Re: Would you work if you didn’t have to?

Lodewijk andré de la porte l at odewijk.nl
Mon Sep 21 04:55:19 PDT 2015


I think I can rephrase to clarify.

2015-09-21 1:04 GMT+02:00 Lodewijk andré de la porte <l at odewijk.nl>:

> We may move from 99% to 99.9% puppets. It's just a way to generalize the
> population, to silence the masses, to present happiness and freedom to be
> guaranteed for all. Without alarm the watchers will turn to sleep, and
> under that dark moon the world will change.
>

I meant this would practically guarantee everyone the funds to be healthy,
choose one's daily activity freely, and for lack of want be happy.

That guarantee seems so sufficient that it's as if there will be no more
injustice due to power imbalance. As if the injustice done by the wealthy
is only because of the existence of the "too poor". I think it will lead to
a greater divergence in wealth. I'm not actually sure if that will be a
problem, but if wealth remains so direct a means for power, well, it very
well could be a problem. (note: democracy is more sensitive to
wealth==power due to the effectiveness of funding popular opinion
campaigns, advertising, new magazines, popular culture inserts, etc)


> I think the immediate gain of guaranteed personal freedoms; freedom from
> labor, freedom to self-improve, freedom to perform altruism, freedom to
> perform art, and yes, even freedom to party, are worth a great deal. Yet,
> it will create a future where nobody is willing to revolt, and the state is
> in even further reaching control.
>

The peace of mind for being guaranteed a minimum of wealth, and the ability
to do what you believe is right. Dwarf Fortress is a unique game started by
someone support by his brother, and it became the inspiration of Minecraft,
which became quite a valuable company. Without years and years of seemingly
unprofitable development, that could not have happened, as Dwarf Fortress
seems to far out to invest in.

I can't even phantom how much better Open Source software would become =)

"Don't bite the hand that feeds" will become very applicable to government.
I think that's a risk. Sometimes the hand of government needs a bite, just
to keep it from fondling too much. I suppose I'm worried popular perception
will move in favor of deep government involvement, also as part of improved
democratic participation and controls, with aspects of economy and personal
life. (ex: why should you own property? If the state owns it and rents it
to people, it's much more manageable! We can make sure all buildings are in
good order, politely force people to move for new construction, ensure
regionally consistent housing, etc)


We'll see. I like BI as a generalized welfare program, the culture will be
whatever the culture develops into. It could be Star Trek
<http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/18/star_trek_economy_federation_is_only_mostly_post_scarcity.html>
level *amazing*, or it could be Idiocracy
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/> level *disappointing*. Hell, it
could be both at the same time!
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