I already suspected regarding Trump voters' "we're voting for him to punish the establishment" mentality.
I know for certain that this is the view of at least one person. An old acquaintance of mine plans to vote for Trump now that Sanders is essentially out of the race, precisely to spit in the eye of the establishment. He even thinks it's a positive thing if Trump completely burns down the country, that we'll somehow rebuild from the ashes.
I can get behind "fuck the establishment", but I'm not going to make a deal with the devil to do so.
It makes me wonder how much more damage they can do before they die off.
Their damage is done; they might do more, yet, but short of WWIII I doubt they can dig much deeper (he says, knocking on wood.) Instead, I'm more concerned about how we keep the younger generations from filling the gap they leave behind.
"Kids these days" has been a meme for almost as long as written history. "Old people ruin everything" appears to have a stronger historical backing. Unless we make some heavy inroads into... honestly, I'm not even sure what would need to be changed, but something must be or the younger generation of today will, in 30-40 years, be the old codgers who vote selfishly based on empty promises and fear-mongering.
The only major difference for this (our?) generation is that they began life already able to reach the furthest corners of the world thanks to the Internet. Could that be enough to break the cycle and allow them to continue voting with educated empathy? Is there even such a possibility?
Personal: I had Comcast at a short-term apartment, three months. (It was known to be short term, there was no contract.) I accidentally paid for a fourth month. When I realized it, I called them up and asked if I could get a refund ($40 was a lot for me at the time). The helpful customer service person said that they could pro-rate me until my service was terminated (it was a few days over three months) and cut a check to me for the remainder. I gave them my new address and the call ended on a high note. I quickly forgot about the refund.
Six months later, living at a third address (my university was weird), I received a package from a friend at the second address of the mail I had received there. Included in this package was a Notice of Collections: Comcast had sent me to collections over the pro-rated amount they owed me. To Comcast's credit, I was able to get someone on the phone on Christmas Day and get the debt removed, but that was when I decided to never use Comcast again (I would use dial-up, I would try two tin cans and a string for internet before I signed up for Comcast). I never did get my pro-rated refund.
Related to me: My office mate recently dropped Comcast for CenturyLink*. He wanted to get a refund on something (I think an extra modem rental fee? Can't quite remember) and Comcast said they would be happy to refund him but could not do so unless the line was hooked back up first. He would have to pay a sum of $300 in fees to have the line re-connected, the refund given (all of like $30), and then the line disconnected. Needless to say, but he wrote off the amount he was trying to get back.
* CenturyLink is also really bad with customer service, but not as bad as Comcast and still cheaper
Checks still have valid, limited uses: 1) Private transfers of money over almost every electronic method are either cumbersome, incur a fee, or both 2) Even ignoring 1, transactions are not always concluded (money changes hands) where electricity or cell phone reception is available (if your bank even has a deposit-by-phone option) 3) Checks are useful where currency would be cumbersome (e.g. much easier to hand my landlord a check than $X in cash) 4) Checks can be used to pay for something when funds won't be available for a day or two[1][2]
But paying for (say) groceries with a check, especially if you don't pull out the checkbook until after all items are scanned? There's a special circle of hell for those people.
[1] Not as useful these days because a lot of places will use their POS to scan the check, use it as an ACH debit, and hand the check right back; in these case the system can sometimes tell when funds aren't available [2] I've done this once or twice (needed groceries over the weekend, but paycheck wasn't be "available" until Monday) but it's something I heavily discourage because it's so easy to be screwed over by the act, even if you're doing so "smartly"
My layman prediction is that what are currently auto insurance firms will become auto membership clubs. It works like this:
1) Most people don't need to actually own a car, they just have their daily commute, shopping, and incidentals 2) If someone doesn't need to use their car while they're working or sleeping, they can rent it out for others to use (Uber => UberMech, which matches need to capacity minus the driver) 3) If someone is satisfied renting the cars of others, they likely won't own one at all (all but guaranteed for those who live in large cities, many of whom just rely on taxis for the moment)
Insurance companies will want to get in on renting out the vehicle, one part extra cash and one part liability concerns. They offer to manage renting out a member's car to other members needing extra capacity (eg. a larger family who only has one or two vehicles) to get the member some extra cash (the company's cut covers profit+extra liability). Eventually, most of their customers will only use them for the car-usage service, and as private ownership drops away the insurance companies start buying and maintaining their own fleet, perhaps outright purchasing existing car rental companies (who have been undergoing similar transformations during this time). "Micro-term" auto rentals (that is, use of a vehicle for under an hour at a time, likely 20 minutes a time) become the mainstay of the company and insurance is a minor product they offer for the minority of people who desire personal vehicles.
