Hacker News Reader

Comment by chillwaves | Hacker News Reader

You think people are not entitled to employment? Are they entitled to survive? Are you going to be the one to break the bad news?

Let's find out what happens when you tell large segments of the population they have no right to a livelihood. I am going to wager the cost to the wealthy will be much higher than an increase in the minimum wage.

View on HN

Maybe you're confusing (as many do) entitled with having the freedom to do something.

Entitled: believing oneself to be inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment

If I don't qualify in any way for a job at your business, let's find out what you say when I force you to hire me because of an argument that I'm inherently deserving of that job. I'll just sit on my butt all day, and you pay me. Sound good?

In case this is not obvious to you... to be entitled to employment (or anything) means someone must provide it. If nobody is voluntarily hiring a man, you would force someone to hire him because this man is entitled to employment?

How would you feel if I told you that there's someone I know in need of employment and YOU must hire him? Oh, and if you don't, I'll fine you or lock you up.

People were never entitled to employment. The very notion of a job as the primary mode of earning one's living was born relatively recently, some 200 years ago (then, it meant mostly manual labor). It survived the transition to information economy, but current AI progress may finally put end to it.

This is as inevitable as the appearance of middle class during the first industrial revolution. The progress cannot be stopped.

I assume everyone who argues that there's no right to employment is also arguing in favor of a guaranteed income - decoupling survival from employment.

That would be an erroneous assumption.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com