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What about making people profit and enjoy life without having to push propaganda that this or that work they contributed to make them worth having them alive?

What about making people profit and enjoy life without having to push propaganda that this or that work they contributed to make them worth having them alive? The premise that if they are not highly pressured to produce something people will just do nothing or only wrong things is such a creepy one. Universal income or something in that spirit would make far more sense to get rid of this concern of having people not to worry about being able to live, whatever occupation they might chose to pursue on top of that. The main issue is that the meritocratic narrative is like the opium of the most favored in power imbalance. Information can cure that kind of plague according to literature[1], but there is no insensitive to go on cure when other will pay all the negative effects of our addictions. [1] https://academic.oup.com/oep/article/77/4/1128/8172634?login=false https://academic.oup.com/oep/article/77/4/1128/8172634?login...

vladms 11mo ago
If I would need to choose only between UBI and high taxes on the rich I would choose the latter, because it would reduce the risk of entrenching the differences or giving too much power to a few. I find more important what is the society's perceived "success" in life. For US (one of the two countries in the study), as a foreigner, I perceive that "success" is considered to be "the self made man". So people feel valuable if they have stuff. I doubt UBI will fix that - and unhappy / depressed people is not great, even if they are not homeless and starving. In other countries "success" can be considered also about "just" living a nice life, enjoying food, or friends, or sport (even if you are not top). And these countries will try to offer paths to some stability, even for the ones that are not the greatest, such that as many people as possible in the society feel good. Makes a nicer environment for all...
- psychoslave 11mo ago
  >If I would need to choose only between UBI and high taxes on the rich I would choose the latter There no need to be exclusive, and actually having concentration of wealth in a few hands is already a social construct. A society can also thrive without high income disparities. Taxing the rich is just taxing on what was captured from the non-rich.
  - mlrtime 11mo ago
    >captured from the non-rich. What do you mean by this? The economy is not zero sum, it is possible for everyone to get "wealthier", even if the spread increases.
    - myrmidon 11mo ago
      This is a good point, but a lot of ressources have a fixed or limited supply (arguably all of them); if wealth inequality increases, the poor fraction of the population will have a harder time competing for those. Consider urban housing as an example (specifically price development in terms of median income, and how the supply side reacts to wealth distribution by "overdelivering" luxury appartments from the average citizens point of view). Increasing inequality is also problematic because it fosters rent-seeking behavior which is self-reinforcing (because this siphons income from the poor side of your distribution to the wealthy one). It might well be better to be less wealthy in a society with lower spread. You could also argue that most wealth right now is accumulated/grown by "extracting" a bit of the value from the work of others. Consider Valve (the game distribution platform) for a very obvious example: They make something around $50M per employee in revenue. Are their employees working ten times harder than average game developers (by literally any reasonable metric)? I'd argue that their company became very good at extracting value from the whole market, instead. Absurd wealth does not come from doing lots of work yourself, it comes from taking a little bit from lots of people.
      - mlrtime 11mo ago
        The cost of urban development has a lot more to do with regulation and limits on building rights than with income inequality. Zoning rules, permitting, height caps, and other constraints keep supply artificially low, which pushes developers toward higher-end units because the fixed costs are so high. If cities simply allowed more building by right, supply would go up and prices would come down. Things like limiting long-term vacancies can help deal with speculative ownership, but none of this is primarily an inequality problem. RE Valve: using revenue per employee isn’t a meaningful way to tie this to inequality. High revenue/employee in a software distribution business just reflects scale. Developers use Valve because it gives them access to a big market, not because Valve is “extracting” in some zero-sum way. If Valve disappeared tomorrow, the distribution market would become less efficient, not more equal, and consumers or developers wouldn’t actually be better off.
- Ajakks 11mo ago
  Success isn't real. All things are internal, but we make/pretend they are external. I dont care at all of your accolades or accomplishments. Exactly like you dont care of mine. If we ever do care about others' success, its not bc of the other people. We are just playing games with ourselves and calling it stuff like expectations, admiration, respect, and responsibility - its all bullshit. UBI allows a different life. You can only fail so much, only fall so far - rather than people being lazy, it will be a huge boon for creativity. The 9-5 for 45 is creative death.

vladms 11mo ago

If I would need to choose only between UBI and high taxes on the rich I would choose the latter, because it would reduce the risk of entrenching the differences or giving too much power to a few. I find more important what is the society's perceived "success" in life. For US (one of the two countries in the study), as a foreigner, I perceive that "success" is considered to be "the self made man". So people feel valuable if they have stuff. I doubt UBI will fix that - and unhappy / depressed people is not great, even if they are not homeless and starving. In other countries "success" can be considered also about "just" living a nice life, enjoying food, or friends, or sport (even if you are not top). And these countries will try to offer paths to some stability, even for the ones that are not the greatest, such that as many people as possible in the society feel good. Makes a nicer environment for all...

psychoslave 11mo ago
>If I would need to choose only between UBI and high taxes on the rich I would choose the latter There no need to be exclusive, and actually having concentration of wealth in a few hands is already a social construct. A society can also thrive without high income disparities. Taxing the rich is just taxing on what was captured from the non-rich.
- mlrtime 11mo ago
  >captured from the non-rich. What do you mean by this? The economy is not zero sum, it is possible for everyone to get "wealthier", even if the spread increases.
  - myrmidon 11mo ago
    This is a good point, but a lot of ressources have a fixed or limited supply (arguably all of them); if wealth inequality increases, the poor fraction of the population will have a harder time competing for those. Consider urban housing as an example (specifically price development in terms of median income, and how the supply side reacts to wealth distribution by "overdelivering" luxury appartments from the average citizens point of view). Increasing inequality is also problematic because it fosters rent-seeking behavior which is self-reinforcing (because this siphons income from the poor side of your distribution to the wealthy one). It might well be better to be less wealthy in a society with lower spread. You could also argue that most wealth right now is accumulated/grown by "extracting" a bit of the value from the work of others. Consider Valve (the game distribution platform) for a very obvious example: They make something around $50M per employee in revenue. Are their employees working ten times harder than average game developers (by literally any reasonable metric)? I'd argue that their company became very good at extracting value from the whole market, instead. Absurd wealth does not come from doing lots of work yourself, it comes from taking a little bit from lots of people.
    - mlrtime 11mo ago
      The cost of urban development has a lot more to do with regulation and limits on building rights than with income inequality. Zoning rules, permitting, height caps, and other constraints keep supply artificially low, which pushes developers toward higher-end units because the fixed costs are so high. If cities simply allowed more building by right, supply would go up and prices would come down. Things like limiting long-term vacancies can help deal with speculative ownership, but none of this is primarily an inequality problem. RE Valve: using revenue per employee isn’t a meaningful way to tie this to inequality. High revenue/employee in a software distribution business just reflects scale. Developers use Valve because it gives them access to a big market, not because Valve is “extracting” in some zero-sum way. If Valve disappeared tomorrow, the distribution market would become less efficient, not more equal, and consumers or developers wouldn’t actually be better off.
Ajakks 11mo ago
Success isn't real. All things are internal, but we make/pretend they are external. I dont care at all of your accolades or accomplishments. Exactly like you dont care of mine. If we ever do care about others' success, its not bc of the other people. We are just playing games with ourselves and calling it stuff like expectations, admiration, respect, and responsibility - its all bullshit. UBI allows a different life. You can only fail so much, only fall so far - rather than people being lazy, it will be a huge boon for creativity. The 9-5 for 45 is creative death.