As automatic buses become standard, bus routes will increase because smaller, driver-less buses will have better access to residential areas. (They could act as track-less trollies, perhaps not even stopping completely in some areas and just having a long on/off zone at 5 MPH.) This will further drive down private ownership, but people will still like the idea of having a vehicle available for their convenience.
Agreed. The book Mountains Beyond Mountains, about Dr. Paul Farmer and his work (primarily concerning Haiti, but also tuberculosis and infectious diseases in general) makes mention of construction/farming equipment that was provided to some of the Haitian people as economic boon... and most of them are abandoned now. Without also providing continuous fuel or other materials, the machines were worthless.
(It's been a while since I've read it, so the account may be incorrect. Regardless, it was one of the few assigned-reading books I ever truly enjoyed during any time in my education and recommend it to everyone.)
I question if you've ever actually met any of these people.
Well, I haven't met many, but I was one. I graduated, with a Bachelor's in Computer Science, in 2008 right as the recession kicked off and had no money or job. Spent ~10 months and 2 states trying to find a job but, with student loans coming due, I got desperate and entered the military.
If you have better ideas for how to deal with masses of unemployed people, feel free to suggest them.
Test subjects.
This is highly "dystopian future", of course, but an excess glut of humans makes for a useful assortment to test various drugs, treatments, and theories on. The "haves" will always want to live longer, stay trimmer, completely avoid cancer, etc., but mice and monkey trials can only go so far. So a human test subject dies? Great, a job opening! If a test subject is lucky they'll come out a trial relatively unscathed; a scant few might actually benefit from them. Most will gain some sort of disfiguration and/or malady, at which point their potential for being a future test subject diminishes. Ethics panels and human-experimentation laws? Crony politicians will quickly do away with them. (And the oligarchs will just ignore them until such time.)
Having and working at a job just gets you more, simply and without bureaucracy, which is the point.
It also upends the employer-employee relationship. Under UBI, a lot of people will tell their employer to fuck off because they find their workplace depressing/hostile and have only stayed there for the paycheck. Unions would still exist, but not be nearly as necessary because entire departments can walk off the job knowing they'll still survive without it. MBAs and CEOs would get their shit straight really quick, because the company could collapse due to understaffing otherwise.
This also has benefits on the employer side: - No minimum wage (which, combined with employee freedom, means that that pay rates will be far more related to market forces) - No unemployment payments (for the states that would have them)
The start menu has a search feature that SEARCHES THE WEB. We freaked out about this with Ubuntu once; we ignore it when Chrome and Firefox do it.
...considering that Chrome and FireFox are primarily web browsers (though in the last few years they've tried to be much more), I don't know why anyone would have a problem with them searching the web.
That's what makes me cling to Win7. Even if you can disable most of the spying and ads, and hobble the rest at the router, that only fixes the problem at the moment. Microsoft has shown that they are more than willing to work around the user's preference (e.g. trying various schemes to get people to upgrade to Win10, ignoring HOSTS as they please on Win10 itself), so I completely expect them to put out an update to disable the option to disable Suggested Apps, turn it back on for everyone, and then add three or four more ad tiles because sure why not.
There will be a Win10 update that changes the URL/IP that their "telemetry" uses to work around blocks at the router before the year's end or I will eat my hat.
At least with Win7 (and 8.1) you can turn off automatic updates and very selectively install updates.
It hides it, allowing us all to feel wonderful about ourselves and that we've "done something" about hate speech.
