13 ms·

What really gets me going is the realization of how much more value people would produce if they could own their lives outright instead of renting it from one b

What really gets me going is the realization of how much more value people would produce if they could own their lives outright instead of renting it from one boss to the next. There'd be less "work" of the traditional, low-productivity, subordinate zombie sense, but a lot more getting done. I want to see BI not because I have an interest in not working. Rather, I want it to free people to work. Work is too important (both as a human need, and as a productive force in society) to leave it in the hands of the entrenched boss men who currently own Work. It would be such an excuse-killer, too, to implement BI and get rid of compulsory labor. People could no longer justify making so little of their lives due to having to work. Now, it turns out to still be quite hard to make something of one's life but, when that excuse is gone, the only thing to say is "Yes, it's hard; but go on, do it." Sometimes I wonder, though, if we invented institutional Work to justify mediocrity, and make it OK. It's often portrayed as an oppression brought in by deceptive, aggressive Boss Men; but I also think people willingly participate because it's a way to substitute mediocre/subordinate social acceptance for the much more intermittent reward/thrill of genuine work. Boss men definitely were more principal in driving Work to its current state, but it was a coevolution.

andrewflnr 14y ago
Don't forget that it comes out of the excess of those who do decide to work. I'm not confident that if this was rolled out globally, there would be enough people who really decide to "make something of their lives" to support the system. Sure, a lot of them will hate themselves if they don't, but, honestly now, how often does that stop laziness? Don't look at yourself to answer, look at the culture.
- EGreg 14y ago
  Studies show welfare spending has reduced poverty dramatically and measurably in ALL countries studied. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfares_effect_on_poverty http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfares_effect_on_poverty Other studies show, however, that it has diminishing returns, especially as it leads to poverty/ghetto culture. However this is changing with technology, internet and mobile phones. People are more docile than in the 90s with the gangsta rap craze.
  - Retric 14y ago
    Bad link, try: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare%27s_effect_on_poverty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare%27s_effect_on_poverty
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - batemanesque 14y ago
    "ghetto culture"? "the gangsta rape craze"? seriously?
    - EGreg 14y ago
      Rap, not rape. Well I could share statistics which clearly show a major rise in violent crime by urban youth in the 90s, with a major decline afterwards, and there could be several explanations for that. As for "ghetto culture" - I am referring to the statistics on single mothers / teen mothers in urban ghetto neighborhoods, and the amount of violence, drug use and drug dealing and done by chronically unemployed males who are feeling disenfranchised and without a purpose. Note that poverty by itself is not the main factor - the same neighborhoods before welfare (50-60 years ago) which retained similar demographics in terms of race saw far leas of either one of these phenomena. The culture was certainly different, with a greater emphasis on productive labor, two parent households, and responsibility. And I say all this to show the diminishing returns from welfare, because the welfare class will be expanding to include more and more people as automation takes over. But on a more positive note: http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen...
      - err_badprocrast 14y ago
        First of all, gangster rap is still extremely popular among youth. > Well I could share statistics which clearly show a major rise in violent crime by urban youth in the 90s, with a major decline afterwards, and there could be several explanations for that. Several easy to spot deterrents of youth crime implemented in the 90s: - Zero Tolerance in schools (automatic expulsion if you have anything that even looks like a weapon) - If you commit a violent crime as a juvenile these days you're likely to get tried and sentenced as an adult (specifics depending on state) As for teen mothers, I can't contribute much to that discussion - but the CDC's data on 15-19 year olds shows a marked and consistent drop in birth rates from 1990 to 2010. [1] > violence, drug use and drug dealing... done by chronically unemployed males who are feeling disenfranchised and without a purpose. Although not socially accepted, it is often treated as a job; I'd also advise caution in trying to limit drug use and dealing to specific demographics. On the topic of welfare, you'd probably be surprised how many college students make use of food stamps these days. 1. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6118a8.htm?s_cid=mm6118a8_e%0d%0a http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6118a8.htm?s_cid=...
- jjoonathan 14y ago
  Free market principles still apply: if all plumbers retire when BI starts then the price people are willing to pay to hire a plumber will increase until somebody decides it's worth doing again. What if it becomes impossible for you to hire a plumber? Well, that would be the sound of opportunity knocking ;)
