Basic income: the world's simplest plan to end poverty, explained

[Xarog]

If no-one has a right to property then no-one has a right to own any food, clothing, shelter etc. Or maybe you mean communal ownership of everything... that worked out great in the Soviet Union.

No, I mean that the concept of a right as a claim against another human being is a thing we hold to be true because we all want it to be true. It is true only insofar we all hold it to be true. Therefore it gains a force of religion but there is absolutely nothing inherent to humanity or logic about the idea of property.

There is ample evidence to suggest that many hunter gatherer societies managed to function as extended family units without the concept of "property" ever being something they gave voice to. It was only when wanderers started to settle that the concept of property started being something people became anxious about.

But it is no different in form to any random religious statement. Those who believe in the fiction feel robbed when the fiction tells them that they have suffered. But the actual suffering is purely subjective. Of course when your ultimate goal is to end human suffering, obviously you need to pay attention to suffering - but forcing people to behave a certain way because it resolves a particular problem doesn't mean that this particular solution has to be part of every other solution we subsequently try.

And it is entirely possible to create a society where the concept of property has no meaning but everyone is still able to maintain a sense of personal security and wellbeing. It's just very hard to imagine what it might look like from where we stand.

 

[Space_Chief]

Here is one
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/694518-Could-a-robot-do-your-job-Short-answer-yes


Not much of an argument you got there chief. Insisting that it is so does not make it so. Nor did I "merely assert" it...I provided capitalistically sound reasoning right after...you even quoted it.

You did no such thing. You just quoted a silly fluff article piece. What trends do you speak of? Show me the hard facts or GTFO with your assertions and wishful thinking.

 

[Space_Chief]

No, I mean that the concept of a right as a claim against another human being is a thing we hold to be true because we all want it to be true. It is true only insofar we all hold it to be true. Therefore it gains a force of religion but there is absolutely nothing inherent to humanity or logic about the idea of property.

Oh you mean like the food I want to fill my hungry stomach... I can't do it because a stronger dude will say - hand it over. Cool.

There is ample evidence to suggest that many hunter gatherer societies managed to function as extended family units without the concept of "property" ever being something they gave voice to. It was only when wanderers started to settle that the concept of property started being something people became anxious about.

You mean they shared wives, treated their children the same as other children, shared clothes, shared their last bit of water, shared hunting grounds and resources with everyone... really? Even animals don't share mates and scarce resources = prey/water/grazing/nesting sites/etc.

But it is no different in form to any random religious statement. Those who believe in the fiction feel robbed when the fiction tells them that they have suffered. But the actual suffering is purely subjective. Of course when your ultimate goal is to end human suffering, obviously you need to pay attention to suffering - but forcing people to behave a certain way because it resolves a particular problem doesn't mean that this particular solution has to be part of every other solution we subsequently try.

Dude, everything can be said to be subjective.

And it is entirely possible to create a society where the concept of property has no meaning but everyone is still able to maintain a sense of personal security and wellbeing. It's just very hard to imagine what it might look like from where we stand.

If it is possible, please show in history where such occurred on an extended and sustainable basis.

 

[Arthur]

Xarog:

I'm sorry I offended you.

My thanks are not sarcastic, though they have a tinge of irony. I am grateful you immediately and upfront clarified your basic stance on property. For me, this eliminates much needless typing on a phone since I grasp your view and its anthropological implications.

I'll ignore your gratuitous psychologising. If you understand better than I will every realise, then what more is there to say - you clearly have a superior intellect. Thanks for letting us know.

Please explain to this inferior why you think a defence of the right to private property assumes a vacuum of infinite space and time. I've never before encountered that assertion. Rather, quite the opposite: finite resources in this space and this time in this real world.

Once you've done that, please then add the missing terms in your syllogism. I just don't have the insight to see how you get from that assertion to your conclusion. There are several missing steps.

 

[Space_Chief]

Collectivism.

Kolkhozes for everyone. Not for me, thanks.

 

[Xarog]

Xarog:

I'm sorry I offended you.

I'm not in the least offended.