America is experiencing this right now, I think. Thanks to the racial and gender equality efforts of the mid-20th century, a lot of actual sexists/racists started going quiet. The general assumption was that these forces had been bested, and would continue to shrink in size and overall these problems would improve. But this year, as Trump ran his primary campaign, it seems that racists just appeared in droves. I don't think they ever went away, though, just receded until they felt there was a candidate who granted them safety to speak their minds.
Silencing dissent/hate speech/uncomfortable thoughts does not make it disappear, just hide in the shadows. It must be allowed, acknowledged, and confronted to make any kind of progress.
We MAY need to use other policies to maintain full employment
Why?
In Ye Olde Times, when there was actual scarcity and plenty of work, it was sensible (even required) to mark an individual's value by their contribution. But we're in, or at least very near, a post-scarcity society where production of goods and food for everyone does not require even a majority of the population to contribute.
Busy work can only do so much, and if we as a society keep placing profits/capitalism and low taxes/small government above all else there won't be much busy work to be had (and most of that can/will be automated away).
There are only two plausible outcomes I can see: blood revolution, beginning with food riots, or a universal income with programs aimed at stagnating the population and eventually decreasing it. We can't keep limping along with increasing income inequality forever.
Damn, my mod points had to run out yesterday, this is spot on. Gawker writers (for varying definitions, and I assume this extends to their editors) are paid per article click, which unfortunately leads towards spiteful "articles" because humans can't seem to get over tabloids.
Lifehacker seems to be the lone exception to this (at the least, it's the only Gawker site I think is worth following), probably because their core reason for being is to be helpful so articles that put down others would drive away common readers. (I've been told by a few that Jalopnik, their car enthusiast site, is also worthwhile, but having no interest in cars I'm not capable of measuring its content.)
I'm not aware if they suppressed any news about Bernie Sanders. However, on many posts about Bernie Sanders or shared articles about Bernie Sanders I will see "Hillary Clinton * Trending" along the very top. It might not be intentional, it could just be that any "trending" algorithm they actually have just sucks.
Tax based on cash hoard? OK, we'll figure out a way to spend every penny we make.
This seems like a good thing. Sure, it hurts the gov. debt, but forcing them to spend all the money instead of sitting on it means the money moves around the economy (even if they use it on "business expenses" like diamond-studded yachts), which increases taxes from other venues slightly.
Even if it's spent overseas, there's still a little benefit to US citizens by way of any US manufacturing/service that increases from that extra circulation of money.
-- We don't end up committing mass suicide as a result of a sense of meaninglessness and a lack of perceived usefulness
A common "argument" against universal income I see is "Most people just won't work". I think this is wrong on a nuanced level: I believe most people will work, but only a subset (perhaps a minority) of those people will be employed.
There are tons of charities and philanthropic groups that need volunteers. Schools would benefit from volunteer TAs (though we'd have to be super careful about that one...). There are people who love to do gardening work (I can't fathom this, but my roommate is one of those people), so if given what tools they need (or funds for tools+gas) would probably do minor landscaping all over the place in lieu of a full-time job. I, personally, volunteer at a cat rescue one day a week; if I found I didn't have to be full-time employed, that would probably increase to 3-4 days a week and I do freelance programming 10-20 hours.
Lots of people will probably have hobbies-turned-income that take up only 10-20 hours/week, but provide them enough for some pleasantries since mincome takes care of the necessities.
-- We don't all eat ourselves into a morbidly obese stupor
I think food prices would swing a bit. Hopefully, stuff like corn subsidies are thrown out during a transition to universal income, so food would no longer be laden with HFCS.
Supportive anecdote: When I was 10 I had appendicitis. Went to one or two different doctors many times and visited the ER three times over about a month.
And then I didn't have appendicitis anymore. Because my appendix ruptured. Fourth trip to the ER they took an X-ray and saw it (or its remnants) and said "huh, that shouldn't show up on an X-ray" and two hours later I was in surgery. My understanding is that routine appendectomy is only slightly more severe than a tonsillectomy: a day or two in the hospital and then you go home and take it easy for a week. In my case I was hospitalized for a week, with three blood draws a day to make sure the infection didn't travel around, then still bedridden for two weeks and walked funny for another month.
