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Comment by acupofnope | Hacker News Reader

Where do you live that your can afford a 15-hour week without worrying about rent, food,..etc?

I think he means if humans were rational and enlightened.

Note: the world started producing a surplus of food a while ago, and still we let many starve, and even today many people live with shortages and food insecurity.

Honestly, if you take a step back and look, a large portion of our economy are just bullshit jobs, or outright cronyism.

I mean, I worked in private sector fin tech (nothing fancy, more-pedestrian stuff) and I'm extremely confident we contributed close to nothing to society, while making good money. Some other work experience was with consulting government and that was just complete bullshit. Then there's books written on the "Rise of the Healthcare Administrator," which correctly point out their numbers have grown by 1-2 orders of magnitude while healthcare costs are up, quality is questionable and by the way, shouldn't technology have the opposite result? And finally, I'm not surprised to see GE as the culprit here. I know they have some brilliant groups, but that company is also infected with crazy politics and insanity from within.

Those rational and enlightened humans would have to be willing to move out of popular cities.

You work in technology. You are, in all likelihood, capable of moving to the country, cooking at home, and telecommuting for 15 hours a week. Have you? Why not?

"I'm not surprised to see GE as the culprit here. I know they have some brilliant groups, but that company is also infected with crazy politics and insanity from within"

I don't think GE consumer products are related to GE, the American company, for several years now. They sold the appliance business to Haier, I believe. Not sure if that would include things like smart bulbs.

just think about it. Factories produce with near zero human muscle costs endless supplies of goods that take care of all our vital needs. With a tiny little effort we could almost entirely automate food production. The way it is currently set up is because of the invention of money and ownership we are in a false sense of lacking something. We lack nothing anymore. In reality there is no lack, hasn't been since the invention of factories and farm machines.

Alan Watts predicted our overabundance of goods in the sixties and the problems we will face (and are facing).

https://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/alan-watts-basic-...

The bottom line is:

who should pay for the basic income?

machines. they do it already.

Properly allocating all resources that humans produce on the scales larger than tribes is only really doable by markets. Ensuring universal access to a subset of those resources is only doable through government programs. Funding government programs is only really doable through taxation. So we're back where we started. You must tax the market to pay for the capacity to universally allocate some of the resources.

You can't tax a machine, you can only tax people, because people operate machines, they can't generate fungible resources (money) themselves. There will always be a market between resources and individuals.

"just think about it. Factories produce with near zero human muscle costs endless supplies of goods that take care of all our vital needs. With a tiny little effort we could almost entirely automate food production."

You're implying that costs are mostly physical effort and automation is a "tiny effort". That's a really weird thing to say on a forum called Hacker News, and why on earth do you think food production isn't "almost entirely automated"? Any prediction of a sudden change in the rate of a trend needs to explain why the change didn't happen more gradually and sooner, as soon as it was possible.

You can definitely afford it, you just have to not live like a typical modern American.

You can arrange your life around riding the bike and taking public transport, get a roommate, cook your own meals, etc. etc. and live on $20k/yr or less. Not in an expensive metropolis (easily), but there are plenty of other places where you can live.

Look at how big houses were in the early 1900s. And how often people ate meat.

Maybe if you are single, young American without any health issues or dependents, sure, why not. Is it attainable by everyone? I don't think so. It's a great ideal to have, and maybe someday a reality, but as things currently are, unrealistic.

Well, in Europe, you can.

no, you cannot. Not everyone can. At least, not in Germany. People pay 60% of their net income to rent while working 40 hours a week. How do you expect the rent to be paid with just 15 hours of work per week in Germany?

The big con is working 40 hours a week to afford to rent/own/buy a place to live so you can continue working said 40 hours a week.

Cut it to 15, move to cheaper residence and cut out gadgets, buying useless shit and owning lots of things. This frees up huge chunks of time and creativity and freedom. The freedom you thought you were working towards toiling 40 hours of your life per week.

yeah, see what happens to the economy if half of the people take this way. Let me call bs on that.

You mean the economy which produces all of the useless things that the parent just said we should stop consuming mindlessly? Slowing economic development is a benefit.

You mean without kids, not owning place you live in, likely sharing flat, without abroad winter/summer holidays, living in places with good public transport without a car, where employer can actually accept 2 days a week employments?

Ok, I just arrived to Europe. What do I do next?

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