Why don't we have a communist society yet? I mean we could.

[Crni Vuk]

Yeah great, but if you all only work part time and get paid accordingly, how are you gonna afford a family to spend time with? I mean, yeah, it's possible, but some people also would like to buy a house for their family at some point. Basically, what you're proposing is that it's not wealth being redistributed, it's just that everybody is just becoming equally poor.

Lower the work hours per weak, increase the salary. Why is that impossible? Dude, I am not saying this will happen tomorrow, or that it would be easy to achieve. But again, this is not a question about money, but about distribution.

Not to mention that we're already having an alleged lack of engineers and skilled workers.

Ah, the so called Myth of the 'Fachkräftemangel', I see! Not everyone agrees with that view:


It's in German though.

Also, due to the nature of some jobs it's kinda hard to distribute their workload over several people. Just saying "Alright, everyone works half time and we get twice as many people instead" will create more problems with the logistics so that it's not that simple.

They can simply get more vacation. I mean it worked pretty well with teachers, before someone thought it would be a good idea to simply fire them over the holidays.

It would work, but productivity wouldn't rise, we would just take longer to get our work done and have less money.

We're living in a society of abundance, where all basic needs are so cheap to cover. that we're throwing tons of food away. Hell our society is facing the issue of overproduction in many areas - see such nice economic ideas like the Abwrackprämie, where they get people to buy a completely new car, even though their old one is still in good condition.

I know it's impossible for a communist to do, but you need to try and understand that what works with and for SOME, does not necessarily scale to EVERYONE.

Or as the capitalist bourgeois, you just lack imagination?

You also havn't answered my question. What is your idea? How do you propose should our society deal with digitalisation, AI and automatition? Let us say, 30% or 40% of the society loose their jobs. What should we do with those people? Make everyone in to an engineer so they can work 50 hours per week?

 

[Hassknecht]

Lower the work hours per weak, increase the salary. Why is that impossible? Dude, I am not saying this will happen tomorrow, or that it would be easy to achieve. But again, this is not a question about money, but about distribution.

So working less and paying more. Where does the monetary difference come from? Of course I can imagine that, but who will pay for it? You can only press out the profits of the companies for so long until the system collapses.

Ah, the so called Myth of the 'Fachkräftemangel', I see! Not everyone agrees with that view:


It's in German though.

There's a reason I said "alleged". I don't believe it, either, but it's a popular talking point to sell us lots of shitty policies, hence the inclusion.

They can simply get more vacation. I mean it worked pretty well with teachers, before someone thought it would be a good idea to simply fire them over the holidays.

There's a bit of a difference between engineers working on multi-year projects with fixed milestones and unexpected problems and teachers who have the same schedule every year.

We're living in a society of abundance, where all basic needs are so cheap to cover. that we're throwing tons of food away. Hell our society is facing the issue of overproduction in many areas - see such nice economic ideas like the Abwrackprämie, where they get people to buy a completely new car, even though their old one is still in good condition.

Production and economy has some weird scaling issues. Overproduction is what makes things cheap in the first place. Produce exactly on demand and things get prohibitively expensive. And when you have people work less and getting paid more (thus basically devalueing the currency) you get people not being able to afford anything.

Or you just lack imagination?

Oh, I can imagine everyone being the same. But it takes me half a case of beer to kill enough brain cells to get to that point.

You also havn't answered my question. What is you idea? How do you propose should our society deal with digitalisation, AI and automatition? Let us say, 30% or 40% of the society loose their jobs. What should we do with those people? Make everyone in to an engineer so they can work 50 hours per week?

I haven't answered your question because I don't know the answer, either. Maybe a radical solution is necessary. But I'd prefer one where the system wouldn't collapse immediately after the redistributed wealth of dispossession runs dry. Maybe we need to go back to placing more value on tradecrafts and handcrafted goods. The crafts are running on empty, because everyone is getting into university and nobody wants to feel like a dumbdumb learning a proper craft, but I think there is a large opportunity there. Especially with future developments in production on demand, like additive manufacturing techniques we could have widespread affordable artisan crafting. It still wouldn't fix the joblessness of those completely unskilled, but I haven't seen a solution for that from you, either, besides "take from the rich and give to the poor".

