If it's a campaign, I fell for it, and regret nothing. I've been doing it for about a week now, but it really hits the sweet spot with my needs for brushing up my math. I finally feel it's within my grasp to get to the level I want. And it's incredibly convenient, you feel you're actuy making progress and it keeps the challenge at the juuuust right level(I've noticed this is incredibly important).
I wouldn't do that, still. If you fail, it forces a review and better automatism because it pushes you to be faster. I think best results come from just leaving it as-is.
I've observed this as well, I do wonder though if that doesn't strongly encourage competitivity(is this word right? autocorrect highlights it, huh) and make people work... well, more. More effective, more time, more angry. It's certainly one possible explanation for why they dominate in many areas. But it does sound like such an exhausting thing.
I don't think it makes us work more, but I think it makes us less satisfied with our lives. Which ultimately fuels the consumerism and pleasure-seeking.
The production side of things comes from exploitation - the US is the strongest imperialist force in the world. We don’t just exploit the periphery, we also exploit our own citizens to the maximum they can bear.
A lot of highlands in the UK support large grouse shooting estates and / or sheep farming. They are wildlife deserts unless you are the sort of wildlife that supports a vested-interests business.
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that humans will find other ways of exploring and spending time that doesn't necessitate productivity. I would love to be FIRE, for example. A lot of people will love it. Some won't, and they will work.
I think UBI is not there yet, but a hallmark of this is the rise of influencers and time burned on media and Netflix. This tells me that leisure time is rising and we have the economic capability of sustaining non-productive activities.
But we're not there _yet_. I don't fear the inevitability of UBI in my lifetime for example. But I'm confident we'll be able to devise a useful system when we get there. In the end, we didn't have capitalism untill we thought up this system. There is surely another kind of system we could have converged to, I seriously doubt it's some magical rule of nature. But we did not, we wound up here. We'll end up in another place at some point.
>Another is that humans will find other ways of exploring and spending time that doesn't necessitate productivity.
Take just about any British musician from the past 50 years - the ones who weren't middle or upper class almost all say that being on welfare (the dole) was what gave them the time and freedom to be creatives.
UB40, for example, are literally named for the application form.
I think that there are definitely people who have been on welfare and used it to better themselves and there are people who thrive in the face of adversity, overcoming the worst situations.
I also think that there are a large number of people who ended up lost without direction or purpose.
Fully agree. But I do believe that cultural norms and societal expectations and what people push you to do with your life play a big role, so these are all levers to be pulled if you want to make a more self-driven population.
> I also think that there are a large number of people who ended up lost without direction or purpose.
People on welfare? I can imagine a lot of these people "accept" that the goal is to get themselves out of welfare, ASAP (especially if there's a deadline), but they can't see a way to that goal - e.g. applying for jobs but getting rejected left and right, and feeling dejected.
With utopian UBI, one would be free to do what they want.. even if it's just jagging off the whole day.
No, there a lot of people who have no idea what to do when they have free time.
There are lots of older people who go back to work, not because they need the money but because the need the structure. In fact, there is an increased risk of death due to retirement.
>Available evidence suggests it is unlikely that changes in health insurance and income can account for the increase in mortality at age 62. So, to further examine the plausibility of retirement leading to higher mortality, Moore examines which causes of death increase when men turn 62, and considers the connection between those and decreased labor force participation.
>With utopian UBI, one would be free to do what they want.. even if it's just jagging off the whole day.
People have need to feel like they are doing something. Usually something positive but they will settle for something negative, generally that ends poorly for society.
Also UBI would only, as my understanding is, take care of the basics. Food, shelter, medical care. So you would end up with a population that has enough to survive, hungry for more and no way to achieve it.....
You can achieve the need to do something by forming human connections. Mutual necessity between people, a form of fulfillment that long predates any economy.
We have the unfortunate combination of being uniquely individualistic and with too much time. Community-based societies, which we will have to transition to in a post-scarcity world, don’t have that problem.
I don't think anyone would choose to work in any way like today, especially if work is focused on generating wealth with a large portion of it being redistributed. Work would have to change to something more like volunteerism.
Well, many people would choose to work for the extra income that would bring them. Or some other status symbol that working could bring, welfare won't bring you that Rolex! Or some cultural shift that makes certain work "cool" (1). Or just fostering a sense of community and mission for doing certain work. People do many many many things motivated by other things than money. I agree that it's only a subset of the population, but if you decrease the work input needs to less than that percent of the population, that's doable. Still, as I said, we're not there yet and I believe we won't be there yet for a long long time.
1. Sometimes I wonder if the state shouldn't hire one of those fancy firms to push cultural outlooks about stuff to change. They have campaigns, but they mostly suck. If you put money on the table and say "hey, marketing company, by each 1% you improve this behavior you get x million dollars" I'm sure that would help motivation.
I get your point, I really do. And I somewhat agree with the basic tenet. It's just that if you look at the big picture and what they are doing on all fronts, it looks really really bad. And it's also who is doing this. I think Trump is a lying, shallow, stupid stupid man. I have thought this for a long time. People like this bring pain and suffering, not reform.
Even more, if you truly believe what you are saying, and you want a more competitive trade environment, getting someone who will botch it will hurt your cause. I see no way these guys are going to leave your country in a good state.
There is no way they are this dumb. Musk especially, he's not some 1 in a lifetime genius, but he's no dummy either. There is no way he does not understand that what he is doing will have severe negative ramifications.
No, that's not really the main reason. The main reason is that almost every modern Western political ideology is either a development from 18th Century liberalism [the more common case] or a reactionary response against it or some subset of its descendants [excluding the overlap, the less common case], and some are both descendants of 18th Century liberalism and reactions against other descendants.)
As a result, most ideologies in the West have some claim to the name “liberalism” and an even larger majority have deep seated opposition to one or more things with an association with that name.
I posit you can successfully be libertarian while disregarding the institution of intellectual property.
I, for one, think it's a deeply flawed way we look at it in our society today and this does not need to be so. There are many many ways we could have perceived and handled intellectual property. I see knowledge a common good that once it's out there, it's out there.
This take horrifies me. Furthering personal knowledge is not even in the same class as driving money on machines calculating random hashes for the sole purpose of proving they are calculating random hashes.
I believe strongly in the power of education, an educated populace that is able to deeply hone it's craft and practice it's interest is the path to prosperity.
I recoil at the kind of outlook you need to have to believe what this post seems to believe.
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