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Debt existed before money (based on plenty of anthropology research among other) and money was actually invented to more easily manage and satisfy it. Not to me
by rini17 3y ago
Debt existed before money (based on plenty of anthropology research among other) and money was actually invented to more easily manage and satisfy it. Not to measure "value", that was a retroactive definition added much later.
Now, lacking any possibility to discharge debt was considered immoral in many religious and philosophical texts since antiquity. Similar arguments and reasons should apply to (im)morality of "undeserved" income.
- aristofun 3y agoOkay, let's use money just as a generic synonim for value, in a sense that UBI is about giving people some minimal amount of "value" to be able to exchange for other "values" (buy food, clothing etc.) produced by someone else. With all that — how can it be moral to be obliged to pay for freeloaders (those who choose to not work)?
- rini17 3y agoWe are already placing all kinds of obligations on owners of money, or owners of anything else. Are all these automatically immoral? And how do you judge anyone's reasons for not working? I prefer not to do it. And yet another question - why do you want value more than wealth? Value is implied to be zero-sum game. But wealth actually grows when money circulates and when all people have their basic needs met. I'd prefer the latter.
- aristofun 3y agoYou didn't answer a simple question — is it immoral or not to be a free loader (i.e. decide to not produce any "wealth")? Why do you think so? I'm not judging, just want to hear your reasoning. > We are already placing all kinds of obligations on owners of money, or owners of anything else. Are all these automatically immoral? Absolutely not. Taxes in general are definitely moral. As long as people agreed on them (by any democratic process for example) and not forced (for example by being slaves and giving away their produced value).
- rini17 3y agoYou did not answer a simple question - how do you decide someone is a free loader, whether they freely decided to not produce? I don't know. Just assuming anyone to be a freeloader is immoral. (By and large, there can be exceptions where they are loud and obnoxious freeloaders, but these are just exceptions.)
- aristofun 3y ago> You did not answer a simple question - how do you decide someone is a free loader, whether they freely decided to not produce? If someone chooses not do anything valuable to the society (while having obvious ability to do something - like no illness, no disabilities etc.) — it is the definition of freeloader I use. So, do you think it is immoral or not? If you don't know, lets' leave morality. Do you think such people are helpful to the society?
- rini17 3y agoNo, I will repeat this again and again, dividing people to helfpul and not helpful is immoral. Of course it's not obvious who is who! How can you boldly proclaim that while we have pandemic of invisible mental illnesses, drug abuse and long covid? Even many people with obvious and surmountable disabilities are neglected and gave up trying to do anything valuable. If you let them perish that ends up more expensive for whole society than supporting them all, and enabling at least some of them to be, as you say "helpful". You can't sort them out in advance, that's why everyone should be supported equally.
- aristofun 3y agoI wish you could remain logical in this discussion. I ask you: is it good to be X? Your answer: how can you tell if someone is X? (Presupposition that we have some good enough way to know was _outside_ of my question) Good luck with promoting utopias )
- 3y ago