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  With BI, there are going to be some people who use it as an excuse to slack off. They're not ambitious or energetic and, relieved of the need to make something of their lives, they probably won't do much. That's true. Here's a question: how much are they doing right now? My guess: not much. Given the high rate of unemployment that exists already, it seems like society's value for unskilled work is pretty low already. So I don't think the bulk loss to society in having the least ambitious ~10-20% slack off is that bad, especially if a large number of people are more engaged in their work. Parasites at the bottom of society are pretty harmless. Parasites at the top, on the other hand, are extremely damaging. We have a lot of the second kind. Because people have to work and most need a steady income that just barely meets expenses, that pretty much means they end up in a subordinate role, there's a class of useless people called "executives" who have total control over the economy (and mediocritize it, because it's best for their positional stability to do so) because people are terrified of losing the jobs and incomes. If there's a trade-off between having more parasites at the bottom of society who don't work vs. having more parasites at the top who ruin others' work, I'd take the former, hands down.
  - jjoonathan 14y ago
    > If there's a trade-off between having more parasites at the bottom of society who don't work vs. having more parasites at the top who ruin others' wor Nonono, you have it backwards. We NEED more parasites! The supply of labor exceeds demand right now which sends the price to 0 (minimum wage paints the problem a different color but doesn't fix anything). We need to decrease the supply of labor so that the market can start pricing it rationally again. If everybody stops working, the price of services skyrockets. But the problem (soaring cost of services) and the solution (soaring reward for labor) are one and the same. This is how the free market is supposed to work. In fact, I'd go so far to say that BI presents a closer approximation to a free market than the system we have now (where the government price-controls labor).
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      Yes, we basically agree. I don't consider it abstractly good for someone to live on society, while able to work, and not working. However, the cost of that is pennies compared to what we pay by having terrible leadership (parasites at the top).
- Retric 14y ago
  BI, does not remove the benefit from traditional employment. Rather it removes the bureaucracy and cutoffs around traditional government benefits. Currently, you get no benefits if your disabled for 5 months and a significant check if it's 6 months. With BI, you get the same money either way, and while it's probably less than the 6 month benefit the risk reduction is worth a lot. Better yet, get laid off and want to try making iOS apps? Just do it, your benefits are unaffected if you want to start a company. Now, the downside is currently upper middle class people get higher disability benefits/social security payments. With BI that goes away, society does not care how old you are or what you made you get the same basic income as everyone else. So you better have savings if you want keep living in a high cost of living area.
- rayiner 14y ago
  I'm convinced that you could give everyone exactly the same income, and people would work for artificial "prestige points."
  - andrewflnr 14y ago
    Was that supposed to be encouraging? ;)
    - rayiner 14y ago
      Kind of... I don't think a basic income would be much of a de-motivator that large swaths of the population would stop working. The social status that came from having an important job would still motivate people, indeed even more so if money was removed as a way to differentiate people.
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    "prestige points." AKA "Whuffie" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_King..., http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8086/8086-h/8086-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8086/8086-h/8086-h.htm)
- mempko 14y ago
  I would argue that the current institution of work is what causes laziness. When people day in and day out go to work for 8 or more hours a day to a job they hate. When they come home, there is nothing left but wanting to be "lazy". I suspect that this trait is learned in our current environment.
derefr 14y ago
> I also think people willingly participate because it's a way to substitute mediocre/subordinate social acceptance for the much more intermittent reward/thrill of genuine work. The drive to seek "intermittent rewards/thrills" isn't universal. Specifically, in people with naturally low dopamine responsivity[1][2], it's almost non-existent. Within this group, you don't tend to see anyone who enjoys casinos and/or casual-social-mobile games, for example; they experience no dopamine hit from one session, so they aren't drawn to replay. There's a categorization system of psychological reward profiles, originally derived from MMO play-styles, called the Bartle test (http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm). Of the four Bartle types, people with low dopamine responsivity are almost never "Achievers"--instead tending to focus on the other three. Here's the description of the category: > Achievers regard points-gathering and rising in levels as their main goal, and all is ultimately subserviant to