@jamiet

this is what he said

"I may have a gift such as an ability to turn wood into chairs. Thus I can then market my efforts for a living. But, if there is no wood for me then I cannot."

he wasn't claiming the rights to capital.

he was referring to having a marketable skill. you didn't address his point, rather his methods, which is off-subject from a right to money

In fact i would go further, and suggest we actually have a system of trust and status. People are able to access credit from banks (making money out of nowhere) based on their status in society. ie if they hold a respectable job, have not committed crimes, etc. And the trust that our community will enforce repayment if the person defaults.

Our whole economy is built around these, not some physical representation of the equivalent amount of gold we have dug up. (Ask me about Gore Vidal's Grandfather, and the gold standard, it's a great story)

And more importantly, we CAN infact simply agree to print money and distribute it to people. (and also destroy taxes instead of using them for anything) This would mean literally nothing which was 'yours' would be redistributed.

the spiritual rights to what should not and what should be owned is irrelevant when referring to the value of human labor.

if i am not allowed to own something, i am still enacting labor that would be rewarded by money.

rights to your output are intrinsic, as only you have the ability to wield them

If you have no relation to that HP, you will be motivated by your own self interest. I have an equation that i use personally. On one side you have and thus can give, the other you have not and must receive. I want to be on the side that has and thus I give as I do not want to be on the other side. I do realize that I may be forced to the other side do to age and infirmities.

"It must be a free choice in response to the generosity from that HP."

You unfortunately do not get a free choice if you are poor, the super wealthy can choose to live in our collective society, or escape it and live anywhere. But the poor are pretty much forced to eek out a living in the society they were born in.

Orathaic is making the point I was going to make, and very eloquently too. Someone should take him to dinner.

Oh Jamie, are you hitting on me?

@orathaic

check out the works of Malthus. giving the poor money would simply raise the prices of goods. money only works in tandem with the amount of available resources

"And more importantly, we CAN infact simply agree to print money and distribute it to people."

giving everyone equal money, gives ZERO incentive for work.

the USSR had this problem, and b/c so many simply weren't working, they made unemployment illegal. if we just gave everyone money: our labor market would crash, and the economy and all the great things that go with it would disappear

And in response, i return to the equation, those who hoard and do not share will be put out. For there is room for the generous not the greedy. But love must be a free gift or it is just another business deal.

And i thought that Jamiet was taking ME to lunch.

Ortho, what is your response to my 'equation'?

It is rather simplified and ignores reality. People do not get these choices, you must follow the laws of your society, under threat of exile or exclusion (prison), we are trained in this reality from childhood with a micro-version of these punishments. If the law decides to tax your every earning and loss, to force you to buy health insurance, or any number of other things, you must conform.

And so long as a perceived majority supports the state this will continue. Infact when a large enough group of dissenters opposes the status quo and threatens the state they will often be appeased and slowly change society. Because the state will protect itself. (in some cases it will do this be creating false categories of 'non-people' who do not deserve the same rights and protections, whether that is poor people*, black people**, Muslims***, or natives.

*'class warfare', **Racism, ***Islamophobia : The function of these terms is to disenfranchise groups of people who object to what the state is doing. To prevent them from securing support from a large enough majority that the state is forced to compromise. The civil rights movement was a success because it managed to unify a black minority with a white middle class. And King was still assassinated at the same time he was trying to promote rights for poor people across 'racial' boundaries.

"If the law decides to tax your every earning and loss" - sorry, perhaps i should be clear, i meant income tax and consumption tax.

You have no idea how far this country can go in its periods of change. You should see how the american electorate was in the 1850's. Check out "Bleeding Kansas". And the american revolution, one third patriots won control, one third neutral just hid and complied, and one third became canadians or returned to britain.

