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Unearned income is unfulfilling and the people who think they earned it resent it being taken from them, even if it's only particularly large because there's a

Unearned income is unfulfilling and the people who think they earned it resent it being taken from them, even if it's only particularly large because there's a big market to sell into and a big winner effect in the market structure. I don't know the answers here but they don't look like free market capitalism or redistributive socialist utopia, and actually I think this axis or spectrum is an actively harmful frame for constructing a society with fulfilling lives and less inequality. Neither more government nor more free enterprise is quite right. People want to live productive lives where they are valued and make a difference. How do you do that in a society which has such enormous returns on capital which alienates people from their work product?

throwanem 6y ago
Unearned income is unfulfilling in the context of a default assumption that the ability to earn an income is a valid measure of worth. There are other, better, measures.
- barrkel 6y ago
  Making something that other people are willing to reward with the fruits of their own labour is about as honest a social measure of worth as you can get outside of friends and family.
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    It's also not something that would be taken away by diverting excess productivity to covering people's basic needs. I can at least imagine a world where doing so spurs a renaissance of creativity and entrepreneurship, because, just like you said, people seem to have an innate need to try and do something productive with their time. If there's a real social fear that I hold, it's that we'd suddenly have supply problems in certain segments of the labor market. I know I, for one, would never have taken that 2nd shift job working in the kitchen of an all night diner if I hadn't needed the money to buy food. I'd have spent that time working on some of the ideas I had for software projects instead.
    - ludamad 6y ago
      "I'd have spent that time working on some of the ideas I had for software projects instead." Then this takes off, makes you money, and you are higher class than those who keep their skills "for fun" EDIT: Not sure if this was understood, this was meant on a commentary on how capitalism and class can find its why back into such a system
      - mumblemumble 6y ago
        Given the idea I had at the time, probably not. But I'd like to think it would have enriched the lives of myself and others, all the same. In broad strokes, I'm more capitalist than communist, so I don't really disagree with the whole "greed is good" thing. Where I part ways is the unstated - often, I suspect, un-recognized - premise that it's the only good. Money's only useful for what it can buy, and its value has been artificially inflated by a social structure that makes it something that you just can't live without.
        TeMPOraL 6y ago
        > Money's only useful for what it can buy, and its value has been artificially inflated by a social structure that makes it something that you just can't live without. That's a good point. And makes me think of videogames analogy, particularly MMORPG. In a typical MMO, you need to labor to earn money (known as "grinding") to buy all the stuff you'll need to make progress easier (and/or possible). But at any time, you can just stop, take time off, go explore the places you've been to (i.e. not containing enemies stronger than you can beat), or even just log out and leave your character be for a week. You lose nothing except time and perhaps your rank in some completely optional competition with other players. But your character won't go hungry, won't starve or freeze to death, won't be evicted for not paying taxes. That illustrates the difference between money being useful, versus being necessary. And even if it's only useful and not necessary, that doesn't mean you won't be motivated to earn it - you will want more money if the things you can buy with it are interesting enough.
        6y ago
  - throwanem 6y ago
    Yes, and that metric is distorted out of all utility by the necessity of maximizing the specifically monetary value of labor, as a condition of survival and stability - and even then, those are frighteningly contingent if they're achievable at all. There are other kinds of value, too.
  - jjk166 6y ago
    If something is enjoyable and rewarding, like making art or an invention, I'd want to do it myself. If a job is unenjoyable and unrewarding, I will use the fruits of my labors to get someone else to do it. I will pay a lot of money to whoever cleans my septic tank. Does that make septic tank cleaners socially valuable, or does that make having a clean septic tank valuable? If a machine can clean the septic tank and no one has to do that task anymore, then I can get what I want without either having to toil myself or convincing someone else to toil.
DailyHN 6y ago
Currency for things that are currently intangible.
EGreg 6y ago
Things become more fulfilling when you see everyone else doing them, such as raising kids. There are so many things people could be doing which are not compensated by the market and corporations. “Leaning in and earning $1 instead of 70c” is a meme that corporations use to get more humans to trade quality time with parents and kids for them. [1] Why don’t we ask about “Leaning out and spending more time with our families?” [2] Open source Science Philosophy Family Personal development Volunteering in community You’ve been CONDITIONED to think that large corporations are better ways to allocate your time and organize us all. That’s why many in NYC lamented when Amazon was not given tax breaks to come to our city. It’s almost as if we need Bezos’ company to organize ourselves an our time so we can get paid the money. Society spends tons on fossil fuels and commuting and for what? To sit in a chair 30 miles away? 1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8 2. http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286
- barrkel 6y ago
  > You've been CONDITIONED I haven't been conditioned, thanks. Large corporations enable efficiencies of scale which in turn enables modern living. We can't live at our current standards with artisan search engines, hand-crafted phones and home-made cars. But the same scale which enables modern living alienates workers from their labour. In most companies, all but a select few at the top have very little agency. They mostly get told what to do and they often don't even see the customer that benefits from the value they create. And the people with agency at the top get the vast majority of the profits. The result is a society with a lot of inequality and poverty, and a mass of alienated consumers trying to purchase those things which are missing in their lives: narrative, stories which connect their consumption with humanity. Hand-made this, small batch that, experiences you can share with other people., the personal touches which weave a life into a broader more meaningful tapestry. And raising children, of course. But that's somewhat bitter-sweet, knowing the world they're going out into, unless you have some assurance they're going to be among those with agency.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    On the contrary, when you have only a few large companies, they form oligopolies, there is no competition, free market does not function and the consumer looses out.
wolfram74 6y ago
If unearned income is unfulfilling, we should raise the estate tax, why should the children of the poor be so blessed to need to work while the children of millionaires and billionaires be saddled with the curse of ennui?
- jkinudsjknds 6y ago
  Most people believe they've earned what are basically economic rents.
- barrkel 6y ago
  You might think you're being facetious, but many wealthy people don't want their children's lives to be wasted on consumption, and so limit their inheritance: enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing. The most meaning in life comes from doing things for other people - not necessarily for money, but for other people. I'd love if we could try and figure out a social, institutional, structural technology which doesn't require taxes (and thus politics and government) for this. Government slowly but surely gets captured by people with the biggest pockets, until populists take over and everything falls apart with simple wrong answers, or worse, kleptocracy.
  - shuntress 6y ago
    >The most meaning in life comes from doing things for other people Exactly. So we should set up a system that provides everyone with enough to meet their basic needs. That way they can spend their time and effort to find the way they can most effectively do things for other people rather than finding the local maxima "job I can tolerate that keeps me alive"
    - barrkel 6y ago
      The most effective means we have today for determining what we should do for other people is prices. That means capitalism. The downsides are lack of agency in large efficient orgs and unearned profits from capital. I don't know the answer, but I don't think UBI + charity++ is it.
RivieraKid 6y ago
Tangential note - I've always found the idiom "job creation" weird and illogical. It seems to be US specific AFAIK. You don't create anything when you decide to exchange money for labor.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  > I've always found the idiom "job creation" weird and illogical. Probably because the origin of the term is very political in nature.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Makes sense to me. While there's practically an infinite amount of things that society would like to be done, it's not so easy to turn them into jobs. The exchange of money for labor is constrained from both sides - on the employee side, the job has to provide enough money for the worker to be able to live off it. On the employer side, most jobs only exist if the output of those jobs can be used to make even more money than it took to pay for it. This applies recursively. In the end, the number of actual jobs available is very limited, and it's not so illogical to call the act of making such money/labor exchange possible as "job creation".
viraptor 6y ago
> Unearned income is unfulfilling and the people who think they earned it resent it being taken from them This seems like an easy explanation striped of nuance that really needs some data backing it. How is it different from resentment from people who earned it by working? Why is it unfulfilling - is it only because of comparison to others, or is it common even for UBI? Is it specific to feelings about income, but balanced out by easier life, or is it a significant decrease in satisfaction overall?

