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Comment by karmacondon | Hacker News Reader

I think the fundamental purpose of a business is to accomplish a task, not to employ people. For example, I don't care how many people are employed to keep hackernews running. I'm thankful for their efforts, but I don't care if it's one person, ten people, or one bot. Or how much any of them get paid. The only thing that consumers and businesses care about is the end result.

If a job can be done by a machine, that's fine. People will find new forms of employment. Or they won't. But we can't expect businesses or consumers to misallocate their resources for the sake of someone's job.

Fortunately, fully automating the process of driving or running a restaurant is decades away. We have time to implement a basic income. Or just come up with more ways to employ people. The number of available jobs is limited only by imagination. "Instagram Photo Producer", "Online Forum Discussion Facilitator", "3D Printed Object Finisher". Someone can pay someone else to do any given thing, and now that's an occupation. "Potential Job Titles" isn't a finite list, and we can't ever run out of them.

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Business is a social construct and we can un-construct it if it proves no longer to be the socially valuable way to do things.

It's there to serve humans. if it doesn't do that, it's a parasite, drag it out behind the shed and shoot it.

The Marxists and communists have tried doing that thing many times and have failed spectacularly. Business based market economy is the only (till now) successful and socially most beneficial type of society that has ever existed. I upvoted the OP because he/she/it (it may be a bot) has put this thing in clear words.

Up until now, the possibility of having a group of people who lead a leisure life without an undercaste of slaves hasn't existed. Automation is a new thing under the sun.

No, no it is not, for fuck's sake. Automation is not new. The spinning Jenny was invented in 1764. Robot labor has been here since industrialization started and there is NOTHING new in the last twenty years. Automation is only the replacement of manual labor with machine labor, a.k.a productivity growth. If you've noticed, economies have been growing for centuries. In fact, growth is slower now than in the past. Automation is happening less now.

Stop believing all this 'robots are coming for our jobs' crap. The robots have always been here.

New or not, there are more and more jobs which are becoming automated and it is a valid question to ask how society should be organized when all jobs would be automated.

No, this is the wrong question to ask. First of all, the rate of automation has not so far resulted in the disappearance of new work - we all survived the contraction of agriculture from employing some 50% of the population to less than 3%.

There is plenty of work. An astonishing amount of work is available for people to do that isn't being done, and it's not because people are obsolete. What is lacking is capital directed at hiring people for that work. You can argue about why this is, but the basic reason to me is the general lack of demand because, more or less, the rich have all the money.

Here is Krugman on the subject: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/17/robert-reich-chal...

That's funny because the "slaves" in America right now enjoy a higher standard of living than virtually every king and queen before our generation.

How is this not patently false? If you take someone living below the poverty line, earning minimum wage, renting their meager apartment, eating highly processed carbs and pseudo-meat, in debt to their bank and payday loan sharks, and under constant threat of homelessness brought on by unexpected illness or economic downturn, how is this situation in any way superior to a king or queen as they existed before "our generation" which I take to mean the modern era rather than literally our generation.

A monarch of the past would have obviously better access to food, more of it, higher quality, they might have slightly less variety available (dependent on the era and location) but they certainly weren't eating the prepackaged garbage that passes for low budget food today.

By law they owned not only their own vast properties, houses, palaces, etc. but also that of all of their subjects and nobility allowing them to give and take as they wished from anyone under their dominion. Even after reforms almost all royal families were still left with vast holdings that produce more than enough wealth to live absurdly opulent lifestyles. There have been many cases of indebted rulers but that is debt in the sense of illiquidity, they were still asset rich and able to melt the plate down to pay off the debts, so to speak.

This notion that everyone was universally worse off in the past and therefore even the lowest of the modern low are somehow better off in their current state and should be thankful for it is the crudest of fallacies. The trite example of modern healthcare being a shining example of why it's better to be poor today than wealthy 200 years ago is equally absurd considering that such care is often avoided by the poorest due to its cost right up until it's too late to do anything about it. You wind up with a situation where a person's only choice is to hope not to get sick since they can't afford the treatment or the missed work either of which could put them even further under water or on the street.

I think that image of monarchs comes from the movies? The famous inventory of Charlemagne's estate includes 2 cups, one chair and a towel. Their food back then was bad meat and oatmeal, no matter who you were.

Indeed, just the existence of cheap antibiotics are likely to make the most humble of today's citizens live decades longer than anyone from the past.

