[evilgenius]

I was talking to a friend of mine in the UK. The conversation came round to the dole. The UK still has a dole. My friend said that you would have a hard time getting those people on it to do anything. They don't seem to respond to incentives. That got me thinking about what life is like in the US, where there isn't a dole anymore. Over here, since there isn't any money in remaining idle, people will do many chump things for money. One of those is to participate in the gig economy. They will gladly do this and that for less than minimum wage because it was their idea, so to speak.

Nobody is going to get rich driving for Uber or doing something for someone else that they were too cheap to hire a real contractor to do. But there is money in that. There is enough to stay out of the dumpster. You could even argue that a slavish embracing of overly legally structured industries, like taxi cab businesses, has been detrimental to the health of the overall economy. Lots of other businesses can thrive because Uber takes people to their door, and taxis only used to take a much smaller figure. Cities may thrive where they were once dying. All they have to do is put up with a five to ten fold increase in dangerous driving because of all the amateurs making u-turns in front of oncoming traffic, or sitting in unsafe places with their flashers on in order to make a dime. Let's not go overboard. Taxi drivers were always just as bad. It's just that there were never so many taxi drivers as there are Uber drivers now.

Then, too, the current gig situation looks short lived. Pretty soon it will give way to automation. Is that when the people will organize? Is that when the supply side, the entrepreneurs responsible for much of this, many of whom can already see where this is going, will do something about it. It is from the supply side that the idea of a universal basic income has the most support. But wouldn't that just be like returning to the dole?

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', '
')Then, too, the current gig situation looks short lived. Pretty soon it will give way to automation. Is that when the people will organize? Is that when the supply side, the entrepreneurs responsible for much of this, many of whom can already see where this is going, will do something about it. It is from the supply side that the idea of a universal basic income has the most support. But wouldn't that just be like returning to the dole?

[evilgenius]

I don't see too many quick solutions either. I think that in the social media world public pressure has more import than it used to. The gig companies who are coordinating the work are responding, at least in certain places, and also because of government, with rules about how many hours can be spent behind the wheel before a person must take a break. There has been a lot of hemming and hawing about background checks. Personally, I feel as if there ought to be a two tiered system with those. If a defenseless person, like a child, is under the care of someone I want them to have to get past the most stringent sort of checks, whereas someone who takes the risk of riding with Uber ought to consider that those people only have to pass a streamlined check. They might not have axe murdered anyone yet, but it isn't our concern that they might sit around all day fantasizing about it. That's just my opinion. Other people want safety to be a higher concern.

I do think the pace of technological change surrounding this issue is progressing far faster than any political reaction to it can. We may wind up scrapping several well intentioned political responses before things take final shape. We may contradict ourselves.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', ' ')There has been a lot of hemming and hawing about background checks.

[Yonnipun]

I myself belive that universal basic income is inevitable in the nearest future. There simply will be no job for the average Joe. I also think that without overbreeding control a basic income is a catastrophic failure. Therefore in order to make it work and to stop the overpolulation the basic income should be paid only for them who voluntarily let themselves sterilized.

[onlooker]

Oh my goodness Y, I just wrote something that almost perfectly mirrors what you just state about the economic incentives needed to get people to comply with population controls on the can-collapse-of-global-civ-be-avoided-by-p-a-ehrlich-t67853-140.html#p1394149

[evilgenius]

