My worry with UBI as a replacement for work is that it relies on the continued altruism of the elite, with no balancing force keeping the status-quo. Despite its problems, properly-functioning capitalism keeps the few accountable to the many. Billionaires can only throw their weight around up to a point, because at the end of the day they rely on regular people to keep their economic engine going. They need us for our economic value, which gives us power. If that became no longer the case, democracy itself could be abolished, with no consequence to those at the top. Capitalism has many problems, and doesn't work on its own, and certainly needs fixing in 2019, but I think it's also the lynchpin maintaining any status quo at all between elites and everyone else.
Now, this also assumes that people become literally useless in the automated future, compared to systems. It's possible - if unlikely - that humans always move on to a higher frontier of uniquely human work once the previous one becomes automated. In that scenario, UBI could be a great way to ride that transition. Also, partial UBI, meant only to give people a platform for growth in a world that still has jobs for them, could be a good way to combat economic inequality.
I think this is the same point that Harari makes in "21 lessons for the 21st century" i.e democracy became important simultaneously with the work of people being important along with the industrial revolution. Nations needed a happy population as a happy population was the ultimate source of economic output as well as an army. If more and more economic output doesn't involve humans, humans can't use a lot of existing tactics to bring about a change. Also, if most people are getting by well on an UBI, would people even be anymore interested in politics, since jobs are currently an important issue in any election.
> Also, if most people are getting by well on an UBI, would people even be anymore interested in politics, since jobs are currently an important issue in any election.
One possible counter is that people may have more free time to spend engaging in politics. Once one need is satisfied attention will inevitably shift. Mazlow's hierarchy and all that.
>>Also, if most people are getting by well on an UBI, would people even be anymore interested in politics, since jobs are currently an important issue in any election.
One of the main reasons people give when I ask them why they don’t pay attention to politics is that they don’t have any time or energy or willpower left to do so after working 40+ hours a week doing largely meaningless, soul-crushing tasks.
If that were all there was to it it would be totally unsustainable. There are two possible goals of UBI, depending on who you ask:
1) Automation is going to make the concept of jobs obsolete. Therefore most of the population will simply die of poverty if we don't artificially redistribute all of the wealth.
2) Many people today are stuck in poverty because they're too financially stretched to pay for healthcare, education, a car to get to work, childcare, etc., even while spending all extra time working multiple jobs. The hope is that by giving them a life raft, they'll have the leeway to spend time, money, and energy on self-betterment, and thereby enrich the economy.
My argument is that #1 sounds good but doesn't seem robust against a few powerful bad actors. #2, though, could be quite effective.
I’d like to believe what you are saying, but it sounds a bit like the cows have control of the farm because the farmer needs the milk. All the farmer does is pain-optimize to the cheapest possible conditions that keep cows alive and milking. Which turns out is locking them in stalls and force feeding them hormones.
People are just realizing now we’ve become the cows needed to legeitimize the capital that is milked back out of us. I agree though that UBI is just trying to juice that feedback loop in the most superficial way possible. Like cows deciding that more hay and hormones will somehow free them. (It won’t)
Yet if the cows stopped producing milk, the farmers would simply let them all die off. And to stretch the metaphor, while the cows produce milk they have the option of unionizing. Saying "we'll all quit if you don't treat us better" only works while they care if you quit.
> My worry with UBI as a replacement for work is that it relies on the continued altruism of the elite
Well it relies on a fair and properly functioning democracy. We have a very corrupt system at the moment, people don't get what they want because politicians are bought and paid for by their donors. We need adequate defenses against this in our system, then it stops being anything to do with the altruism of the elite, because the majority regular folks are going to continue voting for the UBI or other benefits.
The other balance is the threat of revolution. Keep the population happy enough or they'll come for you.
Removing the gated community effect would also help. If the rich have to use the same services as the rest of us, then they have an incentive to ensure those services are well run. If large inheritances are effectively taxed away, then they have to ensure society provides a good platform for their children. Etc.
> Well it relies on a fair and properly functioning democracy.
For that, there need to be consequences for politicians that screw up. There aren't. Actually, nowhere do we even have a real democracy. A regular person has no say in anything at all.
>Now, this also assumes that people become literally useless in the automated future, compared to systems. It's possible - if unlikely - that humans always move on to a higher frontier of uniquely human work once the previous one becomes automated. In that scenario, UBI could be a great way to ride that transition. Also, partial UBI, meant only to give people a platform for growth in a world that still has jobs for them, could be a good way to combat economic inequality.
What you're missing is that not everyone will be qualified to do those tougher new jobs. Especially the people who are now working at McDonalds, as cashiers, etc.
I don't buy the idea that people are fundamentally "smart" and "stupid", or "creative" and "uncreative". I think those things mostly depend on what kind of environment you grow up in, and what your self-perception is.
To your credit, most people probably have an average brain (and roughly the same brain power) that is simply wired differently and focuses on different things. One person is more practical, another more aesthetic, another more mathematical, etc. However, the way you SPEND your brain power has an effect on the kinds of outcomes you get. If you spend all day thinking about cattle, you're not going to understand economics (much less why anyone would want to go to Mars). I'd like to say that's "obvious", but (sadly) to many people, it's not.
Also to your credit, the environment (you grow up in) does have an effect on you significantly, and it shapes what about you is drawn out as well as what information you have to begin with. Someone growing up in the ghetto isn't going to understand the life of the gentry in France. Someone with poor education isn't going to see why they need math for life (until maybe too late).
In short, we all start with a decent brain and a certain wiring. Environment draws out or suppresses who we are, but more importantly, gives us starting information to work with, and this shapes our views and ways of thinking.
Mass democracy was always a mistake and will just have to be abolished (although probably there is no way for it to be abolished democratically as it's a chicken and egg problem - so it will probably happen through societal collapse and what's called a regime change).
It worked okay at the height of industrial era, but worse and worse ever since. Nothing good happens if you let people who bear no real responsibility for anything, to make decisions. Only property owners should vote.
That's a good slogan for starting a war. One day, people like you will have their land taken from them. Will they still feel the same way?
The fact is, if you take away a person's vote, they have no voice AT ALL in their government. The vote actually happens to be the last thing PREVENTING war because the fact is, everyone would like to do what they want and not have other people tell them how to live. We have government to prevent people from hurting each other and doing mean things to each other, and though it may not be all that effective, anarchy never works and always ends in some kind of oligarchy.
People go to war whenever things are taken from them. Land, property, rights, etc. They are happy when things are given to them. Bread, circuses, etc. So if you want to start a war, take from people. If you want to prevent it, give to them.
Social security doesn't seem at all vulnerable to lobbyists or what billionaires want. In a democracy, how would that work? Businesses depend on the legal system.
Lobbyists matter more for issues where most people don't have a direct interest and/or aren't paying attention. UBI by its nature would have a very large constituency, once people are getting the checks.
That said, I agree that partial UBI would be better to start, but more for reasons of affordability and not changing the economy too quickly.
Social security is underfunded and also there is a lot of pressure to not raise the retirement age despite changing demographics. So from one side there was lobbying to give tax cuts instead of funding it and there is also a lot of lobbying to not raise retirement age.
So billionaires and the AARP both get their way most likely at the cost of future generations.
Here's an idea for billionaires: "invest" in things that only break even at best and don't beset the economy with future rent-keeping. Get yr money back, or further tax breaks. For instance, affordable housing.
No, those are trying to be profitable, and the fact that they aren't makes them more menacing, more willing to screw over workers, game regulations, and buy political favor.
Affordable housing is an oxymoron. In the U.S. in general, housing is very, very affordable already. It's just that in the few spots where the money is, it is super expensive, exactly because everyone wants to get there. Build a lot of affordable housing, and you will pay with the time you spend standing in traffic, also an unaffordable amount.
It also doesn't make sense to have everyone in the country try to live in a dozen cities.
Those cities themselves are unsustainable: SF, Portland, and Seattle are all literal shitholes, due to failed civic leadership and uneconomic policies.
As a civilization, we need to figure out how to reduce the pressure to collect in a handful of places, and spread ourselves back over multiple locations and jurisdictions -- because it's clear that's a better plan.
Our current system is optimized for a few major players, and it's collapsing. They're right to worry, and try to adjust it.