To this day I wonder if certain intestinal ailments I suffer are a consequence of the doctors continually missing it.
Everyone makes mistakes. Maybe they needed it as a last-gap for confirming something or looking up something between smashing the other phones and murdering people.
Completely ignoring how ham-fisted the FBI is in trying to retrieve the data and how bad their "request" is in every way, they can't know the iPhone data is useless until they've seen it.
Could this be a violation of the 3rd Amendment? While its original intention was precisely to block the housing of soldiers, in a broad sense it blocks the federal government from usurping control of a person's property, regardless of time length, to further government interests that do not directly involve the property owner. An Op-Ed a few months back asked if government-created viruses spreading through unrelated computers would run afoul of the 3rd; I think it might*, and believe this would fall under the same reasoning.
* but am no constitutional scholar, only a citizen and former military member concerned with privacy
are Google and Yahoo willing to actually stand behind their product and pay for any and all damages when they let malvertising through? No? Then they can jump off the nearest bridge
As with other corporations, ad companies are externalizing the risks while internalizing the rewards. They push the security concerns and quality degradation to the participating website and/or end user; as middle-men, a link between the company that wants to advertise and the site that wants to have advertisements, they don't deal with any of that personally.
We need to force companies to either handle the risks they've been externalizing in all areas or externalizing their profits to the general public. Advertising is probably the one example that most affects people in the most immediate and direct sense. (Other examples include: wonton maintenance that leads to belching methane; being bailed out by the federal government)
With a minimum income, you'd be free to take more risks seeking work; you'd also be more able to walk away from a job with an abusive employer. You could take more time to personally hone your skills and take up hobbies that exemplify them (for instance, if you're a programmer, you could contribute to open source projects.) If the income is enough, or you get a part-time job, you might go (back) to school to get or finish a degree. You'd also have the ability to heavily involve yourself in something that was previously a cursory hobby and potentially turn it into a career.
It might take you a year to deal with the mind-shift, where your job no long occupies a large portion (perhaps the majority) of your thoughts. Of course, if getting the guaranteed income truly worries you, with this experiment you could just move out of the area.
Someone who would squander five years of economic release would squander 50 years of the same.
I agree with the AC's post, but I think the statement should be rewritten as:
People will occupy themselves; it's in our natures.
I've yet to meet the person who likes boredom. Sure, as people get onto universal income ("mincome") and realize that they don't have to work at all to maintain a minimalist life, they might spend a few weeks vegging in front of the TV. But, eventually, most will get bored and actively seek out things to do. For many there might be a time-consuming hobby, some will find jobs (which are now much more subject to any semblance of a "free market", as minimum wages have gone out the window), but I think most will turn to volunteer efforts.
In any case, people will certainly avoid "work", where some middle-manager pushes you around or demands you work Saturdays or pays you a pittance while bringing home a fat paycheck, but they likely won't avoid effort entirely. A mincome would tremendously upset the power disparity between companies and employees (currently heavily in the favor of companies) and more clearly define what jobs society finds useful (garbage man? oh yeah. marketer? eh)
As a result of wanting to avoid "work" while still stretching their mincome, I think that hybrid co-ops/charities--which I'm calling "sharities"--will spring up everywhere. These will be organizations that offer non-financial goods/services (greenhouse, transportation, etc.), and people join in can receive the goods/services at cost (or, perhaps, even free) if they actively contribute (in labor or in $) and non-members can still use the good/service by paying a mark-up price.
I really don't understand the perspective of people who insist we need to work to find life meaningful
I think that, in a post-scarcity/universal income society, most people will find work but they will not find meaningful work as we (questionably) use the term today.
There are all kind of charities that need assistance in labor but can't afford more regular staff nor robots. I think there are a lot of people who would happily make-do with their government stipend and a few odd jobs, devoting a lot of their time to volunteering and other work that capitalism, as a system, does not reward/value. I, personally, already volunteer at a feline rescue once a week; if I didn't have to work, it would be incredibly enticing to expand my hours to 20-30/week there.
