because it forces governments to pick winners, which they are notoriously bad at doing.
- Splatter 7y ago
  > and a few months of rent amnesty for everyone (including businesses) (it's not like houses will disappear if somebody doesn't pay the rent). This is being proposed where I live. I'm curious to know who, in this situation, pays the owners of the rental properties for the use of the house, for the expenses and maintenance, for the employees, plumbers, electricians, and contractors, etc. And what about lost profits due for the assumption of the risk of buying properties for the purpose of providing homes for people to live?
- jnwatson 7y ago
  There’s a lot of research on this in the effective charity set. See [1]. First, it is highly paternalistic to tell people what to spend money on. Second, it takes a huge bureaucracy to manage and enforce controls. Folks still sell their food stamps. 1: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/541609649/how-to-fix-poverty-why-not-just-give-people-money https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/5416096...
kkwteh 7y ago
Going into debt is a big problem if it eats up all of your tax revenue to service it. The WW2 debt was managed by growing the economy to the point where the debt became a small fraction of tax revenue. It seems impossible for modern economies to grow like that today.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > The WW2 debt was managed by growing the economy to the point where the debt became a small fraction of tax revenue. The WW2 debt problem in the US was managed by roughly tripling the share of the economy taken in in taxes, not just growing the economy. Taxes aren't fixed. > Going into debt is a big problem if it eats up all of your tax revenue to service it It's a big problem if it eats up all of your productive output; tax revenue is an arbitrarily-adjustable figure. OTOH, if your debt is denominated in your own currency, so is (in real terms) the debt itself.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago

The Wikipedia reference OP provided claims Universal Basic Income as a solution.

titzer 7y ago

> those busyworks are used to justify giving food, shelter and healthcare to those people. IMHO, even as a recovering laissez-faire libertarian type, the real reason for those jobs is to create funnels of money to the top of society to make a very tiny fraction of the population obscenely wealthy. The bigger scale and the glitzier the funnel, the bigger the fountain of cash for the execs to splash around amongst them. Billionaires are a mathematical anomaly, and those busywork jobs are their payment for us not decapitating the bastards like it's 1789, coupled with an absolutely stunning propaganda blitz that hoodwinked us mere techie upper-middle classers into believing they earned it, deserved it, worked hard for it. It's a lie; a lifetime is not long enough to learn 120,000 lifetimes worth of wealth, and I don't give a shit how many warehouses or webpages your minions make. (sorry, this whole thing isn't directed at you; more like the Bezoses of the world).

reportgunner 7y ago

Maybe, but what do you do with people whose livelihood depend on those superfluous bullshit jobs? Give them work in production of things people need or delivering things people need. > system that guarantees a right to life even if you do nothing productive How could such a system work? Wouldn't that motivate everyone to stop being productive ?

frosted-flakes 7y ago
A right to life is not a right to a comfortable life. I'm not arguing either way, but most people would still work to make their lives better. I'm assuming OP means something like a universal basic income, which I don't know what to think about.