Bay 12 Games Forum

I was actually looking for actual ideas, not just the usual "if you can't do it through taxes, it can't be done" kind of thing.

I mean, could something like the Mana (short story) approach work, where every citizen gets one and only one bank account and every year the balance is reset to (say) $50k, along with abolishing loans?

Could you do it by mandating that a condition for incorporation that 10% (so it's not a controlling share) of a company's stock must be owned by the country and all companies must issue a minimum dividend, so that you can fund UBI based on actual productivity of companies instead of by some other arbitrary taxation scheme?

For me I can't resolve these inconsistencies in beliefs and I have no idea how some of these people sleep at night....but then again I'm not religious.

What's probably the most sad thing about this is that all Christians get painted with a terrible brush because of that type of inconsistency.  And it's hard to separate yourself with cries of "No true Scotsman fallacy" - that is you can't say "well they aren't really Christians because x y z" without just digging a deeper hole.  No amount of apologetics is likely to deal with it either.  It's kind of like any kind of thing - the hardest corruption (of ideas, of physical things, whatever) with which to deal is corruption from within.  So when you have different groups within Christianity (or any religion for that matter) displaying vastly different worldviews, it's no wonder that people question the veracity of any aspect of the belief.

I think this even applies to politics - entire parties get associated with the most "media-worthy" members of the party, even if that type of behavior is in such a minority of the overall ideology.

Overall it's just sad... but at the end of the day I do have hope that it will all get better one day, even if I (or even my children, or grandchildren) don't happen to be around to see it.  And I take steps personally to try and affect things in my local sphere as I can... but I know that the "public" spotlight is not the place for me, so I just deal with the bit of sadness I get from watching what's happening.

This interpretation only holds for small businesses...

A major example where this idea of the owner lessening effort clearly doesn't hold would be a modern corporation, where shareholders typically exert zero effort in the goings on of production, and indeed often ownership of the company is itself essentially only a traded speculative commodity.

It doesn't "hold" only for small businesses - that's just steeped in the modern impression of what a 'corporation' is.  Consider that a valid reason for forming a corporation is that some enterprises require more resources than a single individual can acquire but a group of people could do it.  That enterprise could be something like a major infrastructure project, where the output of the company itself is the thing that benefits the owners - not just the "shareholder returns."

Corporations today are kind of a mishmash of this, but lean heavily toward the "we're just a company to shield ourselves from liability and to make stupid piles of cash" instead of the "we want a big project that will make all our lives better" side.  But there is nothing to say a company can't do that.  Often you see things like today that are more like co-ops than corporations though, and sometimes non-profits.

Now I realize some of this is hypothetical and academic, because reality seems to show that while that is a "mathematical possibility" it doesn't play out much in real societies.  A large part of it I think is that barriers to entry to most industries are so high that new competition can't come in easily, which means oligopolies in most industries.  So companies in those industries just enjoy increased profits when they increase productivity because there is no effective competition - the benefits of productivity no longer spread around.  This is shown by many studies of wage and wealth growth versus productivity growth versus corporate profits over the past several decades.

So I guess yeah I agree that most companies don't use productivity to reduce work required but instead just increase profits... which is arguably not going to turn out pleasant if larger and larger industries do no longer require workers.

Well, that's the "modern" interpretation of capitalism.  There's another version, which apparently isn't en vogue any more.  It says there isn't a "sole" purpose of capitalism, but a couple.  The main alternative being that instead of using the capital goods to facilitate the appropriation of a greater share and quantity of produce you use capital goods to maintain a constant share or quantity of goods for less and less effort on the part of the owner.

Of course, that is the root of the entire modern debate about wealth inequality isn't it?  Cultural norms (not anything inherent to private ownership of capital itself) say that you keep what's yours and try to get more instead of just being content with what you have and simply try to make it sustainable with as little effort as possible.  I'm personally very lazy, so I'd much rather just be allowed to maintain my standard of living with less and less effort.  But instead we have a society that institutionalizes inflation and a host of other things like how benefits are tied to how many hours you work that means you are basically forced to maintain a constant level of work and increase output instead.

A good example is how mobile companies say "For the same price, now get 4GB a month data instead of 3GB" and what I'd much rather have is "no, give me 3GB for 75% the price you used to charge me - I don't want more data!"  That's not the only industry that does it either; about the only industry that you can get the same thing for lower price than you used to is consumer electronics, and even that I think is starting to change.

The most interesting thing I find about bitcoin is that people say "look, it's not controlled by a central authority."  The only thing worse than being controlled by a central authority is being controlled by a distributed authority. At least with a central one you can rebel against it or overthrow it or whatever. If it's distributed, good luck with that - you've basically given up control to a hydra.

Other observations:

People are mad or jealous about the people making massive returns on bitcoin because they are getting massive amounts (if they cash out) and yet they didn't actually produce anything for society*.  It's kind of the same with stock market millionaires - and probably why people don't complain as much about entertainers making massive incomes. At least with the entertainers, they had to actually do something; for the people who lucked out on an "investment" they just managed to ride an appreciation wave - they didn't (generally) actually produce goods or services which corresponded to that increase in value.

It's somewhat astonishing that people are piling all this money into an unregulated market. At least with the "traditional crooked banks" you have some deposit insurance.

*There is probably some argument that these people "produced" a more viable bitcoin network by making early "investment", so their gains are related to that, but that isn't how most people view massive gains.

Dems will tax you and use that money to pave your roads, build a park, fund your schools.

Have you ever been to southeast Michigan?  One of the bluest-of-blue voting histories - I'm talking Wayne, Oakland, and Washtenaw counties here (you can probably add Genesee county where Flint is, too).  We have an astonishing number of dirt roads, and the ones we paved would often actually be better if they were dirt instead of the concrete rubble they are...and I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to look up on the condition of public education in these counties (and you can't blame the current state administration either - these problems have been generations in the making, and will likely take generations to fix).

Anyway my point is actually to say: whatever party label you have, you are not going to get what you think you're going to get from your taxes.  What will get you what you want from your tax dollars is people of integrity - regardless of their party label.  Sadly, "integrity" is not something that is all that common in politics...

Curious here - why do you think that it is the Constitution that is wrong, and not modern sentiment?  Or put another way - how would you make an unbiased determination of which is which?

It's as dangerous a thing to think "old is outdated" as it is to think that "old is perfect and we just misinterpret it."