Similarly, I think that hybrid co-op/charity (a "share charity"--sharity?--where people receive non-financial benefits in exchange for volunteering and/or financial contributions) would become huge. In order to make that minimum income stretch, communities would have large greenhouses and members would volunteer their time in exchange for at-cost food; non-members could still purchase produce there, but pay a markup. Ideas like Uber taken and transformed to be a taxi service, ride-sharing, and free infirm transportation. Both of these already occur in some form, but because they lack the human element they stay incredibly small.
Slashdot Mirror
I know for certain that this is the view of at least one person. An old acquaintance of mine plans to vote for Trump now that Sanders is essentially out of the race, precisely to spit in the eye of the establishment. He even thinks it's a positive thing if Trump completely burns down the country, that we'll somehow rebuild from the ashes.
I can get behind "fuck the establishment", but I'm not going to make a deal with the devil to do so.
Their damage is done; they might do more, yet, but short of WWIII I doubt they can dig much deeper (he says, knocking on wood.) Instead, I'm more concerned about how we keep the younger generations from filling the gap they leave behind.
"Kids these days" has been a meme for almost as long as written history. "Old people ruin everything" appears to have a stronger historical backing. Unless we make some heavy inroads into... honestly, I'm not even sure what would need to be changed, but something must be or the younger generation of today will, in 30-40 years, be the old codgers who vote selfishly based on empty promises and fear-mongering.
The only major difference for this (our?) generation is that they began life already able to reach the furthest corners of the world thanks to the Internet. Could that be enough to break the cycle and allow them to continue voting with educated empathy? Is there even such a possibility?
OH BOY I HAVE MORE STORIES TO ADD
Personal:
I had Comcast at a short-term apartment, three months. (It was known to be short term, there was no contract.) I accidentally paid for a fourth month. When I realized it, I called them up and asked if I could get a refund ($40 was a lot for me at the time). The helpful customer service person said that they could pro-rate me until my service was terminated (it was a few days over three months) and cut a check to me for the remainder. I gave them my new address and the call ended on a high note. I quickly forgot about the refund.
Six months later, living at a third address (my university was weird), I received a package from a friend at the second address of the mail I had received there. Included in this package was a Notice of Collections: Comcast had sent me to collections over the pro-rated amount they owed me . To Comcast's credit, I was able to get someone on the phone on Christmas Day and get the debt removed, but that was when I decided to never use Comcast again (I would use dial-up, I would try two tin cans and a string for internet before I signed up for Comcast). I never did get my pro-rated refund.
Related to me:
My office mate recently dropped Comcast for CenturyLink*. He wanted to get a refund on something (I think an extra modem rental fee? Can't quite remember) and Comcast said they would be happy to refund him but could not do so unless the line was hooked back up first. He would have to pay a sum of $300 in fees to have the line re-connected, the refund given (all of like $30), and then the line disconnected. Needless to say, but he wrote off the amount he was trying to get back.
* CenturyLink is also really bad with customer service, but not as bad as Comcast and still cheaper
Checks still have valid, limited uses:
1) Private transfers of money over almost every electronic method are either cumbersome, incur a fee, or both
2) Even ignoring 1, transactions are not always concluded (money changes hands) where electricity or cell phone reception is available (if your bank even has a deposit-by-phone option)
3) Checks are useful where currency would be cumbersome (e.g. much easier to hand my landlord a check than $X in cash)
4) Checks can be used to pay for something when funds won't be available for a day or two[1][2]
But paying for (say) groceries with a check, especially if you don't pull out the checkbook until after all items are scanned? There's a special circle of hell for those people.
