This sums up my reaction to this thread
ulrichPf said: “The manifesto is flawed and as are your ideas because it not solve the calculation problem that Mises talks about, as all the counter examples show. A computer cannot determine each individuals life circumstance and their own value system they live by.”
I think your understanding of what the manifesto proposes is flawed. Nowhere in the manifesto does it say a computer will solve the calculation problem or determine each individuals life circumstance and their own value system they live by.
Why would I care about my resume, I want the free money, so would millions of others. What is a serious student ? What parameters does your magical computer need to calculate this. If I set up a nose picking degree how will the computer know this is serious ? How do you know one is actually studying or just pretending to study ? Who determines how long studying is, you, the computer or some magical sky fairy.
Read again, I said it fails because of the Mises calculation problem, you probably have no idea what that is, so I suggest you inform yourself a bit.
Capital is the most controversial topic in all of economics. Every few decades or so there is a major capital controversy. The main questions are (off the top of my head):
- What is capital?
- What is interest?
- How is interest formed?
- What is the nature of capital accumulation?
- What is the relationship between capital and labor?
It’s not just about investment.
Yes, true. But that is also true of many different topics across many different fields. What is matter? Gravity? How is gravity formed? What is the nature of space-time? What is the relationship between matter and gravity? Big Cooling, or Big Crunch?
For the sake of most people’s lives, invest ~> profit/loss = jobs is not that difficult to comprehend. I would agree that many socialists do not understand markets (like thinking you can just get rid of them… as if it wouldn’t just be a socialist marketplace), but capital, I think, is pretty easy to grasp on its surface.
ulrichPf said: “Why would I care about my resume, I want the free money, so would millions of others.”
Because you may want to get a job when school ends.
“What is a serious student ? What parameters does your magical computer need to calculate this.”
You qualify for the dividend when the school year begins. How serious you are is up to you. This is not rocket science.
“If I set up a nose picking degree how will the computer know this is serious ?”
You need to enroll in an accredited school. An accredited school would not offer that kind of degree.
“How do you know one is actually studying or just pretending to study ?”
Their grades.
“Who determines how long studying is, you, the computer or some magical sky fairy.”
The magical sky fairy has already determined how many credits a student needs in order to earn a degree. You have never been to school have you?
ulrichPf said: “Read again, I said it fails because of the Mises calculation problem, you probably have no idea what that is, so I suggest you inform yourself a bit.”
The calculation problem was an argument against a centrally planned economy.
Where in the manifesto does it say capitalism will be abolished and replaced with a centrally planned economy?
And where does it say a computer will determine each individual’s life circumstance and their own value system they live by?
To expropriate and redistribute tax money around, you at least need a centrally planned federal agency to do that. It’s that agency would suffer from the calculation problem.
I agree that returning nearly 100% of taxes to the economy is preferable to returning it in services, but you would still be hindering it by 50% in taxes. The money that goes back is already tainted because it is redistributed based solely on that agency’s limited information. I hope you have noticed that your numbers are all completely arbitrary, and admit to yourself that the agency can change them as they see fit. But those numbers are just hunches on what you or the agency thinks it’s “fair”. By imposing your perception of equality, you are forfeiting the market’s evaluation (well, 50% of it), which is a waste of information at the very least.
GL on your hunches. May your socialistic system not fall like every other.
yuberries said: “To expropriate and redistribute tax money around, you at least need a centrally planned federal agency to do that. It’s that agency would suffer from the calculation problem.”
No, you are wrong. Like ulrichPf, you do not understand what the calculation problem is either. You do not need to centrally plan anything in order to tax and pay a dividend. It requires a law. That’s it. And that law would not take over a single business or any industry or the whole economy and would not attempt to set the price of any market good or service, which is what the calculation debate was about.
“I agree that returning nearly 100% of taxes to the economy is preferable to returning it in services, but you would still be hindering it by 50% in taxes.”
Hindering what? The continued disparity of income, wealth and power? The continued existence of poverty, unemployment, financial struggle, people without medical care and people without access to a post-secondary education?
“The money that goes back is already tainted because it is redistributed based solely on that agency’s limited information.”
It redistributes based solely on the fact that decent humans will not tolerate poverty and all the problems I mentioned above. And the information on all of that is readily available on a real-time basis.
“I hope you have noticed that your numbers are all completely arbitrary, and admit to yourself that the agency can change them as they see fit.”
Yes, things absolutely can change. That is what living in a democracy is all about. People can participate in establshing the rules and systems that govern society. The rules and systems is a process, constantly evolving and constantly being improved upon. They are not fixed in stone like some religious commandment.
This manifesto contains ideas that I believe enable us to take yet another step in improving society, the environment we live in and the overall human condition.
“But those numbers are just hunches on what you or the agency thinks it’s “fair”. By imposing your perception of equality, you are forfeiting the market’s evaluation (well, 50% of it), which is a waste of information at the very least.”
The market does not have the right to condemn anyone to a life of poverty, struggle and hopelessness. The market serves us, not the other way around. And where the market fails to deliver the results we want, reasoned human beings will intervene.
The 50% tax rate was used because that is the top rate that already exists. The purpose of the $20k dividend is to eliminate possibility of anyone falling into poverty. The purpose of the $30k dividend is to make everyone, who works, wealthy at a minimum, eliminate the problems of unemployment and eliminate the problems in attaining a post-secondary education.
Those numbers may then be adjusted based on the results they produce. That is the way progress happens.
“GL on your hunches. May your socialistic system not fall like every other.”
Again, a tax is not socialism. And all of the world’s most successful countries have a tax. You are completely misinformed. There is not a single country that has failed because it implemented a tax. And your life in particular will be directly improved because of a tax and dividend.
spoken like a true democrat.
You do not need to centrally plan anything in order to tax and pay a dividend. It requires a law. That’s it. And that law would not take over a single business or any industry or the whole economy and would not attempt to set the price of any market good or service, which is what the calculation debate was about.
“This is socialism in the outward guise of capitalism.” -Mises
Yes, things absolutely can change. That is what living in a democracy is all about. People can participate in establshing the rules and systems that govern society. The rules and systems is a process, constantly evolving and constantly being improved upon. They are not fixed in stone like some religious commandment.