Figuring out how to get people to live in already affordable places is the only way to reduce the pressure on those cities and create housing affordable and livable for average people.
> Figuring out how to get people to live in already affordable places is the only way to reduce the pressure on those cities and create housing affordable and livable for average people.
... And thus a bunch of Californians moved to affordable Austin, TX and made it super expensive, driving all the native residents and average day workers out of their homes and onto the streets.
Pressure moved from one location just builds it somewhere else because people tend to congregate. You can't just say "Everyone, go move to remote places in Montana". It doesn't work like that. People congregate around the job markets, money pools, and nice locations. Hence, the coastal states in the US (centers of trade and places with beaches) have the highest population densities.
> People congregate around the job markets, money pools, and nice locations.
To be fair, there's a lot of nice locations outside of major cities.
But I agree with you that people tend to congregate around job markets and money pools -- and I think that's precisely what has the wealthy concerned and looking for new models, because the attractive forces in the current paradigm lead to unsustainable attractive blobs.
There is a super-simple solution to this problem: a progressive tax on income, wealth, and most importantly, inheritance (with an exemption for private businesses below a certain size that are both owned and administered by a single family).
Another possibility: eliminate private ownership of land. This is actually not as radical as it sounds. It's a big shift in mindset, but not that big a change in how things actually work. The mindset shift is to go back to the native american idea that all land is collectively owned by the people. The government is the "management company" that administers it, and one of the things it can do is offer long-term leases. This would essentially be the same as the status quo except that instead of owning the land and paying property tax, you'd own a lease and pay rent. The reason I think this would have a beneficial effect is that the change in mindset would change the dynamics of political debates. For example, NIMBYism would be less tenable because it's not your back yard any more. You're just a tenant.
The problem is that the changes you propose rip out the framework that allowed our country to become a leader in many respects, show me a socialist or communist country that innovates, there are none, they all come to capitalist countries to learn and compete, your missing the forest for the trees mate.
Yes, of course. That is why the US was the first nation to send a man to space, or have high speed bullet trains, or have accessible healthcare for everyone. Oh wait.
It only invented transistors, lasers, zippers, the internet, carbon fiber, airbags, information theory, aluminum smelting, television, induction motors, alternating current, radio communications, GPS, LED lamps, florescent lamps, incandescent lamps, nuclear power, magnetic storage, RADAR, refrigeration, solar panels...
But hey, the Soviets beat us into space by about a month. All they had to do was murder a million of their political opponents and then starve their people for a few decades. You decide if it was worth it.
And if you think the US has a "free market" healthcare system you are quite mistaken.
Please don't do nationalistic or ideological flamewar on HN, even if someone else started it. Also, please don't snark. This is in the site guidelines:
I'm not Chinese and not a fan of the PRC, but you can't honestly believe all research from China is stolen. Assuming proper nutrition and exposure to education, there are intelligent and innovative people everywhere. Probabilistically speaking, with those assumptions, the larger the population, the more of that innovative potential they're likely to have.
Also, it's efficient to steal ideas. I assure you, given the opportunity, businesses in the US frequently steal ideas/IP as well, they're just more careful about it because there's more consequences. Why do you think so many IP lawsuits exist.
Furthermore, stealing or copying a successful process is in human nature for survival, heck, it's part of the foundations of evolution. Most people are only concerned when it's their ideas being stolen but not when they "borrow" others'.
Oh for sure, there are smart people everywhere, as I note in a comment elsewhere. In this case, I was simply returning one overly simply retort with another.
Capitalism does encourage reward for innovation, which is why it works better... up to a point. Innovative people exist everywhere - it's part of who they are - but when no rewarded, they won't work. What we have in the US is that crafty, selfish businessmen manipulate the system and "invent" all kinds of walls that steal the rewards of innovation for themselves. Now we have tech "giants" and massive corporations that pay peanuts (in comparison with their actual profits off innovation), run the government, and want oppressive laws and treaties like the TPP.
As I'm fond of saying:
In a capitalistic system, a few people end up with all the money and power.
In a communistic system, a few people end up with all the money and power.
The means are different, but the result is the same.
People come to the US for its socialist school system, or the security of its socialist policing and fire services. Or the benefits of a socialist military industrial complex that prop up half the country and invest huge amounts into socialist research and development. People come for the security of the socialist banking system named too big to fail. Show me someone who comes for the capitalist healthcare or prison service...
There are very few countries in the world that lived by the laissez faire rules of capitalism, because its been a disaster every time.
Sure, but how much of that is down to the socialist things i listed, and how much is down to Wall street? Even if you believe mostly the latter; The success of the financial services of Wall St and private enterprise in the US is a direct result of socialist policies. Can you imagine any of this success without socialist schools? can you imagine any rule of law with a private police force?
If a country is too far socialist or too far capitalist, the result is the same; the few gaining great power and privilege, while the many are powerless and suffering in poverty. Its obvious that a balance is needed, socialism can be very good at leveling the playing field for basic necessities, while regulated capitalism can be good at distributing power hierarchies while remaining fairly efficient.
The problem i see us facing right now is that capitalism has had a lobby on political power for fifty years and is preventing this balance, substituting its own power-wealth hungry pseudo-balance. This is why we have difficulty dealing with climate change, and why places like the US are struggling with a universal health system, or why the UK is dismantling theirs.
I agree with your point on laissez-faire capitalism. Unfettered capitalism never works. However, pardon me for beating down the straw-man. You box things in by naming a select few "socialistic" systems that seem to work (only because they've been here with everything else) and selecting a few capitalistic industries that are obvious failure. If socialism was so successful, then why don't people go to OTHER socialist nations in higher rates?
But to answer why people come here, I'd say they come for freedom and the hope of a future - and many try to stay. The east coast is full of Indian doctors who come here for their degree and have no intention of ever going back to India.
Another possibility: eliminate private ownership of land. This is actually not as radical as it sounds.
Historically, what follows this is mass poverty.
The mindset shift is to go back to the native american idea that all land is collectively owned by the people.
Native Americans tended to go to war when one group infringed on another's territory.
The government is the "management company" that administers it, and one of the things it can do is offer long-term leases.
The government struggles administering drivers licenses. And wherever they've been the landlord, the results have almost universally been impoverished ghettos.
> Historically, what follows this is mass poverty.
Yes, but historically capitalism has worked. That's the whole point here: things are changing. Not all of the lessons of history apply in a post-scarcity world.
> Not all of the lessons of history apply in a post-scarcity world.
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
I'm not sure what you mean by "post-scarcity"? Things may be "available", but that doesn't mean people have access to them.
While it's nice to think of land as "unowned", in practice, someone controls it, and they almost never have the interests of the occupants in mind. Besides, I've found that people tend to treat property better when they consider it theirs and have space AWAY from people.
Going along with your point though, it might be best if everyone received some designed size plot of land (large enough to build a small family residence on at least). Yes, there would be competition, but in competitive areas, the land plots could be smaller. In "unwanted" areas (Kansas, Wyoming), plots could be large enough for profitable cattle and farming industry. The good thing would be that no one would be without land to built on; they would have their own space to "be them" and live as they wished without rubbing shoulders with their neighbors (which tends to make Americans rough around the edges, regardless of age/sex/political views). Currently, many people struggle just getting an apartment, let alone a house.
Notably, the mechanics of a new system would need to be worked out, and would likely be abused, manipulated, and ruined because of selfish people, but it's a nice thought.
> in practice, someone controls it, and they almost never have the interests of the occupants in mind
Yes, that's why I'm advocating leases. This allows you to separate short-term control from long-term control more easily. The interests of the occupants are best attended to via short-term control (the sink needs to be fixed now) but the interests of society are best attended to via long-term control (we need to tear down this single family house, which made sense 50 years ago, and replace it with a multi-family unit).
> it might be best if everyone received some designed size plot of land
That might work if there was a constant supply of new land to distribute, but there isn't.
> The interests of the occupants are best attended to via short-term control ... but the interests of society are best attended to via long-term control.
Sounds nice, but good luck finding politicians and leaders who will exercise just (as in "justice") decisions in this manner.
More generally: The problem right now is a people problem, corruption. The system isn't the primary problem. If everyone were benevolent, sharing, kindhearted individuals, then we'd work together to see everyone had a home, regardless of whether the system was capitalistic, socialistic, or communistic. Instead, we live in a world of selfish people. sigh
It's nice to talk about theories though. :)
> That might work if there was a constant supply of new land to distribute, but there isn't.
