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Comment by njharman | Hacker News Reader

> society does generally believe that you are entitled to at least a basic living (food/shelter/healthcare)

That and the OA "The market doesn’t care what you love" are why I'm very socialist very anti the attitude/mantra "free market solves everything!!!".

Markets should not dictate how our society operates. Society should not value efficiency and profit over all else. Society should provide everyone with minimum food/shelter/health/education and let them choose what else to do. Whether that's make assloads of money as investment banker or play drums at love ins.

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The markets do not dictate the fact that we can't afford to just all sit around and be total hippies. It's the universe and ecosystem we live in. The natural state of being is such that if you just sit around and play in the stereotypical sense of the term, you will die. If you can just sit and do nothing, yet still be watered, fed, clothed, sheltered, and medically cared for, it is because someone is working for you to have those things. They don't just spontaneously burst into being. It isn't capitalism creating this reality, it's entropy and evolution.

Despite superficial appearances, we are not rich enough to just let everyone do as they please. Efficiency and profit aren't "just" evil things, they are the lifeblood that allows people to do something other than work. You decry them, yet without them, you have no foundation to stand on to create the world you say you want. Be careful, lest you get what you are asking for.

It is the capitalist system that has created enough wealth to allow you to become detached enough from this reality to even begin to think these thoughts. It is a rare anomaly in human history, not our natural state of being.

There is no "natural state of being" that we know of. Yours is just a prejudiced view of the ones "you have to sustain".

We do have the resources to provide a basic life for everyone (exactly what happens in nordic countries as posted elsewhere). Most people will want to do something with their lifes instead of sitting around, simply because it's boring not to.

There's a long, long road between everyone having food & shelter to the whole humanity fucking around. This reductionism is absurd.

Most people will want to do something with their lifes instead of sitting around, simply because it's boring not to.

Empirical evidence is not in your favor. Staring at a TV is quite satisfying to a distressingly large fraction of society.

Could you be more specific with respect to 'empirical evidence'?

In Germany, according to the Federal Statistical Office (https://www.destatis.de), more hours are spent for unpaid work (100 billion hours) than for paid work (60 billion hours) (as of 2009). This gap seems to keep increasing.

Also in Germany, numerous (sorry, can't find a citation right now) polls showed that about 80% of the people still want (and will) work more or less fulltime with a BIG. Funny enough, also about 80% of the people think that with a BIG the _other_ people won't continue to do so and instead become (or are already) lazy.

Snip/edit: major mis-parsing of a key point.

Suffice to say, countries don't last when ever more people rely on relative fewer producers. Greece and Spain tried and went too far: they just ran out of other people's money. Much of Europe is heading the same direction. Every communist country grids to a halt, with socialists tending the same. There is a glorious time of high living on other people's efforts, but greed and weariness win out.

Sorry, didn't see that the 'BIG' was mentioned in a different thread. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee

So, you are saying that the majority (or, too many? how much is 'too many') of people in Greece and Spain are lazy? I don't understand 'pick up the tab', but the 'dwindling actual [german] workforce' will also become soon lazy? Why is the german workforce dwindling? Because of some 'lazyness' that's catching german workers?

And then these workers will cease doing unpaid work (which e.g. encompasses stuff like running theater groups, looking after the elderlies, ...)? Of course they'll do, because now they have to work on underpaid jobs to 'prove their worth' to society and get enough food on the table for their families.

It is widespread thinking here in Germany that those on welfare are 'keeping the welfare coming in and acquiring luxuries; they don't seem particularly motivated to work'. It is 'supported' by numerous shows (for whom? for those on welfare?) on TV.

It is on the other hand clearly refuted by a huge range of studies from various disciplines (economics, social studies).

I guess it would have been nice if you just left your original text here and replied to my comment, pointing out how I misparsed a key point. Apart from that, (a) the Greece story is much more complex than how you try to frame it here (b) Greece and Spain are pretty different and shouldn't be thrown together. I also don't see a connection between communism and what has been discussed here under 'BIG' (I don't know of any communist country, actually -- mind you, 'communism' as it was/is meant!). And what 'socialist' countries grinding to halt do you think of?

