3 ms·

So here's where I'm coming from: Putting food on the table as a result of your work is satisfying and a source of pride. Not being able to do it is shameful. Th

So here's where I'm coming from: Putting food on the table as a result of your work is satisfying and a source of pride. Not being able to do it is shameful. This is a fundamental dynamic. While it's good that there's a safety net so slip-ups and bad luck won't put you in the street and kill your children, institutionalising that dynamic (effectively removing it) will have catastrophic effects on the values of society. These concerns are not crack-pot libertarian wet dreams, they were raised even by social democrats when the Nordic social democratic welfare states were designed. Britain has talked about anti-social behaviour and broken society for years (it's not just something David Cameron invented with his good-on-paper/WTF-IRL-"Big Society") - don't have that kind of language for it in Denmark, but the same dynamics are present.

_delirium 15y ago
I guess to me that's not an interesting dynamic for a society that's advanced past subsistence farming. In subsistence farming, yes, you work to feed yourself. If you have modern 21st-century farming technology though, producing enough food to feed everyone takes only a few percent of GDP, not 100% of everyone's time. Why not just give it to everyone, since its cost is basically noise on modern economic scales anyway? Then find some more advanced goals for people to work at. If they really, truly, want nothing but a bare subsistence existence, and nothing else that modern society has to offer, then fine, let them sit around eating 2000 calories/day for free; maybe in the future robots will do all the work anyway, and lazy humans can just live off the munificence of their robot benefactors (we're halfway there). But an "advanced" society in 2011 where the reason people work is because they'll starve otherwise, despite the utter un-scarcity of food, now that seems like a pretty shameful dynamic. I'd be more interested in asking, rather than setting up artificial scarcity so that people have to work for the old scarce things (e.g. food) even though they aren't scarce anymore (there's only a distribution problem, not a scarcity problem), whether we can have a society where people work for something else. Maybe the answer's no, but to me that'd be a pretty sad answer.
- mseebach 15y ago
  Putting food on the table is a metaphor that goes beyond food. Here are some statistics on Americans counted as poor: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understandi... We have moved beyond subsistence farming and free food - "food on the table" means a lot more, including many scarce goods.
  - DuncanIdaho 15y ago
    Indeed, we should make a point of not wiping anybody's fanny. What I had in mind is a type of existence where one has bare minimum provided (shelter, food, clothing, access to information), but that also as a feature provides a social stigma. This institution should be viewed by society as a temporary stop or a final refuge a safety net if you will. You want tobacco? Go and work for it. You want booze? Go and work for it. You want PS3? Go and work for it.
    - mseebach 15y ago
      I don't think we disagree much, then. But the origin of this thread was the assertion that 50% of the population would be permanently unemployable by next decade.
    - CWuestefeld 15y ago
      You want tobacco? Go and work for it. You want booze? Go and work for it. You want PS3? Go and work for it. Isn't this how food stamps are currently supposed to work? They only cover staples, and users aren't allowed to pay for tobacco, etc. The thing is, in the real world, food stamp recipients frequently barter their vouchers for these luxury items. When considering such measures, we need to stop imagining what an optimal government might be able to do. Instead, look at the history of such efforts, and the incentive structures (consider Public Choice economics) to understand what is likely to transpire.
deleted 15y ago
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hackinthebochs 15y ago
>So here's where I'm coming from: Putting food on the table as a result of your work is satisfying and a source of pride. Not being able to do it is shameful. This is a fundamental dynamic. You act like this is a fundamental feature of humanity; it's not. Its a learned response to thousands of years of scarcity. There were plenty of societies where food was plentiful and thus they never developed this sort of social conditioning. In a world where food, shelter, necessities are plentiful people will be freed up to gain social standing through creative endeavors. Or perhaps we'll do away with our need to rank each other based on arbitrary metrics. I welcome this future.
- oelewapperke 15y ago
  You mean the dark ages ? And of course, times in history when living was actually worse than in the dark ages. I love how people think today. My grandfather was a colonial doctor, and he actually participated once or twice in a group that approached a tribal society, with more than enough food for all members of the tribe. They did the very same thing then as a completely unrelated tribe on a different continent did to the national geographic crew that approached them. http://www.neatorama.com/2008/05/30/uncontacted-amazon-tribe-attacks-helicopter-with-arrows/ http://www.neatorama.com/2008/05/30/uncontacted-amazon-tribe... Those "plentiful" societies are very different, but they share 2 properties : 1) it's law of the jungle. Kill or be killed. Being a member of the tribe basically entitles you to not be automatically attacked the moment they see you. That's it. 2) the most progressive form of government to be found there is a violent dictatorship, with violent "revolutions" every few years. (the worst ? The same, but every few months). Regularly the new leader decides to eradicate half the tribe. This is what you're referring to ?

