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And every single one of them would have a YouTube channel.
The problem is that a system like that would benefit a lot of people instead of just the parasitic owner class.
We can’t just go around, doing stuff, without our
evildivine overlords earning their share! It simply wouldn’t be fair to our corporate slave-owners.I think it’s moreso that a system like that would ultimately remove the ability for the parasite class to exist. Can’t keep everyone tied to your goods and services if they are entirely capable of producing them themselves.
I work at a tiny 10 person non-profit. I am by far the most computer literate person here by an order of magnitude, given my completely wasted software engineering degree. I offered in my downtime at work to fix a bunch of laptops used by our kids in the after school program that were malfunctioning in some way or another.
I was told to stick to my job description by our Executive Director, and that they’d contact an external IT person to deal with it. I’m an Admin Assistant, which TBH kind of means I wear many hats anyway so my job description is very broad…
So here I am, twiddling my thumbs, posting on Lemmy instead.
Its not only giant corporations. Its infected every modern manager/executive brain. And I want to say, the executive director at my work I consider “one of the good executives”. At least by comparison.
(My immediate superior I like… less. She’ll do something wrong, I’ll try to fix it, and I’ll get reprimanded for trying to fix it.)
one of the good executives
…
10 person non-profit.
This sounds incredibly top-heavy for such a small company. The fact that you got micro-managed like that in such a rediculously small outfit is kind of unheard of, frankly. Usually small companies are the exact opposite, where there’s one owner/operator, the job titles are largely made-up, and everyone just gets everything done because there’s usually not enough expertise-hours to go around to solo every task.
If i had to guess they contract work out or just redirect that money
(My immediate superior I like… less. She’ll do something wrong, I’ll try to fix it, and I’ll get reprimanded for trying to fix it.)
Because it’s fucked exactly how she likes it, you trying to unfuck it messes up her whole system ;)
Most people quite literally think they are above admin assistants.
Imagine the cleaning lady rolls up and fixes the bug you spent hours on in a few seconds.
I worked at a company where the cleaning lady was considerably more intelligent than most of the managers. But you was held back because her English wasn’t really very good yet so she had to take what work she could.
Meanwhile the managers would rock in at 11:30 and immediately go on an hour lunch break. Usually they would then demand a meeting in the afternoon so they could get up to speed with what everyone was doing which was only necessary because they have been AWOL for the past 4 hours.
I invent utility and design patents, but am on disability and can’t afford to patent them open-source. My brain and body won’t let me have a regular job, but I could do this all day long if the social infrastructure was there
Kinda similar. I work in HVAC-R. There are a ton of times where I’m working on a system where I would love to just spend a few more hours making part of it better and then another few hours streamlining things to make future work on it easier. But we charge $200 per hour so no customer wants me to spend 12 hours making their system perfect; they want me to spend 2 hours and just get it functional. If I didn’t have to charge money for my time then not only would every system I touch run like a dream, but they would also be beautiful. As it is people more frequently wind up with duct taped functional travesties and then refuse any follow up work to fix it properly.
Not that I’ve had much luck with this, but I have tried to explain to customers/managers that the work is like to do is preventative.
Sure it’s “expensive” now, but this reduces potential failures AND reduces maintenance time in the future.
This means we spend $ now, but save $$ later 🤷🏻♂️
Unfortunately there’s never time to do it right and always time to do it twice
Ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure
It’s crazy how spot on this guy actually is, this wild dude honestly unclogs drains for the love of it: https://youtu.be/95ATNSkGF3Y
I’m a big fan of the concept of an universal basic income. Where everyone gets ~1000€ every month from the government. For children, the parents get the money.
And I mean everyone. Every legal resident. Including billionaires.
To finance it I would tax both income and capital gains at ~50%. From the very first € you earn.
The net tax load on most people would not actually change much. But it completely gets rid of situations where if people work more, loose their benefits and end up with less.
1000€ should be just about enough to life a frugal lifestyle. A flat with a partner or flatmate in a small town. Produce to cook a flexitarian diet. A public transport pass and a bicycle. A Samsung Galaxy A17 with an internet plan. And all those other real necessities of life.
