You're also pushing a ridiculous false dichotomy in presenting "the free market" as natural and "the state" as unnatural.
Not at all. I don't believe anything is strictly unnatural. Anything that can be described or results from consequences of our existence must surely be natural. It really gets me an a rant when talking to people about so called "organic" foods. :P
I'm simply saying that the mechanisms of selection exist whether a state acknowledges them or not. The state, in fact, is subject to those same mechanisms. When a state falls, it is because it was not fit to survive in the environment any longer. I advocate free markets as a way of making government malleable enough to remake itself before inevitable collapses.
I'm all for the minimum wage increase, BUT I feel as a direct result; prices of everything will go up.. changing pretty much nothing besides hurting those with regular stable income
Not really a concern unless you propose increasing the minimum wage by a huge amount (think setting it to $100/hr rather than the $7.25 it is currently in the U.S.).
It certainly is a concern, no matter how little the increase. See this video:
Minimum wage forces business to pass any cost over the actual market cost of the labor to the consumer. That directly increases the cost of the good or service you are buying.
In the US, we live in a market with a labor surplus.
What is to stop employers from collaborating, and cut the wages across the board so they can get a greater profit?
Business people aren't dumb, if they can get more money through cutting costs, they do.
my name is Michael and I was browsing around, mainly to find out whether there is any way to play "Natural Selection 2" offline at all.
I was pretty surprised to find the topic "basic income" here, as I am an active suporter of this idea in the country I live in.
So I just registered to leave this comment.
There're an intense discussions about this subject in Germany going for approx. 4 years now.
There's a huge amount of information as well as videos, unfortunately in german language only.
In Switzerland, for example, a people initiative. It has started on April, 11th 2012 and still goes until October, 11th 2013. The required 100.000 signatures have already been surpassed by 20.000. There is a valid chance that Swizerland might introduce the "basic income" within the next 2.5 years, if everything goes according to plan.
I have put together a few video clips in english language, just in case you're interested:
I hope you don't mind me listing those video clips. This is not spam by all means.
It's a pleasure to see people discussing about "updating" our ancient social system.
@ CCTEE
Yeah, unfortunately.
I have come across two other nice games recently, that were online games only. I'm surprised about this.
@ That's right, the little podcast "a town without poverty" (second from top) is about this project.
Basic income will become a more serious option in the near future, as automation will continue to decrease workplaces.
Here is an interesting little blog entry, about someone who notices how the job market is changing rapidly: Does work really work?
In order to see why we cannot continue with the "current system" anymore, please take note of this pie chart.
It shows the actual division of wealth in the country I live in, you can be sure it's very similar in your country too ...
50% of all people own only 1.4% while the top 10% own 66.6% and the top 1% own 35% of the nation's wealth.
One thing is for sure, as this trend is going to get worse year by year, societies will collapse at one point.
The keyword here is "compound interest", which means: a lot of money multiplies by itself, without any backup in value whatsoever.
This "exponential growth" is the core reason for the poor to exist (and stay poor) in the first place and for people are increasinlgy being requested to work more in order to pay back interest for credits that the governments (all over the world) are taking to support mainly the wealthy.
It takes a while to understand how this twisted world works.
But it's clear that all these are small scale, in small towns or villages. I've been thinking that the effect in big cities would be different - there's an excess of soul-destroying jobs, like telemarketing, which people would drop in a heartbeat for the basic income.
Even if they're only taking a sabbatical from working for a year or three, the companies would collapse like card houses overnight, causing untold economic turmoil. So, it seems necessary to introduce this region by region, over a number of years...
In the US, we live in a market with a labor surplus.
What is to stop employers from collaborating, and cut the wages across the board so they can get a greater profit?
Business people aren't dumb, if they can get more money through cutting costs, they do.
The labor surplus is due in part to the fact that the price of labor has been mandated in the first place. Labor is like any other good: supply and demand will meet at a market dictated price if left alone. But that's not the whole story, either.
There is a huge amount of regulation and law that stands in the way of creating a business in the first place. In fact, one could argue that we're suffering from a basic misunderstanding of what jobs and employers are. A job is nothing more than some type and amount of human labor one person is willing to pay another person for. It has nothing to do with hourly rates or benefits or the standard of human living.
You may have an employer who buys a long string of jobs from you at a standard rate or set of rates. (General contracting companies are often obligated to charge different rates per type of job by unions, law or just their own policies... meaning one day you might make $18/hr hanging siding and the next $36/hr wiring a house)
The point is that at the basic level this is all we are talking about. I, as a free person, should be able to offer a job (some unit of labor) to anyone I want for whatever price I want or am willing to pay. As long as that job isn't directly harming someone else (like, I'm offering you the job of shooting up a crowded mall) it should be as simple as that. Instead, what we have in the US is some kind of mix where you have to register your business; you have to pay taxes on that business; you have to get the right warrants and permits; on and on and on.