I looked at this thread to see if it might have been the one where I posted that I thought the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression was coming. It wasn't. I never posted anything on this thread in the days running up to the Great Recession. I better step up. Now is my chance again. I'm going to latch onto a couple of themes already at work. Interest rates are rising. I think many corporations that have taken on too much debt are going to fail. The first of those will be the vanity inspired leveraged buyout schemes which rich people who get rich mostly by luck or who get so creative that they forget human feeling seem to favor. Cheap gasoline and low taxes haven't changed the position of the average American either. This time around there aren't so many especially whites males working in one profession, housing. High gas prices won't be the totally shellacking force they were last time. Rental prices will become a huge worry for many, but the political and social structure won't provide any breaks. Gas prices may make Uber and Lyft much harder places to make a living wage, however. Will the public tolerate on demand transportation prices which rival those of the taxi cab industry on an ongoing basis? Will high gas prices create an understanding by the ride buying public that allows that? I think that depends on whether the fully automated version of that service is available at the same time. If it is still years out, they might. If not, then the whole shebang will probably go another way. Which leads to the next crisis, government spending will fall dramatically. Already government is having trouble paying for important things. Pile a whole sector of the economy, in which too many people have been hiding since the Great Recession, into the dole system, in the form of universal basic income, and watch what happens to an already overstretched system. Then, there is always venture capital to worry about. I think we will see fewer superficial tech start-ups in favor of investment in what venture capital perceives as sure things. Privacy will further erode too, as the huge tech giants show how much political and social power they really have in the face of the reduced competition this will engender. Anyway, that's my current guess.

[Cog]

Both Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris both have endorsed single payer government run health care. So called Medicare for All. Its hard not to see that as a move towards socialism. Nearly all Democrats on the Federal level, have endorsed gun bans, in which millions would be made instant felons for non-compliance. Guess which other famous National Socialist back in history accomplished that?

The California Democrat party has made the universal basic income part of their official platform. What is not socialist about that?

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Yonnipun', 'I') myself belive that universal basic income is inevitable in the nearest future. There simply will be no job for the average Joe. I also think that without overbreeding control a basic income is a catastrophic failure. Therefore in order to make it work and to stop the overpolulation the basic income should be paid only for them who voluntarily let themselves sterilized.

[Cog]

So you are going to make foreign countries play nice in their trading with us how exactly? Perhaps we could send Obama so he can do some bows and begging. He was good at that. In business you play hardball and you play to win. Sorry Outcast, but I'll take Trump's judgment on tariffs above the thirty years of bad trade deals we have already been subjected to.

How do I know you are progressive? You have told me this in the following ways:

1) You think taxes are too low(Against tax cuts)
2) You favor a universal basic income
3) You support the unfair trade deals where the USA gets screwed(You support doing nothing to correct these unfair deals)

In other words, your talking points are right in line with the progressive left and are in no ways moderate. I make no bones about being on the conservative right and supporting Trump. At least own up to what you are and be a man about it.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'S')o you are going to make foreign countries play nice in their trading with us how exactly? Perhaps we could send Obama so he can do some bows and begging. He was good at that. In business you play hardball and you play to win. Sorry Outcast, but I'll take Trump's judgment on tariffs above the thirty years of bad trade deals we have already been subjected to.

How do I know you are progressive? You have told me this in the following ways:

1) You think taxes are too low(Against tax cuts)
2) You favor a universal basic income
3) You support the unfair trade deals where the USA gets screwed(You support doing nothing to correct these unfair deals)

[lpetrich]

What's the 'Green New Deal' and why do environmentalists want it? | MPR News
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
') The proposal calls for a new House select committee to draft broad legislation that would make the United States economy carbon-neutral and remove greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere and oceans.

...
This proposal likely faces gargantuan roadblocks in Congress — from wealthy oil-industry lobbyists to climate-science-denying members of Congress to moderate Democrats who don't believe the plan is necessary.

[Cog]

Are we really going to take anything seriously from Occluded Cortex ? The woman is a full blown communist with zero understanding on how to pay for these schemes. Her saving grace, is that she will provide at least two years of entertainment for me.

[Cog]

Just from reading the articles you posted, it seems degrowth involves income redistribution from the rich countries to the poor ones.

Degrowth in the Global North can provide ecological space for the Global South. For example, strong carbon caps for the North and better terms of trade for the South can help compensate for past carbon and resource debts, redistributing wealth between North and South.

For example, a guaranteed basic income would provide universal access to national wealth, securing basic sustenance for all and liberating time for non-paid activity. With the complementary policy of a job guarantee, the state could provide employment for all who wish to work in activities that support the common good.

Rebranding communism as degrowth. Sorry not interested.

[Cog]

Ok then you can take what the other party is offering.

