Free-As-In-Beer Electricity In Greece?

PolygamousRanchKid writes New Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will lay out his radical left-wing government's policies in a speech later on Sunday, firmly rejecting any more austerity forced on his debt-strapped country by its euro zone partners. In his first major speech to parliament as premier, Tsipras is expected to say that Greece wants no more bailout money, plans to renegotiate its debt deal and wants a "bridge agreement" to tide the country over until a new pact is sealed. A second part of the speech will touch on his government's social and fiscal policy over the longer term and is likely to repeat pledges for such things as a rise in the minimum wage and free electricity for poorer Greeks. Which gets me to thinking: with free electricity, wouldn't that be a great business opportunity, to build a cloud of servers in poorer Greeks' basements? Maybe that is the real plan behind the free electricity idea.

Comments

Bitcoin/altcoin/shitcoin

[Anonymous Coward]

I could see people starting to mine Bitcoin as well as other shitcoins a whole lot in Greece should this come into effect.

Can't eat what you don't grow

[Anonymous Coward]

How many failed socialist experiments do we need to see before it's written off as a failure?

I suppose as long as there's 1 more sucker, it will keep working.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[ozduo]

There will always be people who want a share of OTHER people's wealth. True socialism where people share their wealth (australian aboriginees great example) works but it is a disincentive system and a quick trip back to the stone age.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[The Real Dr John]

How many failed capitalist experiments are we going to be subjected to before corporations are no longer people, and the fruits of labor are distributed much more equitably here in the US? What is so much better about CEOs making 500 times as much as their office workers, than having some kind of rational basis for compensating workers, when it is the workers who are doing all the work? I am very tired of the failed, trickle-down capitalist experiments in the US and Europe, and will be very interested to see how much better Greece does when they don't tow the austerity line (austerity for the workers, or course, not the wealthy).

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[Half-pint HAL]

There will always be people who want a share of OTHER people's wealth.

I'm trying to work out which side of your equation is the employee, and which side the employer....

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[ArmoredDragon]

How many failed capitalist experiments are we going to be subjected to

I've only ever been subjected to one, and it doesn't seem to meet any practical definitions of failure. Though the number of failed socialist experiments on the other hand...Icarian, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Venezuelan, Cuban, the Paris Commune...actually the list would probably be big enough to make a book, so I'll stop there.

when it is the workers who are doing all the work?

I remember when I watched the documentary about Tetris, I think it was Alexey Pajitnov who said that in socialism they pretend to pay you if you pretend to work.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[rtb61]

The opposite is feudalism where a minority own everything and we are rapidly heading there. What kind of failure does that lead to, a rather lethal one be careful what you wish for.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[Anonymous Coward]

Greece will be better off in the sense that they won't waste their money on useless things anymore and focus on necessities instead of nice-to-haves, but that's simply because they won't be able to afford anything else. The Euro has allowed Greece to go deep into debt, and the things they bought weren't the right things and all in all too much. "Austerity" is really just an attempt to make them stop overspending and start using their resources wisely. Anybody who thinks Greece should be able to spend like they did before the house of cards came down on them, and it's Germany's fault that they can't, is delusional. Greece was a poor country and will be a poor country again. There is no shortcut. The Greeks have to get their shit together, and I believe they can, because they can work and they're not untalented, but it seems they're really not motivated and prefer to blame Germany.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[TWX]

That's what always cracks me up about the arguments made for or against a form of monetary policy, people argue against a fringe extreme without actually looking at what the goal is.

Very few conservatives argue for the complete abolition of all social services and safety-nets such that everyone literally is on their own. Sure, some do, but not the majority.

Very few liberals argue for the complete abolition of corporations and the ability to accumulate private wealth. Sure, some do, but not the majority.

All we're arguing is to what degree we limit the accumulation of personal wealth, and to what degree we provide social services. I happen to agree that corporations should not have so many individual rights as they currently enjoy, and I also believe that corporate officers that have subdivided their companies up into small entities to attempt to limit liability should not be free to do so. I also believe that there should be limits on the amount of financial assistance offered to those unemployed that have children, and that many things that qualify for assistance should not do so, and that continuing to receive benefits should be somewhat contingent on proving that one is making a concerted effort to find work.