[1] Not as useful these days because a lot of places will use their POS to scan the check, use it as an ACH debit, and hand the check right back; in these case the system can sometimes tell when funds aren't available
[2] I've done this once or twice (needed groceries over the weekend, but paycheck wasn't be "available" until Monday) but it's something I heavily discourage because it's so easy to be screwed over by the act, even if you're doing so "smartly"
My layman prediction is that what are currently auto insurance firms will become auto membership clubs. It works like this:
1) Most people don't need to actually own a car, they just have their daily commute, shopping, and incidentals
2) If someone doesn't need to use their car while they're working or sleeping, they can rent it out for others to use (Uber => UberMech, which matches need to capacity minus the driver)
3) If someone is satisfied renting the cars of others, they likely won't own one at all (all but guaranteed for those who live in large cities, many of whom just rely on taxis for the moment)
Insurance companies will want to get in on renting out the vehicle, one part extra cash and one part liability concerns. They offer to manage renting out a member's car to other members needing extra capacity (eg. a larger family who only has one or two vehicles) to get the member some extra cash (the company's cut covers profit+extra liability). Eventually, most of their customers will only use them for the car-usage service, and as private ownership drops away the insurance companies start buying and maintaining their own fleet, perhaps outright purchasing existing car rental companies (who have been undergoing similar transformations during this time). "Micro-term" auto rentals (that is, use of a vehicle for under an hour at a time, likely 20 minutes a time) become the mainstay of the company and insurance is a minor product they offer for the minority of people who desire personal vehicles.
As automatic buses become standard, bus routes will increase because smaller, driver-less buses will have better access to residential areas. (They could act as track-less trollies, perhaps not even stopping completely in some areas and just having a long on/off zone at 5 MPH.) This will further drive down private ownership, but people will still like the idea of having a vehicle available for their convenience.
Agreed. The book Mountains Beyond Mountains, about Dr. Paul Farmer and his work (primarily concerning Haiti, but also tuberculosis and infectious diseases in general) makes mention of construction/farming equipment that was provided to some of the Haitian people as economic boon... and most of them are abandoned now. Without also providing continuous fuel or other materials, the machines were worthless.
(It's been a while since I've read it, so the account may be incorrect. Regardless, it was one of the few assigned-reading books I ever truly enjoyed during any time in my education and recommend it to everyone.)
Well, I haven't met many, but I was one. I graduated, with a Bachelor's in Computer Science, in 2008 right as the recession kicked off and had no money or job. Spent ~10 months and 2 states trying to find a job but, with student loans coming due, I got desperate and entered the military.
And Knightman is right.
"Them"? Do away with the tiptoeing and just directly say what you mean: "black people are poor and lazy". (Which is wrong.)
Enhanced interrogation techniques.
Test subjects.
This is highly "dystopian future", of course, but an excess glut of humans makes for a useful assortment to test various drugs, treatments, and theories on. The "haves" will always want to live longer, stay trimmer, completely avoid cancer, etc., but mice and monkey trials can only go so far. So a human test subject dies? Great, a job opening! If a test subject is lucky they'll come out a trial relatively unscathed; a scant few might actually benefit from them. Most will gain some sort of disfiguration and/or malady, at which point their potential for being a future test subject diminishes. Ethics panels and human-experimentation laws? Crony politicians will quickly do away with them. (And the oligarchs will just ignore them until such time.)
This isn't necessarily a "what if". There are already a small group of people who make a career out of being test subjects.
It also upends the employer-employee relationship. Under UBI, a lot of people will tell their employer to fuck off because they find their workplace depressing/hostile and have only stayed there for the paycheck. Unions would still exist, but not be nearly as necessary because entire departments can walk off the job knowing they'll still survive without it. MBAs and CEOs would get their shit straight really quick, because the company could collapse due to understaffing otherwise.
This also has benefits on the employer side:
- No minimum wage (which, combined with employee freedom, means that that pay rates will be far more related to market forces)
- No unemployment payments (for the states that would have them)
...considering that Chrome and FireFox are primarily web browsers (though in the last few years they've tried to be much more), I don't know why anyone would have a problem with them searching the web.
for now.
That's what makes me cling to Win7. Even if you can disable most of the spying and ads, and hobble the rest at the router, that only fixes the problem at the moment. Microsoft has shown that they are more than willing to work around the user's preference (e.g. trying various schemes to get people to upgrade to Win10, ignoring HOSTS as they please on Win10 itself), so I completely expect them to put out an update to disable the option to disable Suggested Apps, turn it back on for everyone, and then add three or four more ad tiles because sure why not.
There will be a Win10 update that changes the URL/IP that their "telemetry" uses to work around blocks at the router before the year's end or I will eat my hat.