My thanks are not sarcastic, though they have a tinge of irony. I am grateful you immediately and upfront clarified your basic stance on property. For me, this eliminates much needless typing on a phone since I grasp your view and its anthropological implications.

Good.

I'll ignore your gratuitous psychologising. If you understand better than I will every realise, then what more is there to say - you clearly have a superior intellect. Thanks for letting us know.

Arguably the right response if you don't like arrogance but in this case it's a bad idea. Human behaviour must by neccessity deal with psychology. If I cannot enunciate psychological concepts that you will not ignore, then there is simply zero opportunity to explain anything.

Please explain to this inferior why you think a defence of the right to private property assumes a vacuum of infinite space and time. I've never before encountered that assertion. Rather, quite the opposite: finite resources in this space and this time in this real world.

Humans are not individuals alone. They are social animals too. Intellectually forcing yourself to address them only as individuals by neccessary implication makes you see half the picture. You cannot give a person a manual for moral behaviour that refuses to even acknowledge the inherent social desires which compels humans in all sorts of ways that people rarely have any conscious awareness of.

Once you've done that, please then add the missing terms in your syllogism. I just don't have the insight to see how you get from that assertion to your conclusion. There are several missing steps.

Yes, there are several missing steps. In all honesty I think it will take a book -more than one book- to really explain it all. But if you are willing to be patient, then yes, I believe I will be writing many things on this and other related subjects and I would love to be able to show them to you.

 

[Xarog]

Oh you mean like the food I want to fill my hungry stomach... I can't do it because a stronger dude will say - hand it over. Cool.

No, you are afraid you might not be able to do it because a stronger dude could come along and tell you to hand it over so you seek to convince everyone around you that this is bad and hope like hell that if someone comes to take your food that everyone else nearby will jump to your rescue.

Yeah, I think that about sums up every moral statement human beings have ever made.

You mean they shared wives, treated their children the same as other children, shared clothes, shared their last bit of water, shared hunting grounds and resources with everyone... really? Even animals don't share mates and scarce resources = prey/water/grazing/nesting sites/etc.

No. I just mean they settled their conflicts without ever stopping to think if something like land could be owned by someone.

Dude, everything can be said to be subjective.

And your point is? Meaning is the product of human thought.

If it is possible, please show in history where such occurred on an extended and sustainable basis.

Your request is unreasonable. It implies that in order for something to be possible it must have happened before, but history is full of examples where something occurred for the first time and soon afterwards novel consequences arose from the discovery. Radio waves are an excellent example of this. To a lesser degree this is also true of the semiconductor.

 

[Wimbo]

Good grief! Posting at 04:43 "AM", as the heading helpfully tells us. Why aren't you people sleeping?

Why aren't I?

 

[Hectic]

Yearly World wide strikes, because we demand moar.

Just love it!

 

[dunkyd]

Did anyone mention sterilization in all this crap ?

 

[Space_Chief]

No, you are afraid you might not be able to do it because a stronger dude could come along and tell you to hand it over so you seek to convince everyone around you that this is bad and hope like hell that if someone comes to take your food that everyone else nearby will jump to your rescue.

No. I was just saying that's private property, at the very least. That's my stuff.

No. I just mean they settled their conflicts without ever stopping to think if something like land could be owned by someone.

Not until they found something unique on it. Or until some of them contributed more to its maintenance then others but some wanted to freeload off it while others worked their butts off. Even native Americans did not share their own "beds". And it's not as if wars among the native Americans over turf did not occur.

And your point is? Meaning is the product of human thought.

Meaning to discount something by saying it's subjective is no criticism at all. I can just say, "your criticism of private property as being subjective is subjective itself", take that.

Your request is unreasonable. It implies that in order for something to be possible it must have happened before, but history is full of examples where something occurred for the first time and soon afterwards novel consequences arose from the discovery. Radio waves are an excellent example of this. To a lesser degree this is also true of the semiconductor.