 

[Crni Vuk]

Except, that that the UBI has been calculated and also already tested in practise - The effects of the Universal Basic Income in Kenya, it actually works. But again, the money is there. I mean if you type in google "how to pay for the UBI" you get like a shit tons of links and ideas. I am hardly an economist. But I do not see it just as a pipe dream or even a radical idea anymore.

Talking about money with the UBI is boring in my opinion, it is intellectually a silly discussion as you just say, THERE'S NOT ENOUGH MONEY FOR IT! And I tell you there is. But if you think there is not, have you some better numbers to make your point? Have you calculated how much money is in circulation? Some people apparantly did. David Precht and a few economists for example propose a financial transaction tax, to pay for the UBI, which is a tax we should have anyway. IF they are to be believed, for a state like Germany a financial transaction tax of 0,5% area enough to pay for the UBI. We could also save billions by closing tax loop holes, which again we should do anyway, taxes have to be increased on the wealthy also, income tax should be at the very least 70% - it was around 90% during the 1950s, which again we should do anyway. Or we just close down Berlin, and declare it as a prison like Escape from New York. Which we also should do anyway.

So to make this short. Finding the money for it, is not the issue here. It's just a numbers game in the end. Where is the money generated and how do we distribute it. It's not different to what they do with social security system now.

I actually see a much more serious problem with the UBI and why it would be difficult to implement and it is also a far more interesting point to talk about. Namely, most people, do not know what to do with their free time once they get the UBI and/or lose their job. This requires a very different mindset and attitude, one that is much closer to what enterpreneurs and artists display. Most people have grown up in a kind of culture, where they define themself by their income, their work and titles. Take that way, and what are they left with? Themself. There is a reason, people are more likely to fall into depressions when they loose their job. We're living in a society where our whole education and society is build for the most part on extrinsic motivation, where people learn for grades, money and benefits rather than intrinsic motivation where they learn to improve them self and because they see learning as a fun activity. Who in his right mind, starts to learn integral calculus for fun, if he doesn't have to. But this is the kind of people a future society, proably will need the most, just as how the previous society required people to sit at assambley lines and following instructions. Only now, is the education actually starting to catch up here, but way to slowly and way to little.

 

[BigGuyCIA]

Where is the money generated and how do we distribute it.

Andrew Yang, one of the potential picks for 2020 election here in the U.S., suggested a UBI using taxes imposed on corporations contributing to automation. Seems reasonable.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Again, this is my personal opinion, but I actually prefer the Financial Transaction Tax, but on ALL financial transactions. Any time you pay with a credit card or send money from one bank account to another, a small tax of 0,5% is paid. This would also have the benefit of making certain very risky stock dealings unprofitable. Such a tax has been in discussion for quite some time, particularly after the financial crisis.

 

[Gonzalez]

I don't know about the rest of your societies, but the government I had the highest standars of living with as a memeber of the working class is what Wikipedia in English is currently branding as "populist socialism". So I don't know how all of you outside of my nation want to live, I'm going to be selfish and vote for the populist socialist government we had to come back, thank you. If you are curious about the specifics I'm a Peronist and a Kirchnerist, and I'll keep being that until something better comes along.

 

[TheGM]

Andrew Yang, one of the potential picks for 2020 election here in the U.S., suggested a UBI using taxes imposed on corporations contributing to automation. Seems reasonable.

Then the companies would most likely pack up and go someplace else. the immediate response would most likely to be to put tariffs on those items coming in, because people love them tariffs.

Again, this is my personal opinion, but I actually prefer the Financial Transaction Tax, but on ALL financial transactions. Any time you pay with a credit card or send money from one bank account to another, a small tax of 0,5% is paid. This would also have the benefit of making certain very risky stock dealings unprofitable. Such a tax has been in discussion for quite some time, particularly after the financial crisis.

Then people start hoarding their money in their homes instead of putting them in the banks.

 

[GonZo_626]

The people start hoarding their money in their homes instead of putting them in the banks.

Oh and don't forget working under the table for cash, or cryptocurrencies, or bartering of goods/services. There is a reason many libertarian types are supporting cryptocurrencies, no tax, no government control, and we all know communism is about nothing but complete control over everything. Even Star Trek would not go the commie route and everything could be made in a fucking machine so no one had any need to work.