this. Exploration is necessary only to find new sources of treasure, or improved ways of wringing points from it. Socialising is a relaxing method of discovering what other players know about the business of accumulating points, that their knowledge can be applied to the task of gaining riches. Killing is only necessary to eliminate rivals or people who get in the way, or to gain vast amounts of points (if points are awarded for killing other players). In a business context, people who aren't Achievers are almost[3] inherently MacLeod "Losers." --- [1] Low dopamine responsivity is diagnosed around 7% of the time as ADD/ADHD. It is so widely prevalent in modern populations, though, that many doctors refuse to recognize, diagnose, or treat for that condition, dismissing it as "a healthy psychological state which just doesn't mesh very well with the expectations of the labor market." However, you will frequently find that someone treated for ADD/ADHD, whether or not it is a real condition, will become a Bartle "Achiever" where they previously were not. [2] People who have had chronically-low dopamine responsivity their whole lives also tend, more than the median member of the population, to self-identify as either "nerds" or "creatives" (or both.) When you don't derive any internal "rush" from competing with others (whether "doing the sports" or "going into finance" or "making the sale"), you tend to need to "make your own fun"--which leads to such pursuits as programming, science-fiction, and Minecraft; or to painting, writing, composing, et al. There is a reason, besides their market value, that an MBA in a down market will "hustle", while an Illustration-major will work as a barrista. [3] The "Explorer" play-style/reward-profile gives them the ability to also be "Technocrats" (in your terminology), though.
AndrewKemendo 14y ago
>Sometimes I wonder, though, if we invented institutional Work to justify mediocrity, and make it OK. It's often portrayed as an oppression brought in by deceptive, aggressive Boss Men; but I also think people willingly participate because it's a way to substitute mediocre/subordinate social acceptance for the much more intermittent reward/thrill of genuine work. Very interesting hypothesis. If true, it would answer a lot of questions about poor performance of large organizations and also explain to me why so many people I have worked with are comfortable with said mediocrity.
- rtpg 14y ago
  actually a thing I've noticed in Japan (lifetime employment AND labor shortage) is there's a lot of silly 'institutional work' that is created for less capable members of certain groups. For example, guys whose only job is to just say "be careful please" around construction sites all day long. It's weird, but in a way it ensures these guys can still get some income.
pandaman 14y ago
I have experienced the end result of this as I happened to be born in the USSR. There was not that much more value, quite the opposite - "poor" people in the USA nowadays live much better than not just the middle but most of the ruling class in the USSR.
- jjoonathan 14y ago
  BI is NOT communism. We are not trying to abolish private property or wealth disparities or social classes. In fact, we're trying to make the market even free-er: right now the supply of labor is rigid (everyone must work to live) but supply exceeds demand so the free market sends the price of labor to 0. There are two alternatives: let the supply of labor drop via BI or establish price controls on labor (or pray for the economy to keep growing, but that ship has sailed). Price controls shift the problem around and don't solve the underlying issue: supply exceeds demand. Unfortunately, we have chosen price controls over letting the market equilibrate itself. ANY solution that solves the supply-exceeds-demand issue of labor MUST either create leeches (decrease supply) or continuously grow the economy (increase demand). I think it's easier to create the leeches and call them a cost of doing business. BI is the supply-side economics of labor. Incidentally (this is unrealted because BI is not communism), I'm not convinced that the USSR failed because of communism/socialism/stalinism/capitalism/whatever. I'm no historian, but it looks like what happened is that the US fought an economic war with the USSR via an arms race. We spend a $ on our military to force them to sped a $ on theirs. They ran out of money first because they had a smaller economy coming out of WWII. This opinion is not very well researched or highly informed (I base it off starcraft strategy, heh). Please tell me if I have gone wrong; I will be neither surprised nor offended.
  - pandaman 14y ago
    I agree that the USSR had not fell because of the communism per se. It's been destroyed by the apathy, caused by people getting their basic needs covered without the need to work. When they started - they've got a boost in productivity, even higher than the article describes. They've built up quite a lot in the 1920s-1930s. However, as the workforce become filled with the generations that took this system for granted, its effect turned into the opposite direction and by 1970s, as the last pre-revolutionary generation retired, there had been very few people left who actually wanted to do anything productive. The country went along for a while selling oil and other natural resources but the oil prices dropped in 80s and that was the end of it. There was just not enough oil any more to feed the whole country of 250M people.
chipsy 14y ago
I call it "the right to quit."

