Comment by duncan_bayne | Hacker News Reader

Comment by duncan_bayne | Hacker News Reader

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No, not really.

The requirement to work is a given, at least for the foreseeable future. Humans need wealth to live: food, water, shelter, clothing. We need wealth even more to thrive: books, schools, factories.

None of this comes for free. In a state of nature, to refuse to work is to commit suicide, at a rate proportional to the hostility of your environment.

There are a lot of variables to adjust. You could work less, and enjoy more free time and a commensurately lower standard of living (still fantastically high by historical standards).

Or you could live off others. That's not always an ethical fault: consider invalids, or children, or the very elderly. So long as the people providing for you have a choice in the matter, that's fine from an ethical perspective.

Or - and this is where the ethical fault comes in - you could force others to provide your material needs for you. For example, welfare parasites and professional politicians (but I repeat myself).

So, no. There is no choice about working.

I don't think that's entirely true. There are been plenty of counter-culture examples of people mostly opting out of that system. It's hard, but really it's hard relative to the system they are opting out of, which is why we have the system in the first place. Ultimately, nobody is keeping anyone here, so people have the option to emigrate to a location with less oversight and taxes. This may be hard, but it's possible. I think this is a bug distinction between "real" slavery, and how people equate taxation as slavery. There is implicit acceptance of the system by staying within the region where the system is the prevailing way of doing business.

Wow, you value a persons life so little that you would let them die if they didn't work. If a person killed you to feed themselves or their family, I would consider them more ethical, because at least they had a reason to kill you. You would let them starve over almost nothing.

"Wow, you value a persons life so little that you would let them die if they didn't work."

How the actual fuck did you read that into what I wrote?

... deep breath ...

What I meant was, and perhaps I was unclear, is that material goods are a requirement for life, and a good many of them if you want to thrive rather than just 'not die'.

Those goods have to be produced, by someone. Work has to be done. This is not negotiable. It is a fact of living in this universe.

If that work isn't done by you, then it has to be done by someone. You can't just "opt out" of work, all you can do is either a) do it yourself, b) let someone else do it for you, c) force someone else to do it for you.

Right now, my children are in state (b). There are many adults in that state too - they are dependant upon the work of others. In many case that's through no fault of their own, either, and I think that it's entirely just that a civilised society look after such people.

This is how the fuck I read that into what you wrote, and I quote: "In a state of nature, to refuse to work is to commit suicide, at a rate proportional to the hostility of your environment." ... "So, no. There is no choice about working."

It seems pretty clear to me where I got it from. You are definitely fine with letting people live in misery at the best. It's pretty simple, there is no "actual what the fuck" about it.

Funny that you comment on nature, when civilization has made a lot of the horrible things that have to be dealt with in nature a lot less relevant. In nature animals are violent to each other, and will kill each other even of their own species. By your logic you must support killing each other, otherwise your argument about nature would be totally hypocritical.

The more civilized a place the more people can do their own thing without worry of harm or their needs being met. What you wrote below has nothing to do with a basic income. A basic income will make people less afraid of moving employers for example, making parasites that employ people in hideous conditions lose power. Threats from those psychopaths will have a lot less punch. That is a massive gain.

A basic income does not look like it will not alter how much people work. As an example, the MINCOME project showed that the only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less in an actual experiment with a form of basic income, the people who work will still work. I will not repeat other sources here, any reader can look it up if they want.

While I don't agree with duncan_bayne's view, what you've done (previously to this comment) is taken the most uncharitable possible interpretation of his words, and then written a baiting, reactionary reply to him. Any time you want to write "Wow, you value a persons life so little that you would let them die if they didn't work." you should probably stop and consider a more tactful approach that consists mostly of asking whether you are interpreting what they are saying correctly.

I think (s)he is actually a troll, and quite a skilled one.

"In a state of nature, to refuse to work is to commit suicide, at a rate proportional to the hostility of your environment."

What part of living in a modern industrial / post-industrial society is "in a state of nature"?

I give up.

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