Practicality

Prior to reading that analogy I just could not wrap my head around the "something they don't want to do but not actually involuntary."

The desire to scratch an itch explains it perfectly.

Seriously. People that did those jobs HATED their jobs. Now a group of people have a job again that they hate. Surely we can find something that fulfills their desire to be helpful without a completely unnecessary and unfulfilling job.

That's the idea. Let's for the moment, just assume that AI and robots and some other technologies are ridiculously productive sometime in the future and we solve all sorts of problems and have the resources to provide everyone with everything they want.

At that point it's not a question of giving everyone jobs it's a question of whether or not we decide to distribute our plentiful resources (and a question of, should we?).

Of course, I don't think the time has arrived yet for all this to happen. But as mentioned earlier, I do think it is going to happen (if we don't have some horrible nuclear war or some other megadisaster that kills everyone first)

The big question is will the majority be able to maintain enough power to obtain income for those who aren't working, or will we see some kind of serious class warfare/starving populations?

This is a huge question in human history and it remains to be seen how we as a species are going to answer it.

[My hope regarding the labor is that it meaningless work can be replaced with research and development]

It's probably just because the locals don't want to be seen as "rednecks" for shopping at Walmart. (Of course there are plenty who don't mind, and I guess, better deal for them)

It should be seen as a given that there is significant Russian propaganda working all the time on every issue they care about. Of course they would be trying to influence the American election.

This fits "Anything that good hackers would find interesting." "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

Major world events are pretty much always on topic. We just don't need minor regular news events here.

Kind of makes me think that the market is selecting people who have someone else supporting them so they can do all this interview research. Seems backward in my opinion.

I keep hearing "interviewing is a skill too." Sure it is, but should it be? I mean, why are hiring managers looking for people who are good at pretending to know things rather than people who demonstrate real aptitude through getting things done?

I mean, that spot in your neighbors yard that looks freshly dug would probably be a good place to look. (They were occupying the whole country)

Unless there is some kind of quantum computer algorithm that fits this problem well.

Because people are paying for it, we are getting much higher quality than we would if it was completely government funded. Also, it's still being paid by people who want it rather than it just being a tax.

Because it's expected a lot of people are getting an education that wouldn't be educated otherwise. This is improving our overall productivity.

The rising cost of an education right now is an issue, and we can do a combination of letting it self-correct (many businesses and students are realizing they really don't need a BS to do a good job) as well as adding public schools so more people can get the AS to get a good education.

I don't see any reason to expect that this solution is less optimal than any of the other ones you have mentioned, and it seems much cheaper than revamping the entire system.

To me the root cause of rising health insurance costs is the rising cost of all the lawsuits that doctors and hospitals deal with. When we were just paying for the doctor's education it was a little expensive, but nothing like what we are paying now. You're really just padding the budget to deal with legal fees. A more moderate court system (that awards smaller payouts) would knock this out easily.

I am not familiar with the housing issue, I would have to learn more about it to make a comment.

But I really do think the issues you bring up are best solved with a moderate solution.

I would think their strengths for better economic policies, better military policies, better domestic policies and on and on would outweigh the black-and-white single issues but I am afraid you might be right.

People would rather have simple dogma on single issues. It's just easier to understand a single point of view on a binary issue.

Personally, on a related tangent: I find that the weakest part of most discussions is the tendency to try to make every discussion into 2 opposing viewpoints, rather than seeing the billions of permutations possible on nearly any issue. But it happens all the time.

It's so common that I believe it must be something somewhat hardwired into the way our brains work.

But the middle ground often is the best solution in politics (not necessarily exactly in the middle, but definitely not on the extremes).

Some examples: The best government is between Authoritarianism and Anarchy, rather than one or the other.

Likewise the best government has an economy that is somewhere between completely free-market and absolutely government controlled and regulated. Both extremes have issues.

The best legal government is somewhere between ultra-capitalist and ultra-communist: We don't want only two classes, super-rich and super-poor, but we don't need to make everyone exactly the same either.

Likewise, private investment is definitely a good thing, and we want incentives, but we also don't want CEOs or boards being completely blameless when things go wrong, and we want good pay and good rights for the employees. Most people are ok with CEOs getting paid more that most employees, but most would prefer they not be paid anywhere near as much as they are.

On and on it goes. Generally, the best position is a moderate one. The extremes are where the failure comes from. (There are always exceptions, so that is why I say generally).

Most likely treatment would be some sort of specialized therapy where your DNA is painstakingly copied (with some process that is somehow better than the biological one) and then all the cells in your body are periodically repaired.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_damage_theory_of_aging

Hence, the 1,000 years of debt.

A lot of people will take the deal anyway.

Your comment seems to have an off by one error. What is the other option?

This difference can be very confusing in a lot of circumstances though. I wonder if perhaps a new word is needed.

Of course, my theory is that personality tests just tell you what you think of yourself, and I change my opinion about that often.