I'm sure that some disagree with me. That's fine. I don't want to hear how some view that could be interpreted as possibly relating to mine is bad, I want to hear about how someone's different idea and its merits, and after we've established pros, let's look at cons.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[saigon_from_europe]

It is one thing when we speak about company founders. But there are many CEOs, CFOs and other tom managers that never too any risks and became CEOs/CFOs/whatever. The most problematic part here is that CEO actually does not actually suffer from his own decisions. If company goes bankrupt due to CEO's bad decisions, CEO will be able to live quite comfortably to the end of his life (in some cases, his kids as well + several generations), while the worker will end homeless and his kids would become beggars. So the real risk is with workers, not with the top management.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[Kjella]

How many failed capitalist experiments are we going to be subjected to before corporations are no longer people, and the fruits of labor are distributed much more equitably here in the US?

The problem is that you always end up trying to compare apples to oranges, how important is an engineer compared to a doctor compared to a plumber? What does job performance mean? Or is it just work is work, it all pays the same? That's one way to make sure nobody wants the hard jobs or to work hard. Same goes for services, what's more important my healthcare plan, your kid's education or my dad's pension? Nobody has an objective standard of fairness and trying to assign value by committee will fail as a thousand special interests tries to drag it this way and that.

Another important factor is that assigned values can't deal with fluctuations in supply and demand, if there's a shortage of pork and an excess of beef prices will adjust to even it out, you can't just demand it keep a certain price by fiat unless you want empty shelves. Which is not to say that the paycheck is the biggest where it's most "deserved" or "useful", but the capitalist system does a pretty good job at directing talent to the well-paying jobs and distributing non-essential scarce resources.

You could do a lot within the capitalist system just providing special tax benefits to the groups you want to support. But chances are you'd have to take them in taxes from somebody else. It wouldn't really work any better or different if you take away the money, somebody would be grabbing compensation from one group and giving it to another saying here, you deserve it more. And then ones who just got deprived would scream bloody murder. It's not hard to find faults with the market economy, but it's not hard to find faults with the plan economy either. In other words, explain a better system that'd actually work in the real world with selfish people who want to game the system.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[Fire_Wraith]

How many of those CEOs actually started the company, and put in that risk? A CEO is by no means the originator or owner of the company, after all. How many just came along after, and were hired to run things, only to make ridiculous amounts of money even if they wrecked the company in the process? That's what's ridiculous.

For every Steve Jobs, there's a lot more John Scullys. Carly Fiorina was certainly no Bill Hewlett or Dave Packard.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[Wrath0fb0b]

How many failed capitalist experiments are we going to be subjected to before corporations are no longer people, and the fruits of labor are distributed much more equitably here in the US?

What if it didn't matter how the fruits of labor were distributed so long as the number of fruits grew faster for each individual? That is, what if society was not a zero-sum game involving distribution of a set supply but a question of setting up the rules for maximum growth of the total?

I, for one, would rather consume 50-units in a community of individuals making 100 each then just getting 25 in a community making 25, even if the latter was distributed more equitably. To be fair, this is a point that a lot of people differ on - I've had some people earnestly believe that the disparately of consumption is itself an evil that's worth paying the price of making everyone worse off on an absolute scale.

[ Note that none of this suggests that unbridled capitalism is the best at growing the average consumption power. The history of capitalism is full of crony deals and other market perversities that ended up making everyone poorer on the whole (even as it made some individuals rich). Ultimately this is distinction that I think we need to abide -- are people getting rich by making everyone better off (e.g. by giving people things they actually want at a price they are willing to pay) or are they getting rich at the expense of others. ]

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[TWX]

I think that certain irresponsible people on the Right have done a very good job of smearing the word, such that a lot of poor and lower-middle class voters demonize the concept of being liberal when it's more likely that liberal policies would actually personally benefit them more than corresponding conservative policies.

It saddens me when issues like race, sexual orientation, and abortion, issues that probably won't personally affect the vast majority of voters, manage to be used as wedge-issues to get voters to vote against their direct interests.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[lucm]

How many failed capitalist experiments are we going to be subjected to before corporations are no longer people, and the fruits of labor are distributed much more equitably here in the US? What is so much better about CEOs making 500 times as much as their office workers, than having some kind of rational basis for compensating workers, when it is the workers who are doing all the work? I am very tired of the failed, trickle-down capitalist experiments in the US and Europe, and will be very interested to see how much better Greece does when they don't tow the austerity line (austerity for the workers, or course, not the wealthy).

