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Comment by Lazare | Hacker News Reader

That sounds like a very nice world to live in. It also doesn't sound much like our world. It's certainly not how any country on Earth operates.

One day, I hope and imagine, we will live in a post-scarcity world, and then yes, that sounds like a great plan for organizing society.

> rather than a laser focus on the hand-to-mouth of Jobs Right Now.

Perhaps we should wait to relax that focus once we've actually solved the problem. If you look around, you'll notice employment, especially among people 18-29, is a real challenge, while government finances and pensions are grossly underfunded.

It's the old hierarchy of needs thing; self-actualization is at the top of the pyramid not only because it's the most important, but because it relies on all the others being fulfilled in order to be an acheivable goal.

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"That sounds like a very nice world to live in. It also doesn't sound much like our world. It's certainly not how any country on Earth operates."

We've had a system not a million miles different from the one described in Ireland since the 70's/80's. There are grants for school uniforms and books for those that cant afford them, the cost of a college degree is not exorbitant and is again covered by a grant for those that cant afford it (I went to college with several guys who were on the grant) There's always the focus on getting a job, for obvious reasons, but there are plenty of people who go back and re skill with a 2nd degree.

That is in no way even close to the imagined situation that the response you are quoting is referring to.

In Denmark students have since 1970 and actually dating back to the 50's had the right to SU (Statens Uddannelsesstøtte = government support programmes) in form of government grants and government subsidized loans for any students studying on a government approved list of mostly government subsidized secondary and higher education. Hope that triggers some anti-big gov't folks over there.

It is extremely unlikely that a post-scarcity world will ever occur without, say, a collective global work project. There is no financial incentive for private capital to initiate it. Just like the Internet (in its current form) would have never occurred without government funding.

The technology to bring about a post-scarcity world mostly exists, and we could get there very quickly (maybe 5-10 years). But, how do you convince the upper classes (who control the capital) to support it? How do you temper the common idea that 'the lazy people' will just do nothing all day? (like that's a bad thing)

"But, how do you convince the upper classes (who control the capital) to support it?"

This is a red herring. It's easy to assuming that such an enormous undertaking can be solved by "tax the rich". It doesn't work that way. There isn't enough money in the top 1% of the United States to pay for such a program. Inevitably a UBI would be paid for by the middle class, the meaty part of the bell curve.

This means people who took on debt loads to become a doctor, lawyer, whatever, and have worked hard to pay it down (and probably still are paying it down). $250k/yr sounds like a lot, but when you're paying back $400k worth of loans, it's really not as exorbitant as it sounds to many people -- especially if these same people are trying to buy a house, save for their kids' college, etc.

This seems more optimistic than I usually hear. Do you mind going into what you mean by "post-scarcity" and how we'd achieve it? Does it just mean a living UBI, or is there tech/infrastructure (extensive solar, e.g.) to be developed/built out as well?

Our current global scientific and engineering output is staggering, and it is continuously accelerating. If there was a global 'manhattan project' focused on this, then it would happen.

Global economic output is $80 trillion. There are 100s of millions of scientists, engineers, programmers, technicians in the world. Aside from the ideological complexities, which are probably intractable, it seems like it would be pretty easy to me.

What would it really take to provide basic housing, food, water, clothing, energy, and medicines to 7 billion people? Robotic automation, free / cheap energy, and access to natural resources.

we bulldoze away houses, we throw away food. meanwhile, people are homeless and hungry. Clearly we already live in a society of overproduction.

The difference is that the owners of the capital aren't willing to lose on their investments, and it's cheaper to bulldoze and throw away than to give it away or provide work maintaining the communities that these properties exist in/on.

> we bulldoze away houses etc

People can do whatever they want to their property, no?

Do you personally allow homeless people into your house?

Problems you mentioned are real and tough, but the objections are very simplistic. Its very easy to demand others to do something, and distance yourself away.

appealing to individualism won't solve systemic problems. I don't have to house syrian refugee immigrants in my home personally to realize that europe has an ethical problem by refusing them and treating them the way they have been.

There is a long and historical precedent for demanding that people with excess amounts of capital owe a greater portion than those who own relatively little. There are material differences between the capitalists and all the rest of us, and those allow us to demand specific concessions from them.

> 'the lazy people' will just do nothing all day?

IMHO It's a bad thing considering the fact that a lot of people worked hard to get us to where we are today.

Sorry that I wasn't clear. My point is that it's a subjective qualifier. My productive may be your lazy and vice versa

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