3 ms·

What do you mean? That paragraph is already close to reality in some places in Europe, where public transport is ticket-less and free and the government provide

What do you mean? That paragraph is already close to reality in some places in Europe, where public transport is ticket-less and free and the government provides housing and food at no cost to those who need it. Expand on that and you're at what the author is describing. I personally wouldn't bet money on "this will never happen", would you?

zelphirkalt 6y ago
I am in Europe and I do not see anything close to what the author is describing. Nothing is really at no cost. It is paid for with tax money or directly. The author is not specifying "for those who could not otherwise afford it", but describing it as at no cost for everyone. Most universities cost money to enrole and attend. Does your baker give out buns at no cost? Is the grocery store giving away all the food at no cost? Has it all become a service at no cost? Nope, none of that has happened and it will not happen, as long as everything needs to be a good business in a capitalistic sense. The single person business or small business or any business cannot escape the reality in this system. Show me that country or even that city please. Show me the social experiment, that tries to get people to work without pay, as long as they have access to "all the things we need in our daily lives". As far as I know, it has never been done. What if you have any extra wish? How will it be supplied, without tracking your every move in such a society? How would different needs be satisfied, everyone having slightly different needs? So that's why I call it pure fiction. You are welcome to show me that model city, which self-sufficiently makes it happen. I might move there.
- chmod775 6y ago
  > Nothing is really at no cost. It is paid for with tax money or directly. > The author is not specifying "for those who could not otherwise afford it", but describing it as at no cost for everyone. The author never specified whether or how things are paid for, but for me personally I am assuming tax money. He also leaves open whether luxury goods/foods are still paid for. > Show me that country or even that city please. Show me the social experiment, that tries to get people to work without pay, as long as they have access to "all the things we need in our daily lives". As far as I know, it has never been done. Why are you asking me to show you something I never claimed existed? I claimed there's places with social security (housing, food) and free public transport (Luxembourg for instance). > So that's why I call it pure fiction. Anything that doesn't exist yet is fiction. It seems that you both misunderstood the article and my comment, then tried to maneuver me into a position where I would defend something nobody ever claimed. To be fair, the author leaves a lot of things unexplained, so one's imagination is going to fill in the gaps. Personally I imagined a city where basic necessities are provided for free, but where you have to pay for anything that is a cut above. Greatly expanded social security essentially.
  - zelphirkalt 6y ago
    I see. OK seems I interpret the text differently. Not sure my interpretation is necessarily a wrong reading.
- collyw 6y ago
  Try to find the BBC documentary Inside the Bruderhof (it was on youtube, but seems to have gone). It's a religious commune and it's the best example I have seen of a form of communism that works. Not my idea of how to live my life though. I'll take the evils of free market capitalism over that.
Yetanfou 6y ago
> What do you mean? That paragraph is already close to reality in some places in Europe, where public transport is ticket-less and free and the government provides housing and food at no cost to those who need it. Who needs free housing? Who gets to decide who needs free housing? Need I remind you that this often comes down to "the poorest" and "some of the richest"? Here in Sweden the latter category in the guise of representatives for labour unions, the leadership of public organisations like the police and similarly positioned people as well as a number of politicians (Margot Wallström being a good example here) have been implicated many times in real estate deals where they get to live for free or close to free in high-value city-central property owned and paid by the unions or the state. Also, who decides who gets to live where? Who gets to live in those fine old houses facing the park, who gets to live in the dilapidated tenement blocks? What is the deciding factor? Why? Who pays for those buses and trams? Who pays for those houses? In those places in Europe you mention (and where I live) the answer is that local and state taxes pay for those things, social services gets to decide who is eligible for free housing, the waiting lines for other rental properties are extensive (up to 25 years for some locations) while those eligible for free housing are required by law to be provided with such within a few months. This leads to social tension where people see their children being unable to get their own apartment because all available and affordable places are being handed out for free to "eligible" people, paid for by those same parents and children. The "free" public transport is anything but free, it still needs a large amount of funding which often comes out of local taxes, parking fees and permit fees, "congestion taxes" and more of such. Now imagine a situation where everybody decided from one day to the next to forego on their own mode of transport and starts using the "free" public transport and see what happens. What would happen is a severe drop in funding for the "free" public transport combined with a severe overloading of the buses and trams. The disappearance of car-related taxes would necessitate an increase in other taxes to be able to fund that "free" public transport. For this funding to be stable the taxes would need to be of the sort which can not be avoided, anything from property taxes (which would make owning a house more expensive and relegate this to the richer part of society), public utility taxes, something like the Poll Tax which was tried under the Thatcher government, etc. Since these tax raises would end up breaking the budget for "the poorest" there would be a need for another social servant who gets to decide which people are eligible for tax breaks, raising the taxes for the remaining tax payers. I guess the picture is getting clear now, "free" services generally are anything but free, they just end up being paid in a different way. Now turn the thing around and take some of its assumptions as being close to the truth. Nuclear energy, either in the form of fission or fusion, finally gets to live up to the promise of being close to free. There will still be transport costs - where I live I pay more for getting electricity to my home than for the electricity itself, this due to the network being a natural monopoly while I can shop around (on a rigged market, but still) for electricity sellers - but the price should go down markedly. Assuming that my purchasing power remains the same or goes up this means that I now have money left over. What do you think those "car" services will end up costing compared to owning an old but serviceable electric vehicle? Remember that one of the advantages of electric propulsion is its simplicity and with that its longevity (apart from the batteries, that is). If power were to be close to free I would get myself an old electric clunker and use that, especially given that I live in the countryside. ...or does this Utopia not hold with people living outside of cities? Maybe only "important" people are allowed to live outside of the panopticon? I rebuilt and extended my own house and will probably build some for my children as well using locally sourced (as in taken from my own forest) wood as a building material plus whatever else I need, also locally sourced. I'm in the process of putting solar panels on the barn I built last year, this should make us a net electricity producer in summer. I have yet to decide what to do with the excess electricity, either deliver it to the 'net (which might not be willing to take it), use it it a different way or store it as heat in an insulated underground water basin from where it can be extracted as heat using a heat pump. Would I be allowed to opt out of the state-provided housing and consumption facilities in this Utopia? Would my children be allowed to live in the countryside if wanted to, maybe after having lived in or in proximity to a city for a few years like I did? No, this is not a vision of the future. It is the preface to yet another dystopic novel where the thing which was supposed to make everybody happy ended up in yet another brave new world. In this vision people are supposed to be happy consumers, consuming their way through life. They'll probably end up as fertiliser for the crops eaten by the next generation, she just did not get around to writing that part yet.