“The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom…The Bolshevists persistently tell us that religion is opium for the people. Marxism is indeed opium for those who might take to thinking and must therefore be weaned from it.” -Mises
It redistributes based solely on the fact that decent humans will not tolerate poverty and all the problems I mentioned above. And the information on all of that is readily available on a real-time basis.
“The incomparable success of Marxism is due to the prospect it offers of fulfilling those dream-aspirations and dreams of vengeance which have been so deeply imbedded in the human soul from time immemorial. It promises a Paradise on earth, a Land of Hearts Desire full of happiness and enjoyment, and - sweeter still to the losers in life’s game - humiliation of all who are stronger and better than the multitude. Logic and reasoning, which might show the absurdity of such dreams of bliss and revenge, are to be thrust aside.… It is against Logic, against Science and against the activity of thought itself.” -Mises
The market does not have the right to condemn anyone to a life of poverty, struggle and hopelessness. The market serves us, not the other way around. And where the market fails to deliver the results we want, reasoned human beings will intervene.
“The essence of Marxian philosophy is this: We are right because we are the spokesmen of the rising proletarian class. Discursive reasoning cannot invalidate our teachings, for they are inspired by the supreme power that determines the destiny of mankind. Our adversaries are wrong because they lack the intuition that guides our minds.” -Mises
The 50% tax rate was used because that is the top rate that already exists. The purpose of the $20k dividend is to eliminate possibility of anyone falling into poverty. The purpose of the $30k dividend is to make everyone, who works, wealthy at a minimum, eliminate the problems of unemployment and eliminate the problems in attaining a post-secondary education.
Those numbers may then be adjusted based on the results they produce. That is the way progress happens.
“They have no greater perception of the essentials of economic life than the errand boy, whose only idea of the work of the entrepreneur is that he covers pieces of paper with letters and figures…In the socialist commonwealth every economic change becomes an undertaking whose success can be neither appraised in advance nor later retrospectively determined. There is only groping in the dark. Socialism is the abolition of rational economy.” -Mises
Again, a tax is not socialism.
“The word Capitalism expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas…For it is an essential difference between capitalist and socialist production that under capitalism men provide for themselves, while under Socialism they are provided for…What pushes the masses into the camp of socialism is, even more than the illusion that socialism will make them richer, the expectation that it will curb all those who are better than they themselves are…There will no longer be any room left for innovators and reformers…It is certain that many intellectuals envy the higher income of prosperous businessmen and that these feelings drive them toward socialism. They believe that the authorities of a socialist commonwealth would pay them higher salaries than those that they earn under capitalism…Men must choose between the market economy and socialism. They cannot evade deciding between these alternatives by adopting a middle-of-the-road position, whatever name they may give to it…The Welfare State is merely a method for transforming the market economy step by step into socialism.” -Mises
This manifesto contains ideas that I believe enable us to take yet another step in improving society, the environment we live in and the overall human condition.
“At the bottom of all this fanatical advocacy of planning and socialism there is often nothing else than the intimate consciousness of ones own inferiority and inefficiency…If a man says socialism, or planning, he always has in view his own brand of socialism, his own plan. Thus planning does not in fact mean preparedness to cooperate peacefully. It means conflict.” -Mises
And your life in particular will be directly improved because of a tax and dividend.
“That Socialism would be immediately practicable if an omnipotent and omniscient Deity were personally to descend to take in hand the government of human affairs is incontestable…The impracticability of Socialism is the result of intellectual, not moral, incapacity…Even angels, if they were endowed only with human reason, could not form a socialistic community…Socialism is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build; it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created…In its most fundamental contentions Marxism has never risen above the level of a doctrine for the soap box orator.” -Mises
I’ve actually been tearing this piece apart, line by line, with a friend. At no point in this, anywhere, is any plan presented. Several times there is a heading along the lines of “The Plan:” and then it just repeats the same nonsense principles, such as “We will all have magic robots that will do everything and we’ll all make lots of money even if we don’t work, or if we just do what we want.” That’s paraphrasing, but if you read it I doubt you’ll find much room to say I didn’t read into that right.
My friend noted something peculiar about this piece. The amount of money that the writer suggests each member of the populace receives is an exact number. In his curiosity, he realized that this number was actually the total world GDP divided by the number of people in America. Yep. 300,000,000, roughly. So…even in this magical fairyland idea, the author apparently wanted all the wealth distributed amongst Americans only, and the other six+ billion can starve.
Matt, not for nothing, but quoting Mises like scripture is pretty creepy. So this Mises cult has already brainwashed you into making sure your entire world view is based on his gospel, but at what point does he ask you to drink the Kool Aid?
The idea that you should oppose implementing systems that make sure society works for everyone because some obscure guy in history told you not to is plain twisted.
Maybe you need a support group. 
What if the quotes are better explanations than what might personally be offered? I quote people quite often when I believe their words would better get my message across. And from your context, are we to assume that the only people who should be quoted are those that are not obscure historical figures? How do you define “obscure”? What’s the standard? How many, say, churchill units make up a “washington”?
And it might be a little fanatical to make the claim that the proposed ideas are even a system, much less a system that does good by the whole world. There is no system described in this manifesto. Nowhere. Not once. And it is convoluted and contradictory at every level. It says that we will be free, we will be kings, and we will all have the power to tax. If we are exercising authority over people, how are they kings, and how are they free? I mean, this tax system has a lot of explaining to do. Perhaps you could try to sell me on it?
There’s always reasons beyond just personal preference for people entering a market. I’d like to ask “who will take out the trash”, but I think you’ll just say robots or resources. Where’s the incentive to do hard work
You see it’s your attitude toward work that is similar to communism. You think the state or in your case “resources” will just get everything accomplished. You think that people will just do harder tasks for no reason, or it will be ‘automated’ (or be forced to take up some tasks). Who’s gonna to do mind bending research? Take out the trash? Work in dangerous, stress producing, or take difficult tasks? Even entertaining jobs aren’t easy. What will you do if people aren’t productive in society? Punish them? Jail them? Give some people more? Which if you do, destroys your idea of equality.
There are many incentives to do a task, your society is not only impossible in production, it just does not work with human nature.
You are setting the price on what unemployment is worth, on what employment is worth, on what credit is worth… without giving people the chance to make those evaluations themselves. It falls under the calculation problem whether you admit it or not. The Fed does much less than what you want to do, and we call it central planning too…
Scarcity isn’t caused by the free market, it is a matter of reality.
