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Politics, politics, politics

Gutter Boy said:
That's a similar kind of argument that created Sunday drinking laws a hundred years ago. Or what might happen if you gave votes to women. I.e. what would happen if the underclass became less dependent/freer?

I guess for certain groups with addictive personalities you might need provision to ensure UBI is actually spent on housing and food (vouchers rather than cash etc.).

The greater social cohesion caused by the strengthen of family and community should also act as a check

There's also the utilitarian argument - you are significantly improving the lives of the entire middle and working classes - 90% of the population. That's got to be worth the consequence that a vulnerable 5% will have more opportunity to fall into excess.
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Nothing like votes for women. The right to have a say in who runs the state is in no way comparable to the UBI.
I've also yet to see any solid evidence of this improvement to people's life's that having more 'free' time will give them.
 
nayimfromthehalfwayline said:
I work in data, its a skilled job and one we are struggling to recruit for as it is.

My company, being an insurance company, relies almost completely on said data and its consequent analysis. Developers are hard to find now, we quite simply could not get in even more than we struggle to now to accommodate your utopia.

As I said, it all sounds very nice, but I cannot see how it is in anyway practical or actionable, or even affordable.
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The thing is, it's such a big shift, that it's quite hard to perceive. It's almost like being at the end of the feudal period and trying to grasp what capitalism would be like. You start to see peasants being unbound from serfdom, and larger-scale merchants turning up in towns, but not that you are on the cusp of a paradigm change.

I don't know what you specific area is, but are algorithms not replacing people right across the insurance industry? And chat bots starting to replace people on the customer service side? It's these changes that will drive it. We either have high unemployment, the rest busting a gut to cover the enormous benefits bill, and a small offshore superrich; or we have UBI and share the reduced amount of work around.
 
Gilzeantoscore said:
UBI is based on a false premise, that being that work is solely to derive income. This will lead to increased levels of community disengagement because there will be far less responsibility on the individual. Individuals will also more importantly be less politically engaged. They will alsotake far less notice of the political process. It's all a bit of a ponsy scheme to me anyway.
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Newly retired people usually take about 3-6 months to miss work. Then they can never remember how they ever found time for it.

With people spending more time in their local areas, community-focused activity should actually increase.

Politics is mostly about interest groups arguing over their share of resources. If that question is solved, and politics matters less and becomes more village fete committee, that's not a bad thing. Localism will become reenergised while the state withers (apart from processing UBI and a few other infrastructure essentials).

It's the opposite of a ponzi scheme - it's humanity trying to becoming sustainable/in balance again for the first time since the industrial revolution. The current neo-liberal model - mass economic migration to pay pensions - is the ultimate ponzi scheme.
 
glasgowspur said:
Nothing like votes for women. The right to have a say in who runs the state is in no way comparable to the UBI.
I've also yet to see any solid evidence of this improvement to people's life's that having more 'free' time will give them.
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I just meant that the counter arguments are similar. You can't give women the vote - they don't have the mental capacity, it would upset their pretty little heads. You can't give people permanent food and housing security combined with 3 or 4 day weekends - they would just drink themselves into oblivion

Are you and the people you know more money poor or more time poor? I think for the majority of the population the balance has definitely switched to the latter.

It's not just free time, it's security to be able to follow your dreams. Being a professional artist, musician or footballer, even if you are crap at them. You just accept the trade-off is basic income/lifestyle, rather than choosing to top it up yourself
 
Gutter Boy said:
The thing is, it's such a big shift, that it's quite hard to perceive. It's almost like being at the end of the feudal period and trying to grasp what capitalism would be like. You start to see peasants being unbound from serfdom, and larger-scale merchants turning up in towns, but not that you are on the cusp of a paradigm change.

I don't know what you specific area is, but are algorithms not replacing people right across the insurance industry? And chat bots starting to replace people on the customer service side? It's these changes that will drive it. We either have high unemployment, the rest busting a gut to cover the enormous benefits bill, and a small offshore superrich; or we have UBI and share the reduced amount of work around.
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Absolutely not. Machine learning is beginning to be used to derive potential insights, but it is a long long way away from any sort of real automation.