Somehow I suspect that if you were offered a CEO position that pays 500x more than the office workers, your position would change. There's something about wealth redistribution that is significantly more attractive when you're on the receiving end, or at least on the sidelines.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[ScentCone]

Neither in Russia nor in China socialism is considered a failure

Well, let's see ... by "Russia," of course you mean the "Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics," right? Oh, right ... that union of socialist countries under a central socialist government failed miserably, and destroyed itself. Russia, on the other hand, isn't an example of failed socialism, it's just a good old fashioned miserable totalitarian state that's busy looking to invade its neighbors to make up for its crappy management of its own resources and industry. And ... China? Complete failure of socialism. How can you tell? Because they're clinging to it the collectivist crap in name only, and relying on market economics to produce the prosperity they want.

In both countries however capitalism is considered to be a failure.

No. Without market economics, Russians would be even worse off than they are now. Capitalism failing? Whatever shreds of it they're allowing to function are the only thing producing any shred of prosperity there. And failing in China? It's capitalism, and only capitalism, that is powering that country. Capitalism is working there despite the oppressive, putatively socialist tyranny that otherwise attempts to control the culture there.

Care to explain why Cuba is a failure

Ah, now I see. You don't actually consider poverty, being imprisoned for saying the wrong things, being killed or imprisoned for trying to leave and other socialist delights to be sign of failure. You have some very strange standards for success. Would you feel more successful here if we took away your internet access, threatened you with prison for criticizing politicians, made you subject to a family that has run the country at the point of a gun for decades, and which you'd feel so desperate to leave that you'd risk drowning in shark-infested waters, paddling to the US in raft, and hoping your own country won't jail you for trying? And Venezuela? Really? You must try very, very hard to avoid actually paying attention to what's going on there. If you insist on being that ignorant, please don't do anything that might risk other people - like, voting.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[angel'o'sphere]

Actually Germany is not socialism. nor are most other european counties, like one of the parents up claimed.
Arguable Scandinavia is navigating a middle way between socialism/non socialism.
However americans have a retarded idea what socialism actually is.
Universal healthcare? Socialism! (Rofl, it is a basic human right! China had that 4000 years ago, so had Egypt 6000 years ago)
Unemployment insurrance? Socialism!!! Rofl ...

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[ArmoredDragon]

Are they? From what I've seen, they make the US look socialist in comparison. No minimum wage, German labor unions try to form a bond between management and employees as opposed to soviet style thuggery of US labor unions, they're even more in favor of austerity than the US by far...what's so socialist about them? Other than the high taxes, maybe, but lots of very capitalist countries have high taxes.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[zr]

> If company goes bankrupt due to CEO's bad decisions, CEO will be able to live quite comfortably to the end of his life

if those bad decisions were in fact caused by the CEO there are plenty that can be (and is) done to punish them for poor performance. CEOs fired routinely.

ultimately you have to look at it from a different perspective.

a CEO job isn't an entitlement. much like a surgeon. someone would have to walk a long hard and at times perilous career path. relatively few make it to the top of the piramid.

which makes for a limited pool of quality CEOs. supply-demand. simple as that.

market won't shell out money for no good reason. market does its job as long as its free. and,

btw, the opposite is very much true as well, the only way to check/balance prices (including labor) is free market.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[alvinrod]

I wasn't aware that the German people owned the means of production or that private property was abolished.

Don't confuse Socialism with a Social Democracy. One tends to end in utter failure. The other tends to actually work quite well.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[Half-pint HAL]

I was addressing the GP AC's simplistic argument in his own terms.

Social democracy is the norm in most of Europe, with most people protected by a welfare safety net, and it has proved a good balance between pure market capitalism and pure state socialism. The issue in Greece, Spain and Italy is that the austerity measures are forcing those countries out of the continental European model and more towards the more market-oriented approach of the UK and USA. The current Greek government is trying to reestablish social democracy by instead targeting the real problem of corruption and greed in the rich. The problem with previous governments was that they were run by the corrupt and greedy rich, and hence weren't willing to address the issue.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[PapayaSF]

Care to explain why Cuba is a failure when health care and education are on a much higher level (and much cheaper) than in the USA albeit being under a boycott and other sanctions from the USA the last 70 years?

I always love it when defenders of Cuba portray the US boycott as a negative for Cuba. Have you forgotten that you are the one claiming that capitalism exploits people, and that communism is more efficient and fair? So what if we're not exploiting Cuba with our evil capitalist free trade? That should be a good thing for them, according to leftist economic theory, and allow them to become richer, right? But the fact is, in the 1950s, Cuba had the highest per capita income in Latin America. Now it has the lowest. If you want to blame that on the fact that we aren't practicing capitalism with Cuba, go right ahead!