At least with Win7 (and 8.1) you can turn off automatic updates and very selectively install updates.
America is experiencing this right now, I think. Thanks to the racial and gender equality efforts of the mid-20th century, a lot of actual sexists/racists started going quiet. The general assumption was that these forces had been bested, and would continue to shrink in size and overall these problems would improve. But this year, as Trump ran his primary campaign, it seems that racists just appeared in droves. I don't think they ever went away, though, just receded until they felt there was a candidate who granted them safety to speak their minds.
Silencing dissent/hate speech/uncomfortable thoughts does not make it disappear, just hide in the shadows. It must be allowed, acknowledged, and confronted to make any kind of progress.
Why?
In Ye Olde Times, when there was actual scarcity and plenty of work, it was sensible (even required) to mark an individual's value by their contribution. But we're in, or at least very near, a post-scarcity society where production of goods and food for everyone does not require even a majority of the population to contribute.
Busy work can only do so much, and if we as a society keep placing profits/capitalism and low taxes/small government above all else there won't be much busy work to be had (and most of that can/will be automated away).
There are only two plausible outcomes I can see: blood revolution, beginning with food riots, or a universal income with programs aimed at stagnating the population and eventually decreasing it. We can't keep limping along with increasing income inequality forever.
Damn, my mod points had to run out yesterday, this is spot on. Gawker writers (for varying definitions, and I assume this extends to their editors) are paid per article click, which unfortunately leads towards spiteful "articles" because humans can't seem to get over tabloids.
Lifehacker seems to be the lone exception to this (at the least, it's the only Gawker site I think is worth following), probably because their core reason for being is to be helpful so articles that put down others would drive away common readers. (I've been told by a few that Jalopnik, their car enthusiast site, is also worthwhile, but having no interest in cars I'm not capable of measuring its content.)
I'm not aware if they suppressed any news about Bernie Sanders. However, on many posts about Bernie Sanders or shared articles about Bernie Sanders I will see "Hillary Clinton * Trending" along the very top. It might not be intentional, it could just be that any "trending" algorithm they actually have just sucks.
This seems like a good thing. Sure, it hurts the gov. debt, but forcing them to spend all the money instead of sitting on it means the money moves around the economy (even if they use it on "business expenses" like diamond-studded yachts), which increases taxes from other venues slightly.
Even if it's spent overseas, there's still a little benefit to US citizens by way of any US manufacturing/service that increases from that extra circulation of money.
A common "argument" against universal income I see is "Most people just won't work". I think this is wrong on a nuanced level: I believe most people will work, but only a subset (perhaps a minority) of those people will be employed.
There are tons of charities and philanthropic groups that need volunteers. Schools would benefit from volunteer TAs (though we'd have to be super careful about that one...). There are people who love to do gardening work (I can't fathom this, but my roommate is one of those people), so if given what tools they need (or funds for tools+gas) would probably do minor landscaping all over the place in lieu of a full-time job. I, personally, volunteer at a cat rescue one day a week; if I found I didn't have to be full-time employed, that would probably increase to 3-4 days a week and I do freelance programming 10-20 hours.
Lots of people will probably have hobbies-turned-income that take up only 10-20 hours/week, but provide them enough for some pleasantries since mincome takes care of the necessities.
I think food prices would swing a bit. Hopefully, stuff like corn subsidies are thrown out during a transition to universal income, so food would no longer be laden with HFCS.
Supportive anecdote: When I was 10 I had appendicitis. Went to one or two different doctors many times and visited the ER three times over about a month.
And then I didn't have appendicitis anymore. Because my appendix ruptured. Fourth trip to the ER they took an X-ray and saw it (or its remnants) and said "huh, that shouldn't show up on an X-ray" and two hours later I was in surgery. My understanding is that routine appendectomy is only slightly more severe than a tonsillectomy: a day or two in the hospital and then you go home and take it easy for a week. In my case I was hospitalized for a week, with three blood draws a day to make sure the infection didn't travel around, then still bedridden for two weeks and walked funny for another month.
To this day I wonder if certain intestinal ailments I suffer are a consequence of the doctors continually missing it.