"It is rather simplified and ignores reality. People do not get these choices, you must follow the laws of your society, under threat of exile or exclusion (prison), we are trained in this reality from childhood with a micro-version of these punishments. If the law decides to tax your every earning and loss, to force you to buy health insurance, or any number of other things, you must conform."

um... civil disobedience much?

also you're taking the stance that the state is in fact in the wrong, whereas they could in fact be doing the right thing. not in all cases, but there CAN be, and HAVE been fringe groups, that have been regressive

And the question of state control over local control was the fight between Hamilton (Federalists) and Jefferson (anti-Federalists). We are still fighting this fight. Usually, we fight it out in the balot box but sometimes in the streets.

And the parties change. The Republicans used to be more like the Federalists. The Democrats were like the anti-Federalists. But the philosophies changed, mostly from southern Democrats turning into conservative Republicans, and liberal Republicans becoming Democrats.

Oh for the Whig party! Lincoln started out as a Whig. Then we got crazy and flipped our Whigs!

This is very much a left wing idea. Any time you see "rational" and " give people a floor beneath which they’re not allowed to fall" that's clearly not a right wing thing. UBI of course has considerable theoretical and evidentiary support, but runs counter to rhetoric, and so can't be easily tried. The notion of society providing for all it's members is also a very left wing idea. It's great to see that there are some conservatives willing to listen to evidence left out there, but that's clearly the exception.

And captain brad "your" money is only yours because you've availed yourself of a society and effort created by a giant collective of people. And your rights are only an expression of what society recognizes as yours. If society asks you contribute to the overall functioning that has even allowed you to have money at all, then that's entirely warranted. you've benefited massively from the work of other people, and other people have a solid right to ask you to pitch in.

And this HP nonsense is just nonsense. The fact of the matter is that social order depends on making sure that things work in ways that leave everyone better off in general in part by forcing those who want to screw everyone else over for their own benefit not to. Its a matter of dealing with free riders and cheaters, frankly.

We do have a largely capitalist system in part because it generates wealth reasonably well, but it also has a tendency to leave a lot of people far worse off, and so its downsides need to be ameliorated.

@"If society asks you contribute to the overall functioning that has even allowed you to have money at all, then that's entirely warranted. "

It goes further, when society forces you to contribute so that you are a resource it becomes dependent on you (as a taxpayer). In societies where the state income is derived almost entirely from mineral wealth (say gold/oil) the ruling party has no reason to invest in the well-being of the majority (in terms of roads, schools and hospitals) and this has a major impact on countries which discovery large amounts of oil but do not already have a strong middle class.

If someone in power tries to spend that money on not the army/police, someone else in that country can (more easily) organise a coup and promise to redirect significant wealth to those who support the coup.

@"You have no idea how far this country can go in its periods of change."

Em, what? I have many ideas. And i know that the powers that be will not give up any power if they can avoid it.

Having completely skipped the entire thread except for orathaic's last sentence, I can safely say that he is right - I will NEVER give Captain Brad VIENNA!!

(Especially if you can avoid it...)

@orathaic I can see someone else watches CGPgrey

True dat!

UBI strikes me as a compromise position between people who believe there shouldn't be any government-funded social welfare programs and people who believe there should be such programs targeted specifically to those of greatest need. I know that it sees support among some libertarians occasionally, since it reconciles two common moral impulses -- the idea that a society should take care of its most vulnerable, and the idea that government programs designed to redistribute wealth are unfair.

It's weird to see it gain traction anywhere though. Valis's comments pretty succinctly summarize how I would expect progressives to view UBI.

Actually, imagine the gun debate in America, where you have ideas about gun restrictions that are broadly considered "common sense" which don't get enacted because of a fear that they're the first step toward civilian disarmament. Now flip the sides and make it a sequence that eliminates welfare instead of gun ownership, and you can see why Canada's right-wing might like it.

it's also b/c there is a wide-disagreement on what constitutes "common sense" gun control, despite liberals constantly screaming at the rest of us that if you don't agree that these are common sense then you are a small racist, violent, minority.

please let's not get started on that discussion. I just used that example to provide context for progressives who are rightly confused by this situation, as I figured it was familiar enough to help illuminate things without making any judgment calls on either policy.

Yea but take one of these NRA gun nuts, even if their entire family died in a mass shooting theyd still say: "well they shoulda all had guns; theyd have lived".