As for their supposedly wonderful health care and education systems, according to what? Cuban government statistics? LOL.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[periklisv]

"All Greeks own many houses".
"All Greek fish sold are from Thailand"!
"All Greeks own yachts"?!
"You get thrown out of buses"?!?!
... and of course, all Greeks will steal from you, cheat on you, etc, etc
That's the most complete collection of negative comments I've ever read online, kudos to you for collecting them.
However, compiling a list of negative press releases (like the 3000 blind people, which was a great scandal here as well) and putting some anecdotal self experience, is far from describing the truth. Enough with the "greek sterotypes", even the German don't believe them
I'm not sure what kind of spoiled rich Greek friends you have, that can obviously spend enough to travel abroad and play basketball and whatever, but I assure you that the *vast* majority of people here are struggling with 30% true unemployment and 500 Euros wages. Old people are suffering with a 50%-70% cut in their pension. Disabled people where stripped off their benefits overnight. Gas and heating prices went up 50%. Electricity went up at least 20%. All these along with a 30%-50% increase in taxation *of the poor* (and 0% increase for the rich). This is the actual austerity, and not some bull*hit about people "forced to cut down on spending". Just take a look at the numbers of people immigrating, committing a suicide, dying of heart attacks etc over the last 4 years. Do you really think these where people frustrated for losing one of their yachts?

The true problem of austerity was not that people where "forced to cut down on spending". It's that the state was forced to cut down on spending and find revenue by means of heavy and irrational taxation (insane actually). This had the obvious impact of putting the economy in a deep depression, thus leading the state into having to borrow again, leading to more heavy austerity measures etc. So we've ended up now with an economy 30% smaller, unemployment went from 10% to 30%, people have lost their jobs, their houses, their hopes, their lives and what for? , only this time it's not the private sector that holds it (european banks), but they have traded this with European state loans (see: european people's money). The new government doesn't promise it will "continue the policy of spending". It has promised (and we'll see if it manages that) that it will revert insane austerity measures. For example, cutting the basic wage from 750 Euros to 580 Euros was a measure that not even the employers wanted: They knew that this would drive the economy even more deep into recession.

So, please, check your facts before posting condemns about a whole race, just because you got cheated and had a fight with a bus employee on a crowded island in a crowded season.
I could write much more, about how German businesses funded corruption in Greece, How Germany benefits from the Greek crisis, etc, but it's pointless; You people will always believe that it's "the Greeks' absent mindedness" that is to blame about the crisis, that they had it coming, and that it will never happen to your country. Good luck.
Ah, and by the way, during my trips worldwide I've met literally hundreds of people who h

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[tmosley]

Corporations are not capitalist, they are corporatist, ie fascist. Corporations are created by the state and given special immunity from courts (shareholders aren't personally liable for the actions of their company) and further given a sociopathic mission statement (maximize profit at any cost).

I really wish people would learn to use words in a clear manner rather than conflating polar opposite economic systems.

Re:Can't eat what you don't grow

[nikosdion]

I've only registered an account on /. to comment on this. Disclaimer: I'm not an economist but I did study basic macroeconomics in University. I am uniquely positioned to comment on this since I'm Greek and actually get to pay property taxes in Greece, unlike you, dear dunkelfalke.

Real estate is the typical investment in underdeveloped economies. In developed economies you place your money in stocks and bonds, having a more than fair chance of getting a ROI equal or higher than the inflation rate. So, if a German or American has about $50,000 they'll place them there. In Greece the inflation was at 20% until the early 90s whereas bond interest rates were at 14% and the stock market was anemic (even worse than it is today). In other words, placing your money on stocks and bonds would *lose* you money.

Therefore Greeks placed their money in (old) houses or would build their own with the combined effort of three or more generations of a family. I don't think that an average placement of $25,000 per person, over a lifetime of work, in brick and mortar makes that person "rich" by any standard.

The problem reading the statistics is that the valuation of the houses is based on Greece's skewed "objective valuation" system. This system assigns a price per square meter of property for each area, however this valuation is not grounded on market values. It's arbitrary and usually 5x-20x higher than the market value. For example, the "objective valuation" of a derelict house I've inherited from my father in a mountain village near Kalamata is 250 Euros per square meter when the market value is less than 100, for well-maintained property (as I said, mine is falling apart). I've heard of worse cases, e.g. a 1000 square meter field in a mountain village which only connect to the nearest villages via a single dirt road was 180,000 Euros. Market value? About 5,000 Euros.

