i think society would be better if they just handed out money to people no questions asked, but i suppose it's true some people might use it to be happy
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@foolishowl @dalias @datenwolf @aeva A long time ago, I was out with my pet lizard - he likes to wander around in the local park in the summer. We often get approached by kids (for obvious reasons; he *is* a rather unusual pet), and this time a small boy and an even smaller girl come over to check him out.
So after all the usual questions (what does he eat? does he bite? how old is he?), the boy asks what I have him for. I'm completely baffled by the question ... but I don't really have time to answer before his little sister points out that *obviously* his job is just to be cute.
And, yeah, I think that's the job most domestic cats do too.
@foolishowl @dalias @datenwolf @aeva
Footnote I: A question that I very often get asked by people who haven't met said lizard, but *never* by people who meet us in person, is how I restrain a lizard. The answer is I don't; he stays near me on his own, and also I can walk faster than he can run.
See the picture.Footnote II: Sometimes, kids will start asking their parents if they can have a blue-tongue skink too, because he's so good at that one job he has! If the usual questions haven't been asked at this point, the parents will do that ... and, without fail, refuse when they get the answer to "how old is he?". (He's 18.)
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@CubeRootOfTrue @aeva I am that some people
@edendestroyer @CubeRootOfTrue and honestly i love that for you and everyone else
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@Robotistry @raven @mym I'm not too worried about it. There will be a steady supply of pickup artists so long as there's sweet toy grabage trucks, just like in real life. Likewise, the people who work for the water reclamation department in Chicago already have batmanesque origin stories motivating them so I doubt that would stop. I'm sure the medical records thing certainly couldn't get any worse at least.
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@Robotistry @raven @mym I'm not too worried about it. There will be a steady supply of pickup artists so long as there's sweet toy grabage trucks, just like in real life. Likewise, the people who work for the water reclamation department in Chicago already have batmanesque origin stories motivating them so I doubt that would stop. I'm sure the medical records thing certainly couldn't get any worse at least.
@Robotistry @raven @mym also most big projects in this country that actually benefit the people seem to happen outside the framework of crapitalism anyway
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@aeva i place her as one of the main reasons why we have this stupid "government debt = household debt" nonsense, especially on this wet rock of dissapointment and depression...
@technicalotter yeah i don't see how you are drawing the connection here from my 4 am posts proposing that we effectively end the concept of money for the benefit of the people
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they literally can't run out of money they're the government they can just make more of it "but what about inflation" buddy we literally cannot run out of numbers
Yes, the federal government creates money in the act of spending it. The only thing thatโs needed to manage the size of the money supply is tax. Or you could just have money expire after three months or just like loyalty points. There would be a total amount you could have laying around.
There are lots of people with way too much government money. Elon Musk is one of the best examples of this.
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"but how will we force people to work without the threat of poverty" buddy it's not like I'm gonna stop making video games
I always considered that argument to be a bunch of bullshit. People wonโt do bullshit jobs but most people do hobbies like you know gardening and making furniture and shit like that. If you have the time and resources to figure out something that you think is important or useful, you can find a group of people with like mine and with community consensus, just go ahead and do it.
I donโt buy the people will just do nothing, especially when they gain a measure of esteem for doing it
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@aeva Are there any political ideologies that are pro inflation? It seems like all it does (assuming labour costs keep up) is devalue cash assets, which is another way of saying someone else's debt. And that seems good actually?
@Farbs if people's wages were also always adjusted for inflation the effect is you save less money (at least, if you don't invest it in something or convert it into an asset), but your debts vanish faster. however right now almost nobody gets a guaranteed cost of living adjustment like that so inflation just ends up slowly starving everybody
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I always considered that argument to be a bunch of bullshit. People wonโt do bullshit jobs but most people do hobbies like you know gardening and making furniture and shit like that. If you have the time and resources to figure out something that you think is important or useful, you can find a group of people with like mine and with community consensus, just go ahead and do it.