To give you an idea as to why an estate belonging to a king may appear so sparely furnished, let me ask a question of you. What personal belongings do you usually leave in your hotel room when you're travelling?

I'm going to guess none unless you forget your toothbrush or some other small item. The estate of a king is essentially a hotel room that he also happens to own along with dozens or hundreds of other such locations scattered around the country he rules. Little inventory would be kept there since the majority of day to day furnishing, and I do mean furnishings as including pieces of furniture, would travel with the court as they moved from estate to estate. Nothing valuable would be left behind for the same reasons that you wouldn't leave your laptop at the hotel after you check out, chances are when you come back (if you come back) it's not going to be there and if it is there's a good chance someone else will have had their grubby paws all over it the entire time you were away.

After looking up the inventory in question, it also happens to contain enough livestock and grain to feed well over a 100 people (there were about 100 full time residents) as well as a list of buildings including the mansio itself, two smaller manors, 17 wooden houses, 3 barns, a stable, a kitchen, a mill, two gardens, and a granary. There were also more than 60 horses boarded there.

As for kings not living as long as modern paupers, Charlemagne was a septuagenarian when he died.

This has a good overview of a routine day in the life of a monarch. It's nothing like bad meat and oatmeal. https://www.quora.com/What-was-daily-life-like-for-a-medieva...

A poor person today has access to thousands of movies and music on Netflix and YouTube. A poor person today has a vast array of meals they can purchase with less than one hour of minimum wage work. A poor person today can buy tons of generic prescription pills whose formulas were nonexistent during yesteryear.

A poor person has no Netflix, and doesn't have time for YouTube, she is either clocked in on the job, sitting in traffic to pick up kids from school, or cooking dinner. Besides, that kind of mindless passive entertainment is vastly inferior to what monarch had access to -- hunting, horseback riding, live music and shows, sex, etc. See pharke's response above regarding cheap processed foods.

You think the image of monarchs comes from the movies and that actually monarchs had little more than a couple of cups? I'm sorry but that is a very delusional view.

I don't think; I just read the evidence. E.g. http://legacy.fordham.edu/Halsall/source/800Asnapium.asp

Then your evidence is pretty terribly weak. I didn't bother with this link because your claim that monarchs did not live in opulence and that some link proves that is hard to take seriously.

Kings and queens didn't have to work 70 hour weeks to feed themselves last I checked.

A person on welfare today has more access to a vast number of food options than Kings and Queens of yesteryear. Grapes and wine are extremely cheap and affordable to anyone who has $5 in their pocket. A full meal of chicken and rice can also be had for $3.

My word, their cups floweth over.

People should be happy with big screen tvs

Marxists and communists have tried this without also sticking to democracy... The well known failings could just as well be due to the massize amount of corruption that came from the strong bases of power.

We also had "real" market economies (no trust busting or the like) in the early 20th and it was shitty for a huge part of the population

History is the biggest argument against all economic systems

Are you suggesting that in the West our democracies do not contain massive amounts of corruption stemming from strong bases of power?

I also question your suggestion that "real market economies" were responsible for the dispair that certain communities felt in the early 20th century. "Real" market economies really didn't have much of a chance to exist in the 20th century because by 1913 the Federal Reserve was installed. That ended self-regulated capitalism in the United States, at least. Europe followed suit shortly thereafter.

Just prior to the early 20th century, enormous numbers of people were liberated from the misery of famine and early mortality thanks to the innovations derived from a loosely-regulated market economy. Back then, nobody knew how to deal with a world where the vast percentage of infants born would live beyond early adulthood. Most poor people would just die and there would be no government, nor economic system, around to help anyone. So when these people, born into the late 19th century system, grew into adults living in the early 20th century system, policymakers and citizens alike had no idea how to respond to the challenges that arose. We did some really stupid things as a result, and we are still paying for, and suffering from, some of those policy decisions.

Not to mention capitalist countries working very hard to undermine marxists and communists by pretty much any means possible.

That's rich, considering the number of 'marxist' rebel groups murdering nuns and social leaders and bombing schools.

What's that number? Not even out of single digits? That's rich indeed, considering the entire history of the 20th century is that of successful foreign capitalist intervention, starting all the way with the Russian revolution.

No matter how bloody the communists were, my original point was that it was never done in an environment without active foreign involvement of undermining, destabilization, and outright warfare.