True, but there is plenty of unused land. Just that people tend to crowd the coasts. EDIT: I didn't finish my thought. I meant to add that there's still enough earth for people to occupy for years... and we can build vertical realestate too.
> The problem right now is a people problem, corruption
No, I don't agree. I've done a lot of traveling in Africa so I know what corruption looks like, and what we have in the West ain't it (yet). The situation we're in is a result of people acting rationally within a set of rules that were predicated on some assumptions that are no longer true, like that the demand for labor is essentially infinite. The rules are also based on some assumptions that were never true, like that societal well being can be objectively measured in terms of GDP or ROI or something like that, and that infinite growth is possible.
To fix this problem we need to fundamentally change the rules of the game to better align with today's reality, and more importantly, tomorrow's likely reality: machines can do pretty much anything that humans can do, so the market value of labor is almost certainly going to plunge. That's good for buyers, but bad for sellers. But sellers are people too. We can't just discard them the way we do excess horses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_Need_Not_Apply).
No, there is corruption, but it's better disguised and hidden in the US than in other countries (because otherwise it'd be caught, and no one committing the crimes wants that). People are wicked the world over. Why should it be any different in the US than elsewhere? When people don't have a moral compass, they are free to do as they choose. We have in the US some humanitarian traces of Christianity, some influences of Buddhism, some traces of other things, but in reality, the only ethical tethers politicians have these days is the shame of being caught. It's easier to get caught in a semi-transparent government like the US. In Russia? Nope. People like Putin can do all kinds of things without the populous knowing.
> The situation we're in is a result of people acting rationally within a set of rules that were predicated on some assumptions that are no longer true, like that the demand for labor is essentially infinite.
IBYP? I don't know anyone who thinks the demand for labor is infinite. I can see in your next paragraph, you're jumping the gun and thinking about a robotic society, but hang on there, cowboy (a pun on your last line). While such a shift in system may seem necessary in light of such a future, you're still thinking about economics in terms of how the system will improve things. It's natural for most people on HN to be the rationally-minded architectural types, so they think systems will solve problems. But pause for a moment and consider: Which world would you rather live in:
A) A world where humans (and maybe robots) compete in the market place, where people pursue their own interests and ends in effort to "get ahead". i.e. The world we're headed for. And by the way, this world could be either capitalistic, socialistic, or communistic. The fact is, people will pursue their own interests regardless of the system.
B) A world where humans (and maybe robots) are supportive of each other, offering help to those in need, sharing resources, and seeking the well being of each other.
Yes, it's a leading question, but I think you'd agree world B is nicer. That's the one we want. However, that's the one that requires change in the MORAL AND ETHICAL CHARACTER of people, i.e. the part of people that says "Do good to your neighbor", "Help your neighbor buy groceries", "Help your neighbor fix his/her sink/tub/car", "Help teach your neighbor's kids", as opposed to selfish mentality of "Pay the Stanford coach to let your kid be admitted ahead of other kids" and "When the balance is in your favor, say nothing" and "Make the poor pukes be the garbage man while I, privileged individual, get the high-paying executive role". The fact is, if everyone supported each other, we'd all be ahead by now. But then each person gets the idea that they'll let OTHER people be helpful while THEY get ahead, and the whole thing collapses.
In short, unselfishness would work. And before you object and say it won't happen here (which is quite plausible and very likely), you can't say it NEVER works. For example, Tokyo is one of the safest places in the world due to the underlying philosophical foundations of Japan that taught people to rely on the good of society. It worked for a while (although in more recent times, these philosophical foundations are decaying, so more violence is prevalent, and notably, the reliance on society was directed inwardly (towards the Japanese) not outwardly (towards foreigners), otherwise they wouldn't have been part of WWII). It's a complicated story, and I'm not expounding much. I'm also talking too long and you're going to want to stop reading.
tl;dr - It's a human problem, not a problem of the system we have.
> Why should it be any different in the US than elsewhere?
I don't know why it should be, but I can tell you from personal experience that it is in fact different. To be sure, the U.S. is moving more towards the African model (to my great dismay) but it's not quite there yet.
> I think you'd agree world B is nicer.
Sure. And I'd like a pony too. But if you want to actually solve problems in the real world you have to deal with reality as it is, not as you would like it to be.
>Going along with your point though, it might be best if everyone received some designed size plot of land (large enough to build a small family residence on at least).
It wouldn't work. Building codes and permits would make it too costly for the poor to ever do anything with it.
True, and I did consider that. The list of reasons why it won't work are too long for a single post. Nevertheless, it might be "best" even though "the best we can do" in this chaotic world is no where near "ideal".
You look at historical trends, not a single point in time.
It's not historically Myspace was the social network, it's historically social networks are displaced by others, of which Facebook is only the latest incarnation. And the future of Facebook is Myspace, ideally sooner rather than later, but eventually one way or another.
If every time something has happened before it has had the same result, trying it again and expecting something else is not a plan that inspires confidence.
This seems like it could help the problem but there are serious consequences to enacting it.
Inheritance tax is making it expensive to trasnfer a family-owned farm down the generations, and as a result they are sold to corporations instead. Bigger, wealthier families avoid the tax altogether by using legal methods, which makes the inheritance tax burden mostly fall on the poorer farmers. Removing ownership of land would do nothing to combat this. In fact, if farmers didn’t own their land, things would get worse, not better: they would have no incentive to use long-term (costlier) agricultural strategies, since they wouldn’t have any guarantee they’d benefit from it. Further, they’d be less likely to invest in long term equipment. Guess who would? Larger corporations. In other words, this proposal would exactly concentrate the wealth to big corporations, perhaps the opposite of your intention.
There are plenty of examples of the later and none of them are pretty compared to status quo in the US. It seems unpopular to state but blindingly obvious that we live in the best time in the history of the world for humans, and if you live in a first world country you have it easier than anyone at any point in history to simply live or climb an economic ladder.
Second system syndrome is en vogue right now in politics. Maybe there is some tectonic shift that will happen this century due to technological progress, but I'd counter moderate and incremental change would be much less risky (if you botch a software project maybe people lose jobs, if you botch a political sea change millions of people die) and there is plenty of small but meaningful improvements to be had for every class of person.
The problem is that the economic system as it stands today does not allow for moderate incremental change. In a country where we blindly worship capitalism from birth to our graves, any attacks against capitalism are framed as being un-American.
Small iterative changes are fought tooth-and-nail by those emboldened through exploits encouraged by capitalism who, ironically, hold most the power to make such changes (not much unlike historical implementations of fuedelism).
The system itself is very self-preserving in that nature. Those who have the most to lose in the system have the most power and resources to resist change because that's how the underlying system is structured.
With socioeconomic mobility at an all time low due to earlier successes closing doors behind them (the "american dream"), it's no wonder people are growing more frustrated and seeking radical change over incremental changes. They've tried incremental change (and watched their parents and grandparents try it). It didn't work, so now they're pulling out the stops and who could blame them.
Look at the 2016 and upcoming 2020 presidential elections, largely fueled products of this issue in various forms. People are growing very tired of being lied to and exploited. The very wealthy groups, as the article suggests, need to consider that maximizing long term profits may require them to reduce their short term profit margins a bit and keep working classes from turning this entire country upside down.
I think everything you said could be true and you completely missed the point of my comment.
If I lived in a third world country, I'd be more astounded that there are places I could never work a day in my life and be fed, sheltered, have access to incredible healthcare (yes even in the US) and probably lead an intellectually satisfying (with free access to books, entertainment, computers, Internet and FOSS etc) life.
The fact that there are thousands of billionaires that have possessions and power beyond my comprehension as even a very well off American doesn't mean much. No more than the fact that there is a Pope or Presidents or professional athletes or any other demigod I will never be. It's just another modern form of feudalism that humans seem to be hardwired for.
College admissions have to be part of the discussion. Elite American schools wash our aristocracy with a whiff of merit. If Harvard and Stanford want to maintain “institutional advancement” and “legacy” admissions preferences, that’s their right. But then they should lose their non-profit status. (And the “donations” cease to be tax deductible.)
