Unnecessariat • Hacker News Board

Re: Unnecessariat

#181

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 25, 2016, 11:45 AM UTC

hyperpape wrote: post #26

devishard wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're really putting yourself in their shoes. For most people, things are were better for them before required, high-cost health plans. Most people don't get seriously sick in a given year; that's why health insurance works at all. And for those with required health insurance, it doesn't really help. Take me as an example: I'm 29 in NY and the healthcare plans I have available to me basically fall into…

At 15000, you are making https://aspe.hhs.gov/computations-2015-annual-update-hhs-pov... ), and are eligible for medicaid, or large subsidies in other states. The details really matter here, and my sense (though I'm very open to correction) is that the people who the ACA is most burdensome for are high enough income that they qualify for smaller subsidies, but still can't afford healthcare.

[deleted]

Re: Unnecessariat

#182

Post by mac01021 » Wed, May 25, 2016, 11:53 AM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #121

mac01021 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You just get to try and elect people who will HOPEFULLY do what's in your best interests. You get to do a bit more than that, though few ever do. Making full use of representative democracy means continuously contacting your representative, not leaving them alone until you're convinced they'll act in your interests, and not leaving your friends/family/community alone until you've got as many other people as you can…

Sure, you get to call an intern in their office who will put a tally mark in a spreadsheet. The congressman may use this "how many people called about X" data to make decisions on what to vote for, or they may not.

Yes. But you can do this weekly. And spend tons of time getting others to do this weekly. Dozens of calls about X have more than dozens as many timed as much impact as ome call about X.

If you get a bunch of people with the same concern to form an ”organization“, and then you spend weeks making repeated requests for your congressman to meet with your group, they'll eventually do it. You can write a op-eds and publish content on the internet to try to generate political will. You need to convince your rep that (to go with the example from the article) thousands of their constituants think that the ACA is a terrible idea and that they would enthusiastically support this other policy in its place. If there is a sensible policy that a large fraction of the country would support that hasn't been proposed in a bill yet then they might consider trying to look good by being the one to propose it.

I'm not saying it's easy or that it's guaranteed to work. I'm just saying that most people's civic engagement is about 0.001% of what it should be if they really want a voice in the government.

Picking a candidate for President (a position which isn't even in the legislature) is not the most effective way for you to drive policy.

Re: Unnecessariat

#183

Post by loup-vaillant » Wed, May 25, 2016, 11:54 AM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #177

jraines wrote: post #24

I'm reminded of Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" speech: The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the fut…

>Everything he listed has gotten worse, not better Not productivity. It's roughly doubled. http://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-3/what-can-labor-producti...

The Luddites were right: all other things being equal (they aren't), more productivity means less jobs. Right now, not everyone can work full time, and it shows no sign of ever getting better: demand simply does not grow as fast as productivity.

This means lots of free time. The question is, how do we allocate it? There are only 2 ways to do it: have everyone work less, or have less people work at all. Really, this is a no-brainer. Yet somehow, we're still opting for unemployment (have less people work at all).

We can do better.

Re: Unnecessariat

#184

Post by sokoloff » Wed, May 25, 2016, 11:58 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #157

yummyfajitas wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step 1: Poor person produces something useful, rather than simply consuming. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Everyone is homeless? Could you fill in step 2 for me? I'm not following your logic.

Poor person accepts job paying 1$/hour to compete with indian wages.

Absent coercion, I'd assume that was that person's free choice and that taking whatever state subsidy was implied plug $40/week is better than just the state subsidy.

(Work provides a way to fill the time, have social interactions, and a sense of purpose and accomplishment, in addition to the financial aspect.)

Re: Unnecessariat

#185

Post by vintermann » Wed, May 25, 2016, 12:06 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #178

vintermann wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt Bruenig (yes, the guy who was recently hounded out of his job for calling a powerful Hillary supporter a scumbag) had an interesting description of this argument, or rather this series of arguments. First, he says, libertarians defend inequality through desert: * People should keep their money, they worked hard for it! Then Bruenig points out that there is capital income, which does not come from work. Capital w…

IMO, capital income does come from work; it's just that the moment of income is divorced from the moment of work. That could be by a year, a decade, or a century, and it could accrue to the individual who personally did the work, or to someone to whom they traded, gifted, or willed the capital. I believe that an individual should be allowed to save the results of their work and consume the benefits later. I believe t…

In any case, they don't come from your kids' work. So you have to go back to arguing for voluntarism (step two of the carousel) rather than desert in order to justify your children enjoying something they didn't work for.

And the problem with that is that it really relies on a "facts on the ground" view on property entitlements. If our laws about property are man-made and supported with force, why shouldn't we change how they can be transferred (or possibly voided in case of death?). You can disagree, and you certainly can fight it, but you can't really morally condemn anyone for trying to take it from you.

