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Comment by Arubis | Hacker News Reader

Yes, certainly: the ability to say “no” to abusive labor conditions without risk of irreversibly losing any source of income while living in a society that treats lack of income as deserving of whatever pains and suffering come with it.

The word “any” is doing a lot of work here—I’m implying a denylist or “social credit score” or other way of persisting punishment against an individual beyond mere job loss.

You’re right that we’re not there right now. We’re in the wide middle and still closer to the “we have lots of bargaining power because we’re in demand” end of the continuum—_directionally_ it does not feel that way, but we don’t have a ton of folks dying of Boolean lung in the code mines. But I’d not rule out the possibility. The range of possible human experiences is vast.

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> living in a society that treats lack of income as deserving of whatever pains and suffering

What does the opposite society look like? Universal income?

It looks like a healthy extended family where resources are shared towards a common goal of health and liberty.

What if health and liberty to someone looks like them not providing any net positive to society? What compels someone to work 12 hours a day to share those resources with such a person?

Some people look to the nice things they have and think to themselves "I want everyone to have these things."

No argument there. The question is whether history shows us that that represents a majority or minority of people.

Sounds like an unhealthy person and situation such that 12 hours of labor is mandatory

Step one would be to help them get into a situation where that wasn’t true

If enough people decide they want to spend their liberty not working, then the 12 hours is a necessity, not something "unhealthy" about the person.

Sounds like you’ve got your world model rock solid

It mostly just feels like basic maths, not really a world model. Productivity is a finite resource. If there's a deficit in productivity, people will necessarily suffer and, in the worst case, die. The problem is world views that suggest giving everyone a free choice that enough people will choose productivity while everyone else chooses leisure. I'd be more apt to believe it if we had evidence of it being a natural outcome.

It doesn't have to be so extreme though. Basic scenario: 20% of everyone's income is taxed and then distributed equally to everyone (no matter what, and without setting any fixed dollar amount), another 10% pays for administrative functions and government stuff except welfare, and the remaining 70% is theirs to do with as they please. What would happen? Would everyone quit their job? I don't think so, because 70% is a lot. Some people with jobs that pay so poorly their 70% is less than everyone's average 20% would quit, but that's good, because those were zombie jobs.

I'd be fine with this so long as people who didn't contribute any taxes couldn't vote. Otherwise you're just signing up for those who choose to work to get exploited by the leisurely.

How much is "none"? Exactly $0.00? Can someone who donates $0.01 to the government every year vote?

“I need the world to comfort my fears”

You’re correct. A society filled with people with this view can’t work

Are there historical examples of this ever happening in any significant numbers? This idea that people en masse just won't work and live off of the state where opportunities for work are reasonably available seems more like a boogeyman than a real thing. (obviously, if work is not really available, I can see this happening, but I wouldn't describe the people unable to find work as "leisurely" in that case)

You’re making a point about loafers but non-wage earners are always going to outnumber wage earners, and able bodied loafers are a minute fraction of who we must provide for (the young, the elderly, students, the disabled, etc)

>It looks like a healthy extended family where resources are shared towards a common goal of health and liberty.

In the Europe, like several rich western countries, we mostly replaced the extended family with the government welfare state, for better but mostly for worse.

So current young workers are contributing to a failing state ponzi pension system that will leave them in poverty by the time they retire in several decades, and they will also lack the care of the extended family unit that was the norm decades ago thanks to collapsed birth rates. Double whammy.

Doesn’t sound very much like a healthy family to me

WDYM?

Unfortunately this does not work at nation scale. We are not insects. Tribes fail at levels over a few hundred and that scale only works because of blood ties. Communism has failed to produce good outcomes every time it's been tried. Even coops aren't competitive with traditional corporations.

Agreed, the human biological system likely needs radical augmentation in order to actually realize such a system

The median cortical volume fails beyond dunbars number, so some kind of compensation is needed

I’m not even sure that’s a useful question. It almost points at “what’s the other end of the continuum so we can discuss points on the axis”, which _is_ useful, but I’m not even convinced that “merely” treating those without income as deserving pain is at an end of a continuum itself. It’s a point upon it; things could be worse yet.

Instead let’s break away from opposites and into pieces. What would be _different_ in a society that doesn’t judge harshly the less fortunate?

I’d suggest that would include ensuring that nobody starves or sleeps on the street for want of work.

Richard Rorty describes liberalism as the idea that cruelty is the worst thing that exists. Cruelty, of course, has just as many forms as suffering.

Universal income protects only basic needs and it does so in part. Even if you have income, you need to have housing, clean water, food that isn't poisened and some form of healthy environment to live a good life: income doesn't guarantee it.

On the other end of the income spectrum is the unlimited amassing of wealth. After some point, wealth turns into power. For example, Musk is able to buy twitter influencing public opinion, and Starlink can make or break the battlefield.

If we are talking only about income, I think we would need both a minimum (universal) income and a maximum (a cap on wealth). If we do not, then we will eventually lose democracy.

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