Paleo And Politics page 11

[Cryptocode]

Guaranteed income has a surprising history. Martin Luther King, John Kenneth Galbraith, Milton Friedman and Friedrick von Hayek have all advocated it.

NO they have not all advocated it. Please stop make falsely claimed attributes.

[valmason01]

You probably will but you made my day

Most interesting Comments, but no one has responded to my question "What would your perfect ideal America look like and how would it function?"

For those of profound humorlessness or lack of imagination I offer this:

The Americans With No Abilities Act*

*President Barack Obama and the Democratic Senate are considering sweeping legislation that will provide new benefits for many Americans. The Americans With No Abilities Act is being hailed as a major legislative goal by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition.*

*"Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society," said
California Sen. Barbara Boxer. "We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability (POI) to be ridiculed and passed over. * *With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers simply because they have some idea of what they are doing."*

*In a Capitol Hill press conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pointed to the success of the U.S. Postal Service, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. *

*At the state government level, the Department of Motor Vehicles also has an excellent record of hiring Persons with No Ability (63 percent).*

*Under the Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million mid-level positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.*
*Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given to
guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees. *

*The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations that
promote a significant number of Persons of Inability (POI) into
middle-management positions, and give a tax credit to small and
medium-sized businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every
two talented hires.*

*Finally, the Americans With No Abilities Act contains tough new measures
to make it more difficult to discriminate against the non-abled; for
example, banning discriminatory interview questions such as, "Do you have
any skills or experience that relate to this job?"*

*"As a non-abled person, I can't be expected to keep up with people who
have something going for them," said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position
as a lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint, Mich., due to her inability
to remember righty tighty, lefty loosey. "This new law should be real good
for people like me. I'll finally have job security." *

*With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented
citizens will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.*

*Said Senator Dick Durbin: "As a senator with no abilities, I believe the
same privileges that elected officials enjoy ought to be extended to every
American with no abilities. It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and
every American citizen, regardless of his or her inadequacy, with some sort
of space to take up in this great nation and a good salary for doing so."*

- - - - - - - - - -

Sorry, I just couldn't help myself. I know I'm going to really regret this!

[Rojo]

NO they have not all advocated it. Please stop make falsely claimed attributes.

In his 1994 "autobiographical dialog" Friedrich Hayek stated "I have always said that I am in favor of a minimum income for every person in the country."

MLK: I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.
—from the chapter titled "Where We Are Going"

Friedman proposed the Negative Income Tax:

In economics, a negative income tax (abbreviated NIT) is a progressive income tax system where people earning below a certain amount receive supplemental pay from the government instead of paying taxes to the government. Such a system has been discussed by economists but never fully implemented. It was developed by British politician Juliet Rhys-Williams in the 1940s[1] and later when United States economist Milton Friedman combined NIT with his flat tax proposals.[2]

[Cryptocode]

Rojo heres Mises on upstream. It's a class for HS live and may be a good review.
Mises.tv on USTREAM: Live lectures and seminars presented by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the world center of the Austrian School of economics and liber...

Please review The Possibility of Private Law - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Daily and http://archive.mises.org/18395/can-t...ce-and-courts/
Which presents a view of the private security, law, and court system.

Overall I think you'all are greatly diminishing the value of real money. If you have not read "The Ethics of Money Production" please do. It will break your heart.

I have been trying to remember the name of a famous man in the late 18th or early 19th century who made a very good living by working 1 day a week - if he did in fact need more money. He supported a wife and 5 children in come class (for the time).

Before I retired I was sad about my future, I wanted to continue working. After 2 years of retirement I was angry that everyone couldn't retire by 50 or earlier. And if we had real money we certainly could.

Now to recent comments on numbers of people (available and needed) and classes of income in the future. Today we have way to many people for our territoral land to support. We cannot sustainably continue with this many people. (Remember my years of civic duty in environmental planning.) Our Gov'ts continually want more people because our Federal Reserve continually pumps money into the economy. When they pump more than the real GDP growth, the money is devalued, but it also stimulates politicians to believe more workers are needed to push up the GDP growth. It's madness.

There is no need for any GDP growth. With real money and no taxes people who worked, for themselves or others, would grow richer, and simultaneously the value of that money would increase.

To change the subject slightly, please all consider adding our culture and society into the business and lifestyle discussions. In HIM's proposal they are missing, they were in mine also. Neither of us went that deeply. But HIM seems to want more personal mobility.