Both options seem radical. Either penalize success or forcefully take things from people their families have, possibly, owned for generations.
If you compensate the owners of the land and take your time building the government institutions that will manage it the second option seems possible. Maybe something like what Scotland did in the 90's (I think it was) when they abolished the last parts of the feudal system.
I don't see how that would be possible in the US though. US politicians are typically funded by corporations and corporations own land. Besides, from what I understand, the right to own their own land is very important to quite a few Americans.
Put differently: I'm pretty sure an adult American in the 80's would scream "communism" at your ideas. Some of those work as politicians today. :-)
Land (and property) ownership is quite important here because many of our other rights stem from land ownership.
For example, if I'm on land I don't own, I have no real right to freedom of speech because I have no right to be on the land to begin with since it's privately held. I'm there legally by permission of the property owner only and can be removed.
This becomes increasingly problematic the more private entities take ownership of land. Imagine a world where a few hundred people own nearly all the non-government owned property and the vast majority of citizens have to rent/lease or utilized shared property.
Those private entities begin to dictate if I can take pictures, say certain things, bring a weapon on that property, etc. If the entire industry decides "we only allow Comcast Internet service on our grounds to drill into walls," then unless new laws or enacted at a state/city level forcing landlords to allow it or the FTC steps in, I guess you're using Comcast or doing without.
In theory, conventional wisdom argues competitors will enter the market with less restrictions. In practice, it's all profit driven and the most efficient market solutions get adopted resulting in shared policies across the industry. If business across an industry in general finds it's more profitable that people can't have weapons on their properties and you have no land ownership, then you can own a gun but you'll have no where to put it. Or you may want to spread an idea through speech but no one will allow it. You're then restricted to either government properties where you do have those rights or another private entity that allows it.
If you don't have a lease you can be. About every private property I step foot on I don't have a lease to, so many freedoms tied to property are null there.
If you do have a lease at a given location and it specifies an enforceable restriction that is otherwise legal under federal and state law, they can certainly evict you or often fine you as a breach of contract. This could be for a variety of things related to restrictions of freedom of speech, gun ownership, to owning a cat.
If you can't afford private property, rent, and want to say, grill a burger, good luck finding a lease that permits that. You now live with a subset of legal rights determined by private property owners. Obviously there are things that aren't tied to property... they can't detain you or harm you but they can have the police detain you.
You call it "penalizing success." I call it the principle that successful people have a civic duty to contribute more to the common good.
> owned for generations
You say that as if it's axiomatically a good thing for something to be owned for generations. This is far from clear. Why should one person be entitled to own something that another is not just because of who their parents were?
Read up on the phenomenon called "the tragedy of the commons" [1] to learn why this is a terrible idea.
For even more of an idea on where this can lead you can have a look at the 'Talk' page for the same Wikipedia topic [2] which shows an editing war on the very definition of the topic. Shared ownership does not imply shared stewardship as is made clear by the actions of some of the more vociferous Wikipedians.
There’s too much to work with so I’ll just pick out this little gem, “Khanna said, but too many of them felt locked out of the country’s economic future and were looking for someone to blame.”
Too many? How many is too many? So only 20% if the population feeling locked out would be a okay?
Feel locked out? So it’s just in their heads? The unwashed masses are so emotional. Like animals they go on feelings not facts.
Looking for someone to blame? Their baseless feelings need some outlet and if they’re blaming me it must be just because I happened to walk down the street that day, not because of anything I actually did.
The truth is they don’t feel locked out, they are locked out and after giving people like this guy a pass for three decades are finally looking for the reason they’ve been getting screwed over and this guy is scared shitless they’re going to find it.
The sad part is it’s not going to happen. More likely thing is they’ll have to part with 0.000001 of their wealth to make 5% of the population winners and just get them to oppress the other 95% thus ensuring a healthy return on that 0.00001 making them even richer. They’ll just have to get over the humiliation of having to share their success with a few extra people.
> and after giving people like this guy a pass for three decades are finally looking for the reason they’ve been getting screwed over and this guy is scared shitless they’re going to find it.
Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies /Safa Motesharrei a,⁎, Jorge Rivas b, Eugenia Kalnay c
Summary
Collapses of even advanced civilizations have occurred many times
in the past five thousand years, and they were frequently followed by
centuries of population and cultural decline and economic regression.
Although many different causes have been offered to explain individual
collapses, it is still necessary to develop a more general explanation. In
this paper we attempt to build a simplemathematicalmodel to explore
the essential dynamics of interaction between population and natural
resources. It allows for the two features that seemto appear across societies
that have collapsed: the stretching of resources due to strain
placed on the ecological carrying capacity, and the division of society
into Elites (rich) and Commoners (poor).
The Human And Nature DYnamical model (HANDY)was inspired by
the predator and prey model, with the human population acting as the
predator and nature being the prey. When small, Nature grows exponentially
with a regeneration coefficient γ, but it saturates at a maximum
value λ. As a result, the maximum regeneration of nature takes
place at λ / 2, not at the saturation level λ. The Commoners produce
wealth at a per capita depletion rate δ, and the depletion is also proportional
to the amount of nature available. This production is saved as accumulated
wealth, which is used by the Elites to pay the Commoners a
subsistence salary, s, and pay themselves κs, where κ is the inequality
coefficient. The populations of Elites and Commoners grow with a
birth rate β and die with a death rate α which remains at a healthy
low level when there is enough accumulated food (wealth). However,
when the population increases and the wealth declines, the death rate
increases up to a famine level, leading to population decline.
We show how the carrying capacity – the population that can be indefinitely
supported by a given environment (Catton, 1980) – can be
defined within HANDY, as the population whose total consumption is
at a level that equals what nature can regenerate. Since the regrowth
of Nature is maximum when y = λ / 2, we can find the optimal level
of depletion (production) per capita, δ* in an egalitarian society where
xE ≡ 0, δ∗∗(≥δ∗) in an equitable society where κ ≡ 1, and δ* in an unequal
society where xE ≥ 0 and κ N 1.
In sum, the results of our experiments, discussed in Section 6, indicate
that either one of the two features apparent in historical societal
collapses – over-exploitation of natural resources and strong economic
stratification – can independently result in a complete collapse. Given
economic stratification, collapse is very difficult to avoid and requires
major policy changes, includingmajor reductions in inequality and population
growth rates. Even in the absence of economic stratification, collapse
can still occur if depletion per capita is too high.However, collapse
can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita
rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources
are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion.
> Given economic stratification, collapse is very difficult to avoid and requires major policy changes, including major reductions in inequality and population growth rates. Even in the absence of economic stratification, collapse can still occur if depletion per capita is too high.
Mass migration of the poor, who have second and third generations at higher-than-host-normal birthrates sounds like a major trigger of this kind of summary collapse.
It both directly increases inequality and secondarily increases inequality by taxing the middle class harder, at the same time it causes a population bloom.
Under this HANDY model, the mass migration in response to stalled US population growth could be the proximate trigger for a US social collapse.
This seems to say that societies where the rich consume more tend to consume their resources more quickly? I think the opposite is through though. The rich don't consume in proportion to their wealth, but doubling the income of plumbers and farmers does increase consumption.
Unless I misread the summary, I read it in a hurry
Those are interesting ideas, which I've toyed with, but they don't solve the fundamental problems. In current systems, the wealthy figure out or create legal loopholes. They get tax breaks for hiring people, driving, spending, etc. - all of which help them grow more wealthy, but supposedly "costing" them something so they have an excuse for write-offs, which they find with the accountants who they can afford to write these things up for them.
Wealth laws tend to benefit only the rich, not because people don't have good ideas, but because the people in power always implement the ideas in ways that benefit them. Nothing changes. The problem is a people problem - which causes the economic problem - not a systematic problem.
Poverty. Why take the risk of starting a business if you can't really benefit from it. Why invest money in another business if you can only own 1000 times the median per capita wealth? Why save money at all? Just spend it immediately!
It would be the world's greatest party until it collapses, because no savings, investments, and risk-taking means that jobs disappear.
Also, stealing would be very popular, so a job in law enforcement is about as good as it gets. It would allow you to seize the most.