Everyone makes mistakes. Maybe they needed it as a last-gap for confirming something or looking up something between smashing the other phones and murdering people.
Completely ignoring how ham-fisted the FBI is in trying to retrieve the data and how bad their "request" is in every way, they can't know the iPhone data is useless until they've seen it.
Could this be a violation of the 3rd Amendment? While its original intention was precisely to block the housing of soldiers, in a broad sense it blocks the federal government from usurping control of a person's property, regardless of time length, to further government interests that do not directly involve the property owner. An Op-Ed a few months back asked if government-created viruses spreading through unrelated computers would run afoul of the 3rd; I think it might*, and believe this would fall under the same reasoning.
* but am no constitutional scholar, only a citizen and former military member concerned with privacy
As with other corporations, ad companies are externalizing the risks while internalizing the rewards. They push the security concerns and quality degradation to the participating website and/or end user; as middle-men, a link between the company that wants to advertise and the site that wants to have advertisements, they don't deal with any of that personally.
We need to force companies to either handle the risks they've been externalizing in all areas or externalizing their profits to the general public. Advertising is probably the one example that most affects people in the most immediate and direct sense. (Other examples include: wonton maintenance that leads to belching methane; being bailed out by the federal government)
With a minimum income, you'd be free to take more risks seeking work; you'd also be more able to walk away from a job with an abusive employer. You could take more time to personally hone your skills and take up hobbies that exemplify them (for instance, if you're a programmer, you could contribute to open source projects.) If the income is enough, or you get a part-time job, you might go (back) to school to get or finish a degree. You'd also have the ability to heavily involve yourself in something that was previously a cursory hobby and potentially turn it into a career.
It might take you a year to deal with the mind-shift, where your job no long occupies a large portion (perhaps the majority) of your thoughts. Of course, if getting the guaranteed income truly worries you, with this experiment you could just move out of the area.
Someone who would squander five years of economic release would squander 50 years of the same.
I agree with the AC's post, but I think the statement should be rewritten as:
I've yet to meet the person who likes boredom. Sure, as people get onto universal income ("mincome") and realize that they don't have to work at all to maintain a minimalist life, they might spend a few weeks vegging in front of the TV. But, eventually, most will get bored and actively seek out things to do. For many there might be a time-consuming hobby, some will find jobs (which are now much more subject to any semblance of a "free market", as minimum wages have gone out the window), but I think most will turn to volunteer efforts.
In any case, people will certainly avoid "work", where some middle-manager pushes you around or demands you work Saturdays or pays you a pittance while bringing home a fat paycheck, but they likely won't avoid effort entirely. A mincome would tremendously upset the power disparity between companies and employees (currently heavily in the favor of companies) and more clearly define what jobs society finds useful (garbage man? oh yeah. marketer? eh)
As a result of wanting to avoid "work" while still stretching their mincome, I think that hybrid co-ops/charities--which I'm calling "sharities"--will spring up everywhere. These will be organizations that offer non-financial goods/services (greenhouse, transportation, etc.), and people join in can receive the goods/services at cost (or, perhaps, even free) if they actively contribute (in labor or in $) and non-members can still use the good/service by paying a mark-up price.
I think that, in a post-scarcity/universal income society, most people will find work but they will not find meaningful work as we (questionably) use the term today.
There are all kind of charities that need assistance in labor but can't afford more regular staff nor robots. I think there are a lot of people who would happily make-do with their government stipend and a few odd jobs, devoting a lot of their time to volunteering and other work that capitalism, as a system, does not reward/value. I, personally, already volunteer at a feline rescue once a week; if I didn't have to work, it would be incredibly enticing to expand my hours to 20-30/week there.
Similarly, I think that hybrid co-op/charity (a "share charity"--sharity?--where people receive non-financial benefits in exchange for volunteering and/or financial contributions) would become huge. In order to make that minimum income stretch, communities would have large greenhouses and members would volunteer their time in exchange for at-cost food; non-members could still purchase produce there, but pay a markup. Ideas like Uber taken and transformed to be a taxi service, ride-sharing, and free infirm transportation. Both of these already occur in some form, but because they lack the human element they stay incredibly small.