_delirium 15y ago

I guess to me that's not an interesting dynamic for a society that's advanced past subsistence farming. In subsistence farming, yes, you work to feed yourself. If you have modern 21st-century farming technology though, producing enough food to feed everyone takes only a few percent of GDP, not 100% of everyone's time. Why not just give it to everyone, since its cost is basically noise on modern economic scales anyway? Then find some more advanced goals for people to work at. If they really, truly, want nothing but a bare subsistence existence, and nothing else that modern society has to offer, then fine, let them sit around eating 2000 calories/day for free; maybe in the future robots will do all the work anyway, and lazy humans can just live off the munificence of their robot benefactors (we're halfway there). But an "advanced" society in 2011 where the reason people work is because they'll starve otherwise, despite the utter un-scarcity of food, now that seems like a pretty shameful dynamic. I'd be more interested in asking, rather than setting up artificial scarcity so that people have to work for the old scarce things (e.g. food) even though they aren't scarce anymore (there's only a distribution problem, not a scarcity problem), whether we can have a society where people work for something else. Maybe the answer's no, but to me that'd be a pretty sad answer.

mseebach 15y ago
Putting food on the table is a metaphor that goes beyond food. Here are some statistics on Americans counted as poor: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understandi... We have moved beyond subsistence farming and free food - "food on the table" means a lot more, including many scarce goods.
- DuncanIdaho 15y ago
  Indeed, we should make a point of not wiping anybody's fanny. What I had in mind is a type of existence where one has bare minimum provided (shelter, food, clothing, access to information), but that also as a feature provides a social stigma. This institution should be viewed by society as a temporary stop or a final refuge a safety net if you will. You want tobacco? Go and work for it. You want booze? Go and work for it. You want PS3? Go and work for it.
  - mseebach 15y ago
    I don't think we disagree much, then. But the origin of this thread was the assertion that 50% of the population would be permanently unemployable by next decade.
  - CWuestefeld 15y ago
    You want tobacco? Go and work for it. You want booze? Go and work for it. You want PS3? Go and work for it. Isn't this how food stamps are currently supposed to work? They only cover staples, and users aren't allowed to pay for tobacco, etc. The thing is, in the real world, food stamp recipients frequently barter their vouchers for these luxury items. When considering such measures, we need to stop imagining what an optimal government might be able to do. Instead, look at the history of such efforts, and the incentive structures (consider Public Choice economics) to understand what is likely to transpire.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

hackinthebochs 15y ago

>So here's where I'm coming from: Putting food on the table as a result of your work is satisfying and a source of pride. Not being able to do it is shameful. This is a fundamental dynamic. You act like this is a fundamental feature of humanity; it's not. Its a learned response to thousands of years of scarcity. There were plenty of societies where food was plentiful and thus they never developed this sort of social conditioning. In a world where food, shelter, necessities are plentiful people will be freed up to gain social standing through creative endeavors. Or perhaps we'll do away with our need to rank each other based on arbitrary metrics. I welcome this future.

oelewapperke 15y ago
You mean the dark ages ? And of course, times in history when living was actually worse than in the dark ages. I love how people think today. My grandfather was a colonial doctor, and he actually participated once or twice in a group that approached a tribal society, with more than enough food for all members of the tribe. They did the very same thing then as a completely unrelated tribe on a different continent did to the national geographic crew that approached them. http://www.neatorama.com/2008/05/30/uncontacted-amazon-tribe-attacks-helicopter-with-arrows/ http://www.neatorama.com/2008/05/30/uncontacted-amazon-tribe... Those "plentiful" societies are very different, but they share 2 properties : 1) it's law of the jungle. Kill or be killed. Being a member of the tribe basically entitles you to not be automatically attacked the moment they see you. That's it. 2) the most progressive form of government to be found there is a violent dictatorship, with violent "revolutions" every few years. (the worst ? The same, but every few months). Regularly the new leader decides to eradicate half the tribe. This is what you're referring to ?