Open borders and the elimination of ICE.
A 70-90% tax on anyone making more than ten million a year
Massive gun control regulation
The destruction of the fossil fuel industry through their green initiative
Banning free speech by declaring it hate speech
Abortion freely until the very moment of birth without restriction
Free college, free pre-k, free health care, forgiveness of all student loan debt, universal basic income

Choose wisely

[Cog]

We aren't talking about roads and power plants Newfie. We are talking about the left's positions that involve confiscating and redistributing wealth. Universal basic income, universal health care, free college, free stuff galore are the things I am talking about. The left feels I owe my money to others, to make up for what they do not have. If they feel they need these things, then go out and earn it. Or do without.

[Newfie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'W')e aren't talking about roads and power plants Newfie. We are talking about the left's positions that involve confiscating and redistributing wealth. Universal basic income, universal health care, free college, free stuff galore are the things I am talking about. The left feels I owe my money to others, to make up for what they do not have. If they feel they need these things, then go out and earn it. Or do without.

[evilgenius]

Several things don't look good, not just resources. We are much closer to an employment crisis brought on by artificial intelligence replacing human workers than we are to resource depletion, for instance. As with resource depletion, the unemployment crisis doesn't need to happen, it's just that it will unless the right steps are taken. If the world keeps going forward without planning first it will end in catastrophe. I think a similar fate will befall it if the planning is not well thought out.

I don't think that slapping a universal basic income over the jobs problem will work, in other words. That wouldn't put a stop to the inequality which has allowed the existence of the technology that will create the problem to cause the problem in the first place. It's the inequality which has driven the investment and implementation decisions which have brought this world upon us. It's not happening because the technology has come into existence. It's happening because the only way we have to distribute the profits gained by it is to the few, and not the many. A universal basic income won't fix this. It is only a form of largess which would come with strings attached. People in a democracy need to be able to vote not only with their ballots, but also with their money. They need to be able to take on risk, and receive the reward for having done so when the ideas that compel them to take those risks succeed. The universal basic income is a recipe for perpetually folding the economic engine into the camp of the already perceived winners. It would destroy vitality.

Something very bad could be on the horizon with money. As people lose their jobs they will default on their loans. The money supply is built from debt. When people default in large numbers it destroys money. Already there is huge danger out there. Take a situation like Uber, for instance. A great many people are driving for them, who owe a lot of money. If artificial intelligence were to replace drivers in, say, five years, all of those Uber drivers would be out of work almost overnight. I don't think it would actually take very long to roll out entire fleets of self-driving cars. The fleet model is already the one that the huge capitalized interested are saying they will pursue, over individual ownership. If fifteen other similar things also happen at the same time, look at the speed of change and how fast that is changing, then a lot of debt may be threatened with cancellation. It's easy to imagine fast food outlets not having employees anymore, as robots could flip burgers. Accounting and finance are just algorithms, which artificial intelligence is pretty good at replacing. The resultant blow to the money supply would be immense.

So the fleet model is an example of the sort of thinking I'm talking about that represents what the current distribution of profits will engender. They aren't talking about selling small self-driving fleets to individuals or s corps. They are talking about Uber cornering the market, all of a sudden, by owning all of the cars that drive for it. The cost of upkeep may derail that plan, but it wouldn't necessarily derail the plan that Ford has to do the same. Ditto the new Daimler BMW joint agreement I read about somewhere today, whose goal is to develop the fleet model for them on a shared between them basis. Regardless, individual ownership looks doomed, or relegated to the anachronistic. You are expected to call for your transport with an app, provided by one of the small number of firms which will be the only remaining actual owners of cars at that time, for the purpose of only using it to get from one immediate place to another.

Imagine what this sort of thing will do to thinking and individuality. Add what social media can do to homogenize people, and it is a recipe for the kind of society that doesn't need a tyrant in charge to be a tyranny. In a world like that people need choice to exercise freedom. The universal basic income, provided as it is currently being thought about, as a means to enable people to consume when they don't have incomes would only add to the bottom lines of those who own the fleets. The idea is to support the thing by taxing the fleet owners. That's a good way to take inventiveness out of the human equation. People may quit thinking for themselves, and begin to parrot whatever their phones tell them is right to think. Those who step out of line, who argue for more individuality, what would happen to them?

