[idiotsecant]

This and other fairytales.

The only solution here is to stop tying people's value to their productivity. That makes a lot of sense in the 1900s but it makes a lot less sense when the primary faucet of productivity is automation. If you insist on tying a person's fundamental right to a decent and secure life to their productivity and then take away their ability to be productive you're left with a permenant and growing underclass of undesirables and an increasingly slim pantheon of demigods at the top.

We have written like, an ocean of scifi about this very subject and somehow we still fail to properly consider this as a likely outcome.

[thegrimmest]

Who ever said you have the right to a decent a secure life? People don’t universally agree about this. Some of us posit that we will never escape a state of competition for fundamentally scarce resources. And that the organizing principle of a free society should be peaceful coexistence, not mandatory cooperation.

You figure out your own economic security, I’ll manage mine.

[idiotsecant]

There are already enough resources that nobody should live in abject insecurity and poverty. Your position is fundamentally morally abhorrent to me. You're saying that your ability to take a little bit more for yourself is more important than a child not having polio, a mother feeding her child, a village having clean water.

You are, in short, a tiny little microcosm of why humanity is doomed as a species.

[flavionm]

We don't need to have every human care about every single other human to thrive as a species. If anything, if we did, we wouldn't be able to thrive at all.

The issues you mentioned are, in the vast majority of cases, caused by the lack of peaceful coexistence to begin with, because as long as me and everyone else is coexisting peacefully, getting more for myself isn't taking anything away from those in the situations you mentioned. Resources might be scarce, but that doesn't mean they're zero sum.

[thegrimmest]

I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that my right to choose which children I help is more legitimate than your right to dictate to me. That the voluntary nature of our cooperation is more important than equality of resource distribution.

[bloomingeek]

Oh my, please rant on. I'd love to hear more about people not having the right to a decent and secure life. (After all, I've often thought that having my life tracked and used my a corporation or government would be a wonderful utopia!)

[karol]

They key is to do it by setting up the right structure or end up with it naturally, not by laws and control, because then you end up in a oppressive nanny state at the very best.

[ap99]

You couldn't set up a lemonade stand using that principle let alone an entire society.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> They key is to do it by setting up the right structure or end up with it naturally

This is extremely hand-wavy.

Can you be more concrete in what you think this looks like?

The way I see it, we're only 5-10 years away from having general purpose robots and AI that can basically do anything. If the prices for that automation is low enough, there will be massive layoffs as workers are replaced.

There's no way to "naturally" solve the problem of skyrocketing unemployment without government involvement.

[NetMageSCW]

Ten years from now, we will still be ten years from general AI or robots.

[hackyhacky]

The key, as history teaches us, is guillotines.

[ap99]

Speaking of fairytales, you're living in your own.

Disconnecting value from productivity sounds good if you don't examine any of the consequences.

Can you build a society from scratch using that principle? If you can't then why would it work on an already built society?

Like if we're in an airplane flying, what you're saying is the equivalent getting rid of the wings because they're blocking your view. We're so high in the sky we'd have a lot of altitude to work with, right?

[IgorPartola]

Imagine a society where one person produces all the value. Their job is to do highly technical maintenance on a single machine that is basically the Star Trek replicator: it produces all the food, clothing, housing, energy, etc. that is enough for every human in this society and the surplus is stored away in case the machine is down for maintenance, which happens occasionally. Maintaining the machine takes very specialized knowledge but adding more people to the process in no way makes it more productive. This person, let’s call them The Engineer, has several apprentices who can take over but again, no more than 5 because you just don’t need more.

In this society there is literally nothing for anyone else to do. Do you think they deserve to be cut out of sharing the value generated by The Engineer and the machine, leaving them to starve? Do you think starving people tend to obey rules or are desperate people likely to smash the evil machine and kill The Engineer if The Engineer cuts them off? Or do you think in a society where work hours mean nothing for an average person a different economic system is required?