I distinguish between the words culture and society, yet i'm not sure exactly what definitions I'm using. I'd say that America has a culture of Family and Community; Mexico has a culture of Family and Extended Family; Iran has a tribal culture; Scotland had a clan and tribe culture. That the culture is the basic factor promoting and supporting life. Whereas Society or the social system includes work habits, lifestyle (outside the family maybe), leisure activities, etc. Class by income may then be a social factor or a choice between higher income or higher savings.

I agree that our means of wealth production are changing greatly and will continue on that path. And I can easily imagine small towns, surrounded by family farms, with local merchants and a few industrial businesses in each. Herein the town people might work not more than 1/2 day, or less, in any occupation. Huge cities, like huge corporations, would be gone. That is far to great a drain on surrounding environmental resources.

Many more people could be artisans, they don't all have to be stars or in entertainment. I'd much rather have a hand-made shoe which I would be able to afford,and used to bea ble to afford, but can't today; than to have a mass-production shoe. This is already happening. The stupidly high cost of Universities is resulting in more students switching to what used to be called trade schools, and in earlier centuries, apprentice-ships. These resulted in classes of tradesmen such as Master Butcher (Germany) and Master Baker (France) and wouldn't I love to have them in my town. The mass production and mass consumption businesses would slowly loose customers and as these customers became more selective and as the human population growth rate slowed or reversed. I see this trend as very similar to that of switching from feed-lot beef to GF beef.

Back to HIM's proposal. On considering your geographic state replacements, I don't see any significant difference between them and my private companies. The one difference is that those state (businesses) would have a board of governors elected by the customers of that business. Otherwise, both are simply offering one or more services.

I guess my biggest concern is that I don't think a society and culture can be sustained with out personal (face to face) contact as the basis.

[Cryptocode]

Thank you Rojo, perhaps I was wrong.
But can you give me a link to the Hayek quote?

[Him]

But HIM seems to want more personal mobility.

I think mobility is very important to a healthy society. I also think that society changes and the system needs to be able to bend with those changes without causing things to get worse. One of the big problems with the USA today is that as society changes, every new group sees government as a way to leverage everyone else to accomplish their own goals. "Diffuse harm vs. concentrated benefit" always comes into play, with every group realizing that if they can get just a nickle from every resident of the USA they'll be able to accomplish their pet project.... which is a problem but tolerable when the pet project is relatively non-controversial (e.g. sending a man to the moon), but can attack the core of society when the pet project is controversial (e.g. funding abortions). There needs to be a way to curtail that, and the voluntary government association idea seems to do the job. It's needed because there will be mobility whether you want it or not.

Back to HIM's proposal. On considering your geographic state replacements, I don't see any significant difference between them and my private companies. The one difference is that those state (businesses) would have a board of governors elected by the customers of that business. Otherwise, both are simply offering one or more services.

I see it two ways:

First, what works as a "business" changes drastically if associations are voluntary.

I can't think of any pure examples of a pure voluntary association "business" but there was something close from the 1990s through early 2000s in the combination of the European dole system (along with college students, enthusiasts working on their own time, and others) and the Open Source Software development model. The dole allowed some people to survive without working, and OSS model allowed some of those people to cooperatively assist in the development of a "product" in a sense that was analogous to the products of commercial enterprise, in a voluntary association way, where they would otherwise have been forced to concentrate on survival. Once it was apparent that the "product" had monetary value to the rest of the world, the dole participant's contribution as a percentage of the whole diminished (though their absolute contribution has likely continued to grow) but for a brief period they defined the model.

What is interesting about that situation is that, in order to hold their purely voluntary (and not face to face) organizations together, they wound up following the same paths we see in representative and democratic government. Voting, dialectic, parties, schisms, et cetera. To me that indicates that something like a government model (vs. the for-pay business model where you follow the money) is more appropriate in a post-automation scenario. The motivators that drive today's businesses aren't as strong in the post-automation scenario, so the current model of what a "business" is doesn't seem likely to survive.

Which gets us to the second point: I see it as a transitional path. Rather than ripping up these systems with all their history, systems that many people honestly love, it makes sense to allow them to adapt to the new realities they face.

[Cryptocode]

I'm not objecting at all to mobility, I've certainly engaged considerably in it. Owning multiple houses is a great convenience. But would there be a 'base' community, or more that one? I still think a better way to curtail "Diffuse harm vs. concentrated benefit" is to have no Gov't, when each person can make his/her own choice. Or if a group of people want a specific choice and do make that choice, what benefit do they gain by being a member of a Gov't group. (Perhaps it's the name - Gov't)

I'm not familiar with the European dole system. Is it simply that everyone contributed and some benefited. IF so, that is the same as our 19th century charity organizations but without forcing requirements. Some of those organizations still exist. I did participate in the OSS project at one time There was no renumeration, was I a dole participant?