As far as I understand most essays/reports from 'rather neutral' (yes, difficult to get an unbiased view) institutions here in Germany usually tell the story that nowadays a small minority lives on people's efforts, and this minority is well above welfare level.

Is there any 'proof' for your starting sentence? (countries don't last when ever more people rely on relative fewer producers). After all, automation levels increase ever more, and thus productivity, too. E.g. the number of people working in farming has shrunken dramatically (at least in first world countries), yet we have overall more than enough to eat ('overall'!). The fact that any country runs out of money is not an argument: Did Spain's productivity suddenly (or maybe also slowly) fell to zero? Did the people in Spain suddenly all lose their ability to work and think?

It was my mistake, not yours. Didn't elaborate the correction because writing essays on an iPod Touch is inconvenient.

The proof is obvious. If consumption exceeds production, necessities run out eventually. "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money." Of course Spain and Greece are more complex than this, but the short version is too many people rely on too few producers; it's not that productivity went to zero, it's that production minus consumption did. The USA is facing the same issue, and driving up hugely infeasible debts to forestall the inevitable.

The point of YCombinator is to work real hard on something clever and create a valuable business and reap the rewards; not motivating if those rewards are taken and given to those who do nothing for them.

> We do have the resources to provide a basic life for everyone

"We"? Why should I work so you don't have to?

Seriously - why should I forgo a nicer car so someone else can "find themselves"?

Of course, that makes me "greedy".

If there were only investment bankers and drummers, it would almost make sense to force the bankers to support the drummers (in effect what you are proposing). But the reality is there are mostly people like me, working very hard to support a family, making less than 100k, and I find the idea very hard to swallow that I should be supporting a drummer because they'd rather play than work.

I agree it's fairly complex, but I think there is a lot more than some people working hard, providing value, and making money, while others are just "playing", not providing value and not making money. Ability to capture value is central, and not as easy in all valuable areas as others. One longstanding debate is over scientific research: patents are an attempt to allow it to be monetizable, so the market will ensure that scientists are able to capture some of the value of their discoveries. But they also have a lot of problems, and in addition tend only to allow near/medium-term value to be captured, so don't help much with basic research that will only be commercialized in terms longer than the patent term. That's one specific example, but I don't think entirely unique.

Society should provide everyone with minimum food/shelter/health/education

... paid for by?

By everyone. It's 2012, we have plenty of food and materials to provide for every human being, it's just a matter of distribution.

In the case of Denmark, taxes. The idea is that in a Western country with a reasonably high standard of living, it's possible to shift the playing field on which individuals compete so that it takes place between, say [$20k,inf] rather than [$0,inf]. The tradeoff is some percentage taken off the upside in return for a cap on the downside. Seems reasonably fair to me, and I don't mind paying taxes for that safety net to exist. One can make all sorts of arguments about exactly where to set the thresholds, but the American attitude that seems to be a kind of visceral anger baffles me. As someone well into the middle class, I don't feel some kind of moral indignation that I could be making 10% more money if only there wasn't this healthcare and housing for poor people.

Yeah, that's pretty much the point I was getting at - the price for "everyone should get [...]" comes from somewhere, and that somewhere is usually taxes.

How a BIG may be financed can not be answered like this. You probably don't speak german, otherwise you may find this interview (and link to his doctoral thesis) interesting: http://www.forum-grundeinkommen.de/filme/andre-presse/doktor...

What it says is basically that for a BIG of 800 Euro (per month per person) in Germany there are only 20 billion Euro's missing (per year), that's nothing compared to e.g. what's currently spent for banks and other fancy things without blinking an eye (or in other words: our society is already working with such a high productivity that a BIG is already possible) The tax system (and social welfare system) needs to be changed completely, but the level of taxation will stay the same.

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