I donโt buy the people will just do nothing, especially when they gain a measure of esteem for doing it
none of these arguments were ever serious. They are literally fake news and gas lighting to justify the billionaire class printing money for themselves.
i know you have hope big politics will defund billionaires and create UBI, but i think we have to act and use money they cant print, nothing else will work - its just wasting time and letting them continue, ..but i guess you have your hope and i agree with the goals
Have you ever considered that politics wont help?
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@technicalotter yeah i don't see how you are drawing the connection here from my 4 am posts proposing that we effectively end the concept of money for the benefit of the people
@aeva well not that's the point - maggie thought we would run out of numbers and tricked an entire country into believing i!
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@aeva well not that's the point - maggie thought we would run out of numbers and tricked an entire country into believing i!
@aeva also this is the neurospicy speaking so who knows
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@Farbs if people's wages were also always adjusted for inflation the effect is you save less money (at least, if you don't invest it in something or convert it into an asset), but your debts vanish faster. however right now almost nobody gets a guaranteed cost of living adjustment like that so inflation just ends up slowly starving everybody
@aeva True, and that sucks.
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@aeva Inflation isn't a bad thing! It's stagnation of wages relative to inflation that causes problems, but if someone is handing out money so that people can live and be happy without needing to have their souls crushed in the gears of capitalism, then they can just hand out more of it!
Problem solved!
@xgranade @aeva it's basically just a way of using some intermediary to figure out whose efforts someone decided were worth rewarding with access to more supplies to keep doing their thing
i guess some approaches are to get rid of the number and some involve giving everyone number
but yes, people generally should be able to live
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they literally can't run out of money they're the government they can just make more of it "but what about inflation" buddy we literally cannot run out of numbers
@aeva yeah let's take it from that one rich guys bank account that holds like 50B
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@aeva True, and that sucks.
@Farbs I'm fortunate enough to work for a studio that gives everyone yearly cost of living adjustments that account for inflation and other things. If everyone had that we'd be living in a much happier world.
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none of these arguments were ever serious. They are literally fake news and gas lighting to justify the billionaire class printing money for themselves.
i know you have hope big politics will defund billionaires and create UBI, but i think we have to act and use money they cant print, nothing else will work - its just wasting time and letting them continue, ..but i guess you have your hope and i agree with the goals
Have you ever considered that politics wont help?
When have I ever suggested that big politics was a solution? You and I agree on similar goals, but I look at money is completely different animal from the way you think about it.
For me, the fundamentals were coming the way you're thinking is that controlling the amount of money is the same as limiting oligarchy. Oligarchy is about politics, not commodities. Commodities are the medium.
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@Farbs I'm fortunate enough to work for a studio that gives everyone yearly cost of living adjustments that account for inflation and other things. If everyone had that we'd be living in a much happier world.
@Farbs if you don't have that and your yearly raise (assuming you even get one) doesn't make up for inflation what you're actually getting is a yearly pay cut on the sly.
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I'll happily spend 40 hours a week doing science. What really grinds my gears is all the bureaucracy BS hustling for grant money.
Just give me a lab and a yearly total budget of ~250000โฌ for buying stuff, paying contractors and paying my salary from, and allow me to carry any leftover into the next fiscal year. I'll churn out royalty free medical imaging tech.
@datenwolf @dalias @aeva would you go clean streets if they offered you money for that instead? I guess the amount is not relevant because everybody who makes food just does it cause they want to
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@datenwolf @dalias @aeva would you go clean streets if they offered you money for that instead? I guess the amount is not relevant because everybody who makes food just does it cause they want to
@Profpatsch @datenwolf @dalias I absolutely would go for walks to pick up trash in my neighborhood if I had more free time. One of my local friends likes to fantasize about running his own burger restaurant. I suspect if he had the means and the stability to do so he'd probably give it a shot.
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@datenwolf @dalias @aeva would you go clean streets if they offered you money for that instead? I guess the amount is not relevant because everybody who makes food just does it cause they want to
@Profpatsch @dalias @aeva it's not about the money.
It's about the amount of grant hustling I've to do. And I think that there genuinely are people who enjoy cleaning streets.
And for that matter, a lot of years ago I visited an open house event of the Munich municipal waste water management, and I actually thought that it was a pretty interesting workplace.
