[Mzyxptlk]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

I've been pseudo-actively involved in both youth organizations of the leftist parties, the left alliance and the social democratic party; and on the youth side, the active 'lead' women and men are all what you'd call that internet meme that rolls around, and you can hear them rant the exact shit.

to make an example, there was a discussion on the citizen wage where the left alliance and the green party youth were discussing it; the greens had, earlier, suggested a level of 500 euros, the left alliance wouldn't agree below 1000 euros plus subsidies related to costs of living.[/i]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

Earlier this year I was in a pseudo-conference arranged by the leftist youth parties. A presentee there laid down some alternative measures to GDP, such as the happy planet index. I asked if we should correct it's figures for revolutions and uprisings, given that China, Egypt, and Syria all beat Finland on it. The next presentee I asked on poverty and growth. She critisized growth, and mentioned that this and that many people still live with less than a dollar a day. I quickly calculated for how long we could triple their income (to a presumed three dollars a day) if we socialized and fully liquidiated the worth of Berkshire Hathaway. It yielded a result of a few days. The 99% on global level is so massive that we can blame the 1% all we want but even the wealth they possess wouldn't be sufficient for long.

The answers were, in order given: "You're right, perhaps it should involve something concerning the freedom of expressing one's opinion too" (so to say, she considered a revolution an "illegitimate form of expressing opinion" - I felt this was missing the point). "Perhaps we need to produce more in addition to more fair allocation, but it doesn't have to mean it happens through GDP growth" (this is an oxymoron: if we produce more, we either a) increase the GDP and are able to measure it, or b) increase the GDP in a way we can't measure - even now, we can't completely account things like domestic work to GDP, but we acknowledge that it is there).

Those anecdotes are painful to read.

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

As long as the robots (mentioned below) aren't around, we need a model of a society that revolves around labour force participation. The higher we want the safety nets to be set (optimally, we don't want people to be left out of the society due to unfortunate events, so we need tight safety nets) the higher labour force participation and employment rates we need to fund this.

It is counter-intuitive to work against it. It's wrong on not only economic grounds, but it's wrong on terms of being a violation of perfect duty since if we take it to a maxim, we will have no people who work and only people who live on minimum income and there is nobody paying for it. In essense, no-strings-attached minimum income systems are designed by those people who don't want to participate on the economic model we're in (capitalism, labour force participation) but want to reap the benefits of it (the standard of living) regardless. In terms of political right and left, these people are located on the left wing but they're more right wing than anyone else. I'll explain.

For people who are physically or mentally unable to participate (elderly people, severely handicapped people) there are systems in place. For the healthy, work-able 30-year-old, there are no persistent strong networks in place, because these people are expected to participate in order to fund the non-participation of those who cannot.

In human history, there have been plenty of examples of people who have the positive freedom of being able to do what they will without having to be concerned about sufficient income. Citizen wage systems are akin to this. History knows these people as kings, nobility, monarchs, sons of warlords, and so on. The only reason they were able to live so was because others paid for their living.

I largely agree with what you're saying here, especially that it's rather mind boggling that people think we can collectively tick the 'all of the above' checkbox and expect to be fine. I'll get back to that later.

That said, one caveat: I'm not so sure a citizen's wage would result in everyone refusing to work. Such a citizen's wage would after all be a living wage, not a yacht-jet-villa wage, no matter how many idealistic kids would like that. And in any case, I for one don't think I'd be happy idling the rest of my life away. Sure, a couple of weeks of vacation from time to time is nice, that always feels like it's over too soon. But 40 years? I'd get bored out of my skull. Then again, I'm fairly privileged: I'm reasonably intelligent, fairly well educated and as a result, have a generally nice job. The construction worker or cashier next door probably doesn't quite feel the same way.

