Kapitalism
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Sometimes I get mad about how we in practice have basic income for the rich. If you have a few million dollars, you can park it in zero or low risk investments (eg: high yield savings, bonds) and get free money. Then you can just fuck off and pursue your dreams. No risk. Lots of reward.
But if you're poor? Well you better take any job for any salary or you're just a parasite blah blah blah. All pain, some risk, little reward.
My ex gets an allowance from his grandparents every week. They also bought him a house.
He’d get a job for a couple years, fuck around and get fired. Only got through college because I did his homework.
He has a house, he has a fridge full of food, he can go to restaurants and order out and take weeks off for vacation.
I worked full time through college, often three jobs. I still have massive student loans. I work two part time jobs, because the career field I went into is collapsing, and I’m not welcome as a trans person anyway.
I have always worked; he has not. I sleep on a rug and stack of pillows; he can pick out whatever luxury furniture he wants.
Work is entirely disconnected from reward.
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The major premise of Capitalism is risk vs reward. We hit a tipping point though, where 99% of people do not have any capital to risk, and the people who do have the capital have enough to nullify any risk.
Tax the rich.
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Someone gets it.
Lets instead do this:
Every citizen, irrespective of their nationality, skincolor, gender has the right to:
- living quarters
- work
- maximum of 7 hours of work
- free healthcare
- paid vacation
- equal pay and treatment for women
- freedom of religion and speech
This is directly taken from a 1936 constitution. Today one could improve on it but we're so much worse, everywhere.
Now guess which one.
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The fruit of our labor should be a better world for everyone and future generations.
The belief that people won’t work without external pressure is contradicted by human history, cooperative work and mutual aid have existed for millennia before formal economies developed.
Its known that when people’s basic needs are met, the desire to create and contribute is a natural human drive.
Also as a bit of a sidenote to avoid confusion, i believe all people deserve and could be given more comfort and luxury then their labor currently grants them. So its not correct that i would not want people to have those things, just that it should be non conditional.
It's not exclusive. You can meet everyones needs and then say, "hey if you make some cool fucking shit we'll give you a little extra." Why insist on people doing good solely because they feel like it. Why not push people to be better.
We know what people do when their needs are met, they're called retirees. They don't provide a net gain of almost anything btw. Yes people will pick up rubbish off a beach out of the goodness of their hearts. But the amount of litter collected from philanthropy is not greater than the amount made. And it's a rounding error when compared to the amount of rubbish managed by garbage collectors.
IP laws are good precisely because they encourage people to create and discover even if all their needs are met. They compliment the selfless and persuade the selfish.
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I'm down. I think every year, we ought to take the richest person in the country and redistribute 50% of their assets.
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We barely had mobile phones 20 years ago? You sure about that?
I think i meant smart phone. Apparently cell phone adoption was in the 60%+ range in 2005
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If you can only understand monetary motivation that's your fault. Most people who spend 10 years in med school + residency don't do it because of monetary incentives, they do it because of social and personal incentives.
Most research actually comes from the public sector (universities, research institutes...), where people work not because they hope to get rich one day through patenting something, but because they get paid to do research. 99 scientists in the public sector will do 99% of the work towards a technology, then a private company will take the final 1% of progress, patent it, and prevent everyone else from accessing the mostly publicly-funded development. For fuck's sake, we saw this literally 5 years ago with the development of the COVID vaccines, it was predominantly based on university and institutional research that hadn't been commercialized, and then some companies took all this research for free, got a ton of public grants on the side, and then made the vaccines at an absurd profit. For a counter-example to that, tell me, if the profit motive from private companies is what drives research fastest, why was Cuba the first country to vaccinate all of its population from COVID using state-funded research and production?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Okay tell me, are you more motivated by the innate human desire to contribute to society and discover the universe, or by the innate human desire to contribute to society, discover the universe and a paycheck that will give you material benefits such as free time and luxuries too?
Yes companies profited off of public sector work. Strong protections for what a person creates is exactly the kind of thing IP law is. Again, the problem is weak public institutions being eroded and misused by companies, not the public institutions themselves.
You want to talk about Cuba aye. Lol. Lmao even. Tell me. What's Cuba's patent law like. Go on. I'll let you google it.
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And it went pretty well, until they bought enough politicians to change it.
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Patent protections should be severally limited if not out right done away with minus a few exceptions maybe.