How does that compare to a capitalist killing a 1000people in one day by collapsing a building on them? (Rana Plaza)

How does that compare to a Marxist/communist like Mao/Stalin killing and maiming hundreds of thousands just because they didn't exactly speak the way he approved?

And usually with good reason. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism for details of the 94 million deaths of their own people.

European social democracies have made it work by continuously re-constructing it. Employees and citizens of the welfare state are at the table when negotiating how to set rules for the managed capitalism. Check out Sweden for example.

Sweden and the rest of European economies built their wealth on typical capitalism. And I've checked out Sweden, after you've gone into its current situation it ain't so great as communists like Sanders make it to be

*Socialists like Sanders

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl-BV8vrLDU

I'm actually from Poland, a country that had actual communism created by another rich jew that wanted to help "the opressed masses". You think at the beginning any of the commies said straight what they plan to do how it will look like after they're done? And what they will do with the evil burgois (or "the 1%" as Sanders and his cultists name it). You're playing with fire, just be wary.

I watched a bit of that and he just says basically that you had to admit Cuba had built a lot of medical clinics. Which I agree is true. Doesn't make either of us communists.

There have been successful (meaning what exactly?) societies that were not market economy based.

People tend to think communism vs capitalism but for most of human history it's been something else. Like hunter/gather or some form of feudalism. I don't disagree that market societies work for distributing goods. But they do have external costs. Are there more efficient ways? Probably. Will market economies go the way of hunter/gather economies at some point? Almost certainly.

Can you name one society with a higher standard of living than one based on a market economy?

Hint: You can't.

Sure I can. Feudalism. Oh, you meant a higher standard of living for everyone? Well then, are you sure market economies are really the end all solution for that?

Listen, you seem to think I'm arguing against market economies or trying to promote some kind of communism. I'm not. I'm just pointing out capitalism and communism are not the only choices. There have been other systems and some of them lasted a long time and were extremely "successful" (if by success you mean providing a sustainable livelihood for the members).

But I don't disagree that market economies are effective in achieving certain ends. However humanity didn't come down out of the trees to a market economy and market economies likely won't be around when humanity finally ends. They are a phase in human history, that's all. It's not an ideological statement. Just observation and projection.

Higher for who and compared to what?

If a television is a requisite for a high standard of living, great, we're beating Ptolemy. It's disingenuous to pretend that you can do an apples-to-apples comparison across thousands of years and attribute it to market economics. Given the tremendous natural wealth in the United States, we'd probably have a higher standard of living most countries even if we adopted mercantilist economic policies.

This isn't to claim that market economies aren't a great idea, just that I don't think your reasoning holds water.

Surely there are no advanced economies without rich natural resources. Oh wait. There's South Korea and Singapore who are some the most capitalist countries on Earth.

I'm also questioning your belief that being protectionist wouldn't hurt our standard of living. Do you know the T-shirt you're wearing cost a lot more if it was made in the USA?

No. I'm saying that the United States is so stupidly resource rich that we could get a lot of things wrong and still be fabulously wealthy.

I don't think you're wrong by any stretch--market economics are a great idea--but you've got to present better reasoning for anyone to care.

The Soviet Union depended on an enormous laboring class to meet its production needs; the whole point is that we no longer do.

Oh, we still do, they're just in second and third world countries. The author of this article focused on service industries that require a physical presence in the local area ... and did not address outsourcing. I think that one likely outcome of this law will be that people will find creative new ways to move work to lower cost locales.

Maybe it we is the US its true but if you look at Germany they are a net exporter of manufactured goods and probably have an agricultural surplus so it's quite possible to get by in a modern economy.

We are not there yet. I agree it will happen, the question is when.

capitalism hasn't been the only way. capitalism was an improvement over feudalism. hopefully, there'll be more improvements.

"un-construct it... drag it out behind the shed and shoot it."

Can you "un-construct" this newspeak for us? It sounds like you're advocating that you or some other force besides free and voluntary trade should literally shut down private businesses, possibly beating and robbing their owners in the process (as has been done historically)?

Because there's some formula for determining "social value" which has "number of employees" as a factor?

> It sounds like you're advocating ... literally shut down private businesses, possibly beating and robbing their owners in the process

No, that's what happens in the scenario where we make workers redundant and fail to provide some alternative social contract.

> Because there's some formula for determining "social value" which has "number of employees" as a factor?