If people want luxuries, they will still have to work. Someone still has to produce those consumables after all. But everyone should be able to get all of their basic necessities covered.
Im already taxed like 20% in the US and see nothing for it. May as well do 50 and actualy get something of value for society
Billionaires should not exist and their existence should not be tolerated.
Yes. If someone has a million times the median wealth, there’s something wrong with the system.
But how is that relevant here?
And I mean everyone. Every legal resident. Including billionaires.
I’m a big fan of it in concept, but TBH the pandemic made me think twice about it. By that I mean, I watched quite a lot of people get put on furlough, so essentially having their needs met while not having to work, and they went fucking crazy, like screaming fights in the shared hallway over literally nothing at 6am crazy. And it happened really fast too. I think a lot of people are so indoctrinated into the concept of having to show up to work and be told what to do that they kind of short-circuit when left to work it out for themselves.
Not that I think we shouldn’t do it necessarily, and I’d hope over time it would even out as people got used to it, but it would need to be done very carefully I think. Even if the math and the politics of it make sense, you also have to sort of account for the irrationality of people as well, which I don’t often hear a lot of discussion about.
Many people also go crazy like that right after they retire. At least for a while. Structure is important for humans, and many find it difficult to create structure themselves.
But an UBI wouldn’t mean that people would suddenly be out of work. They 'd still have to work to keep their lifestyle
Just to put my 2 cents on the plate, it seems like a lot of people are stuck in living arrangements they don’t actually want to be in, purely for economic reasons. Lots of personality mismatch in close quarters, work is an escape. UBI would probably break apart lots of lives, but hopefully people will build back better.
In respect to being paid to work on hobbies, a lot of the tech sector was furloughed as well. FOSS projects massively improved, seemingly overnight. I’ve dabbled with Linux on and off during the 2010s, 2021 felt like the year where everything finally clicked together, now I run Linux and FOSS on everything where possible. I’m not sure how to find data to dispute or support that link tho, might just be me.
People need cars to live where I am. There is no public transportation and cycling is far too dangerous, no one even tries. They give up their homes before their cars. Tons of people living on UBI would be living in their cars.
In a political climate where you could actually implement UBI, you would also be able to implement walkability policies.
Also, e-bikes. E-bikes is where it’s at.
Yeah not in rural areas, we need cars.
Now, im all for banning bro trucks and crossovers over 3500 lbs. If you cant get by with a miata or a wagon, you have to get a special license for a bigger vehicle and pay more because youre damaging the road and endangering others 10x more in your 10,000lb f350 diesel.
Rural areas, sure. Suburban and urban where the majority of humans live, no.
Yeah e bikes aren’t even allowed on the roads for now. The walkability problem is a matter of the billions and billions of dollars it would take to essentially redo every road in the county. Some zoning changes could help a little but we’re generations of work away from being walkable
I’m being speculative, right?
In a political climate where you could actually implement UBI, you would also be able to …
it’s a good idea but it requires that costs don’t adapt. that 800€ apartment you wanted? well since you’re already getting a subsidy it’s now 1600€. after all, if you discount the subsidy it’s cheaper!
Exactly. What’s to keep the sellers from just jacking everything up?
College was expensive, but affordable, until the government made it easier to get student loans. Colleges responded by wildly jacking up their prices, and now you literally have to voluntarily take on a lifetime of debt to get a college degree for a job that probably won’t cover the cost of your loan. And what did the government do? They went right along with it, and demand repayment before anything else.
They recently started a benefit program with Medicare that gives you some money each month to buy health related items in drugstores and such, and they responded by jacking up the prices in Walgreens and CVS.
I’m all for UBI as well, but it has to comes with price controls so the corporate parasites don’t just take it all. UBI Gouging has to be a harshly enforced crime.
What we need is to jail people who do exploitive shit like this. Just like any other harmful acticity we jail people for.
Or maybe jusr, OP’s 50% tax deal ramps up the more acxumulated wealth and property you have. Tonstrongly discourage that practice. Like sure, you exploited your rent holdings and you are a ten millionaire. But now we are taxing you at 100% so we can bump people’s UBI subsidy up enough to account for your exploitation.