throwanem 6y ago

Unearned income is unfulfilling in the context of a default assumption that the ability to earn an income is a valid measure of worth. There are other, better, measures.

barrkel 6y ago
Making something that other people are willing to reward with the fruits of their own labour is about as honest a social measure of worth as you can get outside of friends and family.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  It's also not something that would be taken away by diverting excess productivity to covering people's basic needs. I can at least imagine a world where doing so spurs a renaissance of creativity and entrepreneurship, because, just like you said, people seem to have an innate need to try and do something productive with their time. If there's a real social fear that I hold, it's that we'd suddenly have supply problems in certain segments of the labor market. I know I, for one, would never have taken that 2nd shift job working in the kitchen of an all night diner if I hadn't needed the money to buy food. I'd have spent that time working on some of the ideas I had for software projects instead.
  - ludamad 6y ago
    "I'd have spent that time working on some of the ideas I had for software projects instead." Then this takes off, makes you money, and you are higher class than those who keep their skills "for fun" EDIT: Not sure if this was understood, this was meant on a commentary on how capitalism and class can find its why back into such a system
    - mumblemumble 6y ago
      Given the idea I had at the time, probably not. But I'd like to think it would have enriched the lives of myself and others, all the same. In broad strokes, I'm more capitalist than communist, so I don't really disagree with the whole "greed is good" thing. Where I part ways is the unstated - often, I suspect, un-recognized - premise that it's the only good. Money's only useful for what it can buy, and its value has been artificially inflated by a social structure that makes it something that you just can't live without.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        > Money's only useful for what it can buy, and its value has been artificially inflated by a social structure that makes it something that you just can't live without. That's a good point. And makes me think of videogames analogy, particularly MMORPG. In a typical MMO, you need to labor to earn money (known as "grinding") to buy all the stuff you'll need to make progress easier (and/or possible). But at any time, you can just stop, take time off, go explore the places you've been to (i.e. not containing enemies stronger than you can beat), or even just log out and leave your character be for a week. You lose nothing except time and perhaps your rank in some completely optional competition with other players. But your character won't go hungry, won't starve or freeze to death, won't be evicted for not paying taxes. That illustrates the difference between money being useful, versus being necessary. And even if it's only useful and not necessary, that doesn't mean you won't be motivated to earn it - you will want more money if the things you can buy with it are interesting enough.
        6y ago
- throwanem 6y ago
  Yes, and that metric is distorted out of all utility by the necessity of maximizing the specifically monetary value of labor, as a condition of survival and stability - and even then, those are frighteningly contingent if they're achievable at all. There are other kinds of value, too.
- jjk166 6y ago
  If something is enjoyable and rewarding, like making art or an invention, I'd want to do it myself. If a job is unenjoyable and unrewarding, I will use the fruits of my labors to get someone else to do it. I will pay a lot of money to whoever cleans my septic tank. Does that make septic tank cleaners socially valuable, or does that make having a clean septic tank valuable? If a machine can clean the septic tank and no one has to do that task anymore, then I can get what I want without either having to toil myself or convincing someone else to toil.