Yes, much can be done through technology and not face-to-face. But do you really believe life can be sustained that way?

You're reminding me of the mechanics of the Swiss Confederacy, which is very effective. Town meetings are held often, weekly if there is anything to discuss. In person now, but wouldn't have to be. The topics, however, are usually local and geographically confined.

Perhaps what you want is distinguish between the current standard business model and that of a community volunteer group, community being widely understood. Community volunteer groups did occasionally become profit-making, and subsequently became more formally organized. This has happened several times in my community. But these would not be called Gov'ts.

[Cryptocode]

Friedman proposed the Negative Income Tax:

In economics, a negative income tax (abbreviated NIT) is a progressive income tax system where people earning below a certain amount receive supplemental pay from the government instead of paying taxes to the government. Such a system has been discussed by economists but never fully implemented. It was developed by British politician Juliet Rhys-Williams in the 1940s[1] and later when United States economist Milton Friedman combined NIT with his flat tax proposals.[2]

Yes, but a NIT is not based on labor, although it is based on income. It is more of a forced charitable contribution.

[Scott F]

On e onomics, have Any of you ever watch the Crash Course?
The Crash Course | Peak Prosperity

And Mary Logan's Whither Complexity?
Dr. Mary Logan - Whither Complexity?

[Him]

I'm not objecting at all to mobility, I've certainly engaged considerably in it. Owning multiple houses is a great convenience. But would there be a 'base' community, or more that one?

Or none. It should be up to the individual and all should be viable legal choices.

I still think a better way to curtail "Diffuse harm vs. concentrated benefit" is to have no Gov't, when each person can make his/her own choice. Or if a group of people want a specific choice and do make that choice, what benefit do they gain by being a member of a Gov't group. (Perhaps it's the name - Gov't)

Power abhors a vacuum. I don't think you can have "nothing" because the first time there's an incident people will use it as a pretext to change the system to give themselves some of the unused power. Instead you need to shunt the power in safe directions...into work that everyone agrees needs doing, but that bolsters individual freedom. Then you can have your services (call them what you will) to do the everyday work.

I'm not familiar with the European dole system. Is it simply that everyone contributed and some benefited. IF so, that is the same as our 19th century charity organizations but without forcing requirements. Some of those organizations still exist. I did participate in the OSS project at one time There was no renumeration, was I a dole participant?

It's just a welfare system, but much "stronger" than the US form. I have a friend in Germany, healthy male of about my age, who has lived his entire life with an apartment and a little bit of spending money, without ever having a job. He is free to spend his entire day playing on the internet, which means that if the mood struck him he could afford to put in 8+ hours a day on an OSS project without interfering with his personal security or comfort. You, on the other hand, probably had to have a day job to support yourself. That's the difference that allowed some of those guys to put in significant efforts for basically zero monetary gain and bootstrap those technologies to the point where commercial enterprises started seeing value.

Yes, much can be done through technology and not face-to-face. But do you really believe life can be sustained that way?

Automated insemination? No, that's probably not what you meant.

I think people should have both, but they should be able to choose one or the other if that's what they like.

...The topics, however, are usually local and geographically confined.

The topics are based on the interests of the people meeting. Most people have an interest in local and geographically confined because that's where they are. They also have an interest in things they care about (civil rights groups, religions, hobby groups, whatever) and those are usually not geographically limited or local. I don't see any reason to treat those differently.

Perhaps what you want is distinguish between the current standard business model and that of a community volunteer group, community being widely understood. Community volunteer groups did occasionally become profit-making, and subsequently became more formally organized. This has happened several times in my community. But these would not be called Gov'ts.

In a post-automation (or perhaps post-scarcity) world, the motive force behind transitioning to profit-making is greatly diminished. If you don't need to work, are you going to go to work for a company that pays you but doesn't fulfill you? Already, with the resources consumers have in the USA, businesses are finding it necessary to do more than offer a good product for a fair price...they must have an aspirational or ideological tie to the consumer. Hence the eco-business, cause-businesses, lifestyle businesses, et cetera. Businesses do that stuff because consumers respond to it...and it's only going to get more important. There will come a time when consumers won't buy from a car manufacturer unless that manufacturer is aligned with their social views.