Good job, you accomplished nothing in the end.
We can’t jail them without a law that makes it illegal.
And if we introduce rent control, we need to replace it with other incentives to build new apartment buildings. Ideally ones that create a slight oversupply of housing. Otherwise, in a decade or so, you get cheap rent but tons of homeless people because the supply is insufficient.
The incentive is that its what is good for society and good for everyone. The ince tive is doing good. Because people need places to live.
Needs of the many vs needs of the few and all that.
Laws can be made. Laws are all made in the first place.
Building apartments currently cost about a quarter million per unit. Plus interest on the mortgage. Most potential landlords don’t just have millions in liquid funds.
Nobody will be taking out loans like that if they won’t even earn their investment back if everything goes to plan.
well that’s a uniquely us problem which doesn’t really apply to the rest of the world.
I don’t doubt that. In America, our government encourages the Sociopathic Oligarchs to exploit us. That’s why they love it so much here.
Yes, it definitely has to be recalculated frequently. If it doesn’t, it will be about as useful as the US minimum wage after some time.
But as I said, most people wouldn’t have significantly more or less money than they do today. At least I carefully calculated those numbers so that most people would have pretty much the same, for Germany in 2019. So I don’t really expect prices to go up drastically.
It’s not that people suddenly have 1000€ extra. Either their unemployment benefits get replaced by that UBI, or they now have to pay an extra 1000€ in taxes.
it’s not even supposed to be an “extra 1000€ in taxes”, it would just be gradually eaten up by taxes the more you make.
the big problem is, a lot of people on long-term sick pay who are not allowed to work would get less from this system. there needs to be something to deal with that.
Currently the tax rate is progressive. In the future it wouldn’t be anymore. But because those progressive taxes only apply to income over a certain threshold, people with lower incomes would profit more.
This system would not replace social security. If you get a pension due to age or sickness or in your first year of unemployment, you would still be covered by your mandatory insurance. Same with your mandatory health insurance. And you’d still have to pay for it on top of your taxes. The employee and the employer pay 20% of the gross income each.
it’s my understanding that the system would replace social security. the savings from slimming down the systems responsible for payout would be part of what made the entire thing possible.
It would replace long term unemployment benefits. And minimum pension. The benefits that are paid directly by the government, not mandatory insurance.
It would be mostly financed through getting rid of progressive taxes.
isn’t a progressive taxation system meant to ramp up as you earn more, not down? that would lose you money by getting rid of it.
Which is why UBI should be coupled with UBS (universal basic services). In this context, at the very least there would exist also a rental board (like Quebec’s existing Regie du Logement). If you’re more ambitious, housing would be a universal service and taken out of the market altogether. And don’t forget that that 1600E income of the landlord would be also taxed.
More generally: https://ubiadvocates.org/inflation-and-ubi-separating-fact-from-fiction/
If UBI is financed through measures that inject new money into the economy, such as deficit spending or monetary expansion, the risk of inflation may be heightened. This is because the increase in the money supply outpaces the economy’s capacity to produce goods and services, leading to a general rise in prices.
Conversely, if UBI is funded through redistributive measures, such as progressive taxation or cuts in inefficient spending, the inflationary pressures can be mitigated. By targeting resources from high-income individuals or unproductive sectors of the economy, such funding mechanisms redistribute existing wealth rather than injecting new money into circulation.
This ensures that the overall level of demand remains relatively stable, thereby limiting the potential for inflationary spirals.
UBI is a billionaire slop ideology to defuse political tension with gifts, accelerating capital accumulation in the process. It places the 99% as clients of a power-holding elite. It’ll produce a few generations of hapless losers, who’ll be utterly incapable of defending their rights when they eventually roll a cruel patron that decides to take it away.
Statistically, university students, part-time employees and non working people in single income households are the most active in protests. They have the time, the means and the education to do so.
Wage slaves don’t have time. And if they unionize they might get fired and not have anything anymore. So they don’t.
A UBI means everyone is capable of protesting. Why would that produce hapless loosers?