If people won’t tolerate, then they can donate their own money, instead of enacting a law for what they would do anyways.
The market is “us”. Voluntarily exchanging agents. And again, it is not our fault, nor anyones fault, that humanity was born in the mud. Poverty is not inflicted nor condemned unless by theft or coercion. Struggle is a matter of life. Hopelessness is completely subjective and can’t be legislated away. Uh.. what else? Your intervention will add nothing to the wealth of humanity, nor reduce poverty, struggle, hopelessness. It’s just a shell game supposed to make everyone feel better, but will have great economical and moral repercussions, like welfare on steroids.
Thats the way social engineering happens (and ultimately fails anyway)
Let me remind you that what you’re proposing is a 50% federal tax, there’s still state and local taxes on top of that, so, the government will be intervening with the economy way more than they do today, even if in a manner which I find preferrable to returning the money on services (like the army, social security, medicare etc.), it will suffer from the calculation problem much more.
If the states on average meddle with like 25%, it will be 75%? 3/4 of everything the economy produces is controlled by the government… how’s that not socialism lol?
Matt, not for nothing, but quoting Mises like scripture is pretty creepy. So this Mises cult has already brainwashed you into making sure your entire world view is based on his gospel, but at what point does he ask you to drink the Kool Aid?
The idea that you should oppose implementing systems that make sure society works for everyone because some obscure guy in history told you not to is plain twisted.
Maybe you need a support group.
Actually, I just thought it was hilarious that I could manipulate entirely Mises quotes from circa 1920 to respond to your post. Someone could probably do the same with Frederic Bastiat from the mid-1800s or anyone that has discussed socialism. I could have left off the quotes and you probably wouldn’t have noticed the difference except for maybe “The Bolshevists.” You quote someone to give them credit - not to equate them to scripture. If you really want to see Mises’ polemics, read his book Socialism. It’s totally free on this site. Unlike your plan, you don’t have to drink the Kool Aid to understand his exposition of socialism. The only thing he ever asks for is to consider his reasoning.
Took me a while to dig it up. Apparently it was never finished, but it should be:
A Society Where Everyone Is Wealthy, Technology Liberates Us From Jobs, And The World Is A Paradise
(What a great initial heading. Just fantastic. I’m going to assume right off the bat that somewhere shrouded in the following mist of Zeitgeist reasoning there is an explanation as to how making everyone wealthy will not result in inflation of said wealth. I know there is no explanation, but let’s play this charade out. Technology liberating us from jobs is something that has already happened on several occasions, so I don’t even understand what angle that is coming from. I for one am glad that there is an assembly line that cranks out iPods, because they would be absolute monstrosities to behold if they were being assembled by hand. They would also probably be about three thousand dollars to cover the cost of labor. Boy, if there’s this much to say just about the header, we are in for a wild ride.)
Buckminster Fuller showed how technology enables us to have billions of billionaires.
(Citation needed?)
This manifesto shows how today we have the ability to instantly make all 220 million adults millionaires.
(Print 220 trillion dollars and distribute? This may cause some minor problems.)
It is crazy, and totally unacceptable, that in the year 2010, where we have the technology and resources to produce a near unlimited amount of anything, that we still have jobs that pay less than what it takes to live a life of wealth and luxury.
(All right, the first actual argumentative point. Let’s look at it more closely. First, the assertion that we have the potential to produce unlimited anything is blatantly false. Rather, we have sizeable capacity to produce many different things, but producing an unlimited number, or, say, enough so that everyone has one, is by no means trivial. Moreover, the question stands as to what exactly we should produce, or, at a more basic level, who should decide. Let’s move on.)
It is totally unacceptable that we still have poverty,
(I know, right? We should just pass a law that says “no more poverty”. And we could just shoot anyone who disobeys.)
even the simplest financial struggle, unemployment problems, people without their own home, people without their own car, people who don’t have the ability to vacation and travel,
(What, because they have no arms and legs?)
people without access to health care or education, and a society where only a very small percentage of the population gets to lead the good life.
(Groundless assertion. If you took all of the wealth in the world and uniformly distributed it, everyone would be impoverished. Then you list a number of valuable objects that not everyone has. Does it occur to you that perhaps the reason for this is the varying preferences of mankind, coupled with actual scarcity of resources? You’ve still provided no logical argument as to why these things are avoidable. Moreover, I can imagine some cases in which having one of those things might be a detractor. For instance, owning a home might actually cause problems for a single migrant farm worker.)
Things can be better.
(Sure, but by what means?)
We are going to show you simple changes that we can make so that we can have a society where 100% of the population, every single citizen, gets to live the good life.
(Please don’t tell me it involves something called “the Matrix.”)
It will create a society where if you work, no matter what you do, you get paid a high enough salary so that you can live an upper-class lifestyle. Every worker is wealthy.
(That is not what wealthy means. Wealthy means having more valuable goods than the average. If everyone has more valuable goods, no one is wealthy. But let’s assume you mean that everyone is able to live “the good life.” Well, this will require one of several possibilities:
1: Abolition of scarcity by way of production of enough goods for everyone to have as much as he can use. This is only possible by the accumulation of capital goods, which require producers to forgo immediate satisfaction, by definition.
2: Redefinition of “the good life” to mean “what we in power give you.”
3: Redefinition of “wealthy” to mean “holding an arbitrary number of some given monetary unit.”
This is completely neverminding that people, having their fill of one thing, will want something else as well. A lot of people might reach into the magic bag of endless cakes and take out a thousand cakes. Then they will say, “Okay, a thousand is enough for me. Now I want ice cream.” And so you need to have already produced the ice cream that will be desired. You will have to anticipate everything everyone will want. You will then have to hope that all the resources haven’t been used up in producing excesses of other things people might have wanted but in reality didn’t. If you try to produce these things as needed, you will forever be lagging in distributing. Everything everyone wants will have to be delivered, by whatever handful of people have “decided” they would like to deliver things. So there will always be people waiting in want. What will you do to combat this? Most paradise-seekers inevitably end up telling people what they will want and shooting anyone who objects and wants other things.
Let’s see where he goes. I’ve got five bucks on the head-shooting.)
It will create a society where we put an end to the job. The only work you do is the kind of work you would do if you didn’t have a job to go to. Everyone gets paid to do what they love. You get paid to do what you would be doing in your free time.
