If they don’t want money to be a birthright they should make it so money isn’t necessary to stay alive
Stephanie Hendon, 34, lived in a shelter while her husband was living on the street, making it difficult for them to raise their four kids. After a year of payments from the Austin Guaranteed Income Pilot, she had a three-bedroom apartment, a new car, clothes for her children, a new job, and new financial strategies for the future.
This is what GOap fights against: The literal improvement of peoples existence.
Never vote Republican. They hate you!
Its selfish bullshit. Their response would be one of a handful:
“Why should I work if the government will just give me everything for free!?”
“Why should I have to pay for lazy people who made bad decisions!?”
“Why does the government not understand debt!? They’re going to bankrupt us!”
They strongly believe in survival of the fittest. Either you become wealthy or everything you did was your fault and a mistake and you should die if you can’t afford life. The only salvation you should get (I almost used the word deserve, which they 100% would argue you don’t deserve.) would be salvation dolled out by a charity that people volunteered to give of their own desire.
Of course the charities never have nearly enough money to accomplish this which they fully understand but don’t care one iota about. It’s almost entirely selfishness on their part, mixed in with a heaping dose of ignorance.
UBI is the perfect capitalist solution to the majority of problems. It should allow for less market distortion and could have some really interesting outcomes.
I’m very excited to see a first world country use UBI.
That an externalities can go a long, long way in this world.
Capitalism depends on the threat of homelessness to function. UBI can definitely ameliorate the problems of capitalism, but capitalists will constantly fight it. UBI is also a great idea within socialist economies, where there would be no force against it. We should be doing both - eliminate capitalism and provide UBI.
Capitalism depends on the threat of homelessness to function.
No it doesn’t
UBI is also a great idea within socialist economies, where there would be no force against it.
Maybe. But socialism is a stupid inefficient system, so it’s a non starter.
UBI works very well with the market based capitalist system. That’s where I think it will shine.
No it doesn’t
It kinda does. Do you think people enjoy working for near poverty wages? They don’t. But they can’t afford to say no to poor pay because it’s still better than no pay. If people weren’t worried about becoming homeless they’d demand for higher pays. In that sense capitalism does depend on the threat of homelessness to drive down the wage to make more profits.
But socialism is a stupid inefficient system, so it’s a non starter.
How to say you don’t know anything about socialism without saying you don’t know anything about socialism. I’m going to give you an example of it working on a smaller scale because US kept sabotaging most national attempts to have socialism. Worker cooperatives are socialist and I recommend looking up the history of Mondragon, a successfully ran cooperative for over half a century now.
You guys are really bad at understanding basic economy theory.
It works on supply and demand and assumes that everyone works rationally and with full knowledge.
The invisible hand of the market finding the optimal solution is basically the 0th law of capitalism.
Now economic policy, you’ll be amazed to understand is about fixing inefficiencies that do not allow for optimal conditions. Tonnes of people go learn about what are the issues with capitalism and how to make it better, that’s what economic testing is about. That’s why it’s better than socialism because it’s competitive and strives for change.
If people are forced to work for poverty wages then they are losing their true value and capitalism would be about trying to fix that value. If everyone had UBI that would equate the negotiating position of workers and they wouldn’t have to take poverty wages. That’s why UBI is the capitalist solution to that problem in capitalism. It allows to market to work the way economists want it to work.
Everything you wrote is great in theory. But in reality…
The invisible hand of the market finding the optimal solution is basically the 0th law of capitalism.
Optimal solution for whom? It’s not an optimal solution for me to work 16 hours a day, but it would be an optimal way solution for businesses who want to maximize the work they get out of their workers. It’s not capitalism that got us 8h a day 5 days a week, it was the response to the “optimal” solution that capitalism came up with, which was to work people 16 hours a day, 6 days a week. In a broad sense our current working hours is not caused by capitalism but socialism.
The current RTO wave is another example how capitalism does not find the optimal solution. Research has shown that working from home is just as productive if not more productive than working from office (in addition to being more beneficial for the worker) and yet capital owners are demanding people return to office.
Tonnes of people go learn about what are the issues with capitalism and how to make it better, that’s what economic testing is about. That’s why it’s better than socialism because it’s competitive and strives for change.
Why do you think socialism is not competitive or striving towards change?