The idea behind this irrational system is that the presumptive income is based on the "objective valuation" system which has a high tax-free bracket (I think it's currently at 140,000 Euros). If the market valuations were used, very few people would have to pay taxes based on the presumptive income derived from their property.

So, yes, on paper Greeks are extremely wealthy because of the typical Greek solution of cooking up the numbers towards a desired effect and not towards objectivity. In reality Germans have more (neither far more, nor far less) personal wealth and in immediately liquefiable assets. I'm stuck with a derelict house I inherited from my father, without electricity, and with ever diminishing market value. I still have to pay 600 Euros per annum for property taxes for this house. So, what does this property actually count for? An asset of purely imaginary value 15,000 Euros or an annual liability of 600 Euros?

And a final note: your mass media may want to portray Greeks as tax evaders but that's not quite the truth. Two years ago I paid 85,000 Euros income tax out of 110,000 Euros turnover. That's an effective taxation of 77% thanks to the highest taxation bracket being 43% and having to pay 55% of your taxes as a downpayment for next year. The next year my income was a third of that. I've still not gotten back any of the money which was withheld from me two years ago. Yet, the government demanded that I pay OUT OF MY POCKET for the new taxes, including the property tax. I was one of the lucky few who had money in the bank, no loans and no family so I paid up. The majority of SMEs who saw their turnover shrink to crap due to the austerity have loans to pay, families to feed so excuse them if they don't pay their taxes because they preferred to not lose their 30-year-old 2-bedroom apartment with no central heating and not wanting to leave their children hungry. Some couldn't even do that and these are the exact people who will get up to 800KWh of electricity per two months for free, for a total cost to the state of 2 million Euros. Meanwhile your country makes 105 million Euros per year from the

No more bailout

[CrimsonAvenger]

So, he doesn't want any more bailout money, but he DOES want them to give him money to "bridge" things over?

I take it that what he really means is that he doesn't want any more money with strings attached (like an obligation to pay it back), but he's happy to accept money with no strings....

Re: No more bailout

[CrimsonAvenger]

They're not being asked to pay back their debt.

They're being asked to not run up any more debt. They're required by the terms of the bailout (the part where a bunch of other governments a pile of money to keep them out of bankruptcy) to not borrow any more money till they pay the bailout back.

Now, what the Greeks want is for the other European governments to give them more money while at the same time not paying back the last pile of money they were handed.

Re: No more bailout

[cheesybagel]

That is not the only thing they are being asked for. They are also being asked to cut the minimum wage, rise working hours, cut pensions, fire public sector employees and sell state enterprises including the electric power company. The result of those measures, rather unsurprisingly, was 25% unemployment, including over 50% youth unemployment, people who cannot pay back their loans and more vagrant on the streets.

Unless the Greek government offers these people a change to live a decent life what do you think will happen?

Re: No more bailout

[AmiMoJo]

That's the key point. The average Greek didn't cause this mess, but is now suffering for the actions of those who did. It's unacceptable, and the Greek people have decided they won't stand for it. The ones responsible tried to claim that the consequences will be dire, but they have not been so in other countries and we will now get to see if the same thing will be true in Greece or not.

um, OK

[cascadingstylesheet]

No more bailouts, but we'd be happy to take some money to "bridge" us over to ... something.

We firmly reject any policies that might move us toward fiscal responsibility. Oh, and since we're so solvent, we're going to give away free electricity, because that's what everyone who is hopelessly bankrupt does, give away more "free" stuff.

Re:um, OK

[Half-pint HAL]

We firmly reject any policies that might move us toward fiscal responsibility.

No, Greece rejects any policies that won't lead to recovery. Austerity economics is madness, ignoring all the evidence from economic theory and history that says that recovery is hastened by putting money in the hands of those who will spend it quickest (ie the poor). After WWII the UK nationalised a multitude of private industries under the Keynes plan, and we grew. Austerity economics proposes the exact opposite of what worked previously, looking at national infrastructure as liquid assets to be sold. It's the wrong way round.

Re:um, OK

[MeNeXT]

Then why didn't it work the last 60 years? Money is debt, and throwing more debt into the old equation will result in bankruptcy.

The UK used the debt to rebuild the wealth that was destroyed during the war. Greece spent the money in entitlement. Unfortunately the next generation will have to pay. Listen to the solutions offered by the new Greek PM it basically reinstate the old but this time they promise they will not steal. Fingers crossed.