Value of Social Contract = (cost of what you have to sell)/(cost of what you need), aggregate over members of the social group in question.

Markets ruthlessly optimize both the numerator and denominator. So far, the scales have tipped in a direction that benefits most members of our society because there has been plenty of (relatively) valuable work to do. That may be changing. A decreasing numerator can be worse than an increasing (or shrinking-but-too-slowly) denominator. Even in aggregate. The market doesn't really have an innate preference for one direction or another.

It's up to us to fix the problem if the winds shift. If we don't, someone else will, and it will get very messy.

Huge amounts of modern businesses aren't about "free and voluntary trade".

While I'm not saying we should, we could (for example) get rid of limited liability or the massively different tax arrangements for individuals and businesses (which usually greatly favour businesses over individuals). These are social constructs, and we could decide that they are no longer benefitting society.

Humanity, a sufficient majority thereof, simply stops playing the game. Money was a concept. It is now ignored. Corporations were a concept. They are no longer believed in. Ownership is a bouncing cheque with nobody caring to cash it. Most people stop playing "private business". You owned a railway? It's been automated. You owned a steel foundry? It's been automated. It answers to the world direct democracy, not to you. It's busy making things for free. And everyone else is busy doing their vocations. If you wanna go hide in a valley, sell things to each other and hope for civilization to vanish, go right ahead.

What you're saying doesn't make sense. Again, your position ignores scarcity and act as if economics is something like a "big bad boogey man" cooked up or something weird like that.

The steel foundry example is interesting. Does it have an infinite amount of raw materials? Is it utilizing a perpetual energy machine?

To me this like if the professor asks the class "where does the electricity in your class come from?" and the students respond "The socket!"

"Where does ownership come from class?"

"The socket!"

Of course that is silly, but sweat of the brow gets a little hypothetical when you start talking about piling up billions of dollars (probably even less than that). Should we pay the people that are rich today a larger share of the benefits of automation out of nothing more than a commitment to tradition?

You earlier referred to Business as a potential "parasite". Sounds like you are clarifying that you hope such a parasite will starve and wither away. Which is fine. Others might advocate taking proactive and violent measures to kill something which they deem to be parasitic.

I'm quite sure the "un-construction" he's talking about takes the lines of, say, revoking a business license.

I have no idea why you imagined it would involve beating and robbing anyone.

> I have no idea why you imagined it would involve beating and robbing anyone.

How do you think government would enforce that "revoking a business license" thing?

The same way the government goes about most things: asking , then telling, then forcing you to.

I mean governments also revoke driving licenses all the time, I don't think it always devolves to beatings

That depends largely on how long you stay in jail or prison, though.

They would just revoke it because they are the issuers of the license in the first place. You can't take something that you already own from yourself by force.

You're not taking into account that this "Issuer" claims some right to decide (by force, obviously) who can do business in the first place.

So if some entrepreneurial lady begins, say, arranging flowers or braiding hair... maybe she gets forced out of business for not having a license. Or maybe she does get a license but it is revoked for some arbitrary reason like the Issuer decides she's a "parasite" because she doesn't employ "enough" people. Either way, force is being used against her.

So wait, what if some nice lady decides to set herself up as an issuer of professional licenses. Do you want her put out of a job. Are you calling her a parasite? Are you going to beat her up if she doesn't meekly do what you tell her to do, which is clearly against her own self-interest? Why must all anarchist libertarianism devolve so quickly into bloody, revolutionary violence against individuals! Won't someone think of the children!

Do we really need every thread that even tangentially mentions government on HN to devolve into this same childish nonsense?

> So wait, what if some nice lady decides to set herself up as an issuer of professional licenses. Do you want her put out of a job. Are you calling her a parasite?

She'd only be a parasite if she claimed a monopoly on her license and threatened any alternative with violence and imprisonment.

What if I still want to exercise my business without a license? How would they enforce it? Hint: see what happens to abortion practitioners in countries where abortion is illegal or marijuana resellers where it's illegal etc.

The idea that business activity can be regulated or controlled by a state governing body is not new, is not controversial, and is also not robbery.

It isn't robbery as defined by the law like the death penalty isn't murder either legally. From a philosophical point of view though, opinions defer. Not saying I agree or not, just saying.