In the confusion, we forget that the point in the first place is to transform raw goods into refined goods. We don't want people just wasting resources in the name of having a job. Like the proverbial "pay them to dig a hole, then pay them to fill it." That's not an argument of corporate power versus government power, but rather an argument against both. Any concentration of power in a monolithic entity will lead to waste and the withering of society, like an animal trying to survive by eating itself.
To bring it back to the original question, considering the background above: What is to stop employers from collaborating, and cut the wages across the board so they can get a greater profit?
Nothing, and nothing ever will. What gives a government the capacity to transcend simple human nature that a corporation can never have? Profits are not only money; profits are expensive government cars and benders in Las Vegas. You can't stop people from hurting people.
What will balance the equation is the empowerment of all the players. Cartels are inherently unstable because each member stands to gain more by double crossing the others. If five major fast food places cooperate to keep wages low, they will find that empowered employees will find new sources of revenue, and the quality of their food and service will decrease, meaning less sales from empowered customers. At some point, a member of this cartel will increase wages to bring in better workers and produce a better product.
The other thing is that the cartel grows more unstable or becomes outright impossible as the number of members increases. A group of 500-1000 fast food places would not be able to cooperate at that level.
Prisons LOVE to man telephone support hotlines with super cheap slave labour.
These prisons are being run as private businesses for maximum profit that receive heavy subsidies by the state to lower the costs of forced "employment" of inmates even further.
Of course the prison-industrial complex has a huge interest in growing its unfree workforce by manipulating laws so that the slightest wrongdoing warrants jail time.
North America is going full circle: From the abolishment of slavery in 1865 to 2.5 million prisoners (that's almost 1% of the population locked away in cells and work camps) in just 150 years. Land of the Free, indeed. With liberty imprisonment and justice for all.
Big companies LOVE to man their telephone support hotlines with super cheap slave prison labour.
Prisons are a private businesses that receive heavy subsidies by the state to lower the costs of employment of inmates even further.
Of course the prison-industrial complex has a huge interest in growing its unfree workforce by manipulating laws so that the slightest wrongdoing warrants jail time.
North America is going full circle: From the abolishment of slavery in 1865 to 2.5 million prisoners (that's almost 1% of the population imprisoned) in just 150 years.
Well done! Land of the Free, indeed. With liberty imprisonment and justice for all.
Thanks for necroing this thread and racism against Americans.
#sarcasm
Comments
I believe that the primary driver was a belief in freedom; whatever successes occurred were in spite of bad policies.
Not at all. I don't believe anything is strictly unnatural. Anything that can be described or results from consequences of our existence must surely be natural. It really gets me an a rant when talking to people about so called "organic" foods. :P
I'm simply saying that the mechanisms of selection exist whether a state acknowledges them or not. The state, in fact, is subject to those same mechanisms. When a state falls, it is because it was not fit to survive in the environment any longer. I advocate free markets as a way of making government malleable enough to remake itself before inevitable collapses.
In the US, we live in a market with a labor surplus.
What is to stop employers from collaborating, and cut the wages across the board so they can get a greater profit?
Business people aren't dumb, if they can get more money through cutting costs, they do.
my name is Michael and I was browsing around, mainly to find out whether there is any way to play "Natural Selection 2" offline at all.
I was pretty surprised to find the topic "basic income" here, as I am an active suporter of this idea in the country I live in.
So I just registered to leave this comment.
There're an intense discussions about this subject in Germany going for approx. 4 years now.
There's a huge amount of information as well as videos, unfortunately in german language only.
In Switzerland, for example, a people initiative. It has started on April, 11th 2012 and still goes until October, 11th 2013. The required 100.000 signatures have already been surpassed by 20.000. There is a valid chance that Swizerland might introduce the "basic income" within the next 2.5 years, if everything goes according to plan.
I have put together a few video clips in english language, just in case you're interested:
1 - Why does everyone have to work?
2 - a town without poverty (basic income has been tested in a little town in Canada during the 70s)
3 - It's time for a more radical solution, a minimum income (Thom Hartmann interviews Guy Standing, abstract from April, 2nd 2013)
4 - basic income - the petition (There is currently a european petition for the basic income, collecting 1 Mio signatures until January, 14th 2014)
5 - basic income, a new human right (Introduction of the petition)
6 - Let's make everything free (This is not directly related to "basic income", but still interesting)
I hope you don't mind me listing those video clips. This is not spam by all means.
It's a pleasure to see people discussing about "updating" our ancient social system.
Not in any good way, anyway. I think there's bots but thats not the point of this game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome
Less encouragingly, Iran apparently did all this (I think. It's a little hard to read) two years ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_targeted_subsidy_plan
...and is now having trouble with it:
http://binews.org/2012/01/iran-basic-income-might-become-means-tested/
Yeah, unfortunately.
I have come across two other nice games recently, that were online games only. I'm surprised about this.
