Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

> Oh sure, it's theoretically possible that they'd change completely if only the system was different. It's also unlikely, and I don't want to bet the stability, quality of life and relative peacefulness of our modern societies on the off-chance that you're right.

Isn't the point that the current system doesn't provide a stable, peaceful and qualitative life for most of the population? Are you saying it's good enough because you and your dearest have it good?

> But the hours worked has steadily gone down while the hours spent in front of the TV has steadily risen. Something doesn't add up in your calculations. People don't work themselves to death any more. In fact, they have so much free time on their hands, that they spend money to kill it. They literally pay other people to entertain them, to take the free time off of their hands, and they don't know what to do with it. That's a very different situation from 200, 100 or even 50 years ago.

For most of humans history, humans have worked a few hours a day, or 15 hours/week. It's only in recent times that it went up. It happened when it became possible to store goods, and then a few eyed their chance to start exploiting the rest by claiming all the means of productions and forcing the rest to work all their life while the capital owners reaped the benefits. Sure, in some places in the western world, for example in Denmark where I live, it has improved a lot since just 50 years ago, but that doesn't mean it's good enough. People should only work as much as necessary, not as much as they can be forced to to fill the bottomless pockets of a few.

> Right, right, until people starve and we go back to the evil system because, when all is said and done, it's just more efficient. I mean, it's not that this hasn't been tried before.

It hasn't been tried for some thousands of years for a prolonged period for a vast majority of the population.

There has been a few places where they tried in recent times, like anarchist Catalonia in the thirties, but every time capitalist powers see free people as a threat because it might give their own people ideas about how life could be, so every time, like in anarchist Catalonia, they arrive with weapons and kill everyone that won't capitulate to their demands of surrender.

> And yes, I'm absolutely aware that it can work in smaller groups. I'm convinced you can have wonderful small groups based on solidarity. They will run on social control and everybody will make sure that everybody contributes as much as they are able and as much as is needed. But it doesn't scale, unless you want to create a massive police state that takes over the social control thing, and I don't want that.

It doesn't have to scale. That's the problem. We shouldn't try to create such big communities like the US, or Denmark for that matter. It's too big. Science has shown that people cannot trust and function properly in groups of more than ~150 individuals, so why do we try do force them to? Just look at the US, where the difference between the people are so vast, that it's a wonder that it's only now that it's crumbling.

Obviously 150 is too small, but the solution is lots and lots of small communities, a hierarchy, not in power, but in communication structure so that communities can cooperate while keeping sovereignty over themselves instead of being at the mercy of people that live hundreds or thousands of kilometres away.

There's lots of great writing about this. A good place to start is Murray Bookchin[1].

[1]: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post...

> Burn it down, maybe we can build something better in it's place. But what if we can't? What if we end up with something that's terrible because all those nice ideas just don't work? Then you've burnt down a few centuries of progress for a dream. You may be willing to accept that risk, but I can guarantee you that most people are not, because, after all, even for the poorest 10%, this is the best time to be alive during pretty much all of humanity's existence. Well, okay, maybe witnessing the aliens landing the pyramids was pretty great, but aside from that, this is it.

Actually more people in absolute numbers are not able to meet their basic nutritional needs every single they than ever before[2] so while I have it pretty great, it's pretty damn bad a huge amount of people.

[2]: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-...

Also I'm not sure why you think we couldn't at least build something like this again, if all else failed. It was build ones, we could probably do it better with a clean slate. Still, I think we can even strive for more, and we would succeed. People want to survive, and if there is not something stopping them, they will. I have full faith in that, because humans have survived for so long, even when all the previous societies and civilisations has failed, even when Rome fell, and we will survive when this one fails. The question is how we will structure what comes next. Will we finally base it on solidarity, or will it ones again be based on greed, favouring the few over the many.

I'm not particularly sure what your point is. I don't love big private organizations. I'd prefer a world with medium sized companies that fail fast. But I don't hate them, not a lot - they have two big things that separate them from governments: you can always go to another, usually just by crossing the street and going into a different shop. And they can't shoot you or throw you in jail.

> In North-Western Europe? It's good enough for everyone, more than good enough, it's too much, we're suffering the illnesses of abundance, not of scarcity, we're obese, not starving, we're bored, not busy.

That's an extreme exaggeration. Sure, I, and possibly you, are experiencing this. But still here, there are people who are not.

Doesn't matter though. Even if everyone here had it good, we do so because of the exploitation of others in different parts of the world. It's all connected, and we have to fix it all, to fix anything.