(A society without labor, or rather, a society in which the productivity of labor becomes a non-issue. This requires sufficient automation in order to produce enough to end scarcity–but that automation must also be self-repairing. We would need to automate the discovery, collection, processing of natural resources. We would need to automate manufacturing. We would need to either eliminate or automate invention. But that ignores the fact that fulfillment of wants is a pit with no bottom. To put it in terms that simpleton might understand, we would need an automated assembly line to produce scrubbers that scrub the dirty ends of automatic toilet scrubbers. And we would need an automated assembly line to build repair automatons to repair both the toilet-scrubber scrubber line AND the toilet-scrubber scrubber repair automaton line. And what if THOSE break down?
…then someone will obviously decide that repairing toilet-scrubbers15 is his life’s calling.)
It will create a society where you have full control over your time and are not the property of some employer.
(I thought you said a libertarian world was a bad idea? I mean, aren’t those the people that pointed out that employment is an agreement? I don’t know about you, but I don’t see people being whipped at the local McDonald’s.)
You will have the freedom to work full time, work part time, work in your spare time or not work at all in order to volunteer, to raise a family, enjoy more leisure, or to just explore opportunities other than employment.
(Misunderstanding of how labor-rent works. Groundless assertion. You keep saying this, but I’m going to need more than your word. I mean, what if someone doesn’t want you working for them? Do they have the freedom to tell you to piss off? Or are they the ones we shoot? Are you planning on explaining how any of this will work?)
It will create a society where everyone lives in upper-class, state-of-the-art, five-star, resort communities, where the public spaces are great works of art and the homes are all private palaces with every modern amenity.
(Yeah! All we need are to build enough resorts for 6+ billion people to live in, and also keep building enough for all of their kids. This is clearly trivial, and I have no idea why it hasn’t been done already. Wow. That sarcasm actually doesn’t work here, because you think this is plausible…)
Here is a quick overview on how to accomplish that and turn society into a paradise:
- MAKE EXISTING 35% INCOME TAX AND 15% FICA TAX FAIR
(Hmm. This is odd. What if my paradise involves not paying taxes, regardless of my material well-being? Is this where you get to the head-shooting?)
- Everyone pays that rate, no deductions, no special arrangements
- You pay the 35% income tax and 15% FICA tax on 100% of your income
(Why are these separated?)
- Makes the rich pay the same rate the worker does.
(I thought everyone was supposed to be rich and work was supposed to be an option for everyone?)
- Warren Buffet, the world’s richest man, paid just 17.7% of his $46 million in earnings towards tax while his secretary paid 37.5% of her $60,000 in income towards tax.
(Because the capital gains tax is low compared to marginal income tax rates. You realize it doesn’t have to be that way, don’t you? For example, if the government wanted to, they could abolish the progressive income tax and raise the capital gains tax above the income tax rate. Now, that forces me to ask why they don’t just do that in the first place? Well, it has a lot to do with living in a modern welfare state that has a functioning market and a government amenable to lobbying and bribes. High marginal income tax rates “soak” the rich to the psychic benefit of the jealous poor and locking people out of using high income to amass wealth. Rather, it becomes much more efficient to take advantage of the low capital gains tax–though such action requires amassed wealth in the first place.)
- Ends the special treatment given to the wealth who pay just a 15% income tax rate instead of the 35% rate the rest of us pay
(You’re failing to understand that the government currently differentiates based on the origin of your income. They seek to encourage capital gains compared to wealth-amassing via high income. Follow the money.)
- Ends the special treatment given to the wealthy who pay the 15% FICA tax on just a small percentage of their income instead of paying it on 100% of their income like the rest of us pay
(You just said this.)
- Tax code goes from thousands of pages to a single paragraph
(A single paragraph of the government law that the government cannot change or reinterpret? Amazing. I wonder if you knew that this idea alone is something that would have libertarians drooling?)
- Ends all the lobbying of people looking for tax breaks
(How does it do this? Because that would be great. But you need to say how. HOW?)
- USE TAX MONEY TO MAKE EVERY CITIZEN WEALTHY, NOT GOVERNMENT
(Government consists of citizens… uh… and… you’re shuffling dollars back and forth why? You realize that governments not only spend all that money (usually stupidly), but they also run deficits? You knew this, right?)
- Use tax revenue to pay every citizen a dividend
(I guess because you don’t understand how taxes work?)
- The majority of your power in this world comes from income, not from having a representative in government
(I’m sure you meant to say wealth, but whatever.)
- Taxes should be used to fund your lifesyle, not some government bureau
(Wow. What if we just kept that money to ourselves? Wouldn’t that help too?)
- Using tax money to make every citizen wealthy, instead of making government wealthy, is a far more efficient and humane use of tax money
(This is so painfully circular as to be painful.)
- PAY EVERY ADULT $20,000 PER YEAR
(That they pay $10000 tax on? Okay, let’s see where this is going.)
- Use tax money to pay every adult a $20,000 per year guaranteed, basic income that they get regardless if they work or not and regardless of how wealthy they are. It gets paid to everyone.
(Note that this requires, at its base, a real production of 10000*6 billion dollars, with government spending ignored. It requires us to ignore a large chunk of what comprises GDP and then it exceeds global production. 60 trillion dollars a year in payments to everyone.)
- Nobody ever loses the means to survive, enables us to eliminate every government welfare program.
(By replacing them with a nonsensical system by which everyone is handed a large number of increasingly irrelevant bills. What if survival takes more than $10000 per year? So much for answering the inflation problem. Not even a quarter through this and the whole theory has fallen flat on its face. By the way, the plan you have described so far is a giant government welfare program. Just sayin’.)
- Enables you to have greater freedom in lifestyle choices
(But everything is being produced, constantly, in excess. Why do I even need the money? Can’t I just take whatever I want, since I don’t even have to work for the money anyway? I don’t get how this helps anything. You just invented a nonsensical system and said “Let’s do this! It’ll totally work!”)
- It enables us to abandon the backwards policy of trying to create jobs and instead, pursue the more rational policy of trying to create technology that liberates us from jobs.
(You want to create technology to automate all production… for free. Oh boy. So…you need to create those jobs that create technology first. Who works them, in your deranged little world? Whoever fucking FEELS like it? For a reward barely greater than just sitting at home and watching whatever someone feels like putting on TV? If anyone felt like making the robots that make TVs? Technology comes FROM jobs. No welfare program created the laptop your manifesto was typed up on. It came from years of design and improvement and implementation that has never existed anywhere except where there were people working hard to run businesses. Where is the room in your world for the automatons with the ability to invent new things? Or to improve those things that exist?)