[thegrimmest]

For something to be deserved, it must be earned. What do these people do to distinguish themselves from The Engineer’s pets? If they are wholly dependant on him for their subsistence, what distinguishes him from their god?

To derive an alternate system you need alternate axioms. The axioms of our liberal society are moral equality and peaceful coexistence. Among such equals, no one person, group, or majority has the right to dictate to another. What axioms do you propose that would constrain The Engineer? How would you prevent enslaving him?

[idiotsecant]

Hey, dude. How does someone earn value once automation does all the work? Earning the right to a share of the resources when resources are derived from automated labor is such a thoroughly pathological concept that I'm not sure we're communicating on the same planet.

[thegrimmest]

Same way everyone has earned value from the beginning of time: negotiate with others. We are all born naked and without possessions. Everything we get, from the first day of our birth, is given to us by someone else. Our very first negotiations are simple, we are in turns endearing and annoying. As we grow older they become more complex. All I’m saying is that these interactions should be maximally voluntary and nonviolent.

[dangus]

> For something to be deserved, it must be earned.

Eeeeeerrrr, wrong! This is garbage hypercapitalist/libertarian ideology.

Did you earn your public school education? Did you earn your use of the sidewalk or the public parks and playgrounds? Did you earn your library card? Did you earn your citizenship or right to vote? Did you earn the state benefits you get when you are born disabled? Did you earn your mother’s love?

No, these are what we call public services, unalienable rights, and/or unconditional humanity. We don’t revolve the entire world and our entire selves solely around profit because it’s not practical and it’s empty at its core.

Arguably we still do too much profit-based society stuff in the US where things like healthcare and higher education should be guaranteed entitlements that have no need to be earned. Many other countries see these aspects of society as non-negotiable communal benefits that all should enjoy.

In this hypothetical society with The Engineer, it’s likely that The Engineer would want or need to win over the minds of their society in some way to prevent their own demise and ensure they weren’t overthrown, enslaved, or even just thought of as an evil person.

Many of my examples above like public libraries came about because gilded age titans didn’t want to die with the reputation of robber barons. Instead, they did something anti-profit and created institutions like libraries and museums to boost the reputation of their name.

It’s the same reason why your local university has family names on its buildings. The wealthiest people in society often want to leave a positive legacy where the alternative without philanthropy and, essentially, wealth redistribution, is that they are seen as horrible people or not remembered at all.

[thegrimmest]

> This is garbage hypercapitalist/libertarian ideology.

Go on then, how do you decide what people deserve? How do you negotiate with others who disagree with you?

> examples above like public libraries

I agree! The nice part about all these mechanisms is that they’re voluntary.

If you’re suggesting that The Engineer’s actions should be constrained entirely by his own conscience and social pressure, then we agree. No laws or compulsion required.

[dangus]

We decide via a hopefully elected government.

These examples aren’t generally voluntary once implemented. I can’t get a refund from my public library or parks department if I decide not to use it.

The social pressure placed on The Engineer is the manifestation of law. That’s all law is: a set of agreed-upon social contracts, enforced by various means.

Obviously, many dictators and governments get away with badly mistreating their subjects, and that’s unfortunate, shouldn’t happen, and shouldn’t be praised as a good system.

I think you may be splitting hairs a little bit here and trying really hard to manufacture…something.

[idiotsecant]

You sure seem to know a lot about what people 'deserve' so I'm not sure I can hope to crack the rind of that particular coconut but I will leave you with this: Humans, by virtue of being living, thinking beings deserve lives of fulfillment, dignity, and security. The fact that we have, up until present, been unable (or perhaps unwilling) to achieve this does not mean it's not possible or desirable, only that we have failed in that goal.

Everything else, all the 'isims' and ideologies are abstractions.

[carlosjobim]

It's already completely disconnected, don't worry about it. Most people who own any real estate earn more in price appreciation per year than they earn in take-home salary from their real full-time jobs.