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[Days like these...]

A gorillas thoughts: "Fuck, is that a lion in the bushes?....no, just an antelope." "Fuck, is THAT a lion in the bushes....no, just a buffalo." "FUCK, is that a tiger in the bush?"

Aren't gorillas vegetarian? Have you EVER met a vegetarian that wasn't the most low energy tired motherfucker ever? No wonder they sit around all day.

I'm not vegetarian I just don't really want to work. Lol but starvation is not an option so... Good on people who want to do shit that's not me though.

 

[Trogdor1123]

I'm not vegetarian I just don't really want to work. Lol but starvation is not an option so... Good on people who want to do shit that's not me though.

This is one of the most saddest/depressing things I've ever read.

At least you aren't a vegetarian…

 

[jason10mm]

I'm not vegetarian I just don't really want to work. Lol but starvation is not an option so... Good on people who want to do shit that's not me though.

So this brings us around to the existential question....should lazy mofos be paid just "to exist" of the sweat of my labors?

Until AI robot productivity has been elevated so far out of the control of humans that is literally a garden of eden with food raining from the sky that is for some reason devoted to a "look at my goldfish aquarium" level of human sustainment, things like UBI will always be a wealth transfer mechanism. Without any labor return for it it's essentially a reverse slavery concept (i.e. "you work so I can be paid for nothing").

 

[YCoCg]

When AI takes over the majority of jobs then poor people and the working class can just die, there, over population solved.

 

[Wildebeest]

But it can't do any of that. You become powerless because you can't even earn your own livelihood, like an animal in a cage waiting for food and completely powerless to feed yourself.

The current system is failing for a good reason, we use fake money. It's trash fiat currency with no intrinsic value of its own. The true value for a $100 bill is 9 cents because that's what it costs the Federal Reserve to print them.

Well okay, this is arguing that deflation with mass employment with no government support is morally better than inflation with employment and government support. I've heard of this before but is usually just from people heavily invested in gold mines.

 

[falconhoof]

Having to do something, anything is what separates us from animals

"A zoologist who observed gorillas in their native habitat was amazed by the uniformity of their life and their vast idleness. Hours and hours without doing anything. Was boredom unknown to them? This is indeed a question raised by a human, a busy ape. Far from fleeing monotony, animals crave it, and what they most dread is to see it end. For it ends, only to be replaced by fear, the cause of all activity. Inaction is divine; yet it is against inaction that man has rebelled. Man alone, in nature, is incapable of enduring monotony, man alone wants something to happen at all costs — something, anything.... Thereby he shows himself unworthy of his ancestor: the need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla."
Cioran

I'd rather be a gorilla give me ubi so I can just sit with my thoughts

Also nature

The Gombe Chimpanzee War, also known as the Four-Year War. was a violent conflict between two communities of chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in the Kigoma region of Tanzania between 1974 and 1978.

The two groups were once unified in the Kasakela community. By 1974, researcher Jane Goodall noticed the community splintering. Over a span of eight months, a large party of chimpanzees separated themselves into the southern area of Kasakela and were renamed the Kahama community. The separatists consisted of six adult males, three adult females and their young. The Kasakela was left with eight adult males, twelve adult females and their young.

During the four-year conflict, all males of the Kahama community were killed, effectively disbanding the community. The victorious Kasakela then expanded into further territory but were later repelled by two other communities of chimpanzees.

First blood was drawn by the Kasakela community on January 7, 1974, when a party of six adult Kasakela males consisting of Humphrey, Figan, Jomeo, Sherry, Evered, and Rodolf ambushed the isolated Kahama male Godi while he was feeding on a tree. The Kasakela males were accompanied by one female, Gigi, who "charged back and forth around the melee". Despite Godi's attempt to flee, the attackers seized him, threw him on the ground and beat him until he stopped moving. Afterwards, the victorious chimpanzees celebrated boisterously, throwing and dragging branches with hoots and screams, and retreated. Once the Kasakela group had left, Godi stood up again, but probably died of his injuries soon after.

Gombe Chimpanzee War - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Dice]

Injecting money into a situation where most jobs are dogshit nightmare jobs designed around exploiting people because they have no choice is not really a great experiment. UBI creating optionality to bring power of negotiation to working conditions is part of the whole thing. If the employer side decides to offer no negotiation because they have someone with no choice on offer so they can just let the UBI person be unemployed until the experiment is over, that isn't the reality of the situation that would take place with national UBI.