andrewflnr 14y ago

Don't forget that it comes out of the excess of those who do decide to work. I'm not confident that if this was rolled out globally, there would be enough people who really decide to "make something of their lives" to support the system. Sure, a lot of them will hate themselves if they don't, but, honestly now, how often does that stop laziness? Don't look at yourself to answer, look at the culture.

EGreg 14y ago
Studies show welfare spending has reduced poverty dramatically and measurably in ALL countries studied. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfares_effect_on_poverty http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfares_effect_on_poverty Other studies show, however, that it has diminishing returns, especially as it leads to poverty/ghetto culture. However this is changing with technology, internet and mobile phones. People are more docile than in the 90s with the gangsta rap craze.
- Retric 14y ago
  Bad link, try: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare%27s_effect_on_poverty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare%27s_effect_on_poverty
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- batemanesque 14y ago
  "ghetto culture"? "the gangsta rape craze"? seriously?
  - EGreg 14y ago
    Rap, not rape. Well I could share statistics which clearly show a major rise in violent crime by urban youth in the 90s, with a major decline afterwards, and there could be several explanations for that. As for "ghetto culture" - I am referring to the statistics on single mothers / teen mothers in urban ghetto neighborhoods, and the amount of violence, drug use and drug dealing and done by chronically unemployed males who are feeling disenfranchised and without a purpose. Note that poverty by itself is not the main factor - the same neighborhoods before welfare (50-60 years ago) which retained similar demographics in terms of race saw far leas of either one of these phenomena. The culture was certainly different, with a greater emphasis on productive labor, two parent households, and responsibility. And I say all this to show the diminishing returns from welfare, because the welfare class will be expanding to include more and more people as automation takes over. But on a more positive note: http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen...
    - err_badprocrast 14y ago
      First of all, gangster rap is still extremely popular among youth. > Well I could share statistics which clearly show a major rise in violent crime by urban youth in the 90s, with a major decline afterwards, and there could be several explanations for that. Several easy to spot deterrents of youth crime implemented in the 90s: - Zero Tolerance in schools (automatic expulsion if you have anything that even looks like a weapon) - If you commit a violent crime as a juvenile these days you're likely to get tried and sentenced as an adult (specifics depending on state) As for teen mothers, I can't contribute much to that discussion - but the CDC's data on 15-19 year olds shows a marked and consistent drop in birth rates from 1990 to 2010. [1] > violence, drug use and drug dealing... done by chronically unemployed males who are feeling disenfranchised and without a purpose. Although not socially accepted, it is often treated as a job; I'd also advise caution in trying to limit drug use and dealing to specific demographics. On the topic of welfare, you'd probably be surprised how many college students make use of food stamps these days. 1. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6118a8.htm?s_cid=mm6118a8_e%0d%0a http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6118a8.htm?s_cid=...
jjoonathan 14y ago
Free market principles still apply: if all plumbers retire when BI starts then the price people are willing to pay to hire a plumber will increase until somebody decides it's worth doing again. What if it becomes impossible for you to hire a plumber? Well, that would be the sound of opportunity knocking ;)
michaelochurch 14y ago
With BI, there are going to be some people who use it as an excuse to slack off. They're not ambitious or energetic and, relieved of the need to make something of their lives, they probably won't do much. That's true. Here's a question: how much are they doing right now? My guess: not much. Given the high rate of unemployment that exists already, it seems like society's value for unskilled work is pretty low already. So I don't think the bulk loss to society in having the least ambitious ~10-20% slack off is that bad, especially if a large number of people are more engaged in their work. Parasites at the bottom of society are pretty harmless. Parasites at the top, on the other hand, are extremely damaging. We have a lot of the second kind. Because people have to work and most need a steady income that just barely meets expenses, that pretty much means they end up in a subordinate role, there's a class of useless people called "executives" who have total control over the economy (and mediocritize it, because it's best for their positional stability to do so) because people are terrified of losing the jobs and incomes. If there's a trade-off between having more parasites at the bottom of society who don't work vs. having more parasites at the top who ruin others' work, I'd take the former, hands down.
- jjoonathan 14y ago
  > If there's a trade-off between having more parasites at the bottom of society who don't work vs. having more parasites at the top who ruin others' wor Nonono, you have it backwards. We NEED more parasites! The supply of labor exceeds demand right now which sends the price to 0 (minimum wage paints the problem a different color but doesn't fix anything). We need to decrease the supply of labor so that the market can start pricing it rationally again. If everybody stops working, the price of services skyrockets. But the problem (soaring cost of services) and the solution (soaring reward for labor) are one and the same. This is how the free market is supposed to work. In fact, I'd go so far to say that BI presents a closer approximation to a free market than the system we have now (where the government price-controls labor).
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    Yes, we basically agree. I don't consider it abstractly good for someone to live on society, while able to work, and not working. However, the cost of that is pennies compared to what we pay by having terrible leadership (parasites at the top).
Retric 14y ago
BI, does not remove the benefit from traditional employment. Rather it removes the bureaucracy and cutoffs around traditional government benefits. Currently, you get no benefits if your disabled for 5 months and a significant check if it's 6 months. With BI, you get the same money either way, and while it's probably less than the 6 month benefit the risk reduction is worth a lot. Better yet, get laid off and want to try making iOS apps? Just do it, your benefits are unaffected if you want to start a company. Now, the downside is currently upper middle class people get higher disability benefits/social security payments. With BI that goes away, society does not care how old you are or what you made you get the same basic income as everyone else. So you better have savings if you want keep living in a high cost of living area.
rayiner 14y ago
I'm convinced that you could give everyone exactly the same income, and people would work for artificial "prestige points."
- andrewflnr 14y ago
  Was that supposed to be encouraging? ;)
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Kind of... I don't think a basic income would be much of a de-motivator that large swaths of the population would stop working. The social status that came from having an important job would still motivate people, indeed even more so if money was removed as a way to differentiate people.
- nitrogen 14y ago
  "prestige points." AKA "Whuffie" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_King..., http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8086/8086-h/8086-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8086/8086-h/8086-h.htm)
mempko 14y ago
I would argue that the current institution of work is what causes laziness. When people day in and day out go to work for 8 or more hours a day to a job they hate. When they come home, there is nothing left but wanting to be "lazy". I suspect that this trait is learned in our current environment.

