251–260 of 367 posts
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Germany famously just passed legislation that forces employers to record working hours for all employees.
That is a non-issue regarding privacy and the intention is to ensure compliance with employee protection laws capping the maximum weekly working time. You write down when you started working and you write down when you stop. Some employers automatically subtract your legally required break time, some want you to enter it manually.
I don't like the idea that work PCs scan the devices on my home network for what they're up to. I think this is something most people aren't aware of.
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What leads you to believe that people who do not want to work are desirable to have in the workplace? UBI also doesn't give you wealth, it gives you basics, and overal that's much cheaper than dragging down an entire team or department. At the same time, we currently have plenty of people who do not want to work and do indeed not work, that will not change regardless of what you implement. I also think that happy and…
They ain't desirable. But who wants to pay them do nothing? Many people ain't happy to cover existing welfare. Increase welfare and even more people would feel it's unfair.
I do. Because these sentences are in opposition, not support. If they are undesirable in the workforce (reduce productivity or whatever) then why would you want them working? If they drain x dollars from the system, UBI costs y dollars, and if y Here's how I see it: if the measure of a man is how he treats someone who can give him nothing, then the measure of a country is how they treat those that do nothing for them. In other words: the floor. I don't believe countries should have ceilings on wealth or how quality of life, but they should have floors (they all do fwiw). That's what we should focus on more: the floor, not the ceiling.
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You know, it's not just labor that contributes to economic output. Natural resources and accumulated knowledge and technology contribute too. Both belong to everyone with equal share. Giving people what their share of resources and technology has produced is only fair.
How does anyone have any claim to 'their share' of resources without any input? Just by being in existence, they deserve to consume natural resources / technology? I don't see how that makes sense.
Yes. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We also must acknowledge the tragedy of the commons, and that just by existing both utility is being extracted from them (in the modern era) and natural resources that there is no question that they have a right to (air, water, etc) are being utilized and modified by others. E.g. a coal processing plant provides a lot of utility (electricity) but the economic model does not account for the costs that this has on both a global (carbon) and local (pollution) consequences on shared goods (that are innate rights).
Stupidest way to measure/compare productivity.
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You can accuse UBI of many things but unfair it is clearly not, hence the "universal". Everyone gets the same amount - but the assumption is most will then choose to work and earn extra income on top of that.
How is it fair? You do give the same amount to everyone, but you do not take the same from everyone - you have to take more from those who chose to work. Hence the unfair part.
Not the right framing, but not far off. It depends where you set the threshold and how much you extract. Remember that money is a resource where positive feedback loops exist: "you have to have money to make money", "the first million is the hardest", or "passive income." We can think of money as sticky and attractive. Momentum matters. Also remember that a capitalist market relies on competition and money to be fluid and constantly exchanged. Transactions are not zero-sum, but many times result in a positive value. This is even true in a pure fair transaction and without considering external costs like taxes.
tldr: there are sources and sinks in the economy and this is conditioned on the value in the previous time-step. Capitalism works well when value is continually exchanged: meaning sinks are bad.
Once we consider these things, "fair" gets more complicated. One can argue that it isn't fair that wealth begets wealth. That certain goods have an economic value that is not being captured by the evaluations, and are often difficult to put price tags on (e.g. air quality). Tragedy of the commons is quite real. One can also argue that it isn't "fair" that the system does not optimize for societies and instead optimizes individuals. Fair is difficult to define and none of this is as easy as it appears on the surface. Both pro and anti-UBI people make these mistakes. I'm not attacking a particular side but rather suggesting this isn't as straight forward as you have characterized.
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Those with the most to lose benefit the most from having a just and civil society, but that realization never seems to percolate through.
A just and civil society being one where the harder I work, the more taxes I pay? Where stores are closing right and left because theft isn’t prosecuted but I have to pay $7,000 to get a bathroom permitted while an RV on the street outside my house is considered a home and gets to dump shit on the street with no repercussions?
How about: a just and civil economic system is one where the more utility I produce the higher quality of life I can achieve?
This is very different from what you implied (being punished for creating value). Taxes and UBI aren't in opposition to this. It still rewards production and those that create value. It also recognizes that hard work isn't always valuable (digging a tunnel with a spoon is harder than with heavy machinery. But the latter provides more value). Maybe we should frame things this way instead. Progressive taxes do not result in situations where a raise in pay causes a decrease in take-home money. It does instead address the issue that money is sticky and the mere existence of capital passively generates capital (which actually means you generate wealth without doing work). Fine at certain levels but clearly can get out of control (generate wealth for retirement vs generational/perpetual wealth where your children end up wealthier than you passively).
I don’t have an issue being monitored if it means I can work from home more frequently. I think the data would help highlight that I’m more productive working from home than in the office due to less distractions and wasted commute time. It would be helpful if firms monitoring productivity mentioned what they consider productivity to be. However, in doing this, it would also make it easy for individuals to game any p…
> my daily standup is at 9:30AM. I typically join the standup on my phone, and make coffee and have a snack. Our standup runs 30-45mins due to how it’s managed and doesn’t provide much value to me Ugh, I feel you on that. (tho I don't agree with the monitoring part, there's no need for it) I just realized that I haven't had these silly daily standups for nearly a year now, since changing companies. And guess what? My…
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> my daily standup is at 9:30AM. I typically join the standup on my phone, and make coffee and have a snack. Our standup runs 30-45mins due to how it’s managed and doesn’t provide much value to me Ugh, I feel you on that. (tho I don't agree with the monitoring part, there's no need for it) I just realized that I haven't had these silly daily standups for nearly a year now, since changing companies. And guess what? My…
Daily standups can be performed via a Slack channel and a template.
During covid when WFH, I received a legitimate looking SMS message with a link, so rather than clicking it, I curl --verbose'd it (and one subsequent redirect) before seeing it was an obvious phishing / troll. The next day, my VPN & SSO was disabled with instructions to contact corporate security. My use of curl had been detected and while they didn't accuse me of anything, they claimed that they wanted to make sure…