Austerity is imposing honesty into the equation and it will take another 10-20 years to fix properly. Greeks need to pay taxes for the services their government offers. They need to work to create wealth and not just a night out on the town. Greece was the grasshopper and now they need to become more like the ant because winter has come. If Europe was not part of this equation, austerity, the earnings of the Greeks would have disappeared as their currency would have no value.

I agree somewhat to your statement "Austerity economics is madness" and that is when the society generates more wealth than they produce otherwise they are leaving their bills and their debt for their children to pay. History has also told us that trying to maintain an unbalanced situation will only result is a larger disaster later on as was seen in the great depression. We need to put aside some wealth so we can avoid austerity when times are tough.

why does everyone always want to give...

[ganjadude]

why do rich and poor people always get things for "free"??? Be it a rich guy who gets a goodie bag at an award show woth thousands of dollars such as at the grammys, Or giving the "poor" free food and electricity. All of this, on the backs of the actual hard working middle class. Its wrong, the government should not be taking money from X and giving it to Y

Re:why does everyone always want to give...

[quantaman]

why do rich and poor people always get things for "free"??? Be it a rich guy who gets a goodie bag at an award show woth thousands of dollars such as at the grammys, Or giving the "poor" free food and electricity. All of this, on the backs of the actual hard working middle class. Its wrong, the government should not be taking money from X and giving it to Y

Why not? The idea that society achieves an optimal distribution of wealth on its own is ridiculous, adopting a perfect free market wouldn't make it any less so. One of the essential duties of government is to ensure a just and stable society, a limited degree of wealth redistribution is part of that process.

Re:why does everyone always want to give...

[mcrbids]

It's somewhat true that there's a bell curve in taxation, peaking with the middle class.

1) The poor have nothing to tax. They are generally on welfare or just off it, and struggling. The "freebies" a la "welfare" is not so much about the welfare receiving parents as giving their kids a chance to break out of the poverty trap, which they can't do if undernourished or uneducated.

2) The middle class has something to tax, but don't have the resources to defend themselves adequately. This is where the peak begins.

3) The upper middle class has a lot to tax, and is just starting to have enough resources to start to defend themselves, This is where the taxation peak starts to drop. (pretty much: between the 2% and the 0.5%)

3) The super wealthy hold all the cards. They can hire legions of lawyers and bankrupt countries if need be. This category controls or directly owns 50% of the world's wealth. Taxation doesn't even make sense to this class.

Re:why does everyone always want to give...

[drinkypoo]

I dont disagree to a degree, but at what point do the middle class stand up and say enough is enough. no more welfare

The problem is the general ignorance of the public. Here you are demanding an end to entitlement programs when the ones you're really paying for are entitlement programs for corporations. When the public starts demanding the right thing, then perhaps they will get it. Right now, the public is blaming the poor for being poor. Well, the rich can't have it both ways. Either they're The Job Creators, and they are failures at creating jobs, or they're just some greedy self-entitled fucks who have created their own entitlement programs based on artificial scarcity and forcing the masses to do their bidding. So either they're incompetent and trying to do the right thing, or they're evil and succeeding at their goals. There's no third way because people either have their needs met or they do not.

make people work for the state if on welfare

OK, this is not a very complicated concept: You are advocating for slavery. Step one, shit on the economy. Step two, force people to work. Step three, profit! So just stop, and don't bring this idea up again, unless you want to be known as pro-slavery.

As long as you keep blaming the poor for being poor, you're going to be blaming people who are by definition disenfranchised and powerless as opposed to the people who can actually change things for them. It is not news that the most reliable predictor of economic success is the economic success of one's parents.

When I was unemployed i was suposed to be "looking for work" or I wouldnt get paid... well an excel spreadsheet with some adjustments to the dates fixed that real quick. why not actually put me to work if im gonna collect?

Well, there is a way to do that which isn't slavery, and it's called public works. Frankly though, the line is pretty blurry there, too. It's the government's job to promote prosperity, it says so right there. When we get to the point at which public works are necessary, then capitalism has failed. Public works are a manipulation from outside the system only necessary as a correction when it has gone wrong — in a working capitalistic system, capital is motivated to produce what is needed. But in our system, you are able to use capital to produce more capital by depriving people of what is needed, through artificial scarcity. By definition, it will periodically require manual correction. And since the system is set up to so efficiently funnel money to a relative handful of people in charge of the largest corporations (the mechanisms through which they work) it's going to require regular and persistent correction.