 

[SquidWard]

Usually, the hardest jobs have the shittiest pay. Equality would be an improvement.

I'm saying that if a construction worker doing hard manual labor in the baking sun is getting the same thing as someone who rings up orders and hands the customer bags, the construction worker isn't going to see that as fair. Hell, I can't even see a society agreeing on what should be rewarded more and in what ways: Hard physical labor or educated intensive work.

I just don't see people even agreeing on enough shit together to make it work.

I get that a lot of hard labor jobs aren't paid well enough and/or given enough benefits. I'm saying when you start to compare the lower skill set/education jobs that are more just physical work, they'll likely not find it fair that they make the same when one works three times harder. Why would a miner make as much as someone at a car wash? Who would want to go into a mine when they could spray cars with water and soap?

I'm not against the idea, I'm against the idea that it would work with us. I don't know, it's a complex thing. Most ideas about how to run societies are. I think a lot of ideas are great but the implementation proves that we think too highly of ourselves as a whole.

 

[naossano]

I'm saying that if a construction worker doing hard manual labor in the baking sun .

Best case scenario would have those jobs disapear or be limited in time.
Those jobs jobs come with their series of health issues.

 

[valcik]

historically speaking there was a constant progress, not just in technology and the tools we use but also our understanding of moral, ethics, liberty and equality.

Abbolishing slavery? Mad man! Equality for everyone? Ludicrous! No King you say! Peasants with voting their leaders?! What the hell!

WTF

Technology aside, in comparison with the last century there was greater equality in Slavic societies thousands years ago, before Roman occupation and mass christianisation, or Communist occupation, or German Nazi occupation. Women and men were equal in millenium old Slavic societies, actually wise women were more important and much more socially appreciated than men in old Slavic culture before christianisation. Also old Slavs never owned slaves, and never ran slaver markets.

 

[TorontoReign]

Crni doesn't understand at certain points in history women had more power than they have now. Mostly because it isn't parroted on TV and the internet where he can then regurgitate the facts like he knows things, ad nauseum, with lengthy diatribes that most people scroll past.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Yeah, I am sure lesbians could marry and addobt children 4000 years ago and enjoy the same kind of liberty as they do now. I mean there is tons of evidence of it out there and I am just to blind to see it.

 

[valcik]

Actually homosexuality was a social norm in ancient Rome or Greece.

 

[TorontoReign]

Crni thinks the Christians have controlled the world forever. LOL.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Oh no no, I am sure the gauls and all the other ancient cultures with their sacrifices and rituality have been way more advanced in ethical and moral questions than we are today practising a sexual promiscuity that pales in comparison to what we can see today. It was an atheist and feminist paradise I am sure and most people are just not woke enough to realize that.

Crni doesn't understand at certain points in history women had more power than they have now. Mostly because it isn't parroted on TV and the internet where he can then regurgitate the facts like he knows things, ad nauseum, with lengthy diatribes that most people scroll past.

And you've read a history book and some academic work on it or something? Care to share your source of information, so I can learn something as well?

 

[valcik]

Oh no no, I am sure the gauls with their practises, sacrifices and rituality have been way more advanced in ethical and moral questions than we are today.

Read carefully. Not today, but a century or two ago? What you call "constant progress" is actually small leap forward followed by centuries of regression in so many regards.

Also you are faithfull follower of Marx and Engels' scientific socialism, right? Bragging repeatedly how you have read their work and how you admire their ideas, right? As such you have no moral right trying to lecture anybody on what is right or wrong, since your ideals are rotten in their core. There's a lot of nationalist shit in these works, including planned genocide on Slavs in Austria, which makes you a genocidal crypto-nazi.

 

[TorontoReign]

genocidal crypto-nazi.

Best phrase ever.

 

[TheGM]

Best phrase ever.

If there ever was a way to knock somebodies teeth out over the internet, that was it.

 

[MutantScalper]

I'm sure any minute now the, say, Social Democrats of Sweden will commence on their genocidal attack against Austria with the aim of eradicating the Slavs of that area.