Exactly. UBI is a reactionary socialist concept. It is a bandage for a bigger issue, meant to appease so as not to incite revolt. However the real issue is a commodity economy / money. Its really hard to get the masses on board with abolishing that without global revolution.
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Then buy a different 200€ phone?
Iphone SE3 is like $130 refurbished, if you’re into iPhones. My partner has it and they have no complaints.
The problem is more definitional than anything else.
The basic proposition is to do valuable work, as others define value, in exchange for whatever you consider equivalent compensation.
If others don’t see value in alternative ways of operating, you can help define it for them. Map any activity to either money made, money saved, or time saved, or maintenance avoided/automated and just watch how the tone of those “stick to your job description” conversations change.
As soon as you learn to put what matters to you in terms that matter to others, this problem is a whole lot easier to solve.
The guy obsessed with driving a bus or unclogging pipes isn’t necessarily the same guy who can defend the value of those tasks. The profit motive redirects a lot of effort away from the task that needs doing to convincing others the task needs doing and for a living wage. But perhaps every imagined economic model will have a Convincing Stage. That could still be streamlined by removing the wage debate and guaranteeing everyone a livelihood.
Nobody said it had to be the same person doing all of it. You talk of social welfare nets like centrally mandated universal basic income, but you can’t fathom a volunteerist grassroots community-driven effort. Weird how you want your society to be some bizarre faceless bureaucracy that gives you whatever you want like some magic vending machine.
But, if you’re not going to be the one spending your time articulating other people’s value, why is that a task that’s important enough for someone else to do? If not you, then why would anyone else?
That’s the problem with most people’s utopian ideology. Most of it involves requiring things of some magical “others”. These things aren’t ever something that you’re willing to give up any of your own time to do solely for someone else’s benefit. The guy bitching about how someone should do something about all the litter in the street is somehow never the one to bend his own fat ass over to pick any of it up.
Funny how that works.
This is why America is in the situation it’s in. Everyone wants someone else to solve their problems for them instead of showing up to participate more than one day every fourth November.
There are plenty of jobs people don’t want to do unless they’re compelled. Lots of people wouldn’t even bathe if there wasn’t social pressure.
I would work literally any job if I knew I was genuinely helping my community become healthier, safer, and better able to enjoy life instead of the current system, where my labor only serves to put more money in the pockets of oligarchs.
Well at least they won’t commit crimes out of desperation like joining the military industry complex or worse Nazi-militia groups like ICE
There are a startling number of dudes who don’t wash their ass
Yeah, but there are plenty of dudes that would compulsively wash every ass in a 10-mile radius.
With a cloth, right?
Right?
I too have been to a comic con.
I completely disagree. I think most people want to do something, but they don’t have the means and opportunity to do a thing that fulfills them. I fucking HATE having a job. Coming to a place every day to do the same thing, it kills my motivation to do ANYTHING. The only reason I have one is to eat and to do the things I WANT to do. Usually pretty productive things, such as gardening, programming, repairs.
Those are all productive things. Things I COULD earn money for, but then they become work. I have to do them to survive, and so I no longer find the joy in doing them. If I could do them and not have to worry about bills being paid, I would by all accounts be a more productive member of society.
I don’t think people are all that fundamentally different. We have some differences in preference, but when you get down to the basics the majority of people are pretty similar. Some will fall through the cracks or abuse the system, but by and large no one WANTS to be useless. That’s a learned trait.
People like the person you reply to probably also don’t think “sitting on your ass making art while just existing on the subsidy” isn’t “productive enough” or some shit either.
Without realizing just how much of our current working society is built on completely pointless busy work nonsense. But its in an office and done in excel so its “Work” and its “productive” because it makes some rich asshole at the top richer.
If AI is doing one positive thing, its really really showing this out for the reality it is, because AI is pretty good at turning pointless data into equally pointless reports.
And I agree with you, people WANT to do things. I think even those dude who “don’t want to bathe” want to do things yoo, they just may not be “productive” things, or maybe they don’t want to bathe because they see the banality of everything we do in the world so why bother.