It offers actual empirical proof. You don't need novel discoveries to show where such sustainability existed. Semiconductors are tech developments which require some level of advancement. This requires the same basic human conditioning. And you said that people were more communal before ... so it would be easier to find such earlier on.

 

[Space_Chief]

Did anyone mention sterilization in all this crap ?

Eugenics from the late 19th and early 20th c from USA?

 

[Mila]

I do not understand how it will not devalue currency.

 

[The_Assimilator]

More productive, I feel, would be to focus on advancing humanity into a post-scarcity economy.

 

[Xarog]

No. I was just saying that's private property, at the very least. That's my stuff.

And I should agree with you... why?

(Note : This is a hypothetical question. I have no actual desire to cause anyone emotional distress by depriving them of something they feel they have a right to, even if the right itself is a creation of human thought.)

Not until they found something unique on it. Or until some of them contributed more to its maintenance then others but some wanted to freeload off it while others worked their butts off. Even native Americans did not share their own "beds". And it's not as if wars among the native Americans over turf did not occur.

I see. How many other hunter gatherer societies have you studied? When the Native Americans declared war, what did they say their reasons were, even though we can clearly see that it was simply fighting for territory/survival. Do you actually know the specifics or are you simply hoping that this will make my argument go away?

Meaning to discount something by saying it's subjective is no criticism at all. I can just say, "your criticism of private property as being subjective is subjective itself", take that.

That's cool. I have no problem with my personal opinion only having the force of an opinion. In fact all truths are merely relative shades of opinion stated with relative degrees of confidence based upon the subjective assessment of the opinion's accuracy.

It's everyone else who thinks they can magically transform these opinions into something they aren't via mass delusion.

It offers actual empirical proof. You don't need novel discoveries to show where such sustainability existed.

But someone still had to discover the significance of it. Until that moment of discovery, radio waves were totally hidden from human view. Before the discovery humanity was ignorant of it. The existence of something does not neccessitate the immediate discovery of the same thing; your standards are still unreasonable.

Semiconductors are tech developments which require some level of advancement. This requires the same basic human conditioning. And you said that people were more communal before ... so it would be easier to find such earlier on.

Realising that self-discovery is a journey does not mean you have arrived at your destination.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

View attachment 212358
I do not understand how it will not devalue currency.

That pic is something of a strawman fallacy and is disproved by many real world examples.

Anyway, the Bolsa Familia in Brazil is the biggest such system in the world and it makes up 2.5% of total government expenditure.

Why do you think it'll devalue the currency? The money just moves hands, it's not an increase in the supply...

 

[Space_Chief]

That pic is something of a strawman fallacy and is disproved by many real world examples.

Anyway, the Bolsa Familia in Brazil is the biggest such system in the world and it makes up 2.5% of total government expenditure.

Why do you think it'll devalue the currency? The money just moves hands, it's not an increase in the supply...

When poverty is eliminated in Brazil and Brazil continues to remain competitive with the rest of the world we'll talk.

 

[Space_Chief]

And I should agree with you... why?

(Note : This is a hypothetical question. I have no actual desire to cause anyone emotional distress by depriving them of something they feel they have a right to, even if the right itself is a creation of human thought.)

You're not causing any emotional distress. I'm just disproving your assertion that private property does not exist, nor the right to it.

I see. How many other hunter gatherer societies have you studied? When the Native Americans declared war, what did they say their reasons were, even though we can clearly see that it was simply fighting for territory/survival. Do you actually know the specifics or are you simply hoping that this will make my argument go away?

Did they give their food, hunting grounds, resources, clothes and equipment away just like that? Nope. Sorry, private property existed even there. As said, even animals do it. The natural state is private property ownership.

That's cool. I have no problem with my personal opinion only having the force of an opinion. In fact all truths are merely relative shades of opinion stated with relative degrees of confidence based upon the subjective assessment of the opinion's accuracy.

Nope I just said don't call some things subjective as some sort of rebuttal.

It's everyone else who thinks they can magically transform these opinions into something they aren't via mass delusion.

Then shut up with your personal opinons. I exaggerate for effect.