For your disaster scenario, I think it depends on how low the max is. If 1000 times the median per capita wealth still buys you a couple office buildings and a yacht to boot, the ceiling would still be high enough that the vast majority people wouldn't all resort to stealing (much less petty theft). However, it would still lead to shady business deals, high-dollar theft, and hidden assets (especially foreign). But that's a problem for the wealthy. In other words, the idea is that you can be rich, but not TOO rich.
My idea was that if the rich want to increase their wealth, they need to start by increasing the wealth of the poorest members of society. Also, everything above the 1000x level is taxed heavily. Everything below, possibly a low, flat rate. I don't know how this applies to America, but where I live, 1000x median wealth will give you more money than you'd know what to do with.
This particular plot revolves around a mathematical proof (not unlike psychohistory in the Foundation) that indicates any society where a single member is able to acquire more than 1000x the power of the median member results in a power/wealth accumulation feedback loop that eventually destroys the society.
Up until probably WW2, war and revolution were the ultimate redistributor of wealth and arguably mitigated or even prevented too much concentration of wealth. Arguably in some cases that concentration is what precipitated wars and revolutions.
I worry about this now, particularly in what's increasingly a post-nationalism era with almost frictionless global capital mobility. The ultra-rich do their damnedest to pay almost no taxes on their massive wealth and buy themselves even greater tax breaks. The Trump tax "cuts" (I say this because for many professionals living in blue states it was a tax increase) were such a nakedly self-serving (even corrupt) wealth grab at the expense of the country. It's depressing how easily manipulated the GOP base was and is in supporting this (or at least not holding their representatives to account).
What difference does it make if you have $50B in assets vs $60B? I mean really?
You gained that wealth because you lived in a country that was politically stable, had infrastructure like roads and bridges and wasn't being invaded or fighting wars (mostly). Someone needs to pay for that.
This almost feels like an algal bloom of wealth. In an algal bloom, individual organisms are finding local optima. The net result however is that everything dies.
So how about this:
1. We need stronger estate taxes. Inherited wealth is a recipe for a permanent ruling class and a pox on our house.
2. Owning land in the US subjects your worldwide income to US taxes.
3. We need to start property taxing income rather than taxing spending. This further lowers effective tax rates.
The last one requires a little explanation. Let's say you earn $100m in a year. As ordinary income this may cost you $40m in taxes. Of course, no one pays that. It's typically structured so you only earn income for tax purposes when a gain is realized.
So if you need "only" $20m to live this year instead you just realize a $20m gain and pay taxes on that, leaving the other $80m untaxed. It's worse than that because not all of that $20m will be a gain. This allows you to offset tax liabilities essentially indefinitely.
But it gets even worse than that. At the height of the QE era, you could borrow money for essentially nothing. So instead you borrow $25m, putting $5m aside to service the debt for some number of years and don't realize any income and pay no taxes whatsoever. Companies were issuing corporate bonds like crazy in this era to avoid US corporate taxes.
I'm going to say something most likely naive, but I always thought that democracy needed a ladder reset. If online games need to in order to keep the competition healthy and the game fair, why not real life?
I'd agree income inequality is a problem, but I think what is specifically bothering people is that they feel they don't have the opportunity to make more. Once someone has money they can use it to help themselves and "hold down" others. (I put that in quotes because it might be a little exageration, but I think people feel that way.)
There are many examples but a the most basic one in the US is that the outcome of a trial is highly correlated with the amount of money you spend on lawyers.
A problem with Khanna and the article is that he is just continuing to give outsize influence to the rich. I hope he can learn something from Sanders and not worry too much about "alienate(ing) some of his wealthiest backers".
"Once someone has money they can use it to help themselves and "hold down" others."
They can and do, it's part of daily business strategy. Sometimes those efforts are shared if the company is publicly held, even then, the majority of the returns snowball to the large shareholders.
A retired good friend of mine from the chemical industry worked at one of the leading chemical businesses. Part of their entire business strategy/model was collecting strategic patents in chemical processes to prevent others from competing and forcing them to pay royalties to that company. He worked there for several decades leading one of their core research divisions and they shut down most their research divisions because the patent game gave more ROI than actually producing innovative new processes. That specific business now primarily focuses on acquiring IP as blockades and tolls to innovators entering the industry.
That's just one example but I see many businesses use as many anticompetitive strategies as they can get by with. In the tech industry, often potential competitors are simply bought out early before they become competitors either through offers or hiring their talented staff.
Pick a business and they've probably engaged in similar activities. People are not delusional with this assessment, it's spot on.
Honest question: we have unlimited examples of corporations run amok. What examples of law abiding billionaires run amok have we lately? I'm sure they exist but all I can think of is funding ventures that harm the public good (eg, taking all the nice beach front property, lobbying for oil and gas subsidies, legal bribery, or in an extreme case funding extremist organizations).
Most of the excesses seem to be a matter of not outlawing bad things. Is the wealth itself actually harming anybody?
Edit: I guess there is the snowball effect where previous winners have competitive advantages in new competitions, or else outright rent seeking behaviours. I'm also curious about those aspects.
It’s not billionaires, but: search the internet for “college admissions scandal”. Note that the people involved already have better schools, more free time for extracurriculars, tutors, test prep, better environmental factors, etc.
At present, the US has near record low unemployment, rising wages, and a very high stock market.
Yet we also have many thousands homeless.
Truly, capitalism is the worst form of government. Except for everything else, which share the downsides and lack the upside. It's why there are tens of thousands pouring over the border monthly-- to get to America and to capitalism. They want to work for their chance.
If you look at the South American countries that most migrants to the USA are coming from, they do live in uncontrolled capitalistic economies, regardless of their political systems. The rich there use their money and power to control and grow their influence regardless of the impact to others.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 55.3 ms ] threadNow, this also assumes that people become literally useless in the automated future, compared to systems. It's possible - if unlikely - that humans always move on to a higher frontier of uniquely human work once the previous one becomes automated. In that scenario, UBI could be a great way to ride that transition. Also, partial UBI, meant only to give people a platform for growth in a world that still has jobs for them, could be a good way to combat economic inequality.
One possible counter is that people may have more free time to spend engaging in politics. Once one need is satisfied attention will inevitably shift. Mazlow's hierarchy and all that.
One of the main reasons people give when I ask them why they don’t pay attention to politics is that they don’t have any time or energy or willpower left to do so after working 40+ hours a week doing largely meaningless, soul-crushing tasks.
1) Automation is going to make the concept of jobs obsolete. Therefore most of the population will simply die of poverty if we don't artificially redistribute all of the wealth.
2) Many people today are stuck in poverty because they're too financially stretched to pay for healthcare, education, a car to get to work, childcare, etc., even while spending all extra time working multiple jobs. The hope is that by giving them a life raft, they'll have the leeway to spend time, money, and energy on self-betterment, and thereby enrich the economy.
My argument is that #1 sounds good but doesn't seem robust against a few powerful bad actors. #2, though, could be quite effective.
People are just realizing now we’ve become the cows needed to legeitimize the capital that is milked back out of us. I agree though that UBI is just trying to juice that feedback loop in the most superficial way possible. Like cows deciding that more hay and hormones will somehow free them. (It won’t)
Well it relies on a fair and properly functioning democracy. We have a very corrupt system at the moment, people don't get what they want because politicians are bought and paid for by their donors. We need adequate defenses against this in our system, then it stops being anything to do with the altruism of the elite, because the majority regular folks are going to continue voting for the UBI or other benefits.
The other balance is the threat of revolution. Keep the population happy enough or they'll come for you.
Removing the gated community effect would also help. If the rich have to use the same services as the rest of us, then they have an incentive to ensure those services are well run. If large inheritances are effectively taxed away, then they have to ensure society provides a good platform for their children. Etc.
For that, there need to be consequences for politicians that screw up. There aren't. Actually, nowhere do we even have a real democracy. A regular person has no say in anything at all.
What you're missing is that not everyone will be qualified to do those tougher new jobs. Especially the people who are now working at McDonalds, as cashiers, etc.
Also to your credit, the environment (you grow up in) does have an effect on you significantly, and it shapes what about you is drawn out as well as what information you have to begin with. Someone growing up in the ghetto isn't going to understand the life of the gentry in France. Someone with poor education isn't going to see why they need math for life (until maybe too late).
In short, we all start with a decent brain and a certain wiring. Environment draws out or suppresses who we are, but more importantly, gives us starting information to work with, and this shapes our views and ways of thinking.