[evilgenius]

As far as Cog's warning goes that communism could come back, I don't really disagree with that. I think that is a danger in the world today. We are headed for this time when automation will take more jobs than ever, and retraining doesn't seem able to keep up with the pace of change. What we've always called working class people are not going to be happy.

What I'm trying to do instead of becoming alarmist is to find other answers than civil war. I've said in other places that I don't think that some government sponsored universal living wage will work. I think it won't because of the need for the money supply to expand and contract along with the economic activity of the people. I think where the problem lies right now is in low wages. People can't afford to pay off what they are asked by their economies to borrow in order to complete their lives. For decades now, to use the US example, the Fed has raised interest rates every time that worker's wages have begun to see some benefit. They have helped the wealthy concentrate wealth. That, by itself, is not an economic evil. But in doing so they have lost sight of the situation. It can't be fixed with their current set of policies. You can't go back in time and change things, shall we say, by distributing money today. They can't just back off of raising rates right now in order to fix that. The situation has become institutionalized. It has become embedded within the law. It is a big part of the world of memes which run around within the modern mind.

At some point I'm not sure that lower rates are going to help the working class all that much. The working class is on the cusp of a period of uncertainty, such that qualifying for loans may not be easy for many. Soon millions of long haul truckers won't have an entire industry to work in, even though right now there is a shortage and their wages are going up. But how long before big rigs drive themselves? Can we really expect a human to sit as a safety driver backup behind every wheel very many years into that? That's just an example of one segment of the working class which is threatened in that way. Changes like that look set to happen faster than retraining can find a place for everybody who will be displaced.

I think the solution is to set a place for those people who will be displaced at the table, of the ruling class. I don't mean as under communism, where the means of production are owned by the state. I think there ought to be competing classes of stock set up for public companies of some size where formerly working class people are incentivized to buy. I've talked about this before on this site too. If those shares owned by the working class then establish the payment, or bonus, levels of the ruling class, as established by shareholder voting concerning what to do with the money available to those shares - reward the ruling class, management of those companies, or pay themselves, then there would still be room within the economy for the working class. As I said above, they are necessary for any economy, even one of extreme wealth concentration because their level of borrowing helps define the value of the currency which in turn defines how much wealth those who have managed to concentrate have actually got. Using government spending alone, as in a universal basic income, would be more static, like a gold standard, and unresponsive to pressures within the economy. As much as people desire an economy of perception, all equal and everything, any real economy also has to be responsive. If you take the harshest steps, and get rid of money or track its movement to a such a refined degree as to eliminate privacy, I think you will only find that you have to bring it back again. But if you don't fix the systemic problem regarding wages and borrowing the same evil of concentration to such an extreme will lie waiting for you.

[Cog]

I watched the Democrat debates in full both nights. Here is what I've gleaned from what they said:

1) Most of them support defacto decriminalization of anyone crossing the border illegally.
2) They all support free medical care for illegals
3) All of them want to ban what they call assault rifles. Some of them want to confiscate existing ones using a mandatory buyback which is nothing more that confiscation with compensation
4) All of them except Hickenlooper and Biden want some form of universal health care system
5) Some are for a universal basic income Wang with his $1000 per month income and that would include illegals. Which wouldn't be illegals anymore. Castro falls into the everyone is welcome here camp.
6) Booker and Harris are playing race politics by calling Biden a racist and support reparation along with Warren. Warren is as socialist at Bernie and perhaps even more so
6) All of them think we need to tax corporations and rich people more to pay for all of these programs and want to reverse the Trump tax cuts.

7) Most of them support some sort of program to erase $1.2 trillion in student loans. The plan is to forgive all this debt and have the taxpayers pay for this.

The party has shifted far left even from 2016. What is developing is a disaster if we elect any of them. The flood of illegals coming here if we have open borders and free stuff will turn into a tsunami. The country that we know as the USA would cease to exist. Couple that with the confiscation of guns and its a recipe for Civil War.