[Mzyxptlk]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

I think the idea of perfect duty invalidates all this. No matter what you make of it, citizen wage models are structures where the work of some people is used to grant some people a high degree of personal freedom. If you're opposed to capitalists stealing money from the middle class (to live a life of a free lord), and you're not opposed to leftists stealing money from the middle class (to live a life of a free lord, even if on lower level) then I'll just invite you to join the people in the golden robes in Bolgia six.

Well, yes, this kind of exceptionalism never actually works out in the Real World.

I don't think that's much different from the system we currently have, in which the West collectively believes it deserves the ridiculous wealth it has accumulated while paying little to no need to the plight of the truly poor in the world. Here, the right is only a little more blatant in its disregard to suffering than the left is.

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

The problem of scope is vivid on the differences between the coalition party (right wing, suggesting as low as 300 euros), the greens (who are unarguably the most realistic and intelligent in their suggestion - it still heaps a lot higher a tax on the median worker than there is right now, though), and the left alliance (who will blow it completely out of proportion). Incidentally, social democrats aren't very interested in it, surprise surprise, because there's still the trade union pressure: trade unions rightly see citizen wage models as attempts to tax their members more, thus they're reluctant to give them support.

I think it's interesting that a right wing coalition party would be interested in discussing a citizen's wage at all. It's not on the mainstream political agenda here, not even for the left, let alone for the right.

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

Then there becomes questions of what's okay and what's not. Some want living expenses related subsidies added on top: this is due to the obvious fact that in certain parts of Finland 1000 euros a month tax-free is well able to get you rent (maybe 300-400, if you live in a cheap place, for a one-room flat, less if it's say state built for the purpose of giving home to low-income people!). In Helsinki, 700-800 is the rent level. So if you top it with tax-free living subsidies, you wind up with 1500-1600 euros net income per month.

This is more than a low-salary worker earns (net).

So how do they afford it now? I think the mistake (not yours, but theirs) here is one of degree. A citizen's wage cannot support our desired standard of living (and probably never will be able to), it can merely support a required standard of living, plus a little extra. If you want 3 children, or go on holidays twice a year, or want to live in an expensive Helsinki appartment, you're going to have to make it happen yourself, just like you do now.

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

I'm not making reduced worker productivity a bad thing; I was simply pointing out your misinterpretation on GDP. It doesn't matter whether it's createn by robots with artificial intelligence or not. The "value" of our manual labour in comparison to the "value" of machines and tools is already a tiny minority: which is why the reference to plows and tractors.

Yes, I agree with you: the more technology we can develop that can realistically take over people's jobs and do them instead, the more time off we can have (we're already having a lot in comparison to agrarian cultures; yet we're producing a lot more. it's not because we're better as humans, it's because we're equipped with superior gadgets).

We're not 'better as humans', but we are better at using those gadgets, not to mention that our civilization (again, focusing on the West) has a degree of stability that, for example, allows us to set up systems that will provide us with a pension in 40-70 years from now.

However, those reasons are themselves probably also caused by the same technological advances that have driven the rest of human progress.

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

That said, advancing technology is the only reason we've had a period of "exponential growth" in the first place, and it's the only thing that will ever be able to allow it to continue, or transform into more environmentally friendly. More efficient technology, more environment-friendly technology, all will increase GDP when put into production.

There are of course problems: an engineer of the field might argue that we'd already have sufficient AI to set up say car traffic as computer controlled. They might claim, that this could reduce the amount of traffic accidents dramatically. They'll admit, that some accidents would happen and this would be the fault of imperfect AI and programming. Just that, it'd be a big a societal step to lay the blame on something else than a human: would the company that made the code be held responsible, and to which level? Which company would want such responsibility?

If I was the benevolant dictator, I'd put all the best minds available working tirelessly to produce technology that could free more people from what essentially is "forced work" (in terms of philosophical freedom, very few of us would probably - I might be - doing the work they do currently if they hadn't had the need to do it for sustenance. this isn't "freedom" in the sense where citizen wage would grant it, but it could only grant it to a select few).

It makes me wonder though: if the current phase of exponential growth is due to technology, how long can that continue? There are two reasons that make me ask that question. One is objective: there is a limit to what technology can achieve. We can't go faster than the speed of light, there is a limit to the amount of information we can store in a certain amount of stuff, and there's a limited amount of resources and space. We are a fairly long way from hitting any of those limits (further from some than from others), but as a race, we'll hit them eventually.

The other is more subjective: we in the West have been in a unique position of privilege in that a succession of global economic, political and scientific events put us far ahead of the rest of the world, in a way that we never had been before. Now that balance seems to be shifting back into the direction of Asia (as it's historically been), which brings up the question: how much longer we'll continued to be the preferred place for investment? I don't feel qualified to answer that question, so I won't (but I'm interested in yours).

However, what seems undeniable (and unavoidable) to me is that even if it never happens, we'll still need to deal with the fact that there will be a lot more people who strive for a standard of living comparable to that of people in the West, with all the ecological and economic effects that go along with that. Asia is just the beginning, many (but by no means all) African countries are getting started, but South America is probably closer.

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

Yeah, they're pretty much opposed to anything the liberal left would come up with (as it occurs to me now, perhaps they're "conservative left"). Feminist-liberal left would allow more immigrants: because everyone's worth their humane value. True Finns feel this ignores the fact that they, as lower middle class white people, are made the pay dogs. They don't want more people here consuming the social welfare network. They're not anti-immigrant: they'd welcome immigrants that work, but probably simply kick out ones that don't (if they had a trigger).

Euroskeptical, yes. But this is another pony they flog with the "they're making us pay for the living expenses of the slacky meditarrenean people". It's knit to the same bit. It's wrong and leftist propaganda to understand this as systematic hatred towards immigrants, it's not. I believe most of them would genuinely welcome immigrants that work hard to in the system, but they perceive most immigrants as deadweight. In the same way they perceive euro as a system to attach deadweight (Greece) to us. They're simply, on their immigrant stance, more in favour of assimilation than immigration.

Their intellectual arguments are no better than that of the liberal left (which is often poor too), but they're just less "socially acceptable". I'll go further about this in the feminism part.

I don't think that the average xenophobe welcomes immigrants that work, as the prototypical "they're taking our jobs!" illustrates. Interestingly, that sentiment, though distasteful to me, is not actually wrong: an increase of the size of the work force will tend to cause a reduction in wages (though other factors may hold that back or even prevent it altogether). Here too, inequality is largely to blame: a world in which a large portion of the population lives at or below subsistence levels, while a minority lives in abundance is simply not stable.

The left has traditionally marshalled support support for the notion of solidarity between workers of any creed, nationality or skin colour, which has served them well for over a century. There are factors that should make that easier now than ever: workers are richer now than they were when unionization first came along, so they have more financial means to use and laws now exist that make it much harder (though not impossible) for employers to punish their workers for attempting to better their situation. I feel these are overshadowed by a sharp increase in individualism, the (strongly related) idea that the only good policy is one that improves my personal situation and the (almost as strongly related) feeling of entitlement: not only do I want more, I deserve more.

That last change is especially insidious, as it changes selfishness from "I want this, but that probably means other people want it as well; we can't all get it, so this is possibly/probably unattainable" to "I deserve this, and that means no one else does; therefore, this is the right thing to do".