But someone still had to discover the significance of it. Until that moment of discovery, radio waves were totally hidden from human view. Before the discovery humanity was ignorant of it. The existence of something does not neccessitate the immediate discovery of the same thing; your standards are still unreasonable.

Sure but that required advanced tech and knowledge. You speak of this as some sort of innate or ancient wisdom mankind forgot about. So where did this work out....?

 

[Space_Chief]

And I should agree with you... why?

(Note : This is a hypothetical question. I have no actual desire to cause anyone emotional distress by depriving them of something they feel they have a right to, even if the right itself is a creation of human thought.)


I see. How many other hunter gatherer societies have you studied? When the Native Americans declared war, what did they say their reasons were, even though we can clearly see that it was simply fighting for territory/survival. Do you actually know the specifics or are you simply hoping that this will make my argument go away?

I know human nature. Native Americans are basically East Asians. Here is an example of one of their own speaking out recently:

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120305114328AAJkiGC

There are over 500 distinct tribes in the US. Add to that the amount in Canada and Mexico, and it proves that there were never any large wars of conquest. We simply weren't interested in taking over another tribe's territory, or converting them to our beliefs. There were skirmishes. Raids. When a tribes would encroach on the land of another, fights would ensue.

So land = property or at least something one would control exclusively.

And archaeology shows there was plenty of warfare in pre-Colombian North America:

http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/Books/bid1872.htm

Never mind tribes such as Aztecs in Mexico and south, which subjugated others and forced tribute deliveries on them.

 

[Xarog]

You're not causing any emotional distress. I'm just disproving your assertion that private property does not exist, nor the right to it.

You're not getting it.

Consider this hypothetical :
You say private property exists. I say private property does not exist. You say that anyone who says private property does not exist is a threat to your existence and should be treated as such. I say that anyone who says private property exists is a threat to my existence. Everyone on the planet is convinced by one of us that we're speaking the truth. The two factions now proceed to kill each other because each faction is the moral anathema of the other anathema. All the people who believed property exist die and the war is won by the non-property group.

Does the right to property still exist, or has it been destroyed? If everyone agrees that property does not exist, but their general interaction is such that everyone is happy and part of a single community, is their system moral or not? Can a system without the concept of property be moral if the concept or proprety is supposed to be moral?

At the end of the day, the concept of property is an attempt to solve potentially violent conflicts between people in a non-violent manner. But there's a million and one ways of going about trying to do that. Concepts such as property and indeed all moral concepts are simply abstractions that have zero inherent meaning. We create them in an attempt to communicate with one another and create harmony, but each abstraction is only as good as its description, and only as strong as its ability to resonate with human emotions; and I've got to be honest, in my opinion the concept of "property" is a ****ing ****ty idea as it currently stands.

Did they give their food, hunting grounds, resources, clothes and equipment away just like that? Nope. Sorry, private property existed even there. As said, even animals do it. The natural state is private property ownership.

Wrong. You see it there because you want to see it there because you believe that is the justification by which you can discover righteous behaviour. It does not actually exist.

Nope I just said don't call some things subjective as some sort of rebuttal.

It is indeed a rebuttal. You are arguing that the concept of property fits in with natural law. The counter-argument to natural law has been the positivist law system and their founding principle in contradiction to the natural law system is indeed that every moral claim is arbitrary. I am entirely qualified to bring up the subjectivity argument because indeed it has always been the strongest logical counter-argument to the natural law system. Indeed, that's precisely why the posivitist system was embraced by those who rebelled against religion and religious legal interpretation.

Then shut up with your personal opinons. I exaggerate for effect.

My personal opinions are justified with a keen intuition for logical correctness. I would appreciate it if you'd take them seriously enough that I feel my time in trying to explain something to you is not actually being wasted. I don't neccessarily expect you to agree with me, I am merely enthusiastic about the opportunity to potentially change your mind.

Sure but that required advanced tech and knowledge. You speak of this as some sort of innate or ancient wisdom mankind forgot about. So where did this work out....?

I suppose it would be stating the total obvious if I said everyone was born with a yearning for inner joy?