zelphirkalt 6y ago

I am in Europe and I do not see anything close to what the author is describing. Nothing is really at no cost. It is paid for with tax money or directly. The author is not specifying "for those who could not otherwise afford it", but describing it as at no cost for everyone. Most universities cost money to enrole and attend. Does your baker give out buns at no cost? Is the grocery store giving away all the food at no cost? Has it all become a service at no cost? Nope, none of that has happened and it will not happen, as long as everything needs to be a good business in a capitalistic sense. The single person business or small business or any business cannot escape the reality in this system. Show me that country or even that city please. Show me the social experiment, that tries to get people to work without pay, as long as they have access to "all the things we need in our daily lives". As far as I know, it has never been done. What if you have any extra wish? How will it be supplied, without tracking your every move in such a society? How would different needs be satisfied, everyone having slightly different needs? So that's why I call it pure fiction. You are welcome to show me that model city, which self-sufficiently makes it happen. I might move there.

chmod775 6y ago
> Nothing is really at no cost. It is paid for with tax money or directly. > The author is not specifying "for those who could not otherwise afford it", but describing it as at no cost for everyone. The author never specified whether or how things are paid for, but for me personally I am assuming tax money. He also leaves open whether luxury goods/foods are still paid for. > Show me that country or even that city please. Show me the social experiment, that tries to get people to work without pay, as long as they have access to "all the things we need in our daily lives". As far as I know, it has never been done. Why are you asking me to show you something I never claimed existed? I claimed there's places with social security (housing, food) and free public transport (Luxembourg for instance). > So that's why I call it pure fiction. Anything that doesn't exist yet is fiction. It seems that you both misunderstood the article and my comment, then tried to maneuver me into a position where I would defend something nobody ever claimed. To be fair, the author leaves a lot of things unexplained, so one's imagination is going to fill in the gaps. Personally I imagined a city where basic necessities are provided for free, but where you have to pay for anything that is a cut above. Greatly expanded social security essentially.
- zelphirkalt 6y ago
  I see. OK seems I interpret the text differently. Not sure my interpretation is necessarily a wrong reading.
collyw 6y ago
Try to find the BBC documentary Inside the Bruderhof (it was on youtube, but seems to have gone). It's a religious commune and it's the best example I have seen of a form of communism that works. Not my idea of how to live my life though. I'll take the evils of free market capitalism over that.