If people are forced to work for poverty wages then they are losing their true value and capitalism would be about trying to fix that value.
The wages are not following the inflation and wealth gap keeps growing. The so called “middle class” is eroding into “lower class” as the wealth gap keeps making people poorer. This has been happening for decades. Where’s the fix?
Where’s the fix to climate change that oil conglomerates knew about since the 70s? Oh right, the “fix” was to run a disinformation campaign until the evidence becomes irrefutable and they’re forced of oil, because it was the “optimal solution” for making a profit.
What you’re talking about is the idyllic version of Capitalism where everything is great and capital solves everything, because that’s what’s taught to you. What is not taught is that it’s not how capitalism actually works.
It works on supply and demand and assumes that everyone works rationally and with full knowledge.
So it works based on simplifying assumptions that never hold up for real.
Did you know that the US does not have a capitalist system? In fact, it’s silly to think of “capitalism” and “socialism” as systems at all. They aren’t. They are broad systemic feature sets. You’ve probably heard the phrase “mixed economy”. That’s actually what nearly every nation has, a mixed economy, meaning that we have socialist, as well as capitalist, elements. In fact, without socialist elements, the capitalist elements of our economy would have self-destructed a long time ago. You clearly have no idea what capitalism or socialism even are. That’s fine, most people don’t, it’s pretty much the norm, but now that it’s been pointed out to you, you have a choice: learn, and grow, or be a stubborn fool. Hopefully you choose well.
Haha I have a degree in economics. That why I can see all the shit you tankies write as just plain wrong.
But I’m sure your youtube video on Karl Marx makes you an expert on these things.
People don’t use words as absolutes. America is largely referred to as a capitalist country. My saying that isn’t incorrect. But you can argue technicalities of words all you want, communism sucks or (mixed economies heavily leaning to communism sucks).
Dude, if you have a degree in econ I think your uni should lose its accreditation. I am dead serious.
Where’s your degree from, Hillsdale? I can’t imagine it would be any serious school.
- If you had a legitimate degree, you probably would be able to make a coherent argument, instead of announcing that you have a degree, like it’s a magic talisman, to always make you right.
- If you had a legitimate degree, you would probably know that there are people with more education than yourself who are socialists, and not believe that having a degree in economics necessarily makes one pro-capitalist.
- If you had a legitimate degree, you would almost certainly have had at least one or two socialist professors on your way to that degree.
- If you had a legitimate degree, you probably would have learned more intellectual discipline than to call anybody who doesn’t agree with private capital a “tankie”.
- If you had a legitimate degree, you probably wouldn’t be so unwise as to assume you were the only one. This thinking shows a really sheltered life, like somebody who has never even been to a university, or encountered new ideas. It connects back to the “magic talisman” view I mentioned above.
Sure, language is complex, and it isn’t broadly wrong to refer to the US as a “capitalist country”, as capitalism is certainly the dominant economic power, here, but that’s intentionally dodging the point. You were the one speaking in absolutes, saying “But socialism is a stupid inefficient system, so it’s a non starter.” That statement alone indicates a complete lack of understanding of what socialism is, an understanding rooted in absolute systems, which in turn heavily implies a lack of understanding of what capitalism is. What do you think these words actually mean? Come on, show me what that Hillsdale degree was worth.
Survival is a birthright you absolute fucking vultures. We made money a requirement for that.
And it’s not like you can screw off into the forest to live a self-sufficient life either, because I’m pretty sure that’s illegal in most places in the world. If the forest isn’t already devoid of resources due to human activity that is.
It’s also just a ridiculous proposition. So much media tells us this is possible, but no, it’s not, not even if you find a virgin jungle. Professional survivalists who train and study for it still wouldn’t be able to actually live a full life - at some point you’re vulture food without society. We’re cooperative, tribal animals. That’s our strength, and we’ve built economic systems designed to take that strength from us.
I think the core problem is we’ve been giving all the power to sociopaths who use pretty words to fool the masses into allowing them to leech the fruits of their labour whilst contributing nothing themselves.
We need to start valuing empathy over bravado, intellectualism over shallow emotional stimulus, and humanity over populist fervour.
That would be a massive cultural shift that would require changes in our approach to many facets of society (education, media, religion, politics, etc), and we seem to be going in the wrong direction, unfortunately.
