.

[Lark]

.

 

[Totenkindly]

If everyone was independently wealthy, we'd already all be in the same economic bracket, and/or there wouldn't be an economy as much, AND prices would rise anyway because everyone could afford to pay them soon making us all independently average or poor.

Should this be a Fluff thread?

 

[Stigmata]

If everyone was independently wealthy, we'd already all be in the same economic bracket, and/or there wouldn't be an economy as much, AND prices would rise anyway because everyone could afford to pay them soon making us all independently average or poor.

Should this be a Fluff thread?

The post is the equivalent of what Star Wars would've been had the Stormtroopers realized that those were the droid they were looking for.

 

[Kephalos]

I don't know. I think that in the second Gordon Gekko movie where one character asks a Wall Street banker if there was a number, a maximum amount of money that he could make to make him (the banker) simply call it quits and live richly ever after. The banker replies: "More." This is a movie of course but the scene rings true.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

I suppose it depends on how you choose to define wealth.

Are you saying if everyone earned a living wage and the same hourly pay? Technically, would there still be a such thing as wealthy people? I’m not saying this would necessarily be a bad thing, I just don’t think you could really consider anyone “wealthy” in this type of situation. But again, I suppose it boils down to what we mean by “wealthy”. Do you mean financial security, living above the poverty line?

The only issue I see is that even if we choose to value all jobs at the same monetary level, there will still be other ways that some jobs are valued more highly than other jobs. If a ditch digging or sewage plant job is valued the same as a less hazardous, less physically demanding job, what’s to stop the ditch digger from leaving that job to take the air conditioned office job or nail salonist job? How are you going to get enough people to dig ditches or clear sewers of massive fatbergs? Unfair as it may be, there will probably always be a greater value placed on certain types of jobs such as firefighter or long haul trucking. Take money out of the equation and it may be some less tangible metric, but it will still be there. Nursing is another good example. There’s good reason to pay nurses relatively well for the hazards and long hours involved in such work.

I’m not opposed to some universal income that guarantees a living wage, but somehow there needs to be an incentive of fair compensation to take the hardest, nastiest jobs.

And as one person noted, there’s always going to be some with voracious drives to attain more. Even if you replace money as the primary goal, people will find some other primary thing to strive for, perhaps status or prestige.

 

[The Cat]

If wishes and buts were candy and nuts; every day would be halloween.

 

[Virtual ghost]

I had to look for the definition of: independently wealthy.

Being independently wealthy means you have enough money you never have to work again to pay for your expenses, or need monetary support from others. Independent wealth is different from financial independence.

Therefore if we start with this definition it is questionable what would happen (and that probably depends on the culture). However if people don't have to work that doesn't mean that they would really stop working. In other words they would probably do stuff that they wanted to do if they have free time. Especially since the very fact that this came to reality suggests that technology on itself can solve pretty much all problems. What basically indicates the end of the concept of money. I went through 2 currency collapses in life and I have family members that went through 5, therefore for me all money will always be some kind of monopoly money in the end. In other words if large group of people really wants to go in x or y direction they will go in that direction, money alone wouldn't really stop them. Therefore if technology is really this good benefactor that kinda means you can basically be independently wealthy even with fairly average amounts of money (if the concept of money even survives at this point). What means that people would probably divide themselves into various groups and try to achieve whatever that group wants. But how would that end really depends on the details of the situation.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

I guess the only way I could see everyone being independently wealthy without society screeching to a halt and infrastructure crumbling would be if we lived in a civilization so advance that AI and machines took care of everything. Someone has to have the job of repairing and programming the AI and machines, so the machines would have to be advanced enough to have machines repairing and programming machines. So, society might look something like wall-e, and I’m not sure that’s a world I’d want to live in. And at that point, I don’t think we would really be able to describe ourselves as independent or wealthy.

Catch 22 because I also don’t want to live in a world with economic disparities like we currently see

I think there’s a happy medium that can be reached though.

 

[Lark]

If everyone was independently wealthy, we'd already all be in the same economic bracket, and/or there wouldn't be an economy as much, AND prices would rise anyway because everyone could afford to pay them soon making us all independently average or poor.

Should this be a Fluff thread?

Hahahaha.

Nope.

 

[Lark]

The post is the equivalent of what Star Wars would've been had the Stormtroopers realized that those were the droid they were looking for.

Not really, I was going to use it as a jumping off point to discuss John Rawls theory of justice and the "vial of ignorance" idea which he thought would vindicate market liberalism rather than socialism, also maybe a discussion of what "independently wealthy" meant as opposed to "equally wealthy", the two not being the same thing, and maybe a discussion of whether or not equality meant sameness as a side.

But I'm not going to bother now. SOooo, maybe it is as pointless to post as you've just made out.

 

[Lark]

I suppose it depends on how you choose to define wealth.

Are you saying if everyone earned a living wage and the same hourly pay? Technically, would there still be a such thing as wealthy people? I’m not saying this would necessarily be a bad thing, I just don’t think you could really consider anyone “wealthy” in this type of situation. But again, I suppose it boils down to what we mean by “wealthy”. Do you mean financial security, living above the poverty line?

