What Would Constitute a "Meager Lifestyle"?

[Martin Hash]

I think the problem is you are being a little too literal Speaker.

There are tons of cheap housing options that I would find totally acceptable. I don't exactly like being crammed into a huge building full of people in a metropolis, but that is because crowds irritate me, and it isn't required here, where we have loads of space.

And the make work, as I understand it, could be much more edifying than aimless manual labor.

ditto

[Speaker to Animals]

People are not meant to live in little cube boxes, digging and filling holes for no reason other than to humiliate themselves for being poor.

For a moment, imagine we live in a world where there exist only enough jobs for some fraction of society, and the rest are forced onto this welfare system you propose. They must live in little boxes like animals. In order to receive the privilege of feeding themselves and living in their boxes, they must go out each workday to dig a hole so the guy who lives in the box next to them can fill the hole the following day.

How long do you think that lasts before the people living in boxes burn the entire thing to the ground (literally)?

You live off the State & have the audacity to tell others what you want so that they are essentially working for you?! Fuck you.

A society is nothing more than people agreeing not to kill one another, and to band together to fight off the tribe across the hill when they inevitably come to take your stuff. Lots of folks who are seeking control for themselves try to tie mysticism & subjective values to the deal ex post, but The Law doesn't allow parole evidence when adjudicating contracts.

No one is beholden to you. (You don't understand liberty, do you?)

Where did I say you are beholden to me? That's just silly.

You stated that society is nothing more than people agreeing not to kill one another. Let's start with that premise.

If society is nothing more than people agreeing not to kill one another, and if a huge percentage of society is reduced to a meaningless existence of living in boxes like kennel dogs and digging holes for no reason other than to humiliate them for not having access to those jobs, then how exactly has society convinced them not to start killing the people who reduced them to that state?

I argue they would be better off with less civilization in that case. They would be better off without all the laws and economic control of a highly sophisticated, urbanized civilization, and instead living in small communities they formed upon the detritus of the civilization that obviously failed.

If people are living like dogs in human kennels and digging/filling holes for no reason whatsoever, then society failed. Period. You have to address that fact.

[Martin Hash]

(Haven't other posters been complaining to you about strawmanning?)

I did see a proposed solution amongst the strawmen, stick to arguing for that. In fact, I'll address your proposed solution: good idea. As long as people make their own choice to go live in your pseudo-Amish community, great, and the doper/surfers can sleep in their vans or cubicles, whichever they like best & can afford.

[Speaker to Animals]

(Haven't other posters been complaining to you about strawmanning?)

I did see a proposed solution amongst the strawmen, stick to arguing for that. In fact, I'll address your proposed solution: good idea. As long as people make their own choice to go live in your pseudo-Amish environment, great, and the doper/surfers can sleep in their vans or cubicles, whichever they like best & can afford.

Where did I straw man you??

You seem to argue that the ideal solution to the growing joblessness in America is to force people into human kennels. In another thread you said that, in order for people to get welfare, they should just dig and fill random holes.

I am telling you flat out that this kind of solution, when the numbers of those people reach some critical mass (and they eventually will given the rate of technological progress), will result in collapse as the kennel people burn your houses to the ground and try to kill for you reducing them to that dehumanized state.

If civilization results in this future, then civilization is not worthwhile for the majority of people. When this happens, civilization will begin to disintegrate rapidly unless the state becomes even more authoritarian. You could potentially see the West turned into a giant North Korea too. There's that possibility. But you are not going to have "liberty nation" where half the population is forced to live like animals in human kennels and dig holes in the desert in order to feed themselves.

[Speaker to Animals]

Now.. as far as those cube boxes as a matter of choice for young people who just want to save money for a while.. that's not such a bad thing. But if the economy has reached the point where they must live like that out of necessity, then Houston we have a problem.

[Martin Hash]

Now.. as far as those cube boxes as a matter of choice for young people who just want to save money for a while.. that's not such a bad thing. But if the economy has reached the point where they must live like that out of necessity, then Houston we have a problem.

Dude, that's how you have a rational debate, right there.

p.s. I agree.
p.p.s. "Dig holes & fill them in again" is a famous Keynesian quote used emblematically. I use it for effect but, in fact, it's wrong because it isn't productive in any fashion except to instill work ethic, & while I think work ethic is tremendously important, there are lots better ways to implement.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

With the technology we have currently, the system Hash suggests (not that I really have to speak for him on his own damn forum) could easily be used to decentralize away from the metropolis.

And shit, even though the whole post-hole digging, refilling concept is a straw man, even if I was doing that for two days a week, and could survive on the stipend from that work, having all that extra time to jerk off and get high is WAY more 'humanizing' then spending all my time worried about being able to make rent if I get downsized, or financially wiped out from illness or accident.

Christ, ditch digging is good exercise if done properly, so that frees up more time since I wouldn't have to set aside special time to keep my Adonis-like figure.

[Speaker to Animals]

Western civilization, as we know it today, was built by our ancestors because they found meaning in their lives. We are a culture of independent people. Welfare destroys that in so many ways. I do not believe our culture can actually accommodate the state of affairs where up to half of the population is forced by economic necessity to live in purposefully degraded conditions without hope, and forced to do meaningless labor to make those feel satisfied, who were fortunate enough to qualify for the remaining job, to pay taxes to support this system.

A better welfare system is like an economic hospital. It's purpose should be to identify what went wrong, fix the underlying causes, and get people back to self-sufficiency.

If there do not exist enough jobs right now, then one solution would be to establish homestead communities and get a lot of these people into those areas where their labor actually goes towards sustaining them.

But, honestly, economically, we have to change the system. The idea that the people who have the capital to control the capital goods should get the lion's share of the surplus is not going to work when there does not exist enough jobs for a substantial percentage of the population. Obviously various forms of marxism and socialism do not work. We need something else.

[Martin Hash]

How many times do I have to say this?

PROGRESSIVE TAXATION & CONFISCATORY INHERITANCE TAXES

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Speaker, there is a lot to unpack in that post, but to bullet point it:

1. Western Civilization exists as we know it today for a LOT of reasons, some good, some bad, most basically neutral.

2. How is being forced to do meaningless work in exchange for welfare better or worse than being forced to do meaningless work in exchange for a paycheck that doesn't cover your expenses?

3. "Establishing" rural communities for honest, hardy, but largely unnecessary work-off-the-land labor sounds a lot like some of the Communist and Fascist plans that were a total cluster-fuck. Don't fall into the trap of romanticising primitive living, and then trying to force it on people for some imagined moral benefit like self-sufficiency.

which comes to,

4. Self-sufficiency is an illusion. Collaboration, reciprocity, et cetera, are the rule because humans aren't really fucking good at anything. We don't have the fur, claws, teeth, vision, sense of smell, or strength to live like big cats or bears. Humans are not self-sufficient.