Exactly. No one gets to the point of not maintaining basic living standards when they’re raised in an environment of excess, stability, and choice. You get to that level when you’ve either never experienced anything other, or been beaten down enough to realize it’s pointless. Hell, I’d go as far as to say every thing living has the drive to get up and at least survive and procreate. They shut down and stop wasting energy when that seems impossible.
Sounds a bit naive on paper.
But thinking about it, I want to fact-check wikipedia sources for a living. Also make tools to automate shit. Also I fucking love assembling and fixing furniture so I could do that too.
No need to even pay. As long as I am not homeless or starving to death I would be happy and fulfilled doing those kind of work.
Tho I do think doctors and teachers etc should still make some extra money for the years of expertise before even starting the work.
It’s one of those things I’d love to see done as an experiment as long as it could be done ethically. Build a little town somewhere and have no prescribed jobs, just let everyone do what they want and see how it pans out.
Another one I’d like to see is to have two areas as identical as possible - same geography, climate, resources etc. and populate one fully with left-wing people and one with right-wing people and see which one does better. Unfetterd Socialist Utopia vs Unrestricted Ayn Rand Libertarian Boot-strappery or whatever. Settle it once and for all lol.
It’s one of those things I’d love to see done as an experiment
I believe you’ve got a fantastic idea here, not only to see how this one idea pans out, but to learn how we might build a better society. There’s little reason we couldn’t simultaneously have multiple test centres, each using a different system. Scientific method 101.
China famously began its modern transformation in the 80s by creating Special Economic Zones. These were cities where many of the economic rules for the rest of the country wouldn’t apply, and where new theories could be tested. There’s no need to agree with the goals China was pursuing, and for-better-or-for-worse have subsequently achieved, to acknowledge the method is brutally effective.
It’s a good thing I’m a wage slave, because otherwise, I’d build the Omnissiah.
Your kind cling to your flesh as if it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude Biomass you call a Temple will wither and you will beg my kind to save you.
This is me but obsessively analyzing the artistic merits of low brow mediums like animation and video games
You are not wrong. But I wish you were.
This is why a ubi is so essential when society evolves to a post scarcity state.
I’d recommend reading The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin if you’re interested in an in-depth depiction of how an egalitarian stateless society could function without money.
Her short story “The Day Before The Revolution” is a good add-on to this too, and the preface is interesting IMO.
My novel The Dispossessed is about a small worldful of people who call themselves Odonians. The name is taken from the founder of their society, Odo, who lived several generations before the time of the novel, and who therefore doesn’t get into the action-- except implicitly, in that all the action started with her.
Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with; not the social-Darwinist economic “libertarianism” of the far right; but anarchism. as prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism’s principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.
Thank you for the rec I’ll check it out!
Yup but that would require the true ruling class to see their blood spilled to get it. Progressive people have tried and continue to try to push UBI throughout the world. In Canada alone we have had recent experiences both on the Federal and Provincial level. They intentionally get hamstrung or directly shut down to poison any potential results.
The longer we go without UBI the worse it’s going to get. Christ look at youth unemployment globally let alone the general struggles youth are dealing with that didn’t exist even 20 years ago. We need UBI yesterday but we are still struggling to get people to even entertain the concept of it.
In Canada alone we have had recent experiences both on the Federal and Provincial level
We’ve got a new UBI pilot program starting this year! I have no doubt it’ll get set up for failure just like last time, but it’s fun to think about a world that’s not run by sociopaths. Of course, even if it does go well it’ll be useless without crippling Capitalism first to prevent companies from just raising prices and funneling the individual UBI money into shareholder pockets.
Hopefully we can keep Doug Ford away from it this time.
It’s ONT and BC so fingers crossed.
We should push for a UBMI
Universal Bare Minimum Income
“Basic” is debatable
Hard to argue everyone needs the bare minimum
Maybe they aren’t going to be able to buy their art supplies at first. But it’s definitely a start.
Wonderful thing about art is that multiple people can share the same crayon box
UBI? You mean Unstoppable Bot Invasion?
