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I'm not sure how you appease you other than to have simply not bothered with my comment; perhaps that would have been better. Still, seeing the mistake -- as I

I'm not sure how you appease you other than to have simply not bothered with my comment; perhaps that would have been better. Still, seeing the mistake -- as I see it -- and ignoring it to move on to something else doesn't seem necessarily better. > And sticking to calling out fallacies while failing to discuss the object level question is? In this case, an honest attempt at raising general discussion quality, even if it happens to lower it in the immediacy. > 1. if you look carefully I'm not the person that you originally accused of using "thought-terminating cliché" Yes, but you did use such a cliché in your response which seemed to have demanded that I argue against said cliché ("... but rather than trying to argue for why we should, you drop a link to some fallacy on wikipedia and call it a day.") > 2. You really haven't really presented any arguments for the original argument was a "thought-terminating cliché". Indeed, and I am still not even sure specifically what point they intended to argue. I don't know what a coherent response would look like other than to point out why I can't seem to form a more coherent response. -------------- Anyway, back to the initial statement. > I don't see why people with lower skillsets or utility curves that weigh leisure more highly than work activities should be allowed to leech off the productive capacities of others. It seems to be commonly decried that "people with lower skillsets or utility curves that weigh leisure more highly than work activities should [not] be allowed to leech off the productive capacities of others" and rarely asserted that "people with less fortunate life circumstances should be allowed the opportunity to take risks with their productive time rather than being forced into employment as soon as they reach adulthood". Your point is that I could start with this explanation or otherwise include it in my initial comment -- which is fair enough! I suppose I might subscribe a bit too much to a "Socratic" method of teasing out another person's thoughts rather than supplying my own.

hellojesus 3y ago
> and rarely asserted that "people with less fortunate life circumstances should be allowed the opportunity to take risks with their productive time rather than being forced into employment as soon as they reach adulthood". I don't deny this assertion. I deny the method of achieving this outcome whereby private property is stolen/taxed involuntarily from others to achieve it. People with worse initital conditions are absolutely free the opportunity to take risks with their productive time. I believe that the risk should be funded voluntarily by either charity or lrivate capital. Involuntary funding necessarily leads to less efficient economic outcomes.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  (Thanks for clarifying!) > I don't deny this assertion. For what it’s worth, I don’t mean to say that your comment specifically denies this idea. More lamenting the assumptions that are made. > People with worse initital conditions are absolutely free the opportunity to take risks with their productive time. I agree but the risk is much less for a person who can get by on an allowance from their parents or are afforded a place to stay rent-free; failure can be effectively punitive with life-long consequences without such a safety net. > Involuntary funding necessarily leads to less efficient economic outcomes. Why do you believe this? Not that I mean to deny it outright but I often see this claim and I cannot recall seeing strong evidence of it. From an epistemology perspective, I don’t see how people “know” this such that they feel comfortable stating it so brazenly.
  - hellojesus 3y ago
    > I agree but the risk is much less for a person who can get by on an allowance from their parents or are afforded a place to stay rent-free; failure can be effectively punitive with life-long consequences without such a safety net. I don't disagree, but I also don't think the solution to this is to steal from those that started with better initial conditions. > Why do you believe this? Not that I mean to deny it outright but I often see this claim and I cannot recall seeing strong evidence of it. Basic economics. Money taxed from you and then allocated elsewhere means that you're worse off. This is acceptable to some degree: public goods. It is unacceptable when the gov does it to provide non public goods. In this case, UBI is a non public good. You would rather spend the money that is redistributed from you on anything else. In the event that your best use of the money was to give to people that needed UBI, you would do that voluntarily. So in all cases, those being taxed are no better than they were before, and in the worst case they are all worse off. Example: Let's say you have $100 and can live off $50. You really want to provide clean water to a community by charitably giving, and that would cost $40. The gov imposes a tax rate of 50%. Of the 50%, 10% goes to public goods, and 40% goes to teaching lions how to drive cars. With the tax rate, you cannot afford to provide clean water and instead must fund lion drivers. Without the lion drivers included in the tax, you could easily afford to provide clean water.

hellojesus 3y ago

> and rarely asserted that "people with less fortunate life circumstances should be allowed the opportunity to take risks with their productive time rather than being forced into employment as soon as they reach adulthood". I don't deny this assertion. I deny the method of achieving this outcome whereby private property is stolen/taxed involuntarily from others to achieve it. People with worse initital conditions are absolutely free the opportunity to take risks with their productive time. I believe that the risk should be funded voluntarily by either charity or lrivate capital. Involuntary funding necessarily leads to less efficient economic outcomes.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
(Thanks for clarifying!) > I don't deny this assertion. For what it’s worth, I don’t mean to say that your comment specifically denies this idea. More lamenting the assumptions that are made. > People with worse initital conditions are absolutely free the opportunity to take risks with their productive time. I agree but the risk is much less for a person who can get by on an allowance from their parents or are afforded a place to stay rent-free; failure can be effectively punitive with life-long consequences without such a safety net. > Involuntary funding necessarily leads to less efficient economic outcomes. Why do you believe this? Not that I mean to deny it outright but I often see this claim and I cannot recall seeing strong evidence of it. From an epistemology perspective, I don’t see how people “know” this such that they feel comfortable stating it so brazenly.
- hellojesus 3y ago
  > I agree but the risk is much less for a person who can get by on an allowance from their parents or are afforded a place to stay rent-free; failure can be effectively punitive with life-long consequences without such a safety net. I don't disagree, but I also don't think the solution to this is to steal from those that started with better initial conditions. > Why do you believe this? Not that I mean to deny it outright but I often see this claim and I cannot recall seeing strong evidence of it. Basic economics. Money taxed from you and then allocated elsewhere means that you're worse off. This is acceptable to some degree: public goods. It is unacceptable when the gov does it to provide non public goods. In this case, UBI is a non public good. You would rather spend the money that is redistributed from you on anything else. In the event that your best use of the money was to give to people that needed UBI, you would do that voluntarily. So in all cases, those being taxed are no better than they were before, and in the worst case they are all worse off. Example: Let's say you have $100 and can live off $50. You really want to provide clean water to a community by charitably giving, and that would cost $40. The gov imposes a tax rate of 50%. Of the 50%, 10% goes to public goods, and 40% goes to teaching lions how to drive cars. With the tax rate, you cannot afford to provide clean water and instead must fund lion drivers. Without the lion drivers included in the tax, you could easily afford to provide clean water.