During COVID, I was brought in to assess the ground level situations in some warehouse environments. I was friends with the head of 8 states in the organization and he was complaining how they can't find new hires because they can get better pay elsewhere. They went through 200 temps in one year. They were hiring at $12.50/hr for horrible conditions while burger joints had bumped up to $18. I talked to a worker who said his girlfriend wiped down classrooms in the AC for $16/hr while he was doing heavy labor in 100 degrees and dust for $14. That boss couldn't even get his own son to work there. His lament was the corporate leaning on exploitation as a right. They will always do that, just like workers will be inclined to lean on UBI if the conditions outside of it suck ass. However UBI, if implemented for everyone, theoretically balances things to where both sides have to find the arrangements agreeable to both to make something happen. If they don't, it is a failure of the business to make a proposition that works for their employees as much as their customers.

 

[Days like these...]

This is one of the most saddest/depressing things I've ever read.

At least you aren't a vegetarian…

Why? I don't tie my self worth to being productive or doing things. That's not who I am.

 

[Days like these...]

So this brings us around to the existential question....should lazy mofos be paid just "to exist" of the sweat of my labors?

Until AI robot productivity has been elevated so far out of the control of humans that is literally a garden of eden with food raining from the sky that is for some reason devoted to a "look at my goldfish aquarium" level of human sustainment, things like UBI will always be a wealth transfer mechanism. Without any labor return for it it's essentially a reverse slavery concept (i.e. "you work so I can be paid for nothing").

I work, like real work and hard because I don't want to starve or live under a bridge but given the option I wouldnt.

 

[Rentahamster]

This is a positive outcome. When a monetary safety net alleviates some of the worst forms of psychological despair caused by poverty, people will probably be less likely to resort to harmful chemical means. The opioid problem society faces is troubling, and the more tools we have to deal with it, the better.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Why? I don't tie my self worth to being productive or doing things. That's not who I am.

I work, like real work and hard because I don't want to starve or live under a bridge but given the option I wouldnt.

Given these two responses I think I misunderstood you. I thought you essentially were saying you were just some kind of lazy person That just didn't want to work at and didn't work and was just a scab on society (I don't mean to sound harsh, it was my incorrect assumption and I'm trying to illustrate my point).

To me, it sounds more like you just haven't found work you love, more than not wanting to work. That's a big difference

 

[falconhoof]

Injecting money into a situation where most jobs are dogshit nightmare jobs designed around exploiting people because they have no choice is not really a great experiment. UBI creating optionality to bring power of negotiation to working conditions is part of the whole thing. If the employer side decides to offer no negotiation because they have someone with no choice on offer so they can just let the UBI person be unemployed until the experiment is over, that isn't the reality of the situation that would take place with national UBI.

During COVID, I was brought in to assess the ground level situations in some warehouse environments. I was friends with the head of 8 states in the organization and he was complaining how they can't find new hires because they can get better pay elsewhere. They went through 200 temps in one year. They were hiring at $12.50/hr for horrible conditions while burger joints had bumped up to $18. I talked to a worker who said his girlfriend wiped down classrooms in the AC for $16/hr while he was doing heavy labor in 100 degrees and dust for $14. That boss couldn't even get his own son to work there. His lament was the corporate leaning on exploitation as a right. They will always do that, just like workers will be inclined to lean on UBI if the conditions outside of it suck ass. However UBI, if implemented for everyone, theoretically balances things to where both sides have to find the arrangements agreeable to both to make something happen. If they don't, it is a failure of the business to make a proposition that works for their employees as much as their customers.

Any system for improving the status of things has to be tied in with an extremely robust border and migration control. Too often do we see these balances screwed by loopholes and illegal employment that is used to undercut these systems.

 

[Brakum]

I kinda felt like Covid time was a faux UBI experiment.

Give people money and tell them they have all the free time they'd like at home.

Result: Spike in drug use, homelessness, domestic violence, and sourdough bread.

Covid was literally the best time of my life

 

[jason10mm]

I work, like real work and hard because I don't want to starve or live under a bridge but given the option I wouldnt.

Thank you for making my point.

