[quacked]

That is a fair criticism; I don't have a perfect solution built out right now, so I can't paint you a picture of how a theoretical nation full of well-educated laborers and farmers building things and providing for themselves would look in comparison to our current nation, where everyone barely struggles to hang on financially as citizens of the wealthiest empire in the history of civilization.

I am finding it particularly difficult to convince people that they should even look past the current system. If you read through other comments on other chains in this thread, people are trying to explain to me that I could never convince someone to work half-time at a white collar job (where they endlessly produce code and then clock out) and half-time at a blue-collar job (where they endlessly shovel asphalt and then clock out), while at the same time I'm trying to convince them that it's possible to create an equilibrium of demand with output by simultaneously reducing aggregate demand and moving around aggregate output. If there's an end goal to your labor- produce this much and then stop producing until repairs or new units are needed- you don't have to work all the time at these horrible jobs.

Right now, people work in white collar jobs in order to justify their right to the results of the blue collar jobs. If you don't write code, you can't afford the berries that Driscoll's ships to your grocery store, so you write code and make $150k/year, and you buy your $6 carton of berries, and the migrant berry pickers make $18k/year, and the truck driver makes $80k/year. But you're the end user of the berries; if you instead knew how to pick or knew how to drive, you might have a chance at getting the berries to your table without needing quasi-slave labor.

I don't want to live in a country where I get stuff- materials, goods, etc.- from people who are always struggling. We can't just UBI our way to luxury space communism, because then no one will pick the berries, because right now the "berry-picking job" is defined as "12 hours per day in and out of the hot sun".

This is what I'm trying to say- find some way to make sure that I can provide myself with shelter and see a doctor when I need to, and I'll go pick the damn berries and drive them back myself. Many seem to be responding with "no, that's impossible."

[jimbokun]

I am very skeptical of any utopian-sounding scheme.

"I am finding it particularly difficult to convince people that they should even look past the current system."

Look past it all you want. But once you start using the power of the state to make it come about, the potential for devastating unintended consequences are very high.

If you want to be a well rounded human who picks berries and also writes code, knock yourself out. If you want to write Medium articles advocating for this lifestyle, knock yourself out.

But if the vast majority of people just want to specialize and pay people to perform other tasks, that's their prerogative, too.

As for the berry pickers, the UBI-like effect of the Covid stimulus programs in the US showed that giving people an income floor is very effective at raising wages rapidly, as people can turn down jobs that they don't think adequately compensates them for their labor.

[quacked]

> If the vast majority of people just want to specialize and pay people to perform other tasks, that's their prerogative, too.

Your sort of radical individualism, which is mostly accepted by the tech gentry, has proven absolutely disastrous for the less intelligent and other historically disadvantaged people. From birth, the modern American is subjected to the most refined consumer propaganda that has ever existed. The towns and cultures that our ancestors grew up with have been chewed up and spit out by mass tech and capital. People are constantly manipulated by cable news, advertising algorithms, television, computer programs- fast food restaurants are literally designed by "psychologists" and "product researchers" to induce hunger. The average American- not the average American you know, I mean the actual average American- is incapable of choosing culture or principles over the momentary rewards of money or satiation of various appetites because of the conditions imposed upon them by people like us, who have the ability to create controlling mechanisms.

One of the tools used to manipulate the other people in the U.S. is a model of society created in the 1900s, where you go to school for 16 years and then you work at the same career for the rest of your life, drawing a consistent paycheck and performing the same actions over and over again. In the 1970s, the IRA and the 401(k) were invented and pushed in order to free companies from the financial burden of providing pensions, and to siphon more cash into the investment market. Someone who has been convinced of this model of society is unable to argue about anything other than financial compensation. They are kept in a simultaneous state of envy for the rich and contempt for the poor. UBI makes sense to them because it would not require any change to their life, which is why everyone clamors for a higher salary, rather than for a life that they can be proud to live.

If you are content to live your own, satisfied, educated life and let the rest of our society fall victim to predatory markets and invasive habit control, because "that's their prerogative", then you are a coward.

[jimbokun]

And you think centralizing power even more will solve this problem?

People need to be empowered to individually make the choice to opt out of this system on their own. Persuasion to take that course is fine and noble.

But do you honestly think putting some group of people in charge of "protecting" people from all these bad influences, will truly lead to that small number of people acting completely altruistically in the best interests of society? Or they will be sorely tempted to use that power to manipulate society to the ends they personally deem most important?

One of the biggest problems I see with current discourse, is all memory of 20th century history seems to have been completely forgotten. There were large parts of the world that did away with all the consumerism and capitalism. They ended up killing 10s of millions of their own people, through starvation and enforcing their control by killing dissenters.

[quacked]

I don't know if you're still checking this comment chain, but I don't think from my other comments that I mentioned bringing a central authority into the equation. I realize that the concept of a central moral authority "protecting" the populace has gone poorly in the past, but that is not what I am advocating for. I am advocating for a heavily armed, heavily informed populace that knows where everything it uses comes from and is capable of building each component part of its society.

You and I are the authority; we can do the educating and the protection. People are being taken advantage of every day by various agents that wish to exploit them for various purposes. Those need clear, consistent messaging from people they respect that explains and illuminates the many pitfalls of modern society and offers a path through which to learn society-building skills and self-reliance. Leaving them to their own devices does not create a healthy, unified community; it merely leaves them ripe for the harvest by the banks, the insurance companies, advertisers, fast food corporations, car companies, etc.

It is uninteresting to me to be compared to the communists and the Nazis. It will turn out better for us all if you allow yourself to think more creatively than that. Contemporary society does not need to choose between absolute individualistic chaos or absolute control, although the fact that society is populated by many people who think exactly as you do makes that duality seem like the only outcome possible.