I'm still not comprehending how telling someone not to do something would amount to confiscation of property. State mandated confiscation of property would be comparable to robbery the way that legal death penalty would be comparable to murder, but no confiscation of property seems to be involved in simply telling people that some things are not allowed (I'm avoiding here, of course, the very issue of whether it's wise to do that in the first place, which it probably isn't, at least for the foreseeable future.)

Laws are backed by the threat of violence. So yeah, you will have your freedom confiscated and probably the stuff you were selling too.

I don't know where you live but around here, property of people in prison still remains their property.

The property used to commit a crime are usually taken by the police. What do you think happens to your meth lab if you get caught? Or your stock of marijuana or raw milk or the other gazillions things you are forbidden to sell by the power that be and knows better what's good for us?

The police can't do any such thing here. Only a court could. And even then, it generally happens to the property that is the result of a crime (like bribes, for example, or drug money). What message about the level of respect towards private property and human rights would it send if unrelated property was seized for no good reason? If you can't sell your raw milk (I don't actually believe it's illegal here anyway), I don't think anyone is going to take it from you. After all, it's better if you have to get rid of it. You're perfectly free to drink it. At least the state doesn't have to pay for its sanitary disposal.

Most businesses don't require a license to operate unless they deal with controlled goods like tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, or the exploitation of natural resources.

Beyond that, what the government provides is the articles of incorporation to limit the liability of investors, and allow the owners and operators of the business to act as a single entity within the court system.

If we take away the articles of incorporation, the business can still operate but it's not shielded in anyway from being cut up piecemeal via lawsuits, and a lot of the reason people find it worthwhile to invest in or work for a corporation will be removed.

Where do you live?

That's simply not true here, where any business which has to collect sales tax (i.e. nearly everyone) needs a "Transaction Privilege Tax" license.

In the United States, there are no national or state level service taxes, so that's a whole branch of businesses that do not have to register for specific taxation purposes.

If the US were a VAT-style country, everyone would have to register for taxation purposes.

Regardless, at least in the USA, sales tax registration is not the same thing as a licence to operate. You can start a business dealing in tangible goods, and begin selling to out-of-state customers without needing to register for sales tax. The in-state registration for sales tax is simply that---registration, there's no qualifications that you need to attain before you get it, and even without registration you are still required to collect sales taxes.

If I understand you correctly, while it's not a license, you must have one to do business and you can be punished for not having one.

So I have to ask exactly how many businesses can you give me the names & addresses of which legally operate in the USA without any sort of government paperwork which they could punish you for operating without?

My understanding is that we were talking about removing the idea of a business as seperate legal entity, not stopping capitalism in general and preventing people from exchanging money for goods or services.

As such, the only 'business' licence of interest is one which would prevent an individual, real, breathing human being from selling goods, or providing services to the general public.

The requirement that you must personally fill out a sales tax form is not that. This is really just on par with the law that says 'if you make an income, you must fill out your income tax forms'. The only penalty for ignoring it is paying additional administrative costs (and perhaps a small punitive fine) because you made everything harder for everyone.

Edit: And importantly, no one can stop you from filling the form so it can't be called a barrier to entry.

> I have no idea why you imagined it would involve beating and robbing anyone.

Reading history books gives you strange ideas.

He history books that are full of strikebreakers and company stores beating and robbing employees?

If people find a business's product valuable enough that they'd pay their own money for it, then it serves a valuable purpose.

Overly small scale perspective. Exaggerated scenario for clarity: your one starving human buying survival kibble from a fully automated megacorporation is better off with the kibble and without the pittance they spent on it, an infinitesimal amount of value was created. But humanity as a whole would be better off overthrowing the business system and directing the machines to make every human's life a paradise.

Systems should be compared as systems, not as piecemeal and mostly-forced decisions.

No, not at all. I think in all the comments here, there is an egregious error. The error is in totally ignoring the concept of economics or failing the recognize the reality of scarcity. It's not a "social construct"in any non-trivial sense. People throw that "social construct" thing around as if it is at all relevant. You could say the "law of identity" is a social construct and you don't accept ... Ok that's fine, it just means you, and I mean this only literally, don't accept "logic."

To "make every human's life a paradise" is also quite literally to either reject the concept of scarcity or to think you would create some sort "Matrix" like environment, some weird sci-fi stuff, which is fun to talk about but not a solid economics argument.

That's absurdity. If economics were the end all, be all, we'd live in a planned economy dominated by a small cartel of businesses.

Society rejected that 100+ years ago. Recall that until recently, the folks concerning themselves with money were not at the top of the social heap -- with good reason.

