coastalorca11 said:The concept of creating a more socially equitable society has popped up countless times throughout history—communism, socialism, the "third way"... Nowadays, the closest we've seen to that ideal are the Nordic countries.
So, what actually happens when the government tries to fix the distribution of income and wealth?
"freeing up minimal goods" — The issue here is that there is no such thing as a free lunch; everything you give to one person, you've essentially taken from someone else. How do you achieve true fairness if, say, an individual built their own wealth from scratch? Unfortunately, the reality is that people tend to work harder when there's a direct incentive to earn more. If you remove that, you'll almost certainly see a decline in economic activity, which can end up hurting society as a whole.
Then you run into the moral hazard problem. There will always be people looking to game the system to avoid working entirely, content to live off whatever crumbs they're handed. If those crumbs get bigger, you'll just end up with a larger number of people doing exactly that. Once again, you're left with a dead weight on the shoulders of those actually producing value, and the collective output of society ends up shrinking...
Look, just being honest here—and I don't mean this to be rude—but I think that perspective is a little narrow-minded.
We can see for ourselves that fewer and fewer people are working in manufacturing, and agricultural employment has dropped to such tiny levels it's almost unbelievable. I work in IT, so I’m pretty well-acquainted with how automation works. We're getting closer and closer to being able to automate these processes entirely—humanity has been trying to reduce manual labor since the beginning of time, and we're nearly at the point where we can eliminate it altogether. It's just a matter of time...
And once that happens, the "free lunch" dilemma becomes much clearer from a moral standpoint: why would anyone bother working for food when nobody *has* to work to produce it? Our current system is stretched so thin, and it creates these artificial jobs—I've seen plenty of examples during short stints at various companies (especially within big government agencies or their spin-offs)—just to keep people employed. Eventually, that bubble is going to burst...
coastalorca11 said:The concept of creating a more socially equitable society has popped up countless times throughout history—communism, socialism, the "third way"... Nowadays, the closest we've seen to that ideal are the Nordic countries.
So, what actually happens when the government tries to fix the distribution of income and wealth?
"freeing up minimal goods" — The issue here is that there is no such thing as a free lunch; everything you give to one person, you've essentially taken from someone else. How do you achieve true fairness if, say, an individual built their own wealth from scratch? Unfortunately, the reality is that people tend to work harder when there's a direct incentive to earn more. If you remove that, you'll almost certainly see a decline in economic activity, which can end up hurting society as a whole.
Then you run into the moral hazard problem. There will always be people looking to game the system to avoid working entirely, content to live off whatever crumbs they're handed. If those crumbs get bigger, you'll just end up with a larger number of people doing exactly that. Once again, you're left with a dead weight on the shoulders of those actually producing value, and the collective output of society ends up shrinking...
Sorry, but... if you take a look at today's "free" market, it’s anything but free.
- With the massive influence of giant corporations, it’s nearly impossible to launch a serious startup (especially in tech), because as soon as you hit a milestone, a mega-corp just buys you out and that's that. If your innovation doesn't fit neatly into their corporate mold, you can bet it won't last long.
- The way marketing manipulates consumers in this "free market" is so blatant you can't just ignore it. Basically, whoever has the better ad campaign wins, which leads to the absurdity of people judging quality based on commercials rather than actual substance—which is exactly what the "ideal" free market is supposed to prevent. And don't even get me started on how they brainwash kids with those same ads; there’s absolutely no protection for them.
- ... There's more to it, but I think my point is clear. 🙂
Ideally—in the kind of system I’d love to see—since automation will eventually take over most standard jobs, nobody should realistically *have* to work, at least not just to secure a basic standard of living. You'd have a social floor, and then people could just spend their days doing whatever they feel like.
Look, people who actually want to work would be genuinely motivated by this—personally, if I didn't have a way to build things and stay creative, I’d honestly lose my mind, regardless of how much money was in the bank. But for this to work, we’d need a massive shift in our core values, which would probably end up driving crime rates even lower anyway. Plus, a new value system should encourage people to take on those less "glamorous" jobs. It’s pretty simple: once you realize you’re living off society and are an integral part of the community, it shouldn't feel illogical to give something back through hard work...
The issue with past attempts at these kinds of systems, in my opinion, is that they tried to force a new set of values onto a very specific, limited group of people. The main goal was usually just to elevate certain individuals—creating a cult of personality 😁—and they tried to push the whole "social safety net" political agenda way too early. Back then, the working class was still the dominant force in the country, so there was a clear demand for it, unlike the constant decline we see today. Even now, a system like this wouldn't fly immediately, but maybe in 20 years? If we don't kill each other over energy prices first, we might eventually move toward that Nordic model... Whatever happens, most people definitely wouldn't swallow this system right away, but given enough time... :?
By the way, we have incredibly sophisticated ways of predicting market needs today—the kind of stuff big Wall Street investors use—which could easily be leveraged to let the "invisible hand" of the government redistribute resources effectively.
@Brandon Moore20 Regarding the point about lacking rehabilitation and reintegration—well, tell me, what's even the point of prison then? If a predator walks out of jail exactly the same way they walked in, why bother locking them up at all? At that point, you might as well just line them up against a wall and pull the trigger (maybe even send the families a bill for the ammo 🙂)?
Reintegration absolutely needs to happen within the prison system (so feel free to keep being terrified of that idea), but there shouldn't be a fixed sentence for release. Instead, we should have experts determining whether someone is actually fit to rejoin society, along with specialists working directly with inmates on their reentry process. I know a few people who’ve been behind bars (for drug issues, coincidentally 🙂), and they aren't bad people at heart; it's just that their value system and worldview are clearly different from the rest of us. I really don't think re-education is an impossible task
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One thing I still don't get is—would we actually go out and kill each other if nobody was standing over us telling us not to? If the answer is yes, then we haven't actually come that far yet...