- All of our productivity comes from automation, being able to produce goods and services without labor.
(But which goods and services will we produce? Where will we get the machines for said automation?)
- The more we can automate, the richer we get.
(This is the first sentence in this “manifesto” that approaches within spitting distance of the truth, but even this is terribly flawed. For example, what if we automate the wrong things?)
- PAY EVERY WORKER $30,000 PER YEAR
(What do you do for a living? “I process oxygen and amino acids into carbon dioxide.” Who decides what constitutes a Job?)
- Use tax money to also pay every worker an additional $30,000 per year on top of whatever salary they earn.
(If everyone works, that’s another $90 trillion per year in real production needed. Actually, it’s twice that, since everyone is taxed at 50%.)
- Everyone who works, no matter what job you do, gets paid an upper-class income so that every single worker lives a wealthy lifestyle.
(If what job I do is irrelevant, why does it need to be the right job, or even anything productive? I could carve tiny animal figures from tree branches.)
- GET PAID UP TO $365,000 PER YEAR AT WHATEVER JOB YOU DO
- The power of choice is what enables you to wield full control over the economy.
(This sounds like a bad infomercial.)
- You get to choose the food you want, the house you want, the clothing style you want, the car you want, the entertainment you want, even if the vast majority of people don’t want the things you want.
(Who produces them? These hypothetical robots?)
- The economy is designed to cater to your individual wants and needs.
(By whom?)
- We are going to extend your power to dictate how the world serves you by giving you more than just consumer choice.
(“We” who?)
- You will also have the power to choose to live within a completely different economic system, if you think it will provide a superior standard of living and better quality of life.
(How? How do I, say, go over THERE to that system…you know, the one where people aren’t barely surviving on stale bread?)
- And choosing between economic systems will be as simple as choosing between McDonalds and Burger King when you want to eat hamburgers, you don’t need to start a revolution, overthrow the government, vote in a new system or impose your economic system on 100% of the population.
(Why?)
- One alternative economic system that we propose, is to establish a publicly owned, democratically controlled association of companies.
(What?)
- This group of companies will compete with the existing private companies and Wall Street companies.
(Nooooooo they won’t. Democratic control has serious shortcomings when applied to entrepreneurship.)
- This group will use all its revenue to pay employees a more equal salary.
(If all revenue goes to salaries, how will they buy equipment, or magic robots?!)
- This will enable everyone who works, no matter what you do, to earn $365,000 per year.
(365000*6 billion= what the fuck are you smoking?)
- ELIMINATE INTEREST AND AUTOMATICALLY EXTEND CREDIT TO EVERYONE
(Yeah, eliminate time preference! Free credit for everyone! What? You know that we did this recently, right? You see, there was this housing boom, where everyone was getting easy credit…)
- You will get access to your very own, personal Central Bank that will enable you to automatically and instantly get all the credit you want, from mortgages to credit cards, without having to pay any interest.
(I’m gonna call my Central Bank “the magic lamp.”)
- Eliminating interest will eliminate the biggest expense in your life.
(Unless you’re a net lender. It kind of sucks for them. By the way, who’s loaning this money? Is this money coming from all the taxes? What if someone takes ALL the money on credit? What the hell is going on in that tiny head of yours?)
- Eliminating interest will cut the cost of homes in half.
(You’re misunderstanding here. Misunderstanding what? Let’s just say, “everything.”)
- It will enable us to rebuild all our physical infrastructure and bring it up to date.
(Free money will?)
- It will enable us to turn our homes into palaces for the same amount of money we are currently spending on our homes.
(But you just said a factor of two. I couldn’t make my apartment a palace with an extra $700 a month.)
- It will enable us to turn every neighborhood into upper-class, state-of-the-art, resort, communities.
(Just as soon as our guys finish those magic robots!)
- It will enable us to put an end to neighborhood blight.
To learn about the full economic plan, read the Manifesto below. It describes how every human being should be treated like royalty and command the same powers as a King. It creates a society where the individual is all powerful and the individual rules the world, not government, not business.
(Kings by definition have power over others. If I have unlimited power over others, how can they have unlimited power over me?)
Granting everyone a life of nobility, and the wealth, power, and opportunity it gives you, is the secret to prosperity, health, relationships and happiness. It is the secret to a successful life.
(…and it can be yours with only 3 small payments of $39.95!)
MANIFESTO FOR A MILLIONAIRE SOCIETY
Empower The Individual, Not Government, Not Industry, And Create A Society Where Everyone Is Wealthy.
(Oh God, here we go. Again. This is just a repeating circle in which no real information travels the circumference.)
The purpose of this manifesto is to get you to vote.
(In elections. Of governments? That exercise power over you? Huh?)
And make no mistake, this is a full-on, no-holds-barred, unabashed sales pitch to get you to embrace an approach to our economy that is different than what we have now.
(Yes, I suppose psychosis is different from what we have now. And it’s not all that swell right now.)
What we want you to consider voting for is an economic plan that will raise the standard of living of everyone alive so that every adult IS AT LEAST A MILLIONAIRE and, most importantly, commands all the power, privilege and opportunity that comes with having wealth.
(Alright, I’m gonna try to look at this as favorably as I can. First, I note that, as libertarians frequently say, simply wealthy people actually don’t really have any power over me–it’s government that enables them to do so. So, what this guy’s really talking about is self-determination, and that we should all have high standards of living. However, so far he’s provided precisely zero actual methods to increase our well-being, so we’re still waiting on that one.)
The best way to describe this plan is to call it the Individual Monarchy because it gives every individual the kind of lifestyle normally reserved for royalty, and it gives every citizen the actual capabilities of a King:
(Now he’s off on a fucking retard rail. Kings exercise power over others. Now you’re not making sense. It really is appropriate that the best way you could find to describe this plan is with two mutually exclusive terms. Kings used to have the power to execute. Just sayin’.)
- It will give you the power to tax which will pay you an income of $50,000 per year in addition to whatever income you already earn. Our tax revenues are used to fund your lifestyle, not some government bureaucracy.
(The power to tax myself… and give it back to myself? Or do my taxes go to others? Do I tax others? What if I don’t want to? What would I be taxing?)