It worked okay at the height of industrial era, but worse and worse ever since. Nothing good happens if you let people who bear no real responsibility for anything, to make decisions. Only property owners should vote.
That's a good slogan for starting a war. One day, people like you will have their land taken from them. Will they still feel the same way?
The fact is, if you take away a person's vote, they have no voice AT ALL in their government. The vote actually happens to be the last thing PREVENTING war because the fact is, everyone would like to do what they want and not have other people tell them how to live. We have government to prevent people from hurting each other and doing mean things to each other, and though it may not be all that effective, anarchy never works and always ends in some kind of oligarchy.
People go to war whenever things are taken from them. Land, property, rights, etc. They are happy when things are given to them. Bread, circuses, etc. So if you want to start a war, take from people. If you want to prevent it, give to them.
Lobbyists matter more for issues where most people don't have a direct interest and/or aren't paying attention. UBI by its nature would have a very large constituency, once people are getting the checks.
That said, I agree that partial UBI would be better to start, but more for reasons of affordability and not changing the economy too quickly.
So billionaires and the AARP both get their way most likely at the cost of future generations.
there is a fundamental error in how you are thinking about this
Exactly the same thing could be said about slaves.
> ..., which gives us power.
Which didn't give them much power though.
FOH.
Those cities themselves are unsustainable: SF, Portland, and Seattle are all literal shitholes, due to failed civic leadership and uneconomic policies.
As a civilization, we need to figure out how to reduce the pressure to collect in a handful of places, and spread ourselves back over multiple locations and jurisdictions -- because it's clear that's a better plan.
Our current system is optimized for a few major players, and it's collapsing. They're right to worry, and try to adjust it.
Figuring out how to get people to live in already affordable places is the only way to reduce the pressure on those cities and create housing affordable and livable for average people.
... And thus a bunch of Californians moved to affordable Austin, TX and made it super expensive, driving all the native residents and average day workers out of their homes and onto the streets.
Pressure moved from one location just builds it somewhere else because people tend to congregate. You can't just say "Everyone, go move to remote places in Montana". It doesn't work like that. People congregate around the job markets, money pools, and nice locations. Hence, the coastal states in the US (centers of trade and places with beaches) have the highest population densities.
To be fair, there's a lot of nice locations outside of major cities.
But I agree with you that people tend to congregate around job markets and money pools -- and I think that's precisely what has the wealthy concerned and looking for new models, because the attractive forces in the current paradigm lead to unsustainable attractive blobs.
Another possibility: eliminate private ownership of land. This is actually not as radical as it sounds. It's a big shift in mindset, but not that big a change in how things actually work. The mindset shift is to go back to the native american idea that all land is collectively owned by the people. The government is the "management company" that administers it, and one of the things it can do is offer long-term leases. This would essentially be the same as the status quo except that instead of owning the land and paying property tax, you'd own a lease and pay rent. The reason I think this would have a beneficial effect is that the change in mindset would change the dynamics of political debates. For example, NIMBYism would be less tenable because it's not your back yard any more. You're just a tenant.
But hey, the Soviets beat us into space by about a month. All they had to do was murder a million of their political opponents and then starve their people for a few decades. You decide if it was worth it.
And if you think the US has a "free market" healthcare system you are quite mistaken.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Finland? China?
The Chinese just steal research papers and pretend they're theirs.
(I'm not Chinese)
Also, it's efficient to steal ideas. I assure you, given the opportunity, businesses in the US frequently steal ideas/IP as well, they're just more careful about it because there's more consequences. Why do you think so many IP lawsuits exist.
Furthermore, stealing or copying a successful process is in human nature for survival, heck, it's part of the foundations of evolution. Most people are only concerned when it's their ideas being stolen but not when they "borrow" others'.
As I'm fond of saying: In a capitalistic system, a few people end up with all the money and power. In a communistic system, a few people end up with all the money and power. The means are different, but the result is the same.
There are very few countries in the world that lived by the laissez faire rules of capitalism, because its been a disaster every time.
If a country is too far socialist or too far capitalist, the result is the same; the few gaining great power and privilege, while the many are powerless and suffering in poverty. Its obvious that a balance is needed, socialism can be very good at leveling the playing field for basic necessities, while regulated capitalism can be good at distributing power hierarchies while remaining fairly efficient.
The problem i see us facing right now is that capitalism has had a lobby on political power for fifty years and is preventing this balance, substituting its own power-wealth hungry pseudo-balance. This is why we have difficulty dealing with climate change, and why places like the US are struggling with a universal health system, or why the UK is dismantling theirs.
>Can you imagine any of this success without socialist schools?
Yes.
But to answer why people come here, I'd say they come for freedom and the hope of a future - and many try to stay. The east coast is full of Indian doctors who come here for their degree and have no intention of ever going back to India.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Historically, what follows this is mass poverty.
The mindset shift is to go back to the native american idea that all land is collectively owned by the people.
Native Americans tended to go to war when one group infringed on another's territory.
The government is the "management company" that administers it, and one of the things it can do is offer long-term leases.
The government struggles administering drivers licenses. And wherever they've been the landlord, the results have almost universally been impoverished ghettos.
Yes, but historically capitalism has worked. That's the whole point here: things are changing. Not all of the lessons of history apply in a post-scarcity world.
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
I'm not sure what you mean by "post-scarcity"? Things may be "available", but that doesn't mean people have access to them.
While it's nice to think of land as "unowned", in practice, someone controls it, and they almost never have the interests of the occupants in mind. Besides, I've found that people tend to treat property better when they consider it theirs and have space AWAY from people.
Going along with your point though, it might be best if everyone received some designed size plot of land (large enough to build a small family residence on at least). Yes, there would be competition, but in competitive areas, the land plots could be smaller. In "unwanted" areas (Kansas, Wyoming), plots could be large enough for profitable cattle and farming industry. The good thing would be that no one would be without land to built on; they would have their own space to "be them" and live as they wished without rubbing shoulders with their neighbors (which tends to make Americans rough around the edges, regardless of age/sex/political views). Currently, many people struggle just getting an apartment, let alone a house. Notably, the mechanics of a new system would need to be worked out, and would likely be abused, manipulated, and ruined because of selfish people, but it's a nice thought.
Yes, that's why I'm advocating leases. This allows you to separate short-term control from long-term control more easily. The interests of the occupants are best attended to via short-term control (the sink needs to be fixed now) but the interests of society are best attended to via long-term control (we need to tear down this single family house, which made sense 50 years ago, and replace it with a multi-family unit).
> it might be best if everyone received some designed size plot of land
That might work if there was a constant supply of new land to distribute, but there isn't.
Sounds nice, but good luck finding politicians and leaders who will exercise just (as in "justice") decisions in this manner.
More generally: The problem right now is a people problem, corruption. The system isn't the primary problem. If everyone were benevolent, sharing, kindhearted individuals, then we'd work together to see everyone had a home, regardless of whether the system was capitalistic, socialistic, or communistic. Instead, we live in a world of selfish people. sigh
It's nice to talk about theories though. :)
> That might work if there was a constant supply of new land to distribute, but there isn't.
True, but there is plenty of unused land. Just that people tend to crowd the coasts. EDIT: I didn't finish my thought. I meant to add that there's still enough earth for people to occupy for years... and we can build vertical realestate too.
No, I don't agree. I've done a lot of traveling in Africa so I know what corruption looks like, and what we have in the West ain't it (yet). The situation we're in is a result of people acting rationally within a set of rules that were predicated on some assumptions that are no longer true, like that the demand for labor is essentially infinite. The rules are also based on some assumptions that were never true, like that societal well being can be objectively measured in terms of GDP or ROI or something like that, and that infinite growth is possible.
To fix this problem we need to fundamentally change the rules of the game to better align with today's reality, and more importantly, tomorrow's likely reality: machines can do pretty much anything that humans can do, so the market value of labor is almost certainly going to plunge. That's good for buyers, but bad for sellers. But sellers are people too. We can't just discard them the way we do excess horses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_Need_Not_Apply).
> The situation we're in is a result of people acting rationally within a set of rules that were predicated on some assumptions that are no longer true, like that the demand for labor is essentially infinite.
