How many more dwarf fortresses could we have if we gave people the safety net to follow their dreams? Instead of worrying about basic necessities like food, shelter, and healthcare.
However what we saw with covid stimulus and unemployment wasn’t the “everyone’s now an artist” outcome that is suggested with UBI.
We definitely saw creatives able to express and build their visions into the world, thanks to the money and additional time.
But we also saw, and still have ongoing, many people who choose not to work [0]. Some percent of these people are suffering from substance abuse. Not to say this is purely the outcome of UBI, but I can’t imagine it helps those individuals with such proclivities for abuse.
Personally I think we should have a good UBI at the least, qualified for individuals who make under a certain amount and who are able and working, or legitimately looking for a job.
There’s a reason many trust fund kids go broke or dive into substance abuse. Sure there are examples of families who would not do this under similar circumstances, but giving out money for no work (assuming one is able to work), leads to hedonic pleasures unless the individual is purposely aware and trying to avoid such sand traps.
I do think UBI has risks, hopefully we can encourage useful pursuits, public works, etc.
Absolutely no auditing was being done. Some states require you reach out to or inquire about at least 2 jobs per week, nothing close to "all of your time" YMMV I suppose.
>U.S. watchdog estimates $45.6 billion in pandemic unemployment fraud
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/22/unemploym...
That might seem a bit of an extreme statement but the reality is that as soon as children enter school they are steadily stripped of their creativity in favor of discipline and obedience. They are raised in a capitalist society where they are told that their worth is tied to their job. And they spend a huge chunk of their lives doing what their boss tells them.
As far as the stimulus check, these were people trying to survive a global crisis and managed to get a break from the drudgery of their degrading, exploitative jobs.
You can't make claims about human nature without considering the context in which these events are occurring.
It sounds like you think this is bad. Why?
The "U" in UBI means "Universal". Once you add any kind of means testing you ruin the whole idea.
So, so many. Linux is a good example. Linus has talked about how he was able to spend a lot of time on getting Linux off the ground because back in the 80s and 90s, study allowances in Finland were very, very generous. Took him like 8 years to graduate, and during that time he didn't have to worry at all about finding a job to pay rent and buy food. These days, the system is similar, but they do monitor your progress more closely and will cut off the allowance if you don't progress in your studies. (ask me how I know :P)
While some jobs may be completely pointless, I think we would quickly find that we actually need people doing boring jobs because society would fall apart without them and then no one gets to build video games.
I don’t think jobs would go away like you seem to imply. When I say taking care of peoples needs I don’t mean giving everyone a mansion.
The current entertainment market already saturates this several hundred times over.
Creating several dozen more dwarf fortresses won't do anything since they will just take attention away from each other.
Since information can be replicated for almost nothing.
Whereas physical labor can't be replicated nearly as easily.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/canada/british-columbia/...
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ottawa-paramedics-...
Its due to the governments defunding public healthcare in order to 'strangle it then save it'. You defund it, make people say 'it doesnt work', then say that "We need to privatize it."
Its de facto privatization method used since Reagan/Thatcher. Same method is being used in any country that ends up with a 'privatizing' government.
Public health is just difficult to fund. Especially on a shrinking population.
They only have two choices now:
* increase or keep immigration at the same rate
* decrease or eliminate benefits like socialized healthcare and social security
Increase productivity (per capita output), increase taxes, specifically pursue high income society development paths (including on who you allow to immigrate, such that high income immigrants promptly become high tax contributors).
Canada is more or less already doing this. They'll likely just have to boost taxation further.
You’re right about the other two either already happening or inevitable.
Lastly, Canada's population isn't shrinking. It's growing, thanks to a sensible immigration policy (well, mostly sensible; not recognizing the credentials of healthcare professionals is pretty dumb).
Public healthcare is only difficult to find when your government's priority is to personally engorge on a gravy train powered by corruption. All of the issues facing the Ontario healthcare system are intentionally self-inflicted.
Sure, just be a socialistic/communist government and be able to finance the pension system while depending on US money (because there isn't any good alternative), once you go too much into debt and deal with IMF, and be sure not to defund important services (like medicine) when they ask you causing bank runs and bankrupcy. Easy, no?
Oh, and make sure there is no corruption that would cause funds to be mismanaged.
Why the hell would they depend on US money if they become a socialistic/communist government that channels its GDP to its people instead of channeling it to tax breaks for the rich.
> corruption
No problem - they can just legalize it under the name 'lobbying' like how US did it.
Indirectly, because they depend on petroleum/oil/gas. Sure your glorious government has to import energy or other fuel derived products. Not to mention imports don't magically teleport to your location, they also depend on oil to get shipped.
> No problem - they can just legalize it
That's just papering over the issue. Akin to saying we solved drunk driving by setting alcohol in blood to 50%.
