[kubb]

As an empathetic person, this really makes me feel that we should fight for an economic system that gives people more leisure. Rewarding life doesn't need to be expensive, but it does require us to have the time to do something that we love. This is also why I dream about financial independence. I'm not lazy, I just want to do something else than what I have to.

[gspanos]

This is what motivated me to start a company. It is a tech company because that's what I know. But at the end of the day, it's my way of creating what I consider a healthy environment. I was very fortunate to work in an environment like that 6-7 years ago and now I want to re-create it through my company.

[coldtea]

>we should fight for an economic system that gives people more leisure

We don't even have an economic system that pays well or treats people humanely...

[marcosdumay]

All the evidence point towards the GP's goal being more realistic than fixing just that intermediate step.

[thfuran]

What evidence is there for that?

[marcosdumay]

The fact that we have several viable proposals for that, and that partial versions of them already work on practice.

While we have no idea at all of any interventions that only achieves the partial result you want.

[baggy_trough]

Compared to what?

[chefandy]

Maybe compared to ones that don’t toss mid and late career professionals out like a bag of moldy peaches when some confluence of economical and technological factors makes them inconvenient, no matter if they’ve got kids, or a cancer diagnosis, are supporting lots of relatives, or anything else like that, and then say it’s their fault for not predicting it. Maybe ones that don’t financially ruin people because the hospital they got driven to while unconscious doesn’t take their insurance? That is, if they have it because the insurance that costs more than local mortgages for many? Maybe the places that sentence someone involved in a bank heist orders of magnitude longer sentences than white collar criminals that stole orders of magnitude more money?

[baggy_trough]

What ones would those be?

[chefandy]

> What ones would those be?

If you really don't know, I'm not your research assistant so I won't go look up things like universal health care and the social support strategies of various European countries for you. If you're just trying to bait me into some sort of pedantic argument, I'm far past the age where I felt compelled to interact with people who think being deliberately obtuse is a valid conversation tactic. Either way, I'm going to let you finish this one yourself. Have a fantastic sunday.

[baggy_trough]

Many European countries have high youth unemployment and low innovation along with a typically lower standard of living than in the United States. It’s important to be aware of the downsides of leftist economic policies.

[coldtea]

Compared to one that pays well and treats people humanely.

It's not like that in order to suggest that something is bad there must be an existing better version. The suggestion can be about creating that better version.

That of course is a general answer to your asking for a comparison, as if lack of one would refute the point.

Some country first abolished child labour, even when all others still had it. Where the people who advocated for that misguided, since they didn't have a better example to "compare" to?

These are of course also concrete answers to your question, like many EU countries where the vacation period is one month, where there are better employee protections, where there is less discrimination, where overtime is frowned upon and the work culture is not the US "grind", where waiters don't have to make do on tipping, and so on.

They don't have to be perfect in everything either (because an easy knee jerk critique would immediately point to some other shortcomings in their work arrangements). For the point of the suggestion, it's enough that they have better aspects than some country like the US could also adopt.

[baggy_trough]

I would posit that these better aspect have trade offs of their own. Can you identify them?

[polio]

I think we're at a point in the history of Western civilization where we should strive to guarantee non-painful survival for all our citizens. This doesn't necessarily mean comfort, but nobody who grew up legally in the United States should have to wonder about finding nutritious food; clean water; and a quiet, warm, and secure place to sleep. I only restrict this tentatively to citizens because I think these programs would fare better politically if limited to citizens.

People of all backgrounds will find that non-painful survival is still profoundly unfulfilling and will continue to innovate, create, work. I think the fear of succumbing to the elements in America is too real and that that fear is a massive drain on the economy and the spirit of our people.

[CooCooCaCha]

I totally agree and I don't understand why everyone isn't on board with this vision. Sometimes I look around and think "this can't be the end of the story, there has to be a better way to run society".

What's interesting are the libertarian types who want the opposite. You don't get anything by default, you have to fight for everything. All I can think of is 1) why? and 2) is that really their vision of the future? Like in 100 years we'll still have to work meaningless jobs just to put food on our table? Is that really the future we want?

[becquerel]

They want that future because they ultimately believe in human hierarchies.

Sometimes those hierarchies are natural and essential (race, gender, age, whatever), sometimes they're contingent and constructed (skillset, grindset, 'hard work', whatever), but it always has the same end result: they think that you can categorise people like insects, and that some groups of people deserve better things than others. Naturally they believe they would not be at the bottom of the hierarchy.

You may also be interested in the term 'capitalist realism'.

[CooCooCaCha]

Hah, I'm right there with you. I'm definitely aware of capitalist realism, and what you said about hierarchies is exactly why I claim libertarians are right wing.

[oceanplexian]

> This doesn't necessarily mean comfort, but nobody who grew up legally in the United States should have to wonder about finding nutritious food; clean water; and a quiet, warm, and secure place to sleep.

Western civilization has brought more food, clean water, and rescued more people from poverty in the 20th century than the entire history of human civilization. None of that was done by offering guarantees, it was achieved through free market capitalism. Competing economic systems that offered the guarantees you’re describing not only slaughtered millions and caused mass starvation but collapsed from economic dysfunction.

[polio]

I agree with both statements you've made, however I don't see why offering food and housing security would necessitate mass murder, if we were to try it from a less ideological fervent posture. It wouldn't be described as a proletariat revolution or seizing the means of anything. It would just be another social program that I hope would be administered efficiently and ambitiously, and which would replace some of the other legacy programs we've built. I'd hope we'd test it at a small scale and then go from there. The scope of the communism you're identifying in my suggestion would be limited.

I'm generally a supporter of capitalism, but I think present conditions could be improved to facilitate that competition. Workers need to be able to use public transit in peace, which means getting homeless people out. We need to be able to offer shelter so that forceful removal is justifiable. Children need unequivocal access to nutrition so that malnourishment doesn't impair their ability to compete in the arena of idea-generation and in the knowledge economy. I think if the government were in the business of offering floors on quality of life that people could spend their time more productively instead of solving the same hunter-gatherer types of problems individually over and over again. Food insecurity may have been the impetus for work in the past, but I believe that status insecurity can replace it going forward. Nobody needs to starve for the West to prosper.