Meme Thread for Both Posting and Discussing Memes
- Thread starter Captain X
- Start date
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
The bottom left of the second bit has a much better grasp on what the outcome would be than the top left of the first bit.
Institutionally paying people to not work, no matter what you call it, is always utterly corrosive to society.
Skitzyfrenic
Well-known member
And always remember when they bring up UBI experiments in Finland or somewhere to bring up that the participants knew the UBI was going to end. Further it's not that generation I'm that worried about, it's their grandchildren.
Yinko
Well-known member
All UBI experiments to date have actually been experiments in the creation of a modern aristocracy, a privileged class among plebs. Thus people in those experiments behaved radically differently from how they would if UBI was truly universal to the entire peer-group. In that case, the closer comparison would be welfare based communities or prisons.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
As long as we don't live in an economy that is post-scarcity on all essentials, a UBI will not be economically viable.
Even if it does become economically viable, the corrosive effects of paying people to sit on their hands all day would still destroy society eventually.
This inevitably leads to high crime rates and social cancers like entitlement mentality.
Yinko
Well-known member
To be fair, if the unemployment gets high enough, then the cost of labor will go through the floor, and it will actually be cheaper to hire Americans than it would be to use robotic workers. Of course, the chances of the current American population actually choosing to work in that scenario...
That would naturally require in a different culture and lifestyle for the common man to function well, and such dramatic change in economy would also certainly have some hard to predict effects on those and many other things. Yeah, apply that to the average US city social housing neighborhood and it's going to get even worse.
But for example i would not be sure if it would get so bad in, say, Japan.
Who's going to volunteer to go and do a robot's menial work for the equivalent of 2$ per hour, especially when they get UBI money? That's assuming all the socialist regulations like minimum wage and other bloat would be lifted to allow such low pay to begin with.
Yinko
Well-known member
I meant, even without UBI money. During the 2008 crisis a lot of people were unemployed but still refused to do farm-labor. Preconceptions of what kind of work they are 'too good for' are hard to excise from the public imagination. People would rather be homeless and receive charity than do something they see as demeaning.
Maybe people wouldn't be eager for UBI if wages had actually kept up with inflation.
Because that's the issue a lot of this rhetoric dodges around; wages are not keeping up with cost of living, while at the same time people are told they need to expect to do more work for the same amount of pay or have their pay/hours reduced.
It's not that people won't take 'demeaning' jobs, it's that people won't take 'demeaning' jobs for shit pay and little expectation it will get better.
Because that's the issue a lot of this rhetoric dodges around; wages are not keeping up with cost of living, while at the same time people are told they need to expect to do more work for the same amount of pay or have their pay/hours reduced.
It's not that people won't take 'demeaning' jobs, it's that people won't take 'demeaning' jobs for shit pay and little expectation it will get better.
Typhonis
Well-known member
$4.27 in 1970 → 2022 | Inflation Calculator
The 3.96% inflation rate means $4.27 in 1970 is equivalent to $32.21 in 2022. This inflation calculator uses the official US consumer price index.
www.officialdata.org
1970 $4.27 =2022 $32.21
Yinko
Well-known member
I'm sorry... what am I looking at? I recognize literally nothing on that. Not. One. Thing.
Sobek
Disgusting Scalie
And that doesn't account for changes in pattetns of consumption and standards for said goods.
The problem is also that a goof number of people are simply not psychologically wired to handle UBI and such post-scarcity and economic collapse of massive automation. Not just from how they are raised but also their own ideals and expectations and even basic biological pushes. See: Mouse Utopia Experiment.
If given a UBI how many people do you think would quickly fall into the sort of hole lottery winners and sudden celebrities fall of parties and excess followed by addictions and self destruction? If given replicators and holodecks how many people would just proceed to engage in hedonism and quickly spiral into self destruction as their brains start demanding more and more pleasure to get the same high?
Truth is a post scarcity economy is not gonna result in Star Trek for anyone but a small number of people with supreme self control or moral conviction. Everyone else is likely to end up self destroying in a orgy of debauchery as they fry their own brains trying to couple their animalistic instincts with the reality of the singularity.
The Amish are gonna leave their little farm village one day to get some medicinal nanobots to heal one of their own who broke a bone and find out all the "english" dead inside their holodecks, with a permanent smile of a overdose death in the thores of a ecstasy high.
A bunch of Buddhist monks will notice the sounds from the outside have gone silent.
A 94yo Alex Jones is gonna be screaming into a empty sky about how the interdimentional demons stole everyones souls and he was right all along.
A severely autistic IT guy comes to work and is confused why no one showed up, and gets sad and confused why no one told him the office was closed. The self driving car can't take him to his psychologist office, he didn't come either. The city is eerily quiet. He decides to watch the huge maglevs at the shipping port for now. They are still running, the scheduled deliveries are all automated and running at efficiency. They will keep running for months before a technician needs to oversee something. And when that happen they will wait for them. And wait.
The problem is also that a goof number of people are simply not psychologically wired to handle UBI and such post-scarcity and economic collapse of massive automation. Not just from how they are raised but also their own ideals and expectations and even basic biological pushes. See: Mouse Utopia Experiment.
If given a UBI how many people do you think would quickly fall into the sort of hole lottery winners and sudden celebrities fall of parties and excess followed by addictions and self destruction? If given replicators and holodecks how many people would just proceed to engage in hedonism and quickly spiral into self destruction as their brains start demanding more and more pleasure to get the same high?
Truth is a post scarcity economy is not gonna result in Star Trek for anyone but a small number of people with supreme self control or moral conviction. Everyone else is likely to end up self destroying in a orgy of debauchery as they fry their own brains trying to couple their animalistic instincts with the reality of the singularity.
The Amish are gonna leave their little farm village one day to get some medicinal nanobots to heal one of their own who broke a bone and find out all the "english" dead inside their holodecks, with a permanent smile of a overdose death in the thores of a ecstasy high.
A bunch of Buddhist monks will notice the sounds from the outside have gone silent.
A 94yo Alex Jones is gonna be screaming into a empty sky about how the interdimentional demons stole everyones souls and he was right all along.
A severely autistic IT guy comes to work and is confused why no one showed up, and gets sad and confused why no one told him the office was closed. The self driving car can't take him to his psychologist office, he didn't come either. The city is eerily quiet. He decides to watch the huge maglevs at the shipping port for now. They are still running, the scheduled deliveries are all automated and running at efficiency. They will keep running for months before a technician needs to oversee something. And when that happen they will wait for them. And wait.
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Globalist Gonzalo Lira Meme
More Crowder.
RIP Vice News
Chinese Style Socialism
More Crowder.
RIP Vice News
Chinese Style Socialism
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
I hate these books. They are like Blindsight, written by an author who projects his self loathing unto everything else and tries to drag everyone down to his level.