Yetanfou 6y ago

> What do you mean? That paragraph is already close to reality in some places in Europe, where public transport is ticket-less and free and the government provides housing and food at no cost to those who need it. Who needs free housing? Who gets to decide who needs free housing? Need I remind you that this often comes down to "the poorest" and "some of the richest"? Here in Sweden the latter category in the guise of representatives for labour unions, the leadership of public organisations like the police and similarly positioned people as well as a number of politicians (Margot Wallström being a good example here) have been implicated many times in real estate deals where they get to live for free or close to free in high-value city-central property owned and paid by the unions or the state. Also, who decides who gets to live where? Who gets to live in those fine old houses facing the park, who gets to live in the dilapidated tenement blocks? What is the deciding factor? Why? Who pays for those buses and trams? Who pays for those houses? In those places in Europe you mention (and where I live) the answer is that local and state taxes pay for those things, social services gets to decide who is eligible for free housing, the waiting lines for other rental properties are extensive (up to 25 years for some locations) while those eligible for free housing are required by law to be provided with such within a few months. This leads to social tension where people see their children being unable to get their own apartment because all available and affordable places are being handed out for free to "eligible" people, paid for by those same parents and children. The "free" public transport is anything but free, it still needs a large amount of funding which often comes out of local taxes, parking fees and permit fees, "congestion taxes" and more of such. Now imagine a situation where everybody decided from one day to the next to forego on their own mode of transport and starts using the "free" public transport and see what happens. What would happen is a severe drop in funding for the "free" public transport combined with a severe overloading of the buses and trams. The disappearance of car-related taxes would necessitate an increase in other taxes to be able to fund that "free" public transport. For this funding to be stable the taxes would need to be of the sort which can not be avoided, anything from property taxes (which would make owning a house more expensive and relegate this to the richer part of society), public utility taxes, something like the Poll Tax which was tried under the Thatcher government, etc. Since these tax raises would end up breaking the budget for "the poorest" there would be a need for another social servant who gets to decide which people are eligible for tax breaks, raising the taxes for the remaining tax payers. I guess the picture is getting clear now, "free" services generally are anything but free, they just end up being paid in a different way. Now turn the thing around and take some of its assumptions as being close to the truth. Nuclear energy, either in the form of fission or fusion, finally gets to live up to the promise of being close to free. There will still be transport costs - where I live I pay more for getting electricity to my home than for the electricity itself, this due to the network being a natural monopoly while I can shop around (on a rigged market, but still) for electricity sellers - but the price should go down markedly. Assuming that my purchasing power remains the same or goes up this means that I now have money left over. What do you think those "car" services will end up costing compared to owning an old but serviceable electric vehicle? Remember that one of the advantages of electric propulsion is its simplicity and with that its longevity (apart from the batteries, that is). If power were to be close to free I would get myself an old electric clunker and use that, especially given that I live in the countryside. ...or does this Utopia not hold with people living outside of cities? Maybe only "important" people are allowed to live outside of the panopticon? I rebuilt and extended my own house and will probably build some for my children as well using locally sourced (as in taken from my own forest) wood as a building material plus whatever else I need, also locally sourced. I'm in the process of putting solar panels on the barn I built last year, this should make us a net electricity producer in summer. I have yet to decide what to do with the excess electricity, either deliver it to the 'net (which might not be willing to take it), use it it a different way or store it as heat in an insulated underground water basin from where it can be extracted as heat using a heat pump. Would I be allowed to opt out of the state-provided housing and consumption facilities in this Utopia? Would my children be allowed to live in the countryside if wanted to, maybe after having lived in or in proximity to a city for a few years like I did? No, this is not a vision of the future. It is the preface to yet another dystopic novel where the thing which was supposed to make everybody happy ended up in yet another brave new world. In this vision people are supposed to be happy consumers, consuming their way through life. They'll probably end up as fertiliser for the crops eaten by the next generation, she just did not get around to writing that part yet.