IBYP? I don't know anyone who thinks the demand for labor is infinite. I can see in your next paragraph, you're jumping the gun and thinking about a robotic society, but hang on there, cowboy (a pun on your last line). While such a shift in system may seem necessary in light of such a future, you're still thinking about economics in terms of how the system will improve things. It's natural for most people on HN to be the rationally-minded architectural types, so they think systems will solve problems. But pause for a moment and consider: Which world would you rather live in:
A) A world where humans (and maybe robots) compete in the market place, where people pursue their own interests and ends in effort to "get ahead". i.e. The world we're headed for. And by the way, this world could be either capitalistic, socialistic, or communistic. The fact is, people will pursue their own interests regardless of the system.
B) A world where humans (and maybe robots) are supportive of each other, offering help to those in need, sharing resources, and seeking the well being of each other.
Yes, it's a leading question, but I think you'd agree world B is nicer. That's the one we want. However, that's the one that requires change in the MORAL AND ETHICAL CHARACTER of people, i.e. the part of people that says "Do good to your neighbor", "Help your neighbor buy groceries", "Help your neighbor fix his/her sink/tub/car", "Help teach your neighbor's kids", as opposed to selfish mentality of "Pay the Stanford coach to let your kid be admitted ahead of other kids" and "When the balance is in your favor, say nothing" and "Make the poor pukes be the garbage man while I, privileged individual, get the high-paying executive role". The fact is, if everyone supported each other, we'd all be ahead by now. But then each person gets the idea that they'll let OTHER people be helpful while THEY get ahead, and the whole thing collapses.
In short, unselfishness would work. And before you object and say it won't happen here (which is quite plausible and very likely), you can't say it NEVER works. For example, Tokyo is one of the safest places in the world due to the underlying philosophical foundations of Japan that taught people to rely on the good of society. It worked for a while (although in more recent times, these philosophical foundations are decaying, so more violence is prevalent, and notably, the reliance on society was directed inwardly (towards the Japanese) not outwardly (towards foreigners), otherwise they wouldn't have been part of WWII). It's a complicated story, and I'm not expounding much. I'm also talking too long and you're going to want to stop reading.
tl;dr - It's a human problem, not a problem of the system we have.
I don't know why it should be, but I can tell you from personal experience that it is in fact different. To be sure, the U.S. is moving more towards the African model (to my great dismay) but it's not quite there yet.
> I think you'd agree world B is nicer.
Sure. And I'd like a pony too. But if you want to actually solve problems in the real world you have to deal with reality as it is, not as you would like it to be.
It wouldn't work. Building codes and permits would make it too costly for the poor to ever do anything with it.
In 2005, historically, Myspace was THE social network and Facebook was basically nothing.
It's not historically Myspace was the social network, it's historically social networks are displaced by others, of which Facebook is only the latest incarnation. And the future of Facebook is Myspace, ideally sooner rather than later, but eventually one way or another.
If every time something has happened before it has had the same result, trying it again and expecting something else is not a plan that inspires confidence.
What do you mean?
Inheritance tax is making it expensive to trasnfer a family-owned farm down the generations, and as a result they are sold to corporations instead. Bigger, wealthier families avoid the tax altogether by using legal methods, which makes the inheritance tax burden mostly fall on the poorer farmers. Removing ownership of land would do nothing to combat this. In fact, if farmers didn’t own their land, things would get worse, not better: they would have no incentive to use long-term (costlier) agricultural strategies, since they wouldn’t have any guarantee they’d benefit from it. Further, they’d be less likely to invest in long term equipment. Guess who would? Larger corporations. In other words, this proposal would exactly concentrate the wealth to big corporations, perhaps the opposite of your intention.
That is why I added: "with an exemption for private businesses below a certain size that are both owned and administered by a single family".
> Bigger, wealthier families avoid the tax altogether by using legal methods
Yes, to make this work you'd have to eliminate those loopholes.
A lease is a contract arrived at by mutual agreement. Rent control is imposed unilaterally as a government fiat.
Look at Hong Kong, housing prices there have grown seriously out of whack, average citizens are suffering and young adults are leaving.
You'd need a very competent and uncorrupt government to accomplish this ideal.
Second system syndrome is en vogue right now in politics. Maybe there is some tectonic shift that will happen this century due to technological progress, but I'd counter moderate and incremental change would be much less risky (if you botch a software project maybe people lose jobs, if you botch a political sea change millions of people die) and there is plenty of small but meaningful improvements to be had for every class of person.
Small iterative changes are fought tooth-and-nail by those emboldened through exploits encouraged by capitalism who, ironically, hold most the power to make such changes (not much unlike historical implementations of fuedelism).
The system itself is very self-preserving in that nature. Those who have the most to lose in the system have the most power and resources to resist change because that's how the underlying system is structured.
With socioeconomic mobility at an all time low due to earlier successes closing doors behind them (the "american dream"), it's no wonder people are growing more frustrated and seeking radical change over incremental changes. They've tried incremental change (and watched their parents and grandparents try it). It didn't work, so now they're pulling out the stops and who could blame them.
Look at the 2016 and upcoming 2020 presidential elections, largely fueled products of this issue in various forms. People are growing very tired of being lied to and exploited. The very wealthy groups, as the article suggests, need to consider that maximizing long term profits may require them to reduce their short term profit margins a bit and keep working classes from turning this entire country upside down.
If I lived in a third world country, I'd be more astounded that there are places I could never work a day in my life and be fed, sheltered, have access to incredible healthcare (yes even in the US) and probably lead an intellectually satisfying (with free access to books, entertainment, computers, Internet and FOSS etc) life.
The fact that there are thousands of billionaires that have possessions and power beyond my comprehension as even a very well off American doesn't mean much. No more than the fact that there is a Pope or Presidents or professional athletes or any other demigod I will never be. It's just another modern form of feudalism that humans seem to be hardwired for.
If you compensate the owners of the land and take your time building the government institutions that will manage it the second option seems possible. Maybe something like what Scotland did in the 90's (I think it was) when they abolished the last parts of the feudal system.
I don't see how that would be possible in the US though. US politicians are typically funded by corporations and corporations own land. Besides, from what I understand, the right to own their own land is very important to quite a few Americans.
Put differently: I'm pretty sure an adult American in the 80's would scream "communism" at your ideas. Some of those work as politicians today. :-)
For example, if I'm on land I don't own, I have no real right to freedom of speech because I have no right to be on the land to begin with since it's privately held. I'm there legally by permission of the property owner only and can be removed.
This becomes increasingly problematic the more private entities take ownership of land. Imagine a world where a few hundred people own nearly all the non-government owned property and the vast majority of citizens have to rent/lease or utilized shared property.
Those private entities begin to dictate if I can take pictures, say certain things, bring a weapon on that property, etc. If the entire industry decides "we only allow Comcast Internet service on our grounds to drill into walls," then unless new laws or enacted at a state/city level forcing landlords to allow it or the FTC steps in, I guess you're using Comcast or doing without.
In theory, conventional wisdom argues competitors will enter the market with less restrictions. In practice, it's all profit driven and the most efficient market solutions get adopted resulting in shared policies across the industry. If business across an industry in general finds it's more profitable that people can't have weapons on their properties and you have no land ownership, then you can own a gun but you'll have no where to put it. Or you may want to spread an idea through speech but no one will allow it. You're then restricted to either government properties where you do have those rights or another private entity that allows it.
Property ownership is very complex here.
Not if you have a lease.
If you do have a lease at a given location and it specifies an enforceable restriction that is otherwise legal under federal and state law, they can certainly evict you or often fine you as a breach of contract. This could be for a variety of things related to restrictions of freedom of speech, gun ownership, to owning a cat.
If you can't afford private property, rent, and want to say, grill a burger, good luck finding a lease that permits that. You now live with a subset of legal rights determined by private property owners. Obviously there are things that aren't tied to property... they can't detain you or harm you but they can have the police detain you.
You call it "penalizing success." I call it the principle that successful people have a civic duty to contribute more to the common good.
> owned for generations
You say that as if it's axiomatically a good thing for something to be owned for generations. This is far from clear. Why should one person be entitled to own something that another is not just because of who their parents were?
Read up on the phenomenon called "the tragedy of the commons" [1] to learn why this is a terrible idea.