Based on your usage, this is totally wrong notion of "absurdity." What I wrote is actually correct.

I'm not sure what "economics were the end all be all means" but economics is a method by which to understand the "world" under the circumstance of scarcity. I suggest reading a little more of it; it's an interesting topic.

Actually, I don't think this makes any sense. Economics is not about describing a perfect society or something. Don't be silly. :)

It's about understanding reality. Agents engage in activity described by economic principles under the condition of scarcity.

I know that seems sad or something I guess to some. It's like climate change doesn't care if you believe it's real or not.

It's just the way it is ... under the condition of scarcity.

Most economists didn't predict the Global Financial Crisis. Given that you have to wonder about the utility of the so called 'economics' and whether statements made by economists are true.

Feel free to correct me or give more information, I am perfectly fine with being educated.

The problem with "dragging out behind the shed and shooting it" is that the people who propagate it usually start with other people. Thanks 20th century, but no thanks.

Hi Venezuela, nice to meet you.

Interestingly though, it's just now becoming possible to build a fully autonomous, distributed company on Etherium. In theory there's no way to tell if such an entity were controlled by humans or an AI.

It's not there to serve itself, in the sense that an ant colony is there to serve itself?

"Fortunately, fully automating the process of driving or running a restaurant is decades away."

It's closer than you think. Dominos Australia is already trialling automated delivery (in Brisbane, I believe?) with their new DRU robots. [1][2] On the pro-human side, Dominos appear to be testing if people will pay extra for a human, under the guise of "For an extra $3, guaranteed delivery in 20 minutes." (The DRU robots have a top speed of 20km/hr currently.)

[1] https://www.dominos.com.au/inside-dominos/technology/dru

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb0nxQyv7RU

[3] https://www.dominos.com.au/inside-dominos/technology/deliver...

There was something about that video that makes me think DRU isn't a serious proposition; and even if it were, it isn't yet being used for actual deliveries.

This is a common theme with new technology. The sceptics always claim "it's decades away", the enthusiasts always claim "it's nearly here - look!" But what usually happens is something in between. Essentially both are right, some stepping-stone will launch or be trialled, but it takes decades to be refined to the point where it actually delivers on the hype that was "real soon now" way back when; and by the time that happens, everyone has got used to it so the milestone passes without anyone noticing.

In the case of automatic vehicles I don't know when that clock started ticking, so I don't really know how far along we really are.

you linked to early April fools joke ...

The one fault in your logic is that the way companies behave in terms of hiring, can affect the value decision for agents/consumers and thus I think the economics in the world is a little more complicated than you suggest.

But, I kind of agree with your basic point.

Full employment is one of the fundamental macroeconomic objectives. So yes as governments you do expect exactly that. You also expect to reduce disparity between the rich and poor. Why? Because you don't want people to revolt and create chaos. If unemployment goes up too much and there are no jobs, people will revolt and violence will occur... in which people will probably destroy your peaceful stable life... your factory... and your government. So yes the government has to as its objectives solve these issues. If they don't then people have the right to get rid of such a government, and take all your wealth and means of production.

The government could achieve full-employment by drafting everyone or paying them to dig ditches then fill them in again, but that would be really wasteful. If there's actually nothing useful for some people to do (they can't find a job that supports them) then we should stop thinking of employment as a requirement for survival.

If the economy can't find full-time roles for some people, then we as a society — though the state — can just give them money to survive (a 'basic income') and let them do whatever they want with their time (including working part time jobs that wouldn't be able to sustain them on their own). It would be a much more productive and enjoyable use of their time than digging ditches :p

If there's actually nothing useful for some people to do (they can't find a job that supports them) then we should stop thinking of employment as a requirement for survival.

They could fix our crumbling infrastructure, provide child care for working women, in-home care for our elderly, reduce overcrowding by making prisons larger, build community gardens, or a hundred other popular left wing causes.

The claim that we couldn't get productive labor by drafting the unemployed is also the claim that there is nothing else useful that the government could do even if the cost is $0. Do any basic income proponents really believe this?

> They could fix our crumbling infrastructure... reduce overcrowding by making prisons larger

Unskilled people make crappy engineers and construction workers.

> provide child care

These days, child care workers need a lot of paperwork and a bit of training. Not to mention that you kind've have to be good with kids; it's not really a job just anyone can do.