- It will give you command of a multi-trillion dollar worldwide empire that will enable you to earn up to $365,000 per year at whatever job you currently do.
(Worldwide empires are not frequently associated with prosperity and freedom in my mind. Convince me that I’m wrong.)
- It will give you access to your very own, personal Central Bank that will enable you to get all the credit you want, from mortgages to credit cards, no questions asked, without having to pay any interest.
(Again, absolutely no understanding of time-preference.)
- And it will enable you, with all those new capabilities, to turn the “kingdom” you live in into a paradise where you retire from your job, spend your time getting paid to do what you would be doing if you didn’t have a job to go to, and live in a palatial, state-of-the-art home located in a private, 5-star, resort neighborhood.
(All I need to do is produce enough wealth that I can build a palatial home while living under a 50% tax rate. Also, who is handing out the star ratings? Just some guy that thought it would be fun?)
A monarchy is a society ruled by an all-powerful King. In an Individual Monarchy, you are the King, and you will have all the power that comes with it.
(I already exercise a significant amount of power over myself.)
This is an economic program that is built on empowering the individual. It stands in stark contrast to the current status quo which is set up to empower government or empower industry.
(Which one?)
We believe it is the biggest wealth opportunity in the history of mankind. We believe it will be humanity’s Emancipation Proclamation.
(All right! It looks like he’s going to elaborate on how to create that wealth! …Nah, I’m just shittin’ with you.)
To command the power of a King, to live the life of royalty, to secure the benefits of wealth, to gain the opportunity to reach your full potential, all you need to do is cast a free vote for it.
(A free vote? On what? To whom? Do you understand that the way you appear to be using the word “free” suggests that it has no value?)
A NEW ERA IN SOCIETY
Everyone Earns An Upper-Class Income (But in Zimbabwean dollars!)
(Still haven’t put a foothold on that inflation question, mind you, but go on. I want to see how deep you can dig this well. It might be the only useful action you are taking, and it’s just a metaphor, so what-have-you.)
In this manifesto, we will lay out a unique economic plan which enables everyone to lead a life of great luxury and wealth,
(I hope you mean it this time, because you’re not even batting zero, and that’s not possible.)
(Hey, don’t count him out yet–understand that there is no limit to the possibility of how idiotic a person can be.)
where the minimum standard of living is equivalent to that of a millionaire, and where everyone earns a high, upper-class income to acquire the absolute best of what is available.
(You see, the problem is your assumption that if everyone was a millionaire, prices of things would be the same as they are right now. Let’s put this a more BASIC way:
10 IF Moneysupply= Increasing without bound
20 THEN Hyperinflation
30 INPUT “Put money in wheelbarrow?” X$)
Residents Live in Palatial, Five-Star, Resort Neighborhoods
(You keep saying it. You keep saying you have outlined a plan to make this happen, but you have no plan. You just keep telling me I will live in a five-star resort. This raises a question, however. What standard is the five-star rating going by? What kind of palace will I be living in? Palaces are big and all, but you must also remember that a palace five hundred years ago was just a giant slum compared to the low-rent apartments of today.)
It will create a society where low income, run-down neighborhoods become a relic of the past, along with the crime, struggle and hopelessness it breeds.
(“Will” seems to be your operative word. You said there was a plan. I could start walking around and telling people that they “will” be able to become dinosaurs, but that doesn’t mean it will happen. I also note that your “It” at the start of the paragraph doesn’t refer to any concrete noun.)
It will create a society where every neighborhood is transformed into upper-class, state-of-the-art, five-star resort communities, where the public spaces are great works of art that inspire awe and beauty and the homes are private palaces with every modern amenity.
(“Thank you, magic robots!”)
The End of All Jobs
It will put an end to jobs.
(I hope building the magic robots isn’t considered a job. That puts a major hole in this manifesto.)
(Is he going to tell us who gets to be Chief Head-shooter?)
It will create a society where there is no difference between work and play. Work will become an opportunity for people to do what they would want to do if they didn’t have a job to go to. It will be a source of growth, fulfillment and well-being.
(Aren’t you just repeating the same stuff over and over at this point? You’ve said this multiple times already. Repetition appears to be your only forte.)
The goal of the economy will no longer be to pursue the backwards policy of trying to create jobs. Instead, the goal will be to eliminate them using the latest technology and automation so that people are free to trade in their boring, menial, monotonous jobs and the rat race of living paycheck-to-paycheck for productive lives of meaning, adventure, excitement, leisure and higher purpose.
(Who said the goal of the economy was to create jobs? I don’t think there ever was any “goal” of the economy. I think the economy may just exist whether or not there are goals. People set the goals. Are you saying that our goal should be to build these magic robots that will henceforth take care of everything so we can do whatever we want? Okay. How? Because we kind of have to keep working until we reach that point, and if we divert all of our resources to that cause and it doesn’t work out right away…a lot of people are going to have to start farming REALLY FAST.)
You will no longer get paid to do some chore that a machine can easily do. Work is no longer a place where you don’t have full control over your time and are regarded as the property of some employer.
(My employer doesn’t regard me as property. My employer doesn’t want to lose me. I do good work. If I go work somewhere else, it hurts him more than it hurts me. He can’t force me to stay, either. Forget it. That doesn’t even matter. Machines cost money to produce. If we really had the resources and the money to waste on your magic robot idea, we would already have machines that could replace everyone at Burger King affordably. But there’s the problem in a nutshell. Five people making $10-20,000 a year at Burger King is a hell of a lot cheaper than manufacturing a machine or two that can carry out the complicated tasks necessary to pump out burgers, dress them to order, wrap them, and hand them to customers. I saw a video on Youtube recently where some engineers were giddy because they manage to get a robotic arm to half-assedly flip a fake pancake. I’m sure that robot and the accompanying hardware could pay the wages of those five people for at least six months, and it would only be able to flip a hamburger…and THAT’S only if someone is paid to set it up for hamburger flipping first. And believe me, this wasn’t a self-repairing robot. It would need maintenance, probably daily. Also, given its size, I’d say the electric bill alone would be more than the cost of employee lunches.)
(I wonder if he’s considered that the only reason that all production isn’t automated is that the minimum wage is too low… by like a factor of a thousand.)
And it will create a society where entrepreneurs and people with ideas have access to even more resources and can earn even greater profits in this new, rich environment.