DailyHN 6y ago

Currency for things that are currently intangible.

EGreg 6y ago

Things become more fulfilling when you see everyone else doing them, such as raising kids. There are so many things people could be doing which are not compensated by the market and corporations. “Leaning in and earning $1 instead of 70c” is a meme that corporations use to get more humans to trade quality time with parents and kids for them. [1] Why don’t we ask about “Leaning out and spending more time with our families?” [2] Open source Science Philosophy Family Personal development Volunteering in community You’ve been CONDITIONED to think that large corporations are better ways to allocate your time and organize us all. That’s why many in NYC lamented when Amazon was not given tax breaks to come to our city. It’s almost as if we need Bezos’ company to organize ourselves an our time so we can get paid the money. Society spends tons on fossil fuels and commuting and for what? To sit in a chair 30 miles away? 1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8 2. http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286

barrkel 6y ago
> You've been CONDITIONED I haven't been conditioned, thanks. Large corporations enable efficiencies of scale which in turn enables modern living. We can't live at our current standards with artisan search engines, hand-crafted phones and home-made cars. But the same scale which enables modern living alienates workers from their labour. In most companies, all but a select few at the top have very little agency. They mostly get told what to do and they often don't even see the customer that benefits from the value they create. And the people with agency at the top get the vast majority of the profits. The result is a society with a lot of inequality and poverty, and a mass of alienated consumers trying to purchase those things which are missing in their lives: narrative, stories which connect their consumption with humanity. Hand-made this, small batch that, experiences you can share with other people., the personal touches which weave a life into a broader more meaningful tapestry. And raising children, of course. But that's somewhat bitter-sweet, knowing the world they're going out into, unless you have some assurance they're going to be among those with agency.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  On the contrary, when you have only a few large companies, they form oligopolies, there is no competition, free market does not function and the consumer looses out.

wolfram74 6y ago

If unearned income is unfulfilling, we should raise the estate tax, why should the children of the poor be so blessed to need to work while the children of millionaires and billionaires be saddled with the curse of ennui?

jkinudsjknds 6y ago
Most people believe they've earned what are basically economic rents.
barrkel 6y ago
You might think you're being facetious, but many wealthy people don't want their children's lives to be wasted on consumption, and so limit their inheritance: enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing. The most meaning in life comes from doing things for other people - not necessarily for money, but for other people. I'd love if we could try and figure out a social, institutional, structural technology which doesn't require taxes (and thus politics and government) for this. Government slowly but surely gets captured by people with the biggest pockets, until populists take over and everything falls apart with simple wrong answers, or worse, kleptocracy.
- shuntress 6y ago
  >The most meaning in life comes from doing things for other people Exactly. So we should set up a system that provides everyone with enough to meet their basic needs. That way they can spend their time and effort to find the way they can most effectively do things for other people rather than finding the local maxima "job I can tolerate that keeps me alive"
  - barrkel 6y ago
    The most effective means we have today for determining what we should do for other people is prices. That means capitalism. The downsides are lack of agency in large efficient orgs and unearned profits from capital. I don't know the answer, but I don't think UBI + charity++ is it.

RivieraKid 6y ago

Tangential note - I've always found the idiom "job creation" weird and illogical. It seems to be US specific AFAIK. You don't create anything when you decide to exchange money for labor.

rootusrootus 6y ago
> I've always found the idiom "job creation" weird and illogical. Probably because the origin of the term is very political in nature.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Makes sense to me. While there's practically an infinite amount of things that society would like to be done, it's not so easy to turn them into jobs. The exchange of money for labor is constrained from both sides - on the employee side, the job has to provide enough money for the worker to be able to live off it. On the employer side, most jobs only exist if the output of those jobs can be used to make even more money than it took to pay for it. This applies recursively. In the end, the number of actual jobs available is very limited, and it's not so illogical to call the act of making such money/labor exchange possible as "job creation".

viraptor 6y ago

> Unearned income is unfulfilling and the people who think they earned it resent it being taken from them This seems like an easy explanation striped of nuance that really needs some data backing it. How is it different from resentment from people who earned it by working? Why is it unfulfilling - is it only because of comparison to others, or is it common even for UBI? Is it specific to feelings about income, but balanced out by easier life, or is it a significant decrease in satisfaction overall?