The only issue I see is that even if we choose to value all jobs at the same monetary level, there will still be other ways that some jobs are valued more highly than other jobs. If a ditch digging or sewage plant job is valued the same as a less hazardous, less physically demanding job, what’s to stop the ditch digger from leaving that job to take the air conditioned office job or nail salonist job? How are you going to get enough people to dig ditches or clear sewers of massive fatbergs? Unfair as it may be, there will probably always be a greater value placed on certain types of jobs such as firefighter or long haul trucking. Take money out of the equation and it may be some less tangible metric, but it will still be there. Nursing is another good example. There’s good reason to pay nurses relatively well for the hazards and long hours involved in such work.

I’m not opposed to some universal income that guarantees a living wage, but somehow there needs to be an incentive of fair compensation to take the hardest, nastiest jobs.

And as one person noted, there’s always going to be some with voracious drives to attain more. Even if you replace money as the primary goal, people will find some other primary thing to strive for, perhaps status or prestige.

I dont mind the idea of being voracious for more, especially if its proven to make people act in ways that (either by accident or design) benefit the very least well off in society, I do think that sort of society is preferable to strictly egalitarian societies (especially when equality = sameness, rather than fairness or justice).

That's basically Rawls' argument for a market liberalism rather than socialism, I've more of a speculative and personal sympathy with socialism than Rawls but still think he made a pretty good argument.

I wasnt making a point about UBI in this thread, not really, I mean maybe everyone having a Trust Fund would work the same way (they tried this in the UK, although it was ill understood, therefore unpopular and no one missed it when the conservative party wiped it out at a single stroke as just another example of profligate, squandering of public money on benefits).

A writer that I like, despite some pretty big political differences, Samuel Brittan, used to talk about a society in which every household would have three or four separate revenue streams, kind of the opposite of the "NINJAS" (no income, no job or assets) who were blamed for the US housing bubble. These ideas, which could be a mix of public and private, appeal to me as I dont like the idea of a sort of perpetual re-run of beneficial reforms being made and then by "hook or by crook" or by "force or by fraud" the conservatives dismantling it all again.

 

[Vendrah]

...would they still choose socialism?

Liking or not, [MENTION=7]Totenkindly[/MENTION] did argued well.

However, there are some other issues.
Liking or not, money is some sort of an abstraction that we take it very seriously, less or more depending on your personal preferences.
What you are saying seems simply to be a question of: "what if everyone received a proper retirement on their bank accounts?" Liking or not, its pretty similar.
What is expected to happen in market capitalism is perhaps some sort of inflation that is going to make everyone no longer independently again - probably, not 100% surely.

Resourceful speaking, it would be required AI to do the basic jobs - as [MENTION=19700]Doctor Anaximander[/MENTION] and [MENTION=4347]Virtual ghost[/MENTION] said. If that doesn't happen, then essential resources of so-called boring yet necessary jobs would start to be scare which would generate a resource crisis. Supposing the AI does that - and we are close to achieving that each day, actually. It is sad that this inefficient system we live prefer to increase unemployment rather than to decrease working hours, so things are taking a crisis route due to inefficiency and greediness taking the unemployment route rather than the decreasing hours route (more unemployment = less wage/hour = less costs that usually don't go fully to the final product price = more profit), especially because we live on a - yup, bringing typology bit - J society that actually prefers to have a bunch of people working hard and others doing nothing at all so they can be proud of themselves and call the others lazy rather than people in general working not much but everybody working a decent bit - classic mismanagement of resources.

Well, getting back, supposing the AI does such a thing, I think that it depends a lot on what people wants on that system, but I think that the socialism ideas has an underlying and good intention idea to give absolute everyone a decent life, and, if an alternative system already achieves that, socialism would be less appealing. Capitalism per se, specially neoliberalism, does not really have that premise - the pseudo-meritocratic one is pretty much the opposite, just throw people on poverty for random reasons and then create a loop argument where poor->your fault->poor - and if people sank into an horrible life that even includes people committing suicide due to having an horrible time with unemployment, debt, exploitation, lack of work ethics, etc... capitalism doesn't really care. And in the end we got back to the "universal income" thing because that is actually sort of what you are asking ("if everyone had a quite decent UBI, would people prefer socialism?") and my answer is: I think it depends a lot on the people, I do believe that some people would like to live in an approximately equality system (but I think very few would want a 100% equal) while others might want to live on a more unequal one. I would even risking saying it really ups to people, their thoughts, their personalities and their culture context as well (the culture will tend to create inertia).

Perhaps one of the most basic premises of socialism is actually to give everyone a decent life, and if that is achieved by other system, it will automatically becomes less persuasive and there is one less reason to go to it.

 

[Kephalos]

Maybe this can reorient the discussion: historically the class of people whose defining characteristic was being independently wealthy -- as not needing to work for a living -- were the landlords/gentlemen/rentiers, i.e. people who lived off the income from their assets like land or (usually government) bonds.