(How, you dumb shit? This is you: “This will totally work, and we should totally do it, because it would totally work, which is why we should do it: Because it will work.”)
Human Nobility
It is good to be the King.
(Mel Brooks quote fail.)
And all the wealth and power that comes from it is extended to every individual member of society. Individual power is at the heart of our belief in Human Nobility. All human beings should be treated like royalty and are more than just a mere commodity of labor.
(Humans are so noble that we think that they should let magic robots do all the work, as it would make things better.)
Granting everyone a life of nobility, and the wealth, power, and opportunity it gives you, is the secret to prosperity, health, relationships and happiness. It is the secret to a successful life.
(Did you know that the word “granting,” as you used it, is a transitive verb? Like, one with a subject, a direct object, and an indirect object? Granting (I am) that your indirect object is mankind, who’s doing the granting? And what does it mean to be given the secret of relationships? Or happiness for that matter?)
By virtue of being born human, you deserve access to certain rights that provide a dignified life and the resources that enable you to reach your full potential.
(Like in Dragon Ball Z.)
The Beginning of Unprecedented Prosperity
It will create a society where in the face of disease, misfortune, life’s biggest questions, and an insatiable appetite for people to want only the absolute best for their lives, we will be armed with an ever increasing arsenal of progress to deliver a lifestyle even the richest today will gawk at.
(Do you realize that capitalism and the market system actually already did that in the last 200 years?)
That world is possible now, and it can happen immediately by simply casting a vote for it.
(To whom? I’m pretty sure that “abolish scarcity” was nowhere on the last ballot I filled out.)
THE POWER TO TAX
Get paid $50,000 per year, tax free, in addition to whatever income you currently earn.
(Or get paid $20000 a year to sit on your ass. And you don’t see what kinds of incentives such a world creates?)
The first component of our economic program is the power to tax.
Giving you the power to tax means tax money is no longer used to fund a government that provides a massive waste of bureaucracy. Instead, we are going to cut out the government middle-man, and just send that tax money directly to each citizen.
(That’s it. I’m tired of this shit. I’m voting to tax you, the writer of this goddamn “manifesto” of all means you have of collecting and recording thoughts. Think about what you are saying. An amount of money is taken from each citizen (by “someone”) and sent directly to…EACH CITIZEN! What the hell does that accomplish? AND THERE STILL HAS TO BE A FUCKING MIDDLE-MAN!)
Instead of having a 35% income tax and a 15% FICA tax paid directly to government, that tax revenue is going to be paid directly to each citizen. You are going to spend that tax money yourself, instead of having the government spend it on your behalf.
(What boggles my mind is that some people already think that all taxes get “paid” to citizens. Still can’t get over the roundabout logic here…if we can use the term “logic”…that says the citizens will gather revenue from themselves to pay themselves. “Everybody put an apple in the basket. Okay…right…now…everybody take an apple.”)
$20,000 Basic Income
By doing this, we will be able to pay every adult a $20,000 yearly income. That money is paid to every adult, regardless of how much they earn and regardless if they are working at all. It gets paid to everyone–rich and poor, employed and unemployed.
(By doing what? Where is this money coming from? I mean, no manifesto can cover every aspect, I suppose, but to properly qualify as anything even remotely resembling a working idea, you have to fill some of the endless, gaping holes…at some point…somewhere. Anywhere. Fuck, at least crack a joke here and there so I can chuckle at something that DOESN’T make me think you are stabbing yourself while you write this. Why do I think that? Poor circulation to the brain is the only way this possibly could have been written seriously.)
This guaranteed, basic income has been something advocated by American Founding Fathers such as Thomas Paine and iconic, modern-day free market economists such as Milton Friedman.
(Notwithstanding any logical contradictions or moral hazards generated by this. Also, Paine wasn’t a Founding Father. Another note, if the minimum wage hasn’t resulted in abolition of poverty, why will doing the same thing, only harder have any better results?)
It ensures nobody ever loses the means to survive and never slips into poverty.
(“Unless we have to shoot them. And having stale bread is totally not poverty. You’re eating, right? Hey, we’ll get those magic robots eventually.”)
This gives us the ability to eliminate every government welfare program which many people find unfair and unpopular. And it eliminates the need to have a social security, medicare and medicaid program which is the majority of what the federal government does.
(You are here assuming a stickiness of money value which simply isn’t so. Imagine a world with three loaves of bread and four hungry people with $1000000 each. What will the price of the loaves of bread be bid up to?)
It also gives people flexibility and greater freedoms in lifestyle. That income enables you to pursue opportunities other than employment such as volunteering, education, more leisure and raising a family. And it gives you the opportunity to pursue non-traditional jobs which may bring you greater satisfaction but less secure income such as writing a novel, doing scientific research or launching a business.
(Why would you launch a business? Where are you going to find workers? What will you produce that the magic robots can’t produce?)
But most importantly, it will enable us to finally abandon the caveman policy of trying to produce jobs and instead, enable us to pursue the more rational policy of trying to produce automation that liberates us from jobs.
(I am going to note here, once and for all, that institution of a “living wage” has the peculiar effect of drastically reducing production. Why? Because letting people live decently while producing nothing has the totally unexpected consequence of a whole lot more people, who would otherwise be working, sitting on their asses. Thus, production of goods and services decreases, yet the supply of money (assuming no fiscal tomfoolery) stays about the same. Thus the buying power of each individual monetary unit drops. And don’t go thinking that you can fix the problem with fiscal tomfoolery. Any such attempt results either in the collapse of the money system, impoverishment of the ass-sitters, or further redistribution to the ass-sitters, or some combination of these, to varying degrees. And calling it a “more rational policy” doesn’t change the fact that producing automation IS A FUCKING JOB. Whore.)
The End of the Job
Our productivity comes from automation. Being able to produce more goods and services using less labor is how we increase our wealth. Increasing automation and eliminating jobs is what makes us wealthy.
(You know, if I ask a five year old to write me a paper telling me what he wants for Christmas and why he wants it, and he writes, “I want a bike, because bikes are cool.”, that is at least a complete statement and a full answer. You keep stopping at “I want a bike.” No…you know what? No. It’s worse than that. You skip that part and just write “bikes are cool”, without ever mentioning that the bike is what you want. You’re in fucking lala-land, whistling away while random shit pops into your head, and people are asking you to move out of the way, but all you can answer with is “bikes are cool”. Go to hell. No. Go to your god-damn utopia. I hear they have bullets with everyone’s NAME on them.)