And while I can quite happily envisage living a 4 day working week, I just cant see how it is in any way possible/affordable/practical.

Sounds like the sort of thing that would be in the Greens manifesto, along with unicorns bricking rainbows and free pot for everyone.
 
nayimfromthehalfwayline said:
Absolutely not. Machine learning is beginning to be used to derive potential insights, but it is a long long way away from any sort of real automation.

And while I can quite happily envisage living a 4 day working week, I just cant see how it is in any way possible/affordable/practical.

Sounds like the sort of thing that would be in the Greens manifesto, along with unicorns bricking rainbows and free pot for everyone.
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What sort of timescale though - 5 years, 10 years? Transitioning to UBI is about solving the crisis before it happens.

It's not that new or fringe an idea. It nearly made the Beveridge Report in 1942, but was cut during drafting. Italy is now introducing a prototype of it. 1/4 of Swiss voted for it in a referendum. And Scandinavian countries and Canada are playing around with trials.
 
nayimfromthehalfwayline said:
Absolutely not. Machine learning is beginning to be used to derive potential insights, but it is a long long way away from any sort of real automation.

And while I can quite happily envisage living a 4 day working week, I just cant see how it is in any way possible/affordable/practical.

Sounds like the sort of thing that would be in the Greens manifesto, along with unicorns bricking rainbows and free pot for everyone.
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It could happen eventually, with government subsidy and regulation smoothing it out until it just becomes an accepted norm, as the 8 hour per day, 5 day week is now. The working class used to work 6 days a week, 10-16 hours per day, until people fought for the weekend and an 8 hour work day. Not everyone works the same days/hours of course, but a norm has been established that full-time work is around 40 hours done over 5 days.

With people living longer/automation/mental health issues, I could see that over the longer-term, the working week would move to 4 days instead of 5, as it moved to 5 days instead of 6 or even 7. I'm sure when it was 6 days a week, there were plenty of people saying it'd be unaffordable to allow the plebs more than one day off. With political and societal will, things change.
 
In other news, despite some tough competition, it seems Chris Grayling has established himself as the Number 1 ranked idiot in the government. Great work, Chris -- it takes something really special to standout as the undisputed dunce of the government in 2018.
 
Gutter Boy said:
I just meant that the counter arguments are similar. You can't give women the vote - they don't have the mental capacity, it would upset their pretty little heads. You can't give people permanent food and housing security combined with 3 or 4 day weekends - they would just drink themselves into oblivion

from what i see few people arguing against on those grounds, most arguments are either economic or anti state intervention.



Are you and the people you know more money poor or more time poor? I think for the majority of the population the balance has definitely switched to the latter.

more "free" time you generally have the more money you need. who wants to sit around the house and stare at the walls because you have no money.

It's not just free time, it's security to be able to follow your dreams. Being a professional artist, musician or footballer, even if you are crap at them. You just accept the trade-off is basic income/lifestyle, rather than choosing to top it up yourself
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if you are crap at any profession you won't make much money at it.

my biggest problem with it is the universal bit. i have no issue with the low paid and less advantaged being given a helping hand. (i think we already have something like that).
my issue is those getting it who don't need it or don't deserve it.




that didn't really post how i thought it would! the italics were to address each paragrapgh/point. seems to have went awry somehow.
 
Gutter Boy said:
What sort of timescale though - 5 years, 10 years? Transitioning to UBI is about solving the crisis before it happens.

It's not that new or fringe an idea. It nearly made the Beveridge Report in 1942, but was cut during drafting. Italy is now introducing a prototype of it. 1/4 of Swiss voted for it in a referendum. And Scandinavian countries and Canada are playing around with trials.
Click to expand...

Honestly not sure, but however it goes it will still require a lot of human analysis and management regardless, we wont just be letting Skynet run the business.

Most likely it will do the donkey work while the added value comes from the human interrogation of said insights.

We did a project some time back to reduce the processing work in Reserving, saved literally 100s of man hours across the week (each week). The change in staff? A few expensive contractors were not renewed. Otherwise everyone went on to adding value rather than wading through the grind of data.

