Controversial positions I had to defend on facebook: “Involuntary servitude is bad” and “I can be against foreign wars AND trade wars.”
WTF happened with the involuntary servitude thing?
Someone linked an image of Jon Stewart saying everyone should have to work a year doing military/infrastructure building/whatever to build national sense of togetherness.
I have heard that a lot.
Mostly from middle-aged people saying it should be imposed on people when they graduate from HS.
Methinks they want the work to be done without them having to pay for it, and have noticed that they can set things up such that when the proposal is voted on, it will only apply to people unable to vote in that election.
Yes, that’s usually exactly how it works. A shameless power grab and piece of oppression, and also economically really fucking inefficient.
If I were to spend a year doing something 80% of the population is able to do, society doesn’t get the benefit of me instead doing something 1% of the population is able to do, and the people who can only do well things 80% of the population is able to do will find their jobs being taken away by hipsters which as I’ve understood usually upsets the hard-working salt-of-the-earth people pretty badly, and for a good reason.
And if we simply set up a system where everyone does what their comparative advantage is, but without pay, we get the perverse incentives of nobody being interested in doing it. A more rational way of doing it would be to divide the non-being-paid-ness as evenly as possible across people’s careers so instead of people working one year out of 40 without pay, they get 97.5% of their pay every year.
Of course, now we’ve simply reinvented income taxes and the marvellous technology of buying the work we need on the free market. Naturally this isn’t the favored option of the middle-aged people because it wouldn’t let them oppress and boss people around, but instead forces them to pay people a fairer price for their labor. If middle-aged people want more infrastructure builders than the market is currently supplying, they should pay for it so that more people can be infrastructure builders. And I’m pretty sure there isn’t a deficiency of workers because last time I heard we had a lot of unemployed people who would love to find honest physical work for a fair pay but just can’t so they are voting for Trump instead. It would be really really unfair for them if middle-aged assholes were to create a program to increase the amount of the kind of work those people could do that gets done, and then instead of giving those people jobs they would fill in the vacancies with unwilling hipsters.
(via ilzolende)
1 month ago · tagged #the best heuristic for oppressed people since sharp stick time #win-win is my superpower · 22 notes · source: chroniclesofrettek · .permalink
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ilzolende reblogged this from socialjusticemunchkin and added:Also, I would be happy to shut up and start producing goods/services instead of “vague human capital in the form of...
eccentric-opinion liked this
multiheaded1793 said: “If middle-aged people want more infrastructure builders than the market is currently supplying” DID YOU MEAN: MOTHERFUCKING SUBURBS
socialjusticemunchkin reblogged this from ilzolende and added:Yes, that’s usually exactly how it works. A shameless power grab and piece of oppression, and also economically really...
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uncertainkitten reblogged this from drethelin and added:I feel like rather than a national sense of togetherness, it could be useful to build some relevant skills, maybe....
- 2centjubilee reblogged this from ilzolende and added:
Eh. Mandatory labor is not super unusual or weird. Even today, there’s a number of countries which have “mandatory...
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drethelin reblogged this from chroniclesofrettek and added:In practice I think that would be better than sending everyone to get a liberal arts degree but probably best to have...
chroniclesofrettek reblogged this from another-normal-anomaly and added:Someone linked an image of Jon Stewart saying everyone should have to work a year doing military/infrastructure...
- drethelin liked this
another-normal-anomaly reblogged this from chroniclesofrettek and added:WTF happened with the involuntary servitude thing?
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