There is no country in the world where public healtchare is failing without getting DEFUNDED intentionally.
You’re still down to some major choices:
* End immigration and end public benefits like healthcare
* Keep immigration and keep healthcare for now. Then pray that someone finds a solution someday to a shrinking population because immigration will only slow it down.
* Drastically increase taxes. This isn’t really a viable long term solution because in most places that have a lot of socialized benefits the taxes are already very high.
I’m having trouble finding the original statscan article, but according to their projections even if you drastically increase immigration even higher than it is today Canada will still eventually face a population decline. Immigration only slows down the decline. I can’t help but think that the world is experiencing a more subtle and slow version of Children of Men
When are people going to wake up and smell the class war?
Because the evidence just passes me by in the form of news articles, new laws being proposed, new budgets undercutting public health care and promoting the private sector.
I have stories for days. But as you say, I need to start saving the sources because I'm not really into politics. I'm a nerd, I live in a nerdy bubble. I just observe the world around me and see the corruption.
You can do the rationing through market forces, where people who can't afford it get less care; you can do the rationing through some other allocation system (e.g. priority systems, or long queues, or lottery, or committee allocation) which in effect still mean that not all people get everything.
If you want to say "In our society, everyone gets healthcare" then you have do define "healthcare" narrowly, which includes some services but not everything technically possible - I mean, if we have services that take more than a man-month of labor for each month of prolonged life (and there are some) then that's not possible to provide for everyone always even from a purely mathematical standpoint.
There's a "motte and bailey" that goes on with healthcare - emergency services like handling broken legs and illness and such is actually relatively cheap; it's the prolonged costs of all the various things we die of that really puts a burden on things.
Sure we spend $5 million now and then to save premie infants, etc, but that's such a small portion of total healthcare spending as to be a rounding error.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2020-2021/HExpType.pdf breaks some of it down, but not in detail; I suspect that a huge amount of healthcare expenses can be directly tied to obesity and its consequences.
As for stressors...gestures broadly.
One is taxes. Canada already has high taxes, which does not pair well with low salaries and a high cost of living that isn’t too far from either the SF Bay Area or even NYC.
The second is your confederation’s central government is weak. Your provinces have too much power, and they’re the ones controlling the healthcare systems which seem to be managed completely differently from one province to another rifht?
> Profit? Aren’t all of your provincial healthcare systems publicly run and publicly funded? I feel that there are two issues.
The directly publicly run parts are only subject to the "efficiency" part. But more and more gets contracted out where it's also subject to profit pressure.
> The second is your confederation’s central government is weak. Your provinces have too much power, and they’re the ones controlling the healthcare systems which seem to be managed completely differently from one province to another rifht?
That's pretty backwards. Locally managed healthcare tends to beat centrally managed. It also helps inject a bit of competition in, gaining many of the benefits of for-profit healthcare without so many of the downsides.
I tend to agree, but the downside to having each province having their own special healthcare system is that it’s hard for them to collaborate like with something as simple as sharing medical records. Also, the central government can’t do things like mandate minimum spending for healthcare and a more consistent floor on salaries for healthcare workers. Overall though I agree with you.
> It also helps inject a bit of competition in, gaining many of the benefits of for-profit healthcare without so many of the downsides.
People would have to be able to easily move between provinces for that to be true. Unfortunately, it’s hard due to the housing crisis and low salaries. Having a private option would increase competition. It might even offload some strain from the public system assuming that everyone still gets taxed for the public option.
Btw since we’re on the subject, how do Canadians mitigate the long wait for everything healthcare related? Is it common to cross the border for healthcare?
Not really. If a few people can move at the margin, that's enough to keep things in equilibrium. Even if no-one's moving, it still creates political pressure if one province is clearly offering better healthcare than another.
> Btw since we’re on the subject, how do Canadians mitigate the long wait for everything healthcare related? Is it common to cross the border for healthcare?
Again just assuming it works like the UK: a few people pay to go private and get treated quicker, some travel to a cheap place for the same, most people deal with it. While you hear about a handful of dramatic failures (partly since, unlike in a private system, there are many people with an incentive to publicise them), by and large the system is actually very good at prioritising the things that are actually urgent.
But, there is a massive effort underway in the UK, Ontario, and others, to cripple those systems in order to privatize them and profit.
> Wait times for medical care seem surreal.
Its due to the governments defunding public healthcare in order to 'strangle it then save it'. You defund it, make people say 'it doesnt work', then say that "We need to privatize it."
Its de facto privatization method used since Reagan/Thatcher. Same method is being used in any country that ends up with a 'privatizing' government.
Its amazing how people are still unaware of this after so many documentaries, reports, advocacy on the matter.