My particular industry? I dont forsee any great labour savings via automation.


the dza said:
It could happen eventually, with government subsidy and regulation smoothing it out until it just becomes an accepted norm, as the 8 hour per day, 5 day week is now. The working class used to work 6 days a week, 10-16 hours per day, until people fought for the weekend and an 8 hour work day. Not everyone works the same days/hours of course, but a norm has been established that full-time work is around 40 hours done over 5 days.

With people living longer/automation/mental health issues, I could see that over the longer-term, the working week would move to 4 days instead of 5, as it moved to 5 days instead of 6 or even 7. I'm sure when it was 6 days a week, there were plenty of people saying it'd be unaffordable to allow the plebs more than one day off. With political and societal will, things change.
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Id be all for it, I just dont see how it works. I get paid to not work, where does the money come from?
 
nayimfromthehalfwayline said:
Honestly not sure, but however it goes it will still require a lot of human analysis and management regardless, we wont just be letting Skynet run the business.

Most likely it will do the donkey work while the added value comes from the human interrogation of said insights.

We did a project some time back to reduce the processing work in Reserving, saved literally 100s of man hours across the week (each week). The change in staff? A few expensive contractors were not renewed. Otherwise everyone went on to adding value rather than wading through the grind of data.

My particular industry? I dont forsee any great labour savings via automation.




Id be all for it, I just dont see how it works. I get paid to not work, where does the money come from?
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I'm not sure how we'd get there (I'm not suggesting the Gutter Boy solution), but we got from 6 or 7 days per week at a minimum of 10 hours per day as the norm down to 5 days per week at 8 hours per day as the norm. So I think it's possible (even probable) for society to move towards less, particularly because of more people to do the work and more automation. Ultimately, more money ends up in the workers pocket for doing less work (that might be down to an increase in productivity).

Nobody needs to work 80 hours per week in a factory, with their kids doing another 40 hours per week in the same factory, to survive in the UK any more. Yet that was once the case at the bottom of the economic food-chain in this country and other countries in the western world also. Over time, legislation (which was fought for by working people) changed things. We are probably a way off from legislating towards a 4 day week as a standard norm right now, but I think we will drift that way eventually.
 
the dza said:
In other news, despite some tough competition, it seems Chris Grayling has established himself as the Number 1 ranked idiot in the government. Great work, Chris -- it takes something really special to standout as the undisputed dunce of the government in 2018.
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I know some people who work in criminal justice and apparently he was a horrific justice minister too. However as a key Brexiteer I kind of hope he clings on for the next few months, before being thrown into the political wilderness.
 
Gutter Boy said:
Newly retired people usually take about 3-6 months to miss work. Then they can never remember how they ever found time for it.

With people spending more time in their local areas, community-focused activity should actually increase.

Politics is mostly about interest groups arguing over their share of resources. If that question is solved, and politics matters less and becomes more village fete committee, that's not a bad thing. Localism will become reenergised while the state withers (apart from processing UBI and a few other infrastructure essentials).

It's the opposite of a ponzi scheme - it's humanity trying to becoming sustainable/in balance again for the first time since the industrial revolution. The current neo-liberal model - mass economic migration to pay pensions - is the ultimate ponzi scheme.
Click to expand...

It's a Ponzi scheme. Who is going to pay for it? With fewer workers, there will be a narrower tax base. It's pie in the sky. The elites want further political disengagement and this will cement that in place forever. No thanks.
 
the dza said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1003753218650800133
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Hmm. "Remainers running riot" is ERG talk, so I can't believe it came from much of a loyalist. I suspect that May can lose a few of these votes and still survive. There's no majority in the Commons for rock-hard Brexit, so no real gain for the swivel-eyed psychos in replacing her with one of their number. Much better for them to stick to the betrayal narrative when we end up in a deeply unsatisfactory fudge as an alternative to crashing out.
 
Gilzeantoscore said:
It's a Ponzi scheme. Who is going to pay for it? With fewer workers, there will be a narrower tax base. It's pie in the sky. The elites want further political disengagement and this will cement that in place forever. No thanks.
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Its not fewer workers, it's probably more. Just doing a bit less work each. When 10% of the population own 85% of the wealth, the question never needs to be who is going to pay for it.
 
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