Protagonist, on their knees and spitting blood: You may be stronger than me, but I have one thing you don’t.
Villain: Let me guess, love? Friendship? I’ve heard it all before.
Protagonist: No… “updog”.
Villain: …
Villain: What’s “updog”?
Protagonist, highfiving their friend and probably re-opening several wounds: I TOLD you he’d fucking say it.

đŸ”„ technological unemployment and ubi vs wage subsidies and/or abolishing the minimum wage

the-real-seebs:

ranma-official:

blackblocberniebros:

argumate:

mailadreapta:

argumate:

eightyonekilograms:

wirehead-wannabe:

thathopeyetlives:

mailadreapta:

UBI will be disastrous if implemented. Long-term idleness, which is what UBI enables, the explicit reason that UBI exists, is disastrous to the human spirit, and it will inevitable reduce a large fraction of the population to a near sub-human existence.

My preferred solution to the problem (if it is a problem) is a guaranteed jobs program.

I am somewhat inclined to agree with the second sentence, not quite as much with the first. I have a fair amount of hope for such a project, just not very much optimism. 

(FALC and UBI-plus-heavy-automation combination worries me much more)

What about a guaranteed capital program? Jobs mitigate some of the long-term idleness issues but hardly attack the source. 

Makework feels to me like it might not be that much better than idleness, in that it teaches you, at least on a system-1 level, that work isn’t something that’s *really necessary*, and that it’s just a pointless obligation imposed by authority figures.

Seconded, and maybe it doesn’t even go far enough. Make-work is awful. I can’t overemphasize how much resentment is generated when you’re forced to bust your ass for work that you know for a fact has no point. And to be honest, since a lot of labor in our current economy, even for the employed, is bullshit make-work and the malaise is already obvious, I’m confused as to how someone could think it’s the solution.

At least in idleness you could be playing video games. (I’ve seen the hypothesis floating around that, in utter seriousness, video games are the other half of the UBI puzzle. I don’t know if I believe it, but it’s a delightfully subversive take.)

“idleness” can also involve creating works of beauty that might not be financially sustainable in the current economic environment.

think of all the scientific discoveries and works of art and literature created by aristocrats who were technically “idle”, coasting on inherited wealth.

sure, some people may choose to spend their lives cock fighting or whatever instead, but so what.

“Idleness” can involve creating works of beauty, but honestly argumate, how many people would do that? “Somebody could paint the Mona Lisa in their UBI time” is not a serious argument, because only a tiny, tiny fraction of the population has the inclination and the skills to do that.

The people who already live entirely on gov’t support, what do they do? Does it look like “scientific discovery and works of art and literature”? Do you want to dramatically expand the number of people living under those conditions?

better round them up and send them to the sugar plantations then, for their own good

Who the hell are these fucking super villains who think idleness is bad? Fuck off and head down to the salt mines if you think hard labor is so soul-nourishing. You’ve got no business forcing it on everyone else.

there’s nothing “super” about these villains

Hey, @mailadreapta, you know what reduces people to a subhuman existence? Working fourteen hours a day. Being abused by their boss and just taking it because the alternative is starvation. Having to beg for scraps.

I think mailadreapta may be the unicorn: The actually lazy person.

When evaluating social policies, people assume other people act the way they would act. The people who think people would be lazy and do nothing are the people who would immediately stop and do nothing the moment they had subsistence-level supports, rather than seeking something to do.

Also, the point about UBI is
 It’s enough to live on. It’s not necessarily enough for a comfortable life. Virtually everyone I know would trade at least some hours of time for, say, money for video games or something.

But all but one or two of them would make things. If you wouldn’t, mailadreapta, that is your fucking problem, please stop blaming everyone else for a character flaw you are projecting onto them. Find something you care about enough that you’d do it even if you didn’t have to, and grow the fuck up.

self-healing:

self-healing:

hey so i love my shy, reclusive and awkward girls. all of you. those of you who don’t have very many friends or any friends at all, i adore you and appreciate you.

i also say awkward to mean away from the ‘quirky’ definition. i mean girls who are scared about carrying conversations or are often excluded from them, girls with social anxiety, girls with soft low voices, girls who are afraid to make direct eye contact, etc.. i understand it’s difficult doing this everyday. i love y’all!

sonnywortzik:

i’ve mentioned this here before, but it will remain one of the most ideologically influential experiences of my life: when i was in fifth grade i did a report on post traumatic stress as manifested in veterans of the vietnam war, and my father did me the huge favor of connecting me w/ a vietnam vet friend of his who was diagnosed with PTSD, assuring him that while i was only ten i was bright and curious and he should be as honest with me about his experience as possible. 

i remember entering his office with my tape recorder, sitting in a chair that was too big, and asking him questions about war, and his life after war, while swinging my legs over the edge of the chair. i remember being very, very quiet as he spoke of pulling the car over on the highway for fear of crashing when his hands would shake uncontrollably in response to song on the radio or a smell that he couldn’t be sure was real or sense-memory. and of ruined relationships and anger and american hypocrisy. 

and i also remember that was the day i learned what “valor” meant. he used “valor” in a sentence and i didn’t know that word, and when i asked him to explain “valor” he became very quiet. and i can’t remember precisely what he said, if he ever offered me the dictionary definition or not, but i do remember him looking very sad, and saying something about our country’s idea of “valor”, and also something about a broken promise. and there was an edge to his words that i couldn’t parse at the time that i would later come to understand was bitterness, that he sounded bitter. 

to this day i can’t hear or read the word “valor” without seeing sunlight coming through his office window at a slant, close-to-sunset light, and feeling the kind of quiet, confused, completely internalized panic a child feels when they sense that a grown up is trying very hard not to weep in their presence. 

observethewalrus:

cutiequeercris:

byakuya-mioda:

if exploring your gender is ‘becoming a trend’ then i’m glad it’s replacing the ‘being confused and miserable with no context or vocabulary for what you’re going through’ trend

there is honestly zero things wrong with people exploring their gender

Exploring your gender leads to either discovering a gender identity you feel more comfortable with than the one you were assigned at birth or realizing you identify best with your assigned gender except now you have a better understanding/awareness of trans, genderfluid, and nonbinary people and can begin to break down the toxic, transphobic bullshit you have most likely heard or seen at some point in your life 🙂

It’s a win-win