[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.