derefr 14y ago

> I also think people willingly participate because it's a way to substitute mediocre/subordinate social acceptance for the much more intermittent reward/thrill of genuine work. The drive to seek "intermittent rewards/thrills" isn't universal. Specifically, in people with naturally low dopamine responsivity[1][2], it's almost non-existent. Within this group, you don't tend to see anyone who enjoys casinos and/or casual-social-mobile games, for example; they experience no dopamine hit from one session, so they aren't drawn to replay. There's a categorization system of psychological reward profiles, originally derived from MMO play-styles, called the Bartle test (http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm). Of the four Bartle types, people with low dopamine responsivity are almost never "Achievers"--instead tending to focus on the other three. Here's the description of the category: > Achievers regard points-gathering and rising in levels as their main goal, and all is ultimately subserviant to this. Exploration is necessary only to find new sources of treasure, or improved ways of wringing points from it. Socialising is a relaxing method of discovering what other players know about the business of accumulating points, that their knowledge can be applied to the task of gaining riches. Killing is only necessary to eliminate rivals or people who get in the way, or to gain vast amounts of points (if points are awarded for killing other players). In a business context, people who aren't Achievers are almost[3] inherently MacLeod "Losers." --- [1] Low dopamine responsivity is diagnosed around 7% of the time as ADD/ADHD. It is so widely prevalent in modern populations, though, that many doctors refuse to recognize, diagnose, or treat for that condition, dismissing it as "a healthy psychological state which just doesn't mesh very well with the expectations of the labor market." However, you will frequently find that someone treated for ADD/ADHD, whether or not it is a real condition, will become a Bartle "Achiever" where they previously were not. [2] People who have had chronically-low dopamine responsivity their whole lives also tend, more than the median member of the population, to self-identify as either "nerds" or "creatives" (or both.) When you don't derive any internal "rush" from competing with others (whether "doing the sports" or "going into finance" or "making the sale"), you tend to need to "make your own fun"--which leads to such pursuits as programming, science-fiction, and Minecraft; or to painting, writing, composing, et al. There is a reason, besides their market value, that an MBA in a down market will "hustle", while an Illustration-major will work as a barrista. [3] The "Explorer" play-style/reward-profile gives them the ability to also be "Technocrats" (in your terminology), though.

