[yummyfajitas]

Then the private pothole filling entity gets the contract, and the government directs it's dependents to do something else.

But it'll actually be pretty hard for the private sector to compete on any task requiring unskilled labor. The government gets labor at nearly zero marginal cost since it would be paying those people even if it didn't put them to work.

Again, literally the only thing I'm proposing is that instead of giving people money NOT to work, we instead give them money to work. I'm not proposing communism or slave labor.

[dragonwriter]

> Again, literally the only thing I'm proposing is that instead of giving people money NOT to work, we instead give them money to work.

No, you are actually proposing giving them money, whether or not there is work, and then trying to scrounge up some (perhaps meaningless) work so that the money you give them cannot be used for personal development, small entrepreneurship, etc.

> I'm not proposing communism or slave labor.

Forced, economically inefficient (hence, why there is no demand in the private market including that fulfilling government contracts) labor through economic coercion rather than chattel slavery, but I'm not sure that the difference is meaningful, especially if there really is a problem of a growing-over-time number of people unemployable at any given time in the private market due to changes which render their labor superfluous given the available alternatives.

[yummyfajitas]

No, you are actually proposing giving them money,...

We already give them money. I'm simply accepting that this is unlikely to change.

Forced, economically inefficient (hence, why there is no demand in the private market including that fulfilling government contracts)

The labor is not forced you are free to turn it down. We have no way of knowing whether the labor is economically inefficient, due to existing market distortions caused by paying people not to work.

In any case, unless you are claiming that there is no valuable government work to be done at all (are you?), it's a little silly to suggest that my plan to redirect idle labor into providing those government services is inefficient. The labor is either wasted or it's consumed.

[prostoalex]

> The government gets labor at nearly zero marginal cost since it would be paying those people even if it didn't put them to work.

The motivation for the overseers is clear. The worker bees have two choices - work hard (and get paid) versus do nothing (and get paid). Why would the workers go for the former versus the latter?

[dragonwriter]

Presumably, when ordered to work, the benefits would be cut off if the work was refused or performed unacceptably.

I mean, otherwise this whole mandatory-work-for-benefits thing doesn't make any sense (not to say that its a good idea even then.)