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Rich people also get handed so many free things.
Put over $100,000 in the bank and they will throw free accounts, low interest credit cards, rewards, free safety deposit boxes, personal concierge services. And that’s just the start.
Wow, I must be banking at the wrong place.
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I like the idea of little guys coming up with things being able to get a head start from the companies with massive budgets
HOWEVER. imo the big company should not be able to patent anything
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In a classic example you have a village with 2 bakeries, one of the bakers came up with a machine to kneed the bread, so he can make more bread and sell it cheaper. This is sort of the story people tell to show how great capitalism is.
But we have reached a point where that one bakery now owns a chain of bakers, adds ingredients to the bread to make it more addictive, skips on actual ingredients needed for bread and replaces them with sawdust, made donations to the current political party so any competition has to jump through hoops to get a bakery license, etc.
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Absolutely correct. Thats why I said one could improve on it.
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Copyright and inheritance can’t exist in a capitalist society
Under true capitalism, everyone starts at 0 regardless of their birth and the only way to make more money than someone else is to work more hours regardless of profession. Over saturation of a given market is fixed by the invisible hand where people just move onto something that gives more hours
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Copyright and inheritance can’t exist in a capitalist society
Under true capitalism, everyone starts at 0 regardless of their birth and the only way to make more money than someone else is to work more hours regardless of profession. Over saturation of a given market is fixed by the invisible hand where people just move onto something that gives more hours
Under true capitalism, everyone starts at 0 regardless of their birth
Then true capitalism will never exist. At best, it's a Platonic Ideal.
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In a classic example you have a village with 2 bakeries, one of the bakers came up with a machine to kneed the bread, so he can make more bread and sell it cheaper. This is sort of the story people tell to show how great capitalism is.
But we have reached a point where that one bakery now owns a chain of bakers, adds ingredients to the bread to make it more addictive, skips on actual ingredients needed for bread and replaces them with sawdust, made donations to the current political party so any competition has to jump through hoops to get a bakery license, etc.
And then uses his immense wealth and contacts to make frivolous lawsuits against smaller bakers trying to make their own machine, knowing full well they will not win in court but will financially ruin the smaller baker and tie them up in litigation for years, then forcing them to an unfair arbitration where they make a shit offer to buy out the competition
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It's not exclusive. You can meet everyones needs and then say, "hey if you make some cool fucking shit we'll give you a little extra." Why insist on people doing good solely because they feel like it. Why not push people to be better.
We know what people do when their needs are met, they're called retirees. They don't provide a net gain of almost anything btw. Yes people will pick up rubbish off a beach out of the goodness of their hearts. But the amount of litter collected from philanthropy is not greater than the amount made. And it's a rounding error when compared to the amount of rubbish managed by garbage collectors.
IP laws are good precisely because they encourage people to create and discover even if all their needs are met. They compliment the selfless and persuade the selfish.
I am not sure this logic holds well.
People who are rich are still involved in society to the point i wish they would stop exploiting to chase more profit and just retire already with their near infinite wealth.
And the actual retirees your refer towards that don’t do anything are usually old people who slaved an entire career for a total less then some rich “earn” in a single day.
I do think people who build cool stuff deserve to be rewarded though, we could give them a cool artwork, trow them a party or just continue to respect and thank them for their accomplishments.
Currently the reward is “here are the means that someone else could use to not starve that you can now use to go on a holiday with.”
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But wait, I arranged atoms in this order before you did! Now you're not allowed to arrange atoms in this order unless you pay me!!
oooops I think my brain did it by itself. Wait who is my brain?
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Oh yeah I forgot about that. One of the banks here refunds ATM fees if you have a minimum balance of $2500 (and waives the monthly fee if you have $25,000). Like, my guys, the people who don't have money need that fee waived a lot more. But the bank just wants to make money and that means appealing to rich people.
Fortunately it's not hard to find banks who have no fees for those, in the US at least.
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Copyright and inheritance can’t exist in a capitalist society
Under true capitalism, everyone starts at 0 regardless of their birth and the only way to make more money than someone else is to work more hours regardless of profession. Over saturation of a given market is fixed by the invisible hand where people just move onto something that gives more hours
A society where no one has capital and the only way to get ahead is to provide more labour? And you call them steamed hams despite the fact they're obviously grilled?