AndrewKemendo 14y ago

>Sometimes I wonder, though, if we invented institutional Work to justify mediocrity, and make it OK. It's often portrayed as an oppression brought in by deceptive, aggressive Boss Men; but I also think people willingly participate because it's a way to substitute mediocre/subordinate social acceptance for the much more intermittent reward/thrill of genuine work. Very interesting hypothesis. If true, it would answer a lot of questions about poor performance of large organizations and also explain to me why so many people I have worked with are comfortable with said mediocrity.

rtpg 14y ago
actually a thing I've noticed in Japan (lifetime employment AND labor shortage) is there's a lot of silly 'institutional work' that is created for less capable members of certain groups. For example, guys whose only job is to just say "be careful please" around construction sites all day long. It's weird, but in a way it ensures these guys can still get some income.

pandaman 14y ago

I have experienced the end result of this as I happened to be born in the USSR. There was not that much more value, quite the opposite - "poor" people in the USA nowadays live much better than not just the middle but most of the ruling class in the USSR.

jjoonathan 14y ago
BI is NOT communism. We are not trying to abolish private property or wealth disparities or social classes. In fact, we're trying to make the market even free-er: right now the supply of labor is rigid (everyone must work to live) but supply exceeds demand so the free market sends the price of labor to 0. There are two alternatives: let the supply of labor drop via BI or establish price controls on labor (or pray for the economy to keep growing, but that ship has sailed). Price controls shift the problem around and don't solve the underlying issue: supply exceeds demand. Unfortunately, we have chosen price controls over letting the market equilibrate itself. ANY solution that solves the supply-exceeds-demand issue of labor MUST either create leeches (decrease supply) or continuously grow the economy (increase demand). I think it's easier to create the leeches and call them a cost of doing business. BI is the supply-side economics of labor. Incidentally (this is unrealted because BI is not communism), I'm not convinced that the USSR failed because of communism/socialism/stalinism/capitalism/whatever. I'm no historian, but it looks like what happened is that the US fought an economic war with the USSR via an arms race. We spend a $ on our military to force them to sped a $ on theirs. They ran out of money first because they had a smaller economy coming out of WWII. This opinion is not very well researched or highly informed (I base it off starcraft strategy, heh). Please tell me if I have gone wrong; I will be neither surprised nor offended.
- pandaman 14y ago
  I agree that the USSR had not fell because of the communism per se. It's been destroyed by the apathy, caused by people getting their basic needs covered without the need to work. When they started - they've got a boost in productivity, even higher than the article describes. They've built up quite a lot in the 1920s-1930s. However, as the workforce become filled with the generations that took this system for granted, its effect turned into the opposite direction and by 1970s, as the last pre-revolutionary generation retired, there had been very few people left who actually wanted to do anything productive. The country went along for a while selling oil and other natural resources but the oil prices dropped in 80s and that was the end of it. There was just not enough oil any more to feed the whole country of 250M people.

chipsy 14y ago

I call it "the right to quit."