> in-home care for our elderly

And this is in the same bucket. Forcing people into a caring role makes for bad carers.

> build community gardens

This one could work... but then again, how many gardens can you have, and how many folks would they support the work for?

Throw in also that all of these things are not 'free labour'. You still need to manage and train that staff, and you're going to have higher overhead costs because you'll have higher turnover. It's not as simple as just saying "labour = free, so go do something".

Unskilled people make crappy engineers and construction workers.

We did this and it worked. I believe some elements of training were provided.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps

But suppose you are right - there are no unemployed people out there capable of fixing our crumbling infrastructure. Suppose we were to just throw money at the problem via ordinary government spending. How would the work actually get done, i.e. who would do it?

Forcing people into a caring role makes for bad carers.

No one is forced into anything. You do work and you get money, same as any other job. In any case, the folks who make bad carers can do other things, e.g. pick up trash in the park or work as janitors in government buildings.

> build community gardens

This one could work... but then again, how many gardens can you have

When I hear this, I immediately think of Great Cultural Revolution in China, and Pol Pot in Cambodia. Also there the joys of gardening and agricultural work were supposed to cleanse the bourgeois people.

And while we are there, let's shoot anyone with eyeglasses for trying to be too intellectual.

Unbalanced comparisons.

Basic income frees people to do private work. Government projects, to be comparable, would have to pay people for their work, as you know,and also add a premium to cover the time spent.

Basic income and government spending on projects are separate ideas that are only related because they compete for budget.

The point is that if BI people also work, BI and fixing infrastructure are not competing for resources. We can have our cake and eat it too.

> If there's actually nothing useful for some people to do

then those people who cannot be useful will not survive - it's as simple as that. It takes resources to keep someone alive, and that resource must come from somewhere.

I'd live for basic income to be viable, but i highly doubt it's viable, given that it amounts to altruism (from those people who own the means of production/automation). We'd have to have free or near-free energy.

What is the difference though between them being paid for unproductive work for the sake of having a job or being paid a basic income?

but that's the thing... they most likely wont be paid for unproductive work or given a basic income they will simply be let to starve as has ALWAYS been done historically.

This is the key point that always perplexes me in these discussions of automation, the belief that somehow a fully automated society is going to lead to large swaths of the population not doing work and somehow being given basic income and being left to chase 'loftier pursuits' instead of 'wage slavery'...

its not a logical expectation based on past human history...

One could hope that we aspire higher than killing people or allowing people to dies because they have no use to you. It's psychopathic and values people as nothing expect for their use to you, the same way a rapist doesn't give any value to their victims lives, just what they can get from them. Anyone suggesting that unemployed people don't get paid are on the same boat, because they do not value those lives at all, unless it gets them something.

Human history has always been dominated by scarcity. Fully automated production would by definition be a repudiation of all economic theories built upon a foundation of scarcity, so we can't really use them to guide us in devising a solution.

The closest humans have ever come is the indiginous potlach societies of Papua New Guinea where scarcity wasn't an issue and people lived fairly idle lives (and substituted physical scarcity with societal scarcity).

It's like there are extremists on both side of this conversation. :)

To say those people that cannot be useful will not survive is sort of despicable and naive. Someone on the other side made a point about revolts and if we carried this view so far, I guess something like that would happen and make normal economic activity untenable.

Full employment is not a goal of any particular business, though. "The economy" is just a term to describe the transactions people make over time in their own interest. And any system built on the expectation people will ignore their own interests for the common good is destined to fail.

I'm not sure what you mean by "fundamental macroeconomic objective". Surely the purpose of full employment is so the people who are employed can enjoy a certain standard of life.

> Full employment is one of the fundamental macroeconomic objectives

Except for kids/students, and retired people. Nothing is preventing us from studying until we're 30 and retiring at 35 - if only the minority of the population can be productive enough (with the help of machines, obviously) to produce enough for the rest.

the thing that is preventing this from happening is starvation. In a capitalist society where 90% do not contribute to production or commerce and the labor is done and capital owned by the 10%... the 90% starves.

Keep in mind too that the idea of "full employment" doesn't mean 100% employment, it's a technical term.

I will just say, your view is a little overly antagonistic. Keep this in mind, if they government created too much artificiality in the market, which seems to be what you are asking for, this would not solve the people's problems.

Under your view, the government might as well print countless amounts of currency and just distribute it without any regard to it's value.

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