TL;DR: A welfare system requiring people to work is slavery and only motivates maintenance of the welfare state, which is already a problem.

Re:why does everyone always want to give...

[drinkypoo]

i dont know what the answer is and i wont pretend to. Being someone who makes enough to not get any help, but makes enough to get taxed it seems as if id be better off people "poor"

The answer is the MGI (Minimum Guaranteed Income) which we used to call a COLA, or Cost Of Living Allowance. But I guess calling it an allowance is insulting. You take a flat percentage from everyone and then give an equal amount to everyone every year, either just from income or from their total cash pool — the latter of which sounds drastic, but which encourages investment, which in turn is what actually makes the economy go around.

Another part of the answer, though, is not permitting the banks to do what they're doing right now with housing: refusing to sell it at market price. We have multiple homes for every homeless person in this country, let alone family, and houses are just rotting all over the nation while people are living in trailers in their neighbors' back yards. Houses actually depreciate faster when they're not being lived in even if nobody is breaking into them and stealing all the fixtures as is wont to happen, because humans tend to institute some stability of temperatures — to say nothing of maintaining the property, fixing leaks and that sort of thing. So they're actually destroying the available housing in the country for the sake of... what? Nobody knows.

Hell id be ok with making everyone pay an electrical tax and giving everyone free electricity, but i find it wrong to only give something out to a small portion of the population on the backs of everyone else.

Then a minimum guaranteed income should be a no-brainer. If you want more than a minimal existence, you'll still have to work, so most people will do that. But people won't continue to work a shit job for shit money, because they won't have to. It can potentially eliminate entire obsolete industries, yet without putting hordes out on the street with all the predictable resultant social turmoil. And hey, let's throw health care in there too, because nobody should ever go into lifetime servitude because they got sick. I mean, what fucking year is it? These services only cost so much because we're letting Big Pharma run the game. At what point do we admit that capitalism is a failed concept? When you let the money make the rules, money just makes rules which permit it to self-perpetuate. This should not shock anyone.

Re:why does everyone always want to give...

[cheesybagel]

Or so you keep hearing. But when you actually look at the statistics the amount of people who actually do that is rather low.

Re:Physics violation

[geoskd]

If you're using the heat of the pc to keep warm, then there's no inefficiency in using the power to generate bitcoins.

The problem is that when dealing with heating and cooling, pure resistive heating is about the worst way to go about it. Its true, it is 100% efficient at converting the electrical energy to heat energy, but that electrical energy suffered many losses in becoming electrical energy.

A more economical solution is to take the fuel that was used to create the electricity and burn it directly to create heat. (Generally about 20%-30% more efficient overall).

An even better solution is to use that electricity to move Already existing heat around. This is by far the most efficient use of the energy in the first place.

Re:Physics violation

[rossdee]

"If calculation generates heat exactly as efficiently as every other use of electricity that doesn't generate "work" then all heaters should be generating bitcoins or folding proteins or something."

Except that a Bitcoin generating rig costs considerably more than a fan heater.

Re:Oh yeah, that's a great idea...

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Let's exploit the already-screwed Greek government for some 'free' CPU time to run your own business..

Actually, I believe a more accurate statement would be that the Greek government has been exploiting the rest of the EU for free money.

But, as the famous economist John Maynard Keynes said, "If I owe the bank 100 pounds . . . I have a problem. If I owe the bank 100,000 pounds . . . the bank has a problem."

Right now, Angela Merkel has a problem, because she guaranteed the German public that all the money that they lent to Greece would be eventually paid back.

Alexis Tsipras has stated that he wants Greece to stay in the Eurozone. I don't believe him. What he wants most, if for Greece to be free from old debts to the EU. The EU is not going write off the old debts, and let Greece stay in the Eurozone. So his other choice would be to let the bus crash and default on the debts. The EU would then have to toss the Greeks out of the Eurozone. Then Tsipras could claim that he wanted to stay in the Eurozone, and that it was the evil EU who kicked them out.

When the Greeks go back to their own Drachma, instead of the Euro, they can then print as many of them as they like. They can distribute them as they wish, and make everyone in Greece rich!

Of course, the Drachmas will be close to worthless on the world financial markets . . . so the Greeks would not be able to purchase things that they think they need from foreign countries . . . like TVs, cars, washing machines, etc.

