this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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Late Stage Capitalism
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History did. Nobody likes to hear that the only real way to improve their situation is through their own effort, regardless of whether you invest your effort in earning more money or by rejecting the rat race and growing in other ways.
Where in history did this actually happen? I'm not talking about people saying they did, or a communist revolutions where the wealth just shifted hands, when did the wealth get redistributed evenly in history?
Edit: I sort of misunderstood your comment in it's context. Anything more successful than China's Land Reform movement?
That's the point.
I'm going to need you to clarify your first comment, because I have no idea what you are talking about or what your point might be. I thought I understood, but this follow up is baffling.
Yea, I don't get it. Is his point that it's impossible? Because saying it doesn't work when it's never happened leaves you asking "how do you know then?"
History shows that NOT oppressing you doesn't work
But you never stopped oppressing me!
exactly
wtf?!
This is pretty much his argument... WTF indeed
The point is that no matter what sort of social structure you invent, you're going to need some sort of authority to determine who gets what if you want to redistribute people's things. That authority position will be greatly coveted by those who desire to use it to monopolize whatever wealth your society possesses.
Right - but a well educated, fully engaged population in a democratic state can keep those types of people in check.
This is a difficult and ongoing battle with those that want to seize that power and wealth and it takes sacrifice and time to do.
...is something you aren't going to have when exceeding the average is "rewarded" by have any gains you may have made redistributed to underachievers.
“Underachievers”
I hate this myth of the lazy person, that there are significant portions of people that are lazy enough to throw the entire system off.
In almost every single UBI study done on this planet, that has not been the affect.
Turns out the vast majority of people like to achieve things, rewards are not just monetary and the way people feel about money varies.
The odds of you motivating me to do something specifically for money is so low, there has to be another incentive. Why because my base needs are already met, so I have the ability and time to focus on my other needs.
That’s what inherited wealth does for people. There is not a massive portion of underachievers and this seems more reflective of the way you view people.
If you're trying to redistribute society's wealth, then you're going to have to take from those who produce more than average, and give it to those who produce less than average.
Your point about being motivated by things other than money is something I'll readily agree upon, but is also irrelevant to a discussion on the redistribution of wealth, where we're specifically addressing those parts of society which generate wealth.
I think our ideas of how to redistribute them are different, I see your point nonetheless.
However we don’t live in a society where your ability to produce is directly connected to what you receive from what you produce.
That’s the main problem with our society, no ceo is 250 times more productive than a line worker.
I mean you are kind of describing the difference between socialism and communism with that point about productivity.
Under socialism workers get back a percentage of what THEY put in. Under communism the workers get back a portion of what ALL the workers produce or the revenue of that.
I think your definition of redistribution and mine are not the same.
If I'm reading this right you are saying that any "reward" someone gets for over achieving will be punished and that person has to transfer a certain percentage of their bonus to an underachiever. That is to say that the redistribution is a direct hand out of your reward in the form of cash to some underachiever?
My definition of redistribution is that if you live in a society that values the education of its citizens, then the redistribution (ie taxes) is pooled and then spent in a way can help people out of difficult situations so that they can pursue an education and a career that will improve their lives and in a bigger sense improve the economic life of the country.
I see taxes as patriotic that if you truly believe in your country (that is the people that make up the country) you are willing to make a small sacrifice to help others become better citizens.
If "history told you wealth redistribution doesn't work", then that doesn't make sense. It can't show you it doesn't work by not happening, that's more like showing you it isn't achievable, at best.
AKA: Doesn't work
I guess there's two distinct possible interpretations of the OP statement: that you can't do it, or that the results would be bad. For some reason it makes more sense in my head that the standard propaganda would be more about the results being bad, or the idea of even trying being just unthinkable.
That's your problem. You're trying to interpret earnest statements through the lens of propaganda. Not that I can't understand taking such a view of social media.
Well I mean, what defines the meaning of "Redistribution of wealth doesn't work" in the context of this meme is explicitly the intent of an imagined propagandist. A defining feature of mainstream political discourse is to refuse the problem of wealth distribution as a topic of consideration at all, it's redirected to some narrower conception of the problem or made about values. I think what you are saying is not quite the same as a defense of the statement as delivered.
But anyway it's still wrong; even if bureaucratic mechanisms of wealth redistribution were unavoidably self defeating, it is not the case historically that wealth redistribution doesn't happen, it just tends to happen via traumatic collapse.
You've taken pull yourself up by your bootstraps a step further by eating your boots.
Because people don't like being lied to.
Yes, life before capitalism didn't exist.
You should read "Utopia for Realists". It gave countless examples in history where providing unconditional basic income works. Even as we speak, other countries in the past decades did trial on universal basic income and it worked. In one experiment, twelve homeless folks were given regular unconditional cash grants. Except for one, all cleaned themselves up and are renting an accommodation.
UBI works unquestionably. But how has it not been implemented yet? Aside from the "fuck you, got mine" attitude, as well as I hypothesise that in evolutionary psychology, because energy upkeep is high-demanding, it makes us think not contributing to a group in any capacity is being a dead weight, UBI is still not implemented because many say that property owners will abuse unconditional income by raising rent prices. Instead, many propose universal basic utilities, meaning everyone would get free housing and utilities, but still working to get their own food presumably.
But I do not know about the arguments on UBI and basic utilities because of the emerging and inevitable usurpation of humans by AI on the labour market. The current thinking on both UBI and basic utilities is making presumptions of operating under the current free market framework-- that everyone will still be working in some ways and contributing to society. Sooner or later, with the coming of AI, the current mindset about working as a default behaviour is becoming obsolete and being relegated, in my opinion, as a relic of evolutionary psychology.
Or by making the effort to unionize your workplace!