For even more of an idea on where this can lead you can have a look at the 'Talk' page for the same Wikipedia topic [2] which shows an editing war on the very definition of the topic. Shared ownership does not imply shared stewardship as is made clear by the actions of some of the more vociferous Wikipedians.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tragedy_of_the_commons
> one of the things it can do is offer long-term leases
Too many? How many is too many? So only 20% if the population feeling locked out would be a okay?
Feel locked out? So it’s just in their heads? The unwashed masses are so emotional. Like animals they go on feelings not facts.
Looking for someone to blame? Their baseless feelings need some outlet and if they’re blaming me it must be just because I happened to walk down the street that day, not because of anything I actually did.
The truth is they don’t feel locked out, they are locked out and after giving people like this guy a pass for three decades are finally looking for the reason they’ve been getting screwed over and this guy is scared shitless they’re going to find it.
The sad part is it’s not going to happen. More likely thing is they’ll have to part with 0.000001 of their wealth to make 5% of the population winners and just get them to oppress the other 95% thus ensuring a healthy return on that 0.00001 making them even richer. They’ll just have to get over the humiliation of having to share their success with a few extra people.
Preach on brother zcw100!
Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies /Safa Motesharrei a,⁎, Jorge Rivas b, Eugenia Kalnay c
Summary Collapses of even advanced civilizations have occurred many times in the past five thousand years, and they were frequently followed by centuries of population and cultural decline and economic regression. Although many different causes have been offered to explain individual collapses, it is still necessary to develop a more general explanation. In this paper we attempt to build a simplemathematicalmodel to explore the essential dynamics of interaction between population and natural resources. It allows for the two features that seemto appear across societies that have collapsed: the stretching of resources due to strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity, and the division of society into Elites (rich) and Commoners (poor). The Human And Nature DYnamical model (HANDY)was inspired by the predator and prey model, with the human population acting as the predator and nature being the prey. When small, Nature grows exponentially with a regeneration coefficient γ, but it saturates at a maximum value λ. As a result, the maximum regeneration of nature takes place at λ / 2, not at the saturation level λ. The Commoners produce wealth at a per capita depletion rate δ, and the depletion is also proportional to the amount of nature available. This production is saved as accumulated wealth, which is used by the Elites to pay the Commoners a subsistence salary, s, and pay themselves κs, where κ is the inequality coefficient. The populations of Elites and Commoners grow with a birth rate β and die with a death rate α which remains at a healthy low level when there is enough accumulated food (wealth). However, when the population increases and the wealth declines, the death rate increases up to a famine level, leading to population decline. We show how the carrying capacity – the population that can be indefinitely supported by a given environment (Catton, 1980) – can be defined within HANDY, as the population whose total consumption is at a level that equals what nature can regenerate. Since the regrowth of Nature is maximum when y = λ / 2, we can find the optimal level of depletion (production) per capita, δ* in an egalitarian society where xE ≡ 0, δ∗∗(≥δ∗) in an equitable society where κ ≡ 1, and δ* in an unequal society where xE ≥ 0 and κ N 1. In sum, the results of our experiments, discussed in Section 6, indicate that either one of the two features apparent in historical societal collapses – over-exploitation of natural resources and strong economic stratification – can independently result in a complete collapse. Given economic stratification, collapse is very difficult to avoid and requires major policy changes, includingmajor reductions in inequality and population growth rates. Even in the absence of economic stratification, collapse can still occur if depletion per capita is too high.However, collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion.
Mass migration of the poor, who have second and third generations at higher-than-host-normal birthrates sounds like a major trigger of this kind of summary collapse.
It both directly increases inequality and secondarily increases inequality by taxing the middle class harder, at the same time it causes a population bloom.
Under this HANDY model, the mass migration in response to stalled US population growth could be the proximate trigger for a US social collapse.
Unless I misread the summary, I read it in a hurry
People often confuse the needs for working markets (capitalism) with preserving the elite’s position (rent-seeking).
1. Income is not taxed. Wealth is.
2. Wealth tax brackets are determined based on a multiplier: no one person may own more than 1000 times the median per capita wealth.
3. Wealth is not actively monitored. But undeclared wealth is not protected by law.
What would the implications of this scheme be?
Wealth laws tend to benefit only the rich, not because people don't have good ideas, but because the people in power always implement the ideas in ways that benefit them. Nothing changes. The problem is a people problem - which causes the economic problem - not a systematic problem.
It would be the world's greatest party until it collapses, because no savings, investments, and risk-taking means that jobs disappear.
Also, stealing would be very popular, so a job in law enforcement is about as good as it gets. It would allow you to seize the most.
This particular plot revolves around a mathematical proof (not unlike psychohistory in the Foundation) that indicates any society where a single member is able to acquire more than 1000x the power of the median member results in a power/wealth accumulation feedback loop that eventually destroys the society.
I worry about this now, particularly in what's increasingly a post-nationalism era with almost frictionless global capital mobility. The ultra-rich do their damnedest to pay almost no taxes on their massive wealth and buy themselves even greater tax breaks. The Trump tax "cuts" (I say this because for many professionals living in blue states it was a tax increase) were such a nakedly self-serving (even corrupt) wealth grab at the expense of the country. It's depressing how easily manipulated the GOP base was and is in supporting this (or at least not holding their representatives to account).
What difference does it make if you have $50B in assets vs $60B? I mean really?
You gained that wealth because you lived in a country that was politically stable, had infrastructure like roads and bridges and wasn't being invaded or fighting wars (mostly). Someone needs to pay for that.
This almost feels like an algal bloom of wealth. In an algal bloom, individual organisms are finding local optima. The net result however is that everything dies.
So how about this:
1. We need stronger estate taxes. Inherited wealth is a recipe for a permanent ruling class and a pox on our house.
2. Owning land in the US subjects your worldwide income to US taxes.
3. We need to start property taxing income rather than taxing spending. This further lowers effective tax rates.
The last one requires a little explanation. Let's say you earn $100m in a year. As ordinary income this may cost you $40m in taxes. Of course, no one pays that. It's typically structured so you only earn income for tax purposes when a gain is realized.
So if you need "only" $20m to live this year instead you just realize a $20m gain and pay taxes on that, leaving the other $80m untaxed. It's worse than that because not all of that $20m will be a gain. This allows you to offset tax liabilities essentially indefinitely.
But it gets even worse than that. At the height of the QE era, you could borrow money for essentially nothing. So instead you borrow $25m, putting $5m aside to service the debt for some number of years and don't realize any income and pay no taxes whatsoever. Companies were issuing corporate bonds like crazy in this era to avoid US corporate taxes.
Now, how you'd go about doing it, I have no idea.
There are many examples but a the most basic one in the US is that the outcome of a trial is highly correlated with the amount of money you spend on lawyers.
A problem with Khanna and the article is that he is just continuing to give outsize influence to the rich. I hope he can learn something from Sanders and not worry too much about "alienate(ing) some of his wealthiest backers".
They can and do, it's part of daily business strategy. Sometimes those efforts are shared if the company is publicly held, even then, the majority of the returns snowball to the large shareholders.
A retired good friend of mine from the chemical industry worked at one of the leading chemical businesses. Part of their entire business strategy/model was collecting strategic patents in chemical processes to prevent others from competing and forcing them to pay royalties to that company. He worked there for several decades leading one of their core research divisions and they shut down most their research divisions because the patent game gave more ROI than actually producing innovative new processes. That specific business now primarily focuses on acquiring IP as blockades and tolls to innovators entering the industry.
That's just one example but I see many businesses use as many anticompetitive strategies as they can get by with. In the tech industry, often potential competitors are simply bought out early before they become competitors either through offers or hiring their talented staff.
Pick a business and they've probably engaged in similar activities. People are not delusional with this assessment, it's spot on.
Most of the excesses seem to be a matter of not outlawing bad things. Is the wealth itself actually harming anybody?
Edit: I guess there is the snowball effect where previous winners have competitive advantages in new competitions, or else outright rent seeking behaviours. I'm also curious about those aspects.
Yet we also have many thousands homeless.
Truly, capitalism is the worst form of government. Except for everything else, which share the downsides and lack the upside. It's why there are tens of thousands pouring over the border monthly-- to get to America and to capitalism. They want to work for their chance.
Is there someplace else you're thinking about?