But at least they would be free from the Euro yoke, and have control over their own fate . . . and have nobody else to blame, if they don't like how it turns out.

Re:Physics violation

[ShanghaiBill]

The problem is that when dealing with heating and cooling, pure resistive heating is about the worst way to go about it.

In this case, it is the BEST way to go about it. Normally, you have to consider both the one-time cost of the equipment, and the ongoing cost of electricity. But if the electricity is FREE, then the cost of the equipment is the only consideration. If it is wasteful, that is not your problem.

The Greeks are continuing to engage in the same sort of economic insanity that got them in trouble in the first place. If you want to help the poor, then give them money and let them choose what to buy. If you give them "stuff" instead, they will have no incentive not to squander it. It will cost more, and provide fewer benefits.

Re:Physics violation

[Half-pint HAL]

Is electricity "stuff"? Or does it enable the use of stuff?

Anyway, I don't think they've looked far enough east for inspiration. I remember reading a few years ago that in one of the south-east Asian cities (Kuala Lumpur maybe? Singapore?) there was two-tier pricing on electricity -- dirt cheap up to X kWh so that everyone could have lighting and basic usage, but then ramping up to very expensive so that the rich buggers running air conditioning all day long were effectively subsidising the poor.

Although, on reflection, that's not really a solution for Greece seeing as it's not a matter of a large wealth gap as a severe lack of wealth....

Re:You're probably not poor enough if...

[saigon_from_europe]

You're probably not poor enough for free electricity if you can run cloud servers... But you will have the benefit of paying taxes so that those poor enough can get free electricity!

Rich people don't pay taxes in Greece. Most of the wealthy doctors, attorneys and similar higher middle class report their income to be about 1000EUR/month, and basically pay no taxes. That's one of the reasons how the entire problem started. An effort to make them pay taxes after the crisis started ended miserably.

Re: You should be aware that

[Johnny Loves Linux]

Europe is composed of socialist countries and has been for about 60 years or so for the ones that weren't communist and the rest became socialist when the communist regime fell. Germany? Socialist. France? Socialist. Sweden, the land of Ikea, Swedish meatballs, and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? Socialist. Britain, that bastion of capitalism? Socialist. That big ass VAT they pay in Britain? That's to support their socialist regime. Take a look at the health care and welfare systems provided by the European countries. They're socialist.

Taking into account things like technology available to the common people, things like internet access and mobile phone technology, I would have to say that things are a hell of lot better than in the U.S.

So how exactly have they failed?

Re:Physics violation

[jrumney]

I remember reading a few years ago that in one of the south-east Asian cities (Kuala Lumpur maybe? Singapore?) there was two-tier pricing on electricity -- dirt cheap up to X kWh so that everyone could have lighting and basic usage

In Malaysia there are 5 tiers for electricity pricing (until recently it was 9), and if your total bill for the month comes to less than RM20 (around USD 7), the government covers it.

The Cuban Miracle

[lucm]

Care to explain why Cuba is a failure when health care and education are on a much higher level (and much cheaper) than in the USA albeit being under a boycott and other sanctions from the USA the last 70 years?

I don't know, why don't we ask the hundred of thousands of Cubans who fled that paradise and decided to live in Miami instead? Just to be fair and balanced we could also get the opinion of Americans who fled the USA and went to live in Cuba (if you can find one that's not a wanted felon).

Re:The Cuban Miracle

[jmauro]

Taiwan under Chang Kai-Shek, Indonesia under Suharto, Portugal under Salazar, Spain under Franco, most of South and Central America from the late 60's to the early 90's, the list goes on. Hell, even present day Russia and China would fall under that category depending on how you want to slice the apple.

Dictatorships don't really proclude any economic system.

False Dichotomy

[Roger W Moore]

Why do we have to choose between capitalism and socialism? Both have their benefits and both have their problems but they are NOT mutually exclusive. Most countries used to have a progressive tax system with high rates of tax on high earners. CEOs and the like still made more money than the rest of us and did well for themselves but the higher taxes these people paid helped provide common services that we all used e.g. healthcare, transport infrastructure, free university education etc.

This system put both socialism and capitalism in balance. You have the freedom to use your (free) education to go an make money and will directly benefit yourself from doing that but society also benefits and uses the higher taxes you pay to educate the workers you employ, provide the infrastructure to transport the goods you make etc. The trick is to make sure that the high tax payers also benefit from how the taxes are spent even if they don't necessarily benefit as much.