Re: Unnecessariat

#186

Post by nhaehnle » Wed, May 25, 2016, 12:07 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #171

nhaehnle wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your definition of "theft" is "taking something by (threat of) force", then (1) private property at least of land clearly is theft, (2) one could even go further and argue that some forms of taxation aren't theft, and (3) police are regularly involved in theft even while doing the right thing. The key is in "taking something": there is a baseline state of the world against we're comparing the current status quo. F…

If your definition of "theft" is "taking something by (threat of) force", That is not my definition of theft. Theft by force (or threat of force) is a subset of theft in the more general sense. For point (1), there is clearly a historical baseline in which no land was owned by anybody, and all land was equally accessible to all. Then people started to make claims that some part of land was theirs, and that they had t…

Theft by force (or threat of force) is a subset of theft in the more general sense.

Fair enough, but how do you reconcile that with my point (3)? Police returning an item as in the given example means the police are thieves according to your definition.

If not, how do you propose mitigating this conflict?

In the same way as it is done today. Note that I'm not the one who is saying that land ownership is theft - you are, because you are trying so say "taking by (threat of) force is theft".

In reality, what is and isn't theft is defined by social convention. So land ownership, police returning items, and tax aren't theft, even though they all involve (the threat of) force. Taking an item from somebody else's home is theft, even when no force between humans is is involved at all.

Re: Unnecessariat

#187

Post by loup-vaillant » Wed, May 25, 2016, 12:11 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #127

Animats wrote: post #15

From the article: "We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. " That's it right there. We just don't need that many people to do all the stuff. Some of that is imports, but not all, or even most, of it. Get behind the $15 minimum wage. The…

Get behind the $15 minimum wage. Better yet, get behind eliminating minimum wage altogether. It's an unnecessary and immoral restriction on free and voluntary trade. If I want to offer up my time for $6.00 an hour, I have that right damnit. Especially if the alternative is doing nothing and netting $0.00 an hour.

You're sarcastic, right? Surely you're aware that when you starve, your participation in the "market" is neither free nor voluntary? Your hand is just being forced.

Pushed little bit further, this could even re-introduce slavery: just give this little bit of "freedom": the right to renounce all freedoms. Surely that's better than starvation, right?

Re: Unnecessariat

#188

Post by loup-vaillant » Wed, May 25, 2016, 12:14 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #15

From the article: "We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. " That's it right there. We just don't need that many people to do all the stuff. Some of that is imports, but not all, or even most, of it. Get behind the $15 minimum wage. The…

> Get behind the $15 minimum wage. Then the 8 hour day and 40 hour week.

40 hour week? Try 32 (4 days a week). Active workers in the US industry are hardly working more than 30 hours on average anyway (lots of part time workers).

Of course, the minimum wage should be raised accordingly.

Re: Unnecessariat

#189

Post by zkhalique » Wed, May 25, 2016, 12:18 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #168

vintermann wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt Bruenig (yes, the guy who was recently hounded out of his job for calling a powerful Hillary supporter a scumbag) had an interesting description of this argument, or rather this series of arguments. First, he says, libertarians defend inequality through desert: * People should keep their money, they worked hard for it! Then Bruenig points out that there is capital income, which does not come from work. Capital w…

And this is certainly true, but if the common good is what we target, why not have a proper welfare state, a solid UBI funded by high taxes etc.? Well, taxation is theft, so that is the easy answer to that. :-) But to dig a little deeper... a UBI is an interesting concept, and especially so when one considers a future where most, or even all, human labor becomes unneeded. In a world of 100% technological unemployment…

It's not a Ponzi scheme. You simply tax the thing (savings from firing humans) that is increasingly eating the lunch of the other thing (humans being employed), which you want to subsidize, because of a constraint libertarians don't mention (we want all humans to live even if demand for their labor is low).

Here's what you do:

1) Tax the monetary gains made by corporations from greater automation, not enough to disincentivize R&D, but enough to counteract inflation from step #2.

2) Institute an unconditional basic income, like Alaska already does for natural resources. Everyone gets a check in the mail.

You balance #1 and #2 so there is no net inflation. The more corporations lay people off in the aggregate, the more wages will be replaced by UBI.

Re: Unnecessariat

#190

Post by vintermann » Wed, May 25, 2016, 12:23 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #168

vintermann wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt Bruenig (yes, the guy who was recently hounded out of his job for calling a powerful Hillary supporter a scumbag) had an interesting description of this argument, or rather this series of arguments. First, he says, libertarians defend inequality through desert: * People should keep their money, they worked hard for it! Then Bruenig points out that there is capital income, which does not come from work. Capital w…

And this is certainly true, but if the common good is what we target, why not have a proper welfare state, a solid UBI funded by high taxes etc.? Well, taxation is theft, so that is the easy answer to that. :-) But to dig a little deeper... a UBI is an interesting concept, and especially so when one considers a future where most, or even all, human labor becomes unneeded. In a world of 100% technological unemployment…

We can't divorce the need for human labor from distributional concerns. For all we know, in the future the extremely rich will place a premium on "hand-made" luxury yachts, even if the autonomous robots they own could do it far cheaper. Human labor won't be totally unnecessary in such a world, but it would still be a miserable world.