Some folks can self start and self-motivate. Others need a shrill woman to do it. Then others need to face starvation and death before they earn their keep.

The goal should be "there is ALWAYS a job for everyone to be able to work", not "let's institutionalize the lazy to NEVER need to work".

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

I can't imagine how UBI could work in a society where entertainment and distractions are such a huge business, and what most people want to spend their money on.
UBI is never going to be enough for 5 subscription services, 2 new video games a month, dinners out, cinema, gas, plane tickets, vacations, Disneyland, sports, drugs, and hookers. People on UBI would soon realize they have to make choices, and then they'll want to work a little to make more money and afford more entertainment. But then there won't be any jobs available for 80+% of people. And people won't be happy.

Also, the human mind is a problem-solving machine. Remove the basic problems of survival, and it'll create more problems to solve. We're already seeing this in modern societies. People make a big fuss out of non-existing issues because every moron can get what were once high-skill jobs. Imagine what would happen when most people don't have to work to put food on the table.

 

[Haint]

When AI takes over the majority of jobs then poor people and the working class can just die, there, over population solved.

Most working and service class jobs are actually booming and will boom even harder in the AI future. It's the fake jobs, the white collar pretend to work jobs, whose days entail sending emails about meetings for meetings about sending emails that are being wiped out and will continue to be wiped out by AI. We're still a long long ways away from humanoid and specialty robots taking over working class, blue collar, and service jobs at any kind of meaningful scale.

 

[Dice]

Any system for improving the status of things has to be tied in with an extremely robust border and migration control. Too often do we see these balances screwed by loopholes and illegal employment that is used to undercut these systems.

I'm with you on that. Globalization is already completed so most jobs can be offshored and those that can't can still severely undercut local hiring with visa holders. I saw the bedrock economy of my hometown melt away was everything was given to 2-year visa holders from India. The money wasn't going to locals and wasn't being spent locally by them, so it all collapsed and I had to move to a major city.

Thing is, between that and AI, our current system is degraded either way. Globalization is irreversible and soon AI will also be. It is inevitable that either a new proposed system will have to be global or employment rules will have to be very strictly enforced. I'm inclined to think the latter will be more likely since strict nativism is just going to make a country less competitive in the global market and thus have less for its own people. That is what we saw with closed socialist/communist governments in a capitalist world.

So either the world changes or anyone attempting to deviate will fail. Problem with the notion of the world not changing is that it already has and our capitalist system was always designed to exploit some countries to the benefit of some others. An equalized race to the bottom for all countries doesn't work for those who structured themselves around being rich. You can much more easily be poor and have a whole life in Southeast Asia compared to the US, both culturally and pragmatically, because of how things were designed to work with it. Imposing the same exploitation everywhere is going to lead to collapses and revolts, so to avoid that a new global system will be needed if we wish to retain the global productivity and harvest thereof.

 

[poppabk]

I'm with you on that. Globalization is already completed so most jobs can be offshored and those that can't can still severely undercut local hiring with visa holders. I saw the bedrock economy of my hometown melt away was everything was given to 2-year visa holders from India. The money wasn't going to locals and wasn't being spent locally by them, so it all collapsed and I had to move to a major city.

There isn't a 2 year visa.
Not sure what bedrock economy could be completely undercut with H1B visas which are not easy to come by.

 

[Dice]

There isn't a 2 year visa.
Not sure what bedrock economy could be completely undercut with H1B visas which are not easy to come by.

A massive corporation the town was literally built around. Anyone not working there was at a business that served the people who worked there. No longer.

 

[poppabk]

A massive corporation the town was literally built around. Anyone not working there was at a business that served the people who worked there. No longer.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say a couple of hundred H1B employees didn't bring it down.

 

[Days like these...]

Thank you for making my point.

Some folks can self start and self-motivate. Others need a shrill woman to do it. Then others need to face starvation and death before they earn their keep.

The goal should be "there is ALWAYS a job for everyone to be able to work", not "let's institutionalize the lazy to NEVER need to work".

But I am lazy given the option I wouldn't work. Not sure where the disconnect is.

 

[JimmyRustler]

The way I see it we already have a meaning crisis because people have it way too good. Victor Frankl wrote about this already in the 70s. I fully believe that we just haven't adapted to not having to fight for survival every day. UBI will just make things worse.

But I could be wrong. Who knows?