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

I prefer earned income tax credit systems which essentially are of the idea that there is a negative income tax on lower levels of income. They are mathematically more sound (in economic terms), they are morally more sound, and they retain the idea of high labour force participation rates, without potentially damaging wage-competitiveness (in the way certain minimum wage systems can: see case Germany and their recent wage politics). And I'd believe people would be far more willing to accept the notion that we will subsidies low-pay workers for working rather than subsidising people for being idle. Since it's going to come from the working people's purses anyways. The idea that we could fund any of these systems with some bizzarre notion that has to do with capitol income tax is just hilarious, at least in Finland.

That does sound pretty interesting. I'll read up on it, thanks for the pointers.

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

But paradox of thrift is a different story altogether.

That seems to fit pretty well with what I said about people being afraid to spend. Doesn't it?

By the way, you should give Michael Sandel's justice lectures a view, if you haven't already. They're all available online, here's the first.

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

You're arguing that reducing the amount of human capitol required in production outputs is somehow not going to be visible on GDP.

No, no, no. I did not mean to imply that we can reduce the labour force by an appreciable fraction without feeling it somewhere. Earlier in your post, you wrote this:

Originally Posted by Tiet j

Yes, we require global growth. We have four choices: we rapidly reduce the amount of people on this planet, we dramatically reduce consumption in the west, we accept the notion that the majority of the planet's inhabitants are going to remain extremely poor on western standards, or we strive for growth. This is why we strive for growth.

I've rarely heard this expressed as succinctly and as accurately. If I were the benevolent dictator of the world, I guess I'd be more inclined to focus on the second (and first, to a lesser extent) choice, rather than the fourth, partly because exponential growth is not maintainable and partly because the extreme equality that exists in the world today is something I have a serious problem with.

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

99% of the GDP growth you perceive on a trend doesn't come from people being better or more productive. I would argue that the average worker is far less productive now, through hours worked alone, than he was in the agrarian society.

99% of the GDP growth is development of better technology. It's easy to be a technocrat in this setting, and I perceive it as the only probable out. It doesn't need to mean only increasing productivity, but also more durable, more "green" production. If we replace all workers with robots that do four time the work, and spend 2 hours a day monitoring and maintaining them, we'll be left with far more time for hobbies and the joys of life, and we'll experience an unpreceeded rise on all economic indicators that have to do with productivity. Of course, the more "effective" these robots are, the higher we can set the fixed amount we pay to people, no? It's an utopia.

Technology is a big deal. From plows to tractors, from cards to databases. It's always been a big deal, and it's the biggest of all deals in terms of GDP growth.

I'm not sure if you're making reduced worker productivity (when we ignore technology) out as a bad thing, especially because you also used the word 'utopia', which is rarely used in a positive sense, in my experience.

I can't help but think it's a genuine first step towards a world in which people aren't forced to work for 40-80 hours a week (depending on your geographical location) just to survive. You could also say it would be the second step, if the industrial revolution was the first, or even the third, if the agricultural one was the first.

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

True Finns isn't a political party with a clear agenda, however. It's simply a manifestation or a backlash to leftist feminism. Leftist feminism considers all women and all ethnic minorities to be victims that need understanding - if something doesn't go as they'd want, it's the society's fault. White men are excluded from this, despite forming the majority of say unemployed and school drop-outs. True Finns is an umbrella term under which more or less every disillusioned white male from the ghettoing neighbourhood falls under. It's also a leftist movement by economic terms, or at very "worst" central.

Interesting. It was my understanding the True Finns were largely nationalistic and eurosceptical, as opposed to our Freedom Party, which started out islamophobic and only became eurosceptical when 'the people' became disillusioned with the demands 'Brussels' made of us.

They are however similar in that there's a dichotomy between their economic views (left-wing) and their societal ones (right-wing). Being left-wing on economic issues appeals to the same feelings of entitlement that enciting hatred and fear of outsiders does, be they Muslims or Greeks. This is not strange or non-sensical, but it is new.

By the way, this isn't the first time I hear you talking about feminism in a negative fashion. Is that a general anti-feminist conviction shining through, or just a dislike of a particular incarnation of it (that, in my view, misapplies the label)?