Just google. "Neoliberal privatization tactics", "Economic hitmen" (that was a pretty popular take), neoliberalism etc.
> more (old) people are using health care.
Irrelevant. The number of older people in any country is not enough to bankrupt healthcare systems Healthcare is a function of the percentage of national GDP spent on it. If there are more people, you have more GDP, you can spend more. If you have less people, you cant spend more but you also have less people.
Blaming the problems on irrelevant 'reasons' is one of the ways in which privatization is hidden from sight - just check how many cuts have been made to the healthcare spending in your own country in the past 40 years, and how much. There you will have your answer.
We’re currently at €7000 per person per year spent on health care, with average salaries being €36.000 annually. This is unsustainable.
> Wait times for medical care seem surreal.
Its due to the governments defunding public healthcare in order to 'strangle it then save it'. You defund it, make people say 'it doesnt work', then say that "We need to privatize it."
Its de facto privatization method used since Reagan/Thatcher. Same method is being used in any country that ends up with a 'privatizing' government.
We don't have this issue in Taiwan for example. I'm sure other countries can pipe up.
Actually now that I think about it the devs could relatively easily get a gold card visa and emigrate here... From what I remember of their documentary they basically love to just code all day and go on walks, a lifestyle easily supported here. We also got FAT internet pipes.
Nobody can know for sure but you can never know if a huge earthquake will hit San Francisco, better not live there. Or if the subway will flood in new York city, better not live there. Or if Berlin will be hit with a terrorist bomb, better not live there...
And so on. At least here we are very unlikely to be shot, and, our public transit means we don't have to risk death from drunk driving. I believe a rational analysis of actual likelihood to random death in Taiwan vs the usa, the outcomes are much better in Taiwan, and that's before considering better access to healthcare and other reasons our quality of life is higher here.
It’s not overblown. If I were to guess, people are prone to normalcy bias even when the probability for an invasion is getting higher and higher.
The further China’s social order degrades, the higher the chances of an invasion.
It should be obvious, but so have I. What are you seeing in your news that makes you think you know more than I that there's not only a higher risk of PLA invasion, but that said risk is at all measurable in any meaningful way?
> The further China’s social order degrades, the higher the chances of an invasion.
By what basis? Try my logic: the further the PRC's social order degrades, the less support Xi will have for a foreign war. What happened back in Russia when they invaded Ukraine? Protests. Does the CPC want more protests right now?
It's moot. Think about it: if you are so certain that there will be an invasion, then you likely would acknowledge that our intelligence services are even more certain. If your certainty is so high, their certainty would be, well, probably at 100% in the next year, right? If they knew that, would they not completely mobilize our army, activate our standing militia? The PLA would know that we know, and wouldn't the invasion simply happen tomorrow?
I say this because I ask you to recognize the inherent uncertainty at all, and that the statistical probability of a PLA invasion is dependent upon human whim and global politics. If you can't tell me which way a stock is going to go confidently enough to bet your entire savings on it, there's no way you can reasonably guess whether Taiwan is livable based on risk of invasion.
I mean, if you're telling me you wouldn't live in Taiwan because you'd be afraid of an invasion, I definitely don't want to hear that you've been in a car any time in the last year, because if you're that concerned about the PLA invading Taiwan, there's no WAY you would risk the objectively, measurably higher likelihood of getting in a car accident from a drunk driver.
But don't take my word for it: in the words of a huge portion of the staff of the US state department stationed here in Taiwan (we had a dinner party recently (I have no authority to quote them on this so you know, don't run to the press)): the US State Department is skittish to a fault. If they haven't pulled staff, they don't consider invasion a realistic probability.
There’s also a lot of troop deployments in both Fujian and Hainan.
Focusing your country’s rage outward towards a foreign enemy is also a strategy so old that even the Romans mention it.
I get it. You don’t want to leave like the Cantonese in Hong Kong. You can keep your head in the ground all you want, but it’s not going to make the danger go away
Pretty sure Ukraine had / has nothing that Russia wants to keep alive.
If the danger wasn’t real, TSMC wouldn’t be building foundries in the US, Japan, India, and Germany to name a few places.
I think it's "working well" in the sense that "sudden illness won't bankrupt you" but not "working well" in the sense that "you might have to wait two years to get a new hip" (which I believe is the current waiting time in the UK.)
Now they're commonly seeing population contraction or flattening.
They already have high taxes.
They're in deep shit and it has little to do with Capitalists taking over their healthcare systems. The math was always going to take them here. Only per capita economic growth to offset the aging and population shrinkage can save them, short of epic scale high income immigration.
30 years ago Germany's GDP per capita was ~$26,500. That's $57,000 inflation adjusted. The projected GDP per capita for Germany in 2022 is $48,000.
