UBI, the plan way out of govt debt

[AlbertaFarmer5]

No society on earth has progressed by having non productive citizens, in fact those societies and countries fail ....
get productive people to work , don’t pay them to be non productive.
We are heading down a self destructive path with UBI .

But what if society and technology has progressed to the point where all of our needs and wants can be met when only a small fraction of people are working, thanks to abundant energy, automation, efficiency, productivity etc. Right now we have people working for the sake of working, driving down our productivity, and dragging down our standard of living, while inflating the cost of everything we do.

The catch is how do you motivate those few whose skills are needed, and keep the rest occupied enough to find meaning in their lives.

[jazz]

No society on earth has progressed by having non productive citizens, in fact those societies and countries fail ....
get productive people to work , don’t pay them to be non productive.
We are heading down a self destructive path with UBI .

I dont think thats totally correct. Many kingdoms and monarchies had very few productive people in the lower tiers. They were called serfs for a reason. They had an army, owned all the land and had a fortified castle and a compliant population and they lasted a long time.

Capitalism is actually a fairly new construct. I dont think Rome was a capitalist society at all. It was expansionist empire with totalitarian rule.

[bucket]

I dont think thats totally correct. Many kingdoms and monarchies had very few productive people in the lower tiers. They were called serfs for a reason. They had an army, owned all the land and had a fortified castle and a compliant population and they lasted a long time.

Capitalism is actually a fairly new construct. I dont think Rome was a capitalist society at all. It was expansionist empire with totalitarian rule.

Capitalism is socialism. There are few capitalists that don't get funding from government..

Nothing proceeds here without a government cheque and the companies that may come here are waiting for a government issued cheque/ grant..

Otherwise we would have many more things here.

Why did the plant protein plants go to Manitoba. 100 million for Merit came from government.

Why did the final stage of the West side Irrigation Project not get completed in the last 40 years? Waiting for government because the capitalist aka socialist farmers wouldn't spend their own money..

[AlbertaFarmer5]

But what if society and technology has progressed to the point where all of our needs and wants can be met when only a small fraction of people are working, thanks to abundant energy, automation, efficiency, productivity etc. Right now we have people working for the sake of working, driving down our productivity, and dragging down our standard of living, while inflating the cost of everything we do.

The catch is how do you motivate those few whose skills are needed, and keep the rest occupied enough to find meaning in their lives.

The problem with my statement above is that present day governments are doing everything they can to create the opposite scenario, while simultaneously pushing for UBI.

Destroying the cheap abundant energy that would be required as a cornerstone.

Replacing said energy with costly, unreliable, labour and energy intensive sources, requiring ever more labour just to break even.

Eroding productivity and efficiency with regulations, environmental, safety, labour, etc.

Make work projects, such as green energy, and bureaucracy in general growing faster than the real economy. Including the labour to enforce and comply with the layers and layers of bureaucracy and regulations.

Legalizing or allowing the very substances that are ruining the lives of people with no purpose in life to start with.

[jazz]

Why did the plant protein plants go to Manitoba. 100 million for Merit came from government.

At the end of the day, at least something got built out of it and a product made and some people employed in it.

Thats more than I can say for the untold billions we flush down a black hole everyday in this country.

I have to give it to the chinese. The may be communist but everyone is productive and at least gives something back to society. They never stop building. Here, we never build anything.

[burnt]

Capitalism is socialism. There are few capitalists that don't get funding from government..

Nothing proceeds here without a government cheque and the companies that may come here are waiting for a government issued cheque/ grant..

Otherwise we would have many more things here.

Why did the plant protein plants go to Manitoba. 100 million for Merit came from government.

Why did the final stage of the West side Irrigation Project not get completed in the last 40 years? Waiting for government because the capitalist aka socialist farmers wouldn't spend their own money..

I may be alone on this, but I find this post to be fraught with inconsistencies and, beginning with the opening claim, very unsupportable.

To change the definition of capitalism, or attempt to define it by equating it to disruptive modern practices is not a good premise from which to support your argument.

What you describe appears to be more closely related to hegemony, or even fascism, than capitalism and especially stands in sharp contrast to free enterprise.

What we see prevailing in much of the West today is closer to kleptocracy than it s to capitalism. And it is inevitable that when this overtakes an economic system, it will result in the destruction of entrepreneurial opportunity.

Evidence of kleptocray - look at the corrupt SNC fiasco.

[Austrian Economics]

But what if society and technology has progressed to the point where all of our needs and wants can be met when only a small fraction of people are working, thanks to abundant energy, automation, efficiency, productivity etc. Right now we have people working for the sake of working, driving down our productivity, and dragging down our standard of living, while inflating the cost of everything we do.

The catch is how do you motivate those few whose skills are needed, and keep the rest occupied enough to find meaning in their lives.

What you are stating here is kind of a flipside version of the Luddite argument that technological advancement destroys jobs and creates unemployment. I really don't think we face a problem here with too many people working; quite the opposite.

As technology advances, work gets easier and people are able to afford more leisure time and a comfortable retirement. But you still need to work. Fewer people working coupled with zero percent interest rates are going to bring leisure time and retirement to an end if we are not careful.

[burnt]

Paychecks, CERB, business welfare - Trudeau's boys say it's all the same -

[AlbertaFarmer5]

What you are stating here is kind of a flipside version of the Luddite argument that technological advancement destroys jobs and creates unemployment. I really don't think we face a problem here with too many people working; quite the opposite.

As technology advances, work gets easier and people are able to afford more leisure time and a comfortable retirement. But you still need to work. Fewer people working coupled with zero percent interest rates are going to bring leisure time and retirement to an end if we are not careful.

No, I'm saying that if we actually embraced technology and took full advantage of the energy sources available, we wouldn't all have to be working, at least not in the capacity we are today.

We need to get away from measuring economic success by employment, and move on to measuring it by productivity. Half the country could be breaking windows, while the other half replaces them, we would have full employment, and high GDP, and absolutely no productive economy.