And automation improves our quality of life. It frees us from having to spend our limited time doing tasks nobody has any interest in doing.
(Thank God for janitors.)
The only work anyone should do is the kind of work they would do if they didn’t have a job to go to.
(That’s called leisure. I’m not sure where you think you’re going with this.)
You should get paid to do what you love, what brings you the most satisfaction and what you would be doing in your free time.
(Soooooo… you’re saying I can be paid for making fun of your silly “doctrine?”)
The fact that most of us spend the vast majority of our brief moment in time in this universe working a job is a tragedy.
(No. No it isn’t. You see, “tragedy” is a literary concept by which a character’s faults result in a bad outcome for him. I just can’t stand it when people call things that are merely unfortunate, “tragedies.” They are not. Hubris creates tragedies. Ambition creates tragedies. Nine-to-fives do not create tragedies. Rather, they generate wealth, both for the employer and the worker. They make things that you want to consume… and sell them to you for your consumption. If you were to say, with good intentions, get people to NOT do that… and we all starve… that would be a tragedy.)
We should use automation to eliminate every job that exists that people only do because they are getting paid to do it.
(We’ve been over this because you’re just repeating yourself. How many people want to build magic robots for a living? What if the job of building magic robots sucks?)
(Also, you’re somehow trying to pretend that it’s logical that if no one had to work, everyone would work.)
Work should be a source of growth and well-being, not a chore.
(Do we need to define “work” here? I think we might. Work is both a source of growth and well-being and a chore… right?)
People should spend their time being productive in something that inspires them to live, not working some job like a piece of machinery.
(I thought they should be able to do what they want? Or are you going to tell them what they want?)
We can have a world where there is no difference between work and play.
(That’s a horrific idea! Imagine no enjoyability, is that what you’re saying?)
We can have a world where everyone retires from their job.
(Assertion =/= reality. What jobs? I thought you said there were no jobs?)
We can have a world where everyone looks forward to every day, not just the weekends, because they are doing something that they would be doing even if they weren’t getting paid.
(What about the Peter Gibbons of the world?)
The only way to progress, the only way to maximize our automation capabilities and the only way to put an end to the need to have menial jobs is if people are paid a basic income that they get whether they are working or not.
(I don’t think you know how things work.)
The need to have jobs, so people can earn an income to survive, holds us back.
(No, it forces lazy people to produce. It’s kind of the reason you were able to type this redundant, rambling monologue up.)
The vast majority of jobs we do can be eliminated tomorrow with automation.
(At what cost? The fact that they aren’t is suggestive. Show your work. Do you mean we can just demolish those evil job buildings?)
It is no longer the 20th century. We live in a new world.
(I… I don’t know what to say. Should I say something about how Brave he must be to write this stuff down? Or maybe I can note that putting a random year up isn’t an argument. Where the fuck is my flying car?)
The economy is now digital, powered by intelligent machines and no longer requires human labor to do most tasks.
(This is patently false.)
We employ 3 million people in banking to do a job a cheap computer can do.
(Marx says “Hi.”)
We employ 15 million people in making all our products but then use 20 million people in trying to sell them.
(See above.)
100% of our physical wealth comes from just 35 million jobs in mining, utilities, manufacturing, construction, maintenance, healthcare. That’s just 1/5th of the workforce. We can switch to working just 1 day per week without any reduction in our standard of living.
(Do you understand that you’re just saying that jobs that people willingly pay for that are unproductive? This is the same bullshit ideology from the 1700s that said that anything not involving the land was unproductive. Brokering is a valuable service.)
The remaining 115 million jobs can be automated with existing technology (banking, transportation), are obsolete (retail trade) or are things people volunteer for (music, fire, police, education).
(WOW. Just… WOW.)
The waste and inefficiency trying to keep this ancient system going is criminal.
(Ancient? Ancient? Ancient? Ancient? Do remember the internet of the 1700s? I didn’t think so.)
We are wasting tens of millions of human lives and talent. We are wasting our most important and most valuable resource.
(No… no… we’re putting them to use. And I’m a little put off by your very casual assumption of ownership of others as resources.)
We have real problems that need to be worked on like curing disease, developing the next generation of energy, and figuring out why we exist in this universe and how it all works.
(Wait… you mean… like… scientists and doctors? Stuff they’re already doing? Without magic robots? Hold on a minute? Who in their right mind is going to be motivated to spend years learning how to solve differential equations if magic robots simply drop grapes into our mouths all the time.)
Instead, we have people wasting their lives driving around in polluting trucks, kids in the mall selling jeans instead of in college and an army of tens of millions of office employees doing nothing more than shuffling around paper.
(Are you saying we shouldn’t have trucks or jeans or paper? How will machines handle all those things for us? Will they pollute? Will they be delivered on nonpolluting trucks?)
All these jobs should be eliminated now using existing technology and intelligent systems so we can get on with living the good life.
(If there’s no motivation to improve technology, where will we get these intelligent systems?)
We can have a better, more rewarding life and, more importantly, we can begin using those people to work on real issues.
(We… can… begin… using… people…?)
$30,000 Worker Bonus
And in addition to that $20,000 basic income, we will also be able to pay every worker another $30,000 per year on top of whatever salary they earn.
(Who will determine what constitutes a “job?” Bureaucrats? Magic robots? You can’t just throw money at problems and solve them… see GM… see public education… see roads…)
That is a total of $50,000, tax free, in additional income you will earn every year. And since these incomes are based on GDP, they will grow as the economy grows.
(But you said there was a 50% tax? Now the numbers make even less sense! Three years into this, we’re going to be down to one or two rotten oranges and a dollar. Incentives, man! Incentives!)
In our current system, 94% of all the workers in this country will never earn a six-figure, upper-class income.
(Print enough funny money and they will, no problem.)
But with the $50,000 tax bonus, we have just raised the average worker earnings to a six-figure, upper-class income. And we are just getting started.
(TOTALLY NOT OMINOUS.)
HAHAHAHA. That was some hysterical satire. It is evident that it only takes common sense to realize that this Utopia is utter non-sense. Reality is laughing in its face.
Now I will have very good example to every statist who calls anarchy an “utopia”. THIS IS UTOPIA, not anarchism dammit 