@ That's right, the little podcast "a town without poverty" (second from top) is about this project.
Basic income will become a more serious option in the near future, as automation will continue to decrease workplaces.
Here is an interesting little blog entry, about someone who notices how the job market is changing rapidly: Does work really work?
It shows the actual division of wealth in the country I live in, you can be sure it's very similar in your country too ...
50% of all people own only 1.4% while the top 10% own 66.6% and the top 1% own 35% of the nation's wealth.
One thing is for sure, as this trend is going to get worse year by year, societies will collapse at one point.
The keyword here is "compound interest", which means: a lot of money multiplies by itself, without any backup in value whatsoever.
This "exponential growth" is the core reason for the poor to exist (and stay poor) in the first place and for people are increasinlgy being requested to work more in order to pay back interest for credits that the governments (all over the world) are taking to support mainly the wealthy.
It takes a while to understand how this twisted world works.
http://mondediplo.com/2013/05/04income
But it's clear that all these are small scale, in small towns or villages. I've been thinking that the effect in big cities would be different - there's an excess of soul-destroying jobs, like telemarketing, which people would drop in a heartbeat for the basic income.
Even if they're only taking a sabbatical from working for a year or three, the companies would collapse like card houses overnight, causing untold economic turmoil. So, it seems necessary to introduce this region by region, over a number of years...
The labor surplus is due in part to the fact that the price of labor has been mandated in the first place. Labor is like any other good: supply and demand will meet at a market dictated price if left alone. But that's not the whole story, either.
There is a huge amount of regulation and law that stands in the way of creating a business in the first place. In fact, one could argue that we're suffering from a basic misunderstanding of what jobs and employers are. A job is nothing more than some type and amount of human labor one person is willing to pay another person for. It has nothing to do with hourly rates or benefits or the standard of human living.
You may have an employer who buys a long string of jobs from you at a standard rate or set of rates. (General contracting companies are often obligated to charge different rates per type of job by unions, law or just their own policies... meaning one day you might make $18/hr hanging siding and the next $36/hr wiring a house)
The point is that at the basic level this is all we are talking about. I, as a free person, should be able to offer a job (some unit of labor) to anyone I want for whatever price I want or am willing to pay. As long as that job isn't directly harming someone else (like, I'm offering you the job of shooting up a crowded mall) it should be as simple as that. Instead, what we have in the US is some kind of mix where you have to register your business; you have to pay taxes on that business; you have to get the right warrants and permits; on and on and on.
In the confusion, we forget that the point in the first place is to transform raw goods into refined goods. We don't want people just wasting resources in the name of having a job. Like the proverbial "pay them to dig a hole, then pay them to fill it." That's not an argument of corporate power versus government power, but rather an argument against both. Any concentration of power in a monolithic entity will lead to waste and the withering of society, like an animal trying to survive by eating itself.
To bring it back to the original question, considering the background above: What is to stop employers from collaborating, and cut the wages across the board so they can get a greater profit?
Nothing, and nothing ever will. What gives a government the capacity to transcend simple human nature that a corporation can never have? Profits are not only money; profits are expensive government cars and benders in Las Vegas. You can't stop people from hurting people.
What will balance the equation is the empowerment of all the players. Cartels are inherently unstable because each member stands to gain more by double crossing the others. If five major fast food places cooperate to keep wages low, they will find that empowered employees will find new sources of revenue, and the quality of their food and service will decrease, meaning less sales from empowered customers. At some point, a member of this cartel will increase wages to bring in better workers and produce a better product.
The other thing is that the cartel grows more unstable or becomes outright impossible as the number of members increases. A group of 500-1000 fast food places would not be able to cooperate at that level.
USA is #1
...in prison population per capita.
Prisons LOVE to man telephone support hotlines with super cheap slave labour.
These prisons are being run as private businesses for maximum profit that receive heavy subsidies by the state to lower the costs of forced "employment" of inmates even further.
Of course the prison-industrial complex has a huge interest in growing its unfree workforce by manipulating laws so that the slightest wrongdoing warrants jail time.
North America is going full circle: From the abolishment of slavery in 1865 to 2.5 million prisoners (that's almost 1% of the population locked away in cells and work camps) in just 150 years. Land of the Free, indeed. With liberty imprisonment and justice for all.
Thanks for necroing this thread and racism against Americans.
#sarcasm
I have noticed that this thread has been resurrected, so let's update this topic.
There's a lot of media attention about basic income:
NBC - Money for being a US citizen
NBC News - Basic Income
Minute Video - Basic Income
Barbara Jacobson - Basic Income
Basic Income is not a crazy idea
Kaiser Report about Basic Income
Basic Income for being alive
Basic Income in Switzerland
BBC World - Basic Income
Basic Income on Fox Business
US Basic Income guarantee
Al Jazeera - Basic Income
"young weezy baby" - Lil Wayne, 1990s-present
Current and continuing Millionaire citizen of the United States