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Comment by lsc | Hacker News Reader

eh, You can have a very strong welfare state that provides minimal food, shelter, medical care and clothing to everyone who needs it without having a planned economy. They really are different issues.

there's a big difference between a welfare state and full out socialism; the difference is largely about power... Socialisim is about giving the workers control over the means of production. The welfare state is merely about seeing to it that people don't starve.

We're rich enough, in America, at least, that with tax increases, we could provide the minimum for everyone, and pay for it out of the sorts of taxes we pay now (only, of couse, somewhat more)

There was a lot of effort in that direction here and in the UK in the '70s; there was a lot of criticism that the public housing, for instance, wasn't very nice, but what really ended it was the rise of the political movement that backed Thatcher (in the UK) and Reagan (in the US)

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I like your reasoning, and I agree that we need more effort toward social programs that provide basic needs for the population.

One argument against such programs is that they could allow people to have a lifestyle where they choose to never work, yet live a comfortable life and have lots of children. It seems like this could cause extreme population growth, but in a very bad way. Am I missing something, or is there a solution to address that problem?

Your logic assumes that most people are so shallow that they would stop working/trying to improve their conditions after they are able to live “comfortably”. There are several wealthy countries that provide this kind of welfare without much population growth or lazy workforce. On the other hand there are counties like Bangladesh that saw rapid growth in population in the 80s even though most people were very very poor - in fact the country’s pouplation growth has demolished now that more people can live comfortably due to increased wealth and access to education.

The leap you're making, that I don't understand, is that if people didn't have to work, they'd start having huge families en masse.

Why do you think that would happen? Is there any basis for having that concern?

Sex is fun, it’s free, and procreation is a biologically driven part of being human.

The argument is that if we give people a basic sustainable way to live and the least motivated to improve their condition will likely fall back to the basics.

Children are annoying, though. I doubt most people would start having huge families if they can easily prevent it while still having sex.

There's a huge gap between the current situation and a system where people on welfare who choose not to work are able to live "comfortably" in perpetuity.

Somewhere within that gap is a decent system where poor people don't starve but are still incentivized to improve their situation.

I also don't really see how having children relates to any of this.

On the other hand, automation will probably force us into a welfare state one way or another.

>One argument against such programs is that they could allow people to have a lifestyle where they choose to never work, yet live a comfortable life and have lots of children. It seems like this could cause extreme population growth, but in a very bad way. Am I missing something, or is there a solution to address that problem?

So, I'm talking largely about rich nations like the USA. Here? it has been a long time since the population was restricted by food, so we can neatly sidestep that problem without resorting to Swift.

I do think it's important to design welfare programs to aid people who are leaving poverty. I personally don't think this should be done by cutting off the support if they don't work... But I do think programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit which help smooth the transition from being dependent on welfare to supporting yourself are super important...

(And I think the Earned Income Tax Credit is generally considered a good model of this; the idea is that instead of cutting out benefits as soon as a person gets a job, the government continues to supplement the income until they are doing well.

a basic income that everyone gets addresses a similar problem, and a basic income + a strongly progressive income tax could probably do something similar.

In 2016, 4.9 percent of U.S. households (6.1 million households) had very low food security, essentially unchanged from 5.0 percent in 2015. In this more severe range of food insecurity, the food intake of some household members was reduced and normal eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year due to limited resources. [1]

[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/84973/err-237....

Our current social welfare programs actively discourage people from saving money to get out of poverty. If you have more than 2,000$ in your bank account you are disqualified from reviving EBT in many states. So people either have to save and hide or lie about their money or get cut off the second their able to build their own safety net. Predatory lending and an inability to plan beyond their immediate survival also incentives what could be considered bad financial decisions. While start ups might in theory help buffer some of the negatives what objectively is needed is opportunities and examples of alternative means of livelihoods. People don't generally sit around and have babies because they don't have anything better to do, although I'm sure sex out of boredom does result in some unplanned pregnancies.

1) Higher income is already associated with lower fertility. Only people who are already pretty rich decide that they’re not rich enough to procreate.

2) If the market honestly has nothing for someone to do (or it’s of such low value that it falls below minimum wage), is it really a tragedy if they don’t work?

It is if they fill their time with making babies and this results in catastrophic population growth.

As you must be aware, population growth comes from high family size which in turn comes from the need to ensure one's support at old age.

In extremely poor societies, where there are no pensions or social security for the old, the best way to make sure you have food and shelter when you're too old to work is to have many children.

And maybe in a society where everything is provided for you, the easiest way to find fulfillment is through having lots of kids to raise?

If you actually want to do a good job raising those kids, it certainly isn't the easiest way to find fulfillment...

But of course, in societies where you (can choose to have) everything (basic) provided for you, there are indeed some who have many kids but don't bother to actually raise them. This is how underclass is created.

millions of teenagers get part time jobs despite not needing it to live.

The corollary to "if X has what they need to live they won't work" is "the only reason X works is to not die".

While on a high level it can feel that way, especially at the lower rungs of society (where people get the worst kind of jobs). But ultimately humans have a lot of motivations for doing things.

Unfortunately many people cannot act on these motivations because they are too busy trying not to starve/get evicted/die from illness. A world where no one has to worry about these is something we could all work towards.

I suspect the real argument anti-welfare people want to make, but are too cowardly to state explicitely, is: "if the poor weren't forced to accept shitty jobs to survive, we would have to pay them fair wages and/or improve working conditions, which would reduce the wealth going into our pockets."

Your assumption is that population growth is a bad thing. But why?

Of course the earth only has finite resources, but with our level of technology it is entirely feasible to sustain billions more people. The growth and progress of humanity is dependent on ever increasing available intellect to solve the worlds problems. If we ever want build massive civilizations spanning the solar system, it’s going to take trillions of humans. I’d rather believe in that kind of future than a stagnant “garden of eden” earth where we self limit our own progress.

Socialism is state (in some sense the public if it is also a democracy) owning the means of production. Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production. Workers owning the means of production is syndicalism.

I think I agree that you are more correct, especially as I specifically said 'workers' and not 'people' - syndicalism, as I understand it, is mostly about the workers in a particular industry (or factory) controlling said industry (or factory) however, it doesn't really change my point;

Either way, socialism is about control of the means of production, and my point is that you can have a welfare state without changing the control of the means of production, as long as you have a means of significant taxation, which we have in place in the US already.

Wikipedia page on socialism: "Social ownership may refer to forms of public, collective or cooperative ownership, or to citizen ownership of equity."

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