> The lowest 10% has never lived a better life, objectively. I assume your issue isn't objective measurements but relative qualities? I.e. how good is the poorest person's life compared to the richest? It's still pretty damn great. We do have a class-gap in life expectancy, but it's small, much, much smaller than it was a hundred years ago and let's not talk about any time before that.

Objectively? If you mean having more materialistic stuff than ever before? Sure. But what about life quality? Being able to relax, not having so many concerns, and so on. Sure, we have Netflix now, but we have also have for one a huge amount of mental illness. There are so much more about well-being than just having Netflix and a warm bed.

> First of all that's inaccurate because you're counting "work" as in "work for money". A subsistence farmer has never worked 15 hours/week, and even someone who has worked in some form of employment has had a lot more home-work than they do now. Specialization means everyone works more in one thing but doesn't have to work a little bit in everything.

I'm talking before there were farmers. Before it was possible to exploit others, because humans could only survive by caring for each other, because the tripe lived and died according to their team work. Surplus of food was not a possibility, so there was no way for anyone to hoard stuff, so compassion and sharing were the overall way of life for the most part because that gave the best chances of surviving. Back then, people surely hunted and gathered food, but it was in total hours not more than about 15 hours a week, sometimes less. That's the current consensus on the matter.

Then agriculture happened and few other technologies were developed, and suddenly surplus was a possibility, and then some wanted to keep the surplus for themselves, and work hours increased for everyone else.

> Second: they've lived very simple and quite short lives. We can have that as well, but we don't. We want to live healthy and long and have retirements where we don't work at all that span 10-20% of our adult life span. That's unprecedented on a large scale.

We still produce many times more than we need. There is absolutely no reason we couldn't work a lot less and still produce all that's needed for all that. The only problem is that a few people keep such a big part of the wealth for themselves.

> What's necessary? Should they have a purse for a rainy day? Then they'll have to work more than what's strictly necessary for today's survival. Should they have retirement? Well, add another 20% and so on.

They should have all that, and they could and still only work say 15 hours a week. We still produce way too much of which too much of the wealth go to a few hands instead of being more evenly distributed.

> I absolutely agree, but that's not going to happen.

Sure it can, I don't see why not, and at least I'm gonna do whatever I can to fight the fight.

> UBI may well be the fuel you need for the acceleration of society's splintering. Maybe you can try the small commune afterwards, if anyone is still alive.

I think climate change, corvid-19 and all the next pandemics that are coming, are the fuel.

> Right, but we're talking about modern societies, not the situation in the third world, aren't we? How many people in Denmark aren't able to meet their basic nutritional needs?

I'm talking about all people in the whole wide world. I don't see why I shouldn't care for other people just because they are not part of my world directly, and I don't believe you can fix something, like climate change, or inequality, or a pandemic, without fixing it everywhere. Gresham's law; if bad things exist, they spread until there is nothing good left.

> Oh, I'm sure we could. It's just that we'll have to wade through rivers of blood and endure unimaginable amounts of human suffering. We do not just stand on the shoulders of giants, we stand on the bones of the many that lived and died before us to bring about the world we have today. If we get thrown back a few hundred years, we'll probably get back here again, but it'll take a while, and it will take a lot of blood, sweat and tears.

> It's easy to speak from the privileged position of wealthy peacefulness about how easy it was achieved and to wager it on a coin flip. It's a different story for those that achieved it, much like the politicians that send soldiers to war and the soldiers that do the dying and the killing.

I'm convinced that if we don't do these things, it will be much worse. Climate change and future pandemics is not something our capitalist, oligarchical civilization are gonna fix, so if we don't fix it ourself, we will be much worse off.

I think you've summed it up that your beliefs are very specific and if anyone disagrees with one of them they're unlikely to agree with the rest of them.

I will also note that libertarian principles are not very popular with the electorate because most people will gladly sacrifice abstract freedom for {economic growth|job opportunities|reduce poverty|etc}.

Hmm. I think they are valuable and can be considered separately, like:

1) that we have a constitution that limits federal authority (for what I think are many good historical reasons);

2) socialism/communism has caused big problems, also with many extensively painful historical examples. I relate this to "government cares for us";

3) my beliefs about the nature of life, purpose of government, importance of freedom to choose what one does with one's earnings, etc., also could be considered separately. And that I have learned for myself of God's reality.

4) many others, individually also, I think...if were to take more time on them each. Like my personal experiences with the worst customer service I've ever had, being from federal agencies. Etc. But we don't have to, of course. :)