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The degeneration you fear sounds like a fine alternative to me. I'd rather deal with happy drunks than stressed out angry workers. Idleness doesn't bother me. T

by thwest 12y ago

The degeneration you fear sounds like a fine alternative to me. I'd rather deal with happy drunks than stressed out angry workers. Idleness doesn't bother me. The crime you allude to is usually committed by the young men who have no income in those situations and result to crime to obtain funds.

bokonist 12y ago
For reference, this is what I fear: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/world/europe/10britain.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/world/europe/10britain.htm... <quote> >In its four most deprived neighborhoods, some 30 percent of the residents of working age are considered “economically inactive,” neither holding jobs nor looking for them. > "The housing projects in Wythenshawe represent an extreme pocket of social deprivation and alienation. But the problems here — a breakdown in families, an absence of respect for authority, the prevalence of drugs, drunkenness, truancy, vandalism and petty criminality — are common across Britain." > Bringing home her groceries recently, Jane Leach, a 46-year-old caregiver for the elderly, described a typical weekend evening on the small grassy area that serves as a park of sorts between two rows of houses on her street. The youths start coming after 6, she said, dozens of them, boys and girls, mostly in their teens. They get drunk, take drugs, harass the residents, steal cars, urinate and defecate in the gardens, smash beer bottles on doorsteps, fight, pass out. > When she tries to intervene, Ms. Leach said, the youths yell abuse at her. When she tells them to get off her car, they tell her there is nowhere else to sit. Recently, youths slashed every tire on 12 cars up and down the street, she said. When her partner was smashed in the face by a 14-year-old, Ms. Leach said, the police took 45 minutes to respond. </quote> The article blames the stealing to some extent on poverty. But these people are not impoverished in the classical sense of the world. They have food, healthcare, and decent housing. I'm sure they have access to libraries where they could have a near infinite supply of books. Maybe they cannot afford vacations or fancy entertainment systems, but under any sort of basic income for not working scheme, people would face such limits in income. And also, even if you could turn these people into less violent and vulgar idlers, as a first order moral principle, I do not want a world that looks like idiocracy or the ship in Wall-E.
- bandushrew 12y ago
  being unemployed, with no access to resources you can use to build things, is a very different environment than being unemployed with full access to things you can build.
- glesica 12y ago
  "...social deprivation and alienation." I think this part is important, though. The poor in our society are alienated and often cut-off from the larger society and culture. If unemployment was a socially accepted norm I do not think you would see this, I think you would see more people acting like "natural aristocrats". On the other hand, I don't necessarily disagree with you entirely. Maybe people do need to work, it is possible. In that case, my solution would be to find the absolute minimum that people "need" to work in order to remain socially-balanced and force them to work that much, preferably doing something that contributes to the general welfare.

by thwest 12y ago

bokonist 12y ago

For reference, this is what I fear: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/world/europe/10britain.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/world/europe/10britain.htm... <quote> >In its four most deprived neighborhoods, some 30 percent of the residents of working age are considered “economically inactive,” neither holding jobs nor looking for them. > "The housing projects in Wythenshawe represent an extreme pocket of social deprivation and alienation. But the problems here — a breakdown in families, an absence of respect for authority, the prevalence of drugs, drunkenness, truancy, vandalism and petty criminality — are common across Britain." > Bringing home her groceries recently, Jane Leach, a 46-year-old caregiver for the elderly, described a typical weekend evening on the small grassy area that serves as a park of sorts between two rows of houses on her street. The youths start coming after 6, she said, dozens of them, boys and girls, mostly in their teens. They get drunk, take drugs, harass the residents, steal cars, urinate and defecate in the gardens, smash beer bottles on doorsteps, fight, pass out. > When she tries to intervene, Ms. Leach said, the youths yell abuse at her. When she tells them to get off her car, they tell her there is nowhere else to sit. Recently, youths slashed every tire on 12 cars up and down the street, she said. When her partner was smashed in the face by a 14-year-old, Ms. Leach said, the police took 45 minutes to respond. </quote> The article blames the stealing to some extent on poverty. But these people are not impoverished in the classical sense of the world. They have food, healthcare, and decent housing. I'm sure they have access to libraries where they could have a near infinite supply of books. Maybe they cannot afford vacations or fancy entertainment systems, but under any sort of basic income for not working scheme, people would face such limits in income. And also, even if you could turn these people into less violent and vulgar idlers, as a first order moral principle, I do not want a world that looks like idiocracy or the ship in Wall-E.

bandushrew 12y ago
being unemployed, with no access to resources you can use to build things, is a very different environment than being unemployed with full access to things you can build.
glesica 12y ago
"...social deprivation and alienation." I think this part is important, though. The poor in our society are alienated and often cut-off from the larger society and culture. If unemployment was a socially accepted norm I do not think you would see this, I think you would see more people acting like "natural aristocrats". On the other hand, I don't necessarily disagree with you entirely. Maybe people do need to work, it is possible. In that case, my solution would be to find the absolute minimum that people "need" to work in order to remain socially-balanced and force them to work that much, preferably doing something that contributes to the general welfare.