I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

>oh my god can we stop acting like the only possibilities are american "capitalism" or soviet "communism", it's exhausting

No way -- I threw in 1600s Europe as well as subsistence farming in there.

I think the Patreon point is really interesting. I really don't like Patreon or anything like that, but is a bit miraculous. There's some really, really, niche art up there. That sort of art would have NEVER found an audience, even as recently as the 90s. If it had to be on TV, or in a book, no publisher or producer would have touched it. And even if they had, said publisher or producer would have never managed to find the 0.001% of the population who was interested in it.

The kind of niche art that's available now was simply never possible in any other time in history.

A potential counter-argument could be something like: yes, in the past artists could not have just produced just what they wanted, but perhaps more artists were previously employable (even if they had to just make paintings or Jesus or some other popular thing they didn't really care for.)

What do you think about that?

(Reasonable) Good faith at the individual level is a good thing, but when trying to scale it and build a working socialist system out of it, you're 100% set for failure.

> could you please summarize in short what you meant here as keypoint?

> I'm not sure we are interpreting this right,based also on reactions and troll references in clear contrast to your other comment.

I'm not sure what's unclear about my first comment, but I'll try to rephrase with new words.

People are people and deserve to be treated humanely as such. Productivity is but one aspect of people, and not the only one you can ascribe any value to. People are more than their productivity.

Productivity is often just used to mean 'how much money you earn', but I find it useful to expand its meaning to 'how well you're doing what you're enjoying'. If you spend time reading books because you enjoy it, that's productive. If you spend time at work earning money, that's also productive, since money is needed to, ya know, stay alive, and thus let you enjoy life, for what it's worth.

My point about disabilities is probably better expanded by the article in question, unless you have any pointed questions at that.

> also the comment

> "I've considered suicide because I was unable to make ends meet. I don't want others to experience that. Is that too much to ask?"

> was important and extremely insightful, wanted to ask what you meant with "was unable to nake ends meet" which type of ends?

The instance I had in mind was one where I was in danger of not having food to eat at the end of a month. I wasn't in any danger for that matter. I can get free food locally if I'm desperate. I can call a friend and ask for a favour (and friends have asked me!). But getting to that point is well beyond the point where my mind goes 'oh ffs, just end it, it's not worth the bother'. If someone is at that point, they should get help, but ideally, they shouldn't get to that point in the first place. Prevention is better than a cure (although we should work on cures too!).

> we could take care of everyone with disabilities 10x over with plenty to spare.

Yes, like the 40%[1] of Stanford undergrads who have disabilities. The greatest long term impediment to what you're suggesting is folks who don't need the help taking advantage of the resource distribution. It both massively increases the costs and sours those who have to pay into the system on the whole thing leading to a backlash.

If we could just solve this quirk of human nature, we'd be all set.

[1] https://fortune.com/article/rise-in-elite-students-seeking-a...

Let’s assume that all human labor goes through the same transition as agriculture: within a single human lifetime, 98% of all the human work is replaced by highly efficient machines and a small minority of highly productive people. If only 2% of the population have the required skills/talents/ownership to remain productive, on what basis does the remaining 98% participate in the economy? The answer has always been: people will invent new ways to be economically productive, but if the agriculture ladder of labor generalizes across the economy - what is left for the average, unexceptional, run-of-the-mill man on the street?