 

[Tellenbach]

People choose socialism because they want big daddy government to take care of them. Having wealth obviates such a desire. In addition, rational people -wealthy or not, will seldom choose a system that concentrates power and wealth in the hands of power-hungry and corrupt bureaucrats. That's the fatal flaw in socialism. The elites who are supposed to be making these decisions of taxation and redistribution tend to be stupid assholes. You're not getting selfless and objective decision-makers in government, you're getting slimy money grubbing lawyer types.

 

[ceecee]

In addition, rational people -wealthy or not, will seldom choose a system that concentrates power and wealth in the hands of power-hungry and corrupt bureaucrats. That's the fatal flaw in socialism.

lol The mental gymnastics required to completely ignore that power is concentrated in the hands of power-hungry and corrupt bureaucrats under capitalism - the current economic system - and blaming it on socialism - is amazing. How much medication do you take to accomplish this?

 

[Vendrah]

People choose socialism because they want big daddy government to take care of them. Having wealth obviates such a desire. In addition, rational people -wealthy or not, will seldom choose a system that concentrates power and wealth in the hands of power-hungry and corrupt bureaucrats. That's the fatal flaw in socialism. The elites who are supposed to be making these decisions of taxation and redistribution tend to be stupid assholes. You're not getting selfless and objective decision-makers in government, you're getting slimy money grubbing lawyer types.

Let me join [MENTION=4050]ceecee[/MENTION] side and re-phrase this:

"People choose capitalism because they want big daddy market to take care of them. Having wealth obviates such a desire. In addition, rational people -wealthy or not, will seldom choose a system that concentrates power and wealth in the hands of power-hungry and corrupt billionaires/entrepreneurs/capitalists. That's the fatal flaw in capitalism. The elites who are supposed to be making these decisions of employment and wage distribution tend to be stupid assholes. You're not getting selfless and objective decision-makers in free market capitalism, you're getting slimy money grubbing lawyer types."

Easy!

 

[Tellenbach]

[MENTION=32874]Vendrah[/MENTION] Sure, if you ignore the failures of socialism and the successes of capitalism, everything makes sense, but people like me can't ignore the mountains of empirical evidence.

Is the world better off or worst off because people like Gates, Ford, Edison, Musk, Bezos, and Jobs created personal fortunes through capitalism? I see billions of people lifted up from poverty because these capitalists created billions of opportunities for people who would otherwise be chasing large animals with a stick.

 

[Lark]

Liking or not, [MENTION=7]Totenkindly[/MENTION] did argued well.

Did she like post it?

I must have missed that, I only saw her miss the point entirely and suggest the thread belonged in the fluff section.

 

[Vendrah]

[MENTION=32874]Vendrah[/MENTION] Sure, if you ignore the failures of socialism and the successes of capitalism, everything makes sense, but people like me can't ignore the mountains of empirical evidence.

Is the world better off or worst off because people like Gates, Ford, Edison, Musk, Bezos, and Jobs created personal fortunes through capitalism? I see billions of people lifted up from poverty because these capitalists created billions of opportunities for people who would otherwise be chasing large animals with a stick.

Mountains of empirical evidence?
Well, for capitalism, maybe, but capitalism is almost a monopoly at 21th century, like the world is 60-80% capitalism and 20-40% the rest and the rest is mostly chinese, and capitalism is pushing to a 100% blocking everything that it isn't capitalist - cold war was about that anyway, about the monopoly of capitalism vs monopoly of socialism; For neoliberalism anti-state and pro-market, well, I already made a whole big thread with arguments and evidences against it some few months ago.

If we were on the times of kings and queens, every king and queen would claim that they are the ones who brings the prosperity for their king, they are the one which are the providers of food and water for the citizens, they are the ones which the warrior gives a purpose, etc... Yet truth is, they all just hold the control (aka "own") the water and food supplies, the terrains, etc.. rather than they are really providers of anything at all, while pilling up mountains of gold and stuff with the service of the ones which they are supposedly the providers. For these entrepreneurs, its the same thing: They own the resources and they probably own a good bunch of the "means of production". If they haven't hold these things, people could live without them unless they are actual inventors. And, in case you don't know, most laws out there states that the inventions of the employees belongs to the company, a good bunch of innovation, except the very first ones, of these innovative people were done by their employees which the name we won't ever heard about it. Gates would take perhaps a 100 years to do a Windows XP operational system alone, that were the work of many many people that we don't know plus Gates. And Im not even counting the "rumours" (which some of them are not) of people stealing, copying inventions, etc..

 

[Lark]

People choose socialism because they want big daddy government to take care of them. Having wealth obviates such a desire. In addition, rational people -wealthy or not, will seldom choose a system that concentrates power and wealth in the hands of power-hungry and corrupt bureaucrats. That's the fatal flaw in socialism. The elites who are supposed to be making these decisions of taxation and redistribution tend to be stupid assholes. You're not getting selfless and objective decision-makers in government, you're getting slimy money grubbing lawyer types.

I suppose its alright if all that you say is the function of private individuals rather than government.

As they say, under capitalism man exploits man, under socialism it is precisely the opposite