🤣😆🤣🤣😆😂😂
I’d be doing pickup truck stuff. I’m already that guy to my friends, family, and coworkers. Dump runs, moving, transporting large purchases like furniture, or bulk purchases like potting soil. Hell, sometimes I get free wood from trees cut down to drag home, split, and give away free to the neighbors. I’ve definitely thought to myself before that with a salary and a gas budget I’d be content with just doing that all the time.
That’d be freakin’ awesome
I obsessively/compulsively update and optimize computers. I see a missing driver or BIOS update not installed? A dusty CPU Fan? A security alert? I fix. I literally just went to bed after running “sudo dnf update -y && Sudo flatpak upgrade -y” on my wife’s laptop that she doesn’t even use! Thankfully, my work lets me tinker on machines all day, every day, and nobody cares if a side project shows up on the bench every now and then. I would do it for free if I didn’t need the money. When I’m not at work, I do IT for family, and I volunteer at the library. I don’t even game anymore, I self host and tinker. Hell, I spend more time mucking with Jellyfin than watching media. There are people like that. We exist.
I was like this, it eventually got kind of boring, now I’m learning beekeeping and old clock repair in the 7.5 hours a day leftover now that I’ve automated my job. Sorry “waiting for a maintenance window to do a server migration” or whatever it is people think I do.
Can you tell Me why Jellyfin keeps playing media with black bars across the screen? Every time I start playback, it’s a die roll whether I get a black screen, horizontal stripes, vertical stripes, a grid of black lines, or a perfectly ordinary video. I usually have to start and stop a video two or three times at the beginning to get good playback. The problem seems to get worse when My root partition is more full.
That’s a surprisingly complicated question! If you post the playback info, that might help. Also, what are you hosting Jellyfin on, what OS, environment, gpu? Do the same videos pay back clean in VLC? Does the computer posting back the media have scaling, or a weird OS? I have my Jellyfin in a Proxmox container and had all kinds of issues when passing a (very old) GPU through, but without it I can’t get 4k. I have more than a few movies where I manually re-encoded them before putting them on Jellyfin and kept the source file zipped up for storage.
Thanks for helping! I’m both hosting and playing it on a CachyOS (Arch) KDE machine with an Intel i5 and NVIDIA RTX, and the videos are fine on VLC, Haruna, and mpv.
I love customizing the art and movie ratings on my jellyfin
Honestly, if I was given time for it and a wage where I wouldn’t have to worry at all, I would probably be building drywalls.
I would be taking care of other people’s gardens. I’d encourage them to let me build habitats for native wildlife. And doing work outside is just so relaxing.
And I would build an alarm clock app, that lets you set the alarm according to the weather. It would allow you to set up alarms for snow and black ice. That way you can clear your section of sidewalk and use alternative transportation options to get to work.
Or maybe I’d open a repair-shop. One that also allows people to do the work themselves with tools and instruction.
Or maybe I’d open a repair-shop. One that also allows people to do the work themselves with tools and instruction.
I would use the hell out of this. I’ve been focusing on repairing over buying lately and it’s not only cheaper (obviously), but it’s really rewarding. Some plumbing, sewing to repair clothes, computer repair, I’ve come to realise that many things are easier to repair than you’d think and the biggest hurdle is just being shown how. For those of us who learn best by doing and being shown in person (not video) this would be amazing.
but it’s really rewarding
Exactly. I don’t even think that service could be offered any cheaper than having an employee do the repair.
But it’s fun. And it gives people insight into repairability, they can use for their next purchase.
I know someone like that who cannot keep a job because of autism and health issues. Luckily she lives in a functioning country and gets state support including money and guidance. She is the regional pet/pony/alpaca carer and her house is always filled with animals from people on holiday or sick animals from people with full time jobs. She also notifies all the local farmers if one of their animals has an issue.
That’s awesome! And I can entirely relate but my ADHD / autism isn’t so bad I can’t keep a job, but now with hindsight if could choose career path again I would leave the tech world of computers to work with animals. Instead I keep working in tech to afford filling my house with animals (at least as I work remotely I can spend a lot of time with them). Dogs, cats, fish, snakes, amphibians, parrots, …
🥹