30 years ago France's GDP per capita was ~$23,800. That's $51,300 inflation adjusted. The projected GDP per capita for France in 2022 is $42,330.
30 years ago the UK's GDP per capita was ~$20,500. That's $44,200 inflation adjusted. The projected GDP per capita for the UK in 2022 is $47,300.
30 years to end up with a net contraction or otherwise close to flat. And these are supposedly the economic giants of Europe. In some cases it's even worse than it seems per capita, as eg France has added nine million people in that time; the UK has added ten million people.
The same scenario is playing out for nearly all the affluent European nations.
As the World Bank dataset shows, Germany has in fact had GDP per capita growth - the 26500 figure you cite is in 2015 dollars, so it is already adjusted for inflation. GDP growth is never reported in nominal terms, but always in real terms, which is adjusted for inflation.
Economic growth is a meaningless term in itself. There was so much growth in the US, and what did it do for the majority? A tiny ~1% or less got extremely rich. But the majority are not able to feed themselves.
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/americas-dirty-little-secret...
> They're in deep shit and it has little to do with Capitalists taking over their healthcare systems.
The capitalists took over the economy of entire Europe starting with Thatcher/Reagan.
> The math was always going to take them here
This sounds like religious sermon. There is a magical 'math', which makes everyone happy when there is 'growth'. Like how it obviously did in the US.
...
That has nothing to do with it. Growth, or contraction, has nothing to do with people having public healthcare since public healthcare is run over the fraction of the GDP that people generate. If there are less people, there is less GDP, but less need for healthcare. If there are more people, you need more healthcare spending but there are more people that generate GDP.
Its capitalism. Unequal distribution of wealth can never be sustained even with gigantic growth. Like the US demonstrated since Reagan.
Neither system is perfect and they both have pros and cons
That's objectively false and its a perception that is based on the Angloamerican cold war propaganda.
With all the 'power and influence', the 'elites' of Eastern Bloc did not live so much more in luxury compared to their own people.
If an ordinary person got his house at the age of ~35, a party official got it a few years earlier. If an ordinary person drived an X years old car, the official drove a 4-5 year newer car.
The catch is, all the citizens in the Eastern Bloc systems got their houses, cars, guaranteed jobs, education, healthcare, childcare, paid vacations, paid maternity leave, retirement and all that stuff.
They were very surprised when they changed to capitalism and learned that none of those were guaranteed under capitalism. Now they have so much freedom.
You’ve contradicted yourself in the same comment.
Besides what you wrote doesn’t fully reflect reality
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0390670050003867...
Power is much more centralized in socialist systems. Consequently, corruption spreads much faster compared to more decentralized systems like capitalism. The end results is everyone is equally poor except for high level government officials.
I didnt. There is absolutely no practical difference in between driving a car that came out last year and driving a 5 year old car.
> Besides what you wrote doesn’t fully reflect reality
Im sorry but a paper from a private American think thank does not make reality. Actual statistics do.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-...
> Power is much more centralized in socialist systems. Consequently, corruption spreads much faster compared to more decentralized systems like capitalism
Those are religious statements without any sound basis. In a capitalist system corruption is normalized in the form of the 'freedom of the property owner to do whatever he wants with his property' and 'election funding'.
> The end results is everyone is equally poor except for high level government officials.
Another religious statement.
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/americas-dirty-little-secret...
Which contradicts the reality. The US is not at war. Nobody is sanctioning the US. Nobody is conducting economic warfare against the US. The US sat at the top of the world's economic system uncontested for the last 30 years. And that is the result.
Newer cars weren’t the only thing socialist kleptocrats were found to be hoarding. They had all sorts of luxury goods from the West ranging from fashion, jewelry, and even food.
I don’t deny that late stage capitalism will happen or is happening as we speak, but socialism isn’t immune to corruption either. Late stage socialism also happens much sooner than late stage capitalism because power is so much more concentrated in socialist systems. We know this because we’ve had plenty of failed socialism experiments in the 20th century
> Those are religious statements without any sound basis
It’s ironic that you’d write this when you never offer solid facts yourself despite other commenters requesting that you provide data. My data is more valid than your little anecdotes
Why are you blaming them and not the system?
He produced an enormous amount of value and chose to not collect the earnings until now.
1. we do have Dwarf Fortress.
2. It's not our collective responsibility to finance people who want to make art
I'm not blaming the system because it's not the limiting factor here. They did not prioritize their financial security so why should society do it instead? They have all the tools to finance their lives yet opted not to. They learned this themselves and corrected it when they realized it was unsustainable. The worst possible scenario is subsidizing their previous lifestyle.
Insurance not covering medically necessary procedures and hospitals charging exorbitant prices is a problem, not this.