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The idea that you absolutely must work hard in exchange for the necessities of your life, is so deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness, like a fundame
by benched 13y ago
The idea that you absolutely must work hard in exchange for the necessities of your life, is so deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness, like a fundamental law of conservation, that it seems a lot of people cannot conceive otherwise.
- avmich 13y agoTwenty years ago a lot of people couldn't see themselves using a cellphone or an Internet.
- enraged_camel 13y agoI think this is different, though. They did not have any moral objections to cellphones or Internet. They simply lacked imagination.
- MacsHeadroom 13y agoWhat if said moral objections stem from a lack of imagination?
- rescripting 13y agoCellphones and the Internet were adopted on a person by person basis. It became easy to imagine yourself with them once the neighbour got it. Basic Income takes much more buy in from more people to get off the ground. I like the idea of it being attempted on the city level though, I'd never thought of that. It's likely the smallest scale that would work with the least amount of individual buy in required.
- llamataboot 13y agoIt has been: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/1970s-manitoba-poverty-experiment-called-a-success-1.868562 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/1970s-manitoba-povert...
- randomdata 13y agoI seem to remember that in 1994 most people understood the usefulness of both technologies, especially cell phones. Cost was the real hinderance. Though if we go one more year, by 1995, internet access was starting to become common in the home.
- api 13y agoI think the real fallacy beneath the surface is that if we do something like this people will just totally stop working. A few will, but most will use their newfound flexibility to shift what they work on: explore other career options, create art and culture, etc. Overall there will likely be a lot more entrepreneurship, invention, science, art, literature, and music. It's tied into the far right's religious-based doctrine of original sin view of humanity: we are miserable evil disgusting monsters who must be beaten and cudgeled into exhibiting any form of virtue. If it weren't for life-or-death struggle we would all sit around, drink beer, play video games, and probably screw goats. It's the same mentality behind strict physical discipline of children... if you spare the rod, the kid will grow up to be lazy or a monster. Besides, the people who would completely stop working are the lazy people nobody would want to hire in the first place. You're not losing much by taking those folks out of the work force.
- bcheung 13y agoYou have heard of communism, right?
- orthecreedence 13y agoThis is much more like capitalism, with the government investing in you every month.
- api 13y agoThat's not why communism didn't work. Communism didn't work because they tried to micromanage every aspect of the economy. It was central planning that failed, not guaranteed minimums. A guaranteed minimum income without economic micromanagement or other central planning is what I'd like to see tried.
- nirnira 13y ago>Communism didn't work because they tried to micromanage every aspect of the economy. No, sorry, you're completely wrong. Communism didn't work because it destroyed every incentive for industrious, honest labour, supplanting healthy competitive free-market economics with a landscape of scheming and parasitism as people scrambled to exploit one another. Communism failed (and will fail every single time another stupid generation which hasn't even bothered to pay attention to the past implements its ideas again) because, under Communism, there is no economy. Communism is a terrible, terrible idea. Just like all coercive redistribution, which, proportional to the degree of redistribution, destroys economic growth. It's no accident that, other than a handful of tight-knit low-population nation cum communities with large oil stakes, the number of socialist policies enacted by a legislature correlates directly with poor economic performance. The tragedy is that populations suffering from the negative effects of these policies delude themselves into thinking that an expansion of the policies will fix their woes, rather than hard work and smart investment. It's a vicious circle.
- conanbatt 13y agoThis might be true in the US, where both political parties are right-wing and flaunt "socialist" as a curse-word every day. I think BI is something that cant and shouldnt happen country-wide one day to the other. Cities should start doing it first. Cities like.. SF? which have a ridicolous surplus of money the city squanders, while still having a lower class without medical care.
- sliverstorm 13y agoSF already tried giving homeless people a stipend.
- boomlinde 13y agoWhich has what to do with basic income?
- sliverstorm 13y agoLike a limited-scope version of it
- boomlinde 13y agoHow so? I can't see any less superficial connection than that they are both about giving away money.
- sliverstorm 13y agoSo you view a program that gives away money to some people and a program that gives away money to all people, as so completely unrelated as to be utterly incomparable?
- boomlinde 13y agoNot utterly incomparable, but you seemed dismissive of implementing a BI program in SF on the basis of another social program, seemingly without regard to what is different about it.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- trystero 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic