Comments | hairyfigment: weird economics

hairyfigment

weird economics

Sep 20, 2006 04:25

This post consists of a rough draft of my favorite plan to end poverty and wage slavery in America. My dream Congress would threaten to put this plan into operation unless experts produced a better plan.

( Click to read quackery )

Comments 7

Issues tandu September 20 2006, 14:36:24 UTC

Hi HF. This is Scott Rassbach, from Tim's blog ( ... )

Re: Issues hairyfigment September 20 2006, 21:35:09 UTC

1&2: Yes, that's a feature. Not the supposed crime increase, but the rest of it. By a startling coincidence, I'd like more people to find purpose in the practices of my religion instead of in money. And even if they reject my version of purpose, I want them to think about what sort of life they'd find worthwhile. I don't want them to focus on what they need to stay alive. It seems to me that making people focus on the "bottom line" works against democracy in the long run. If we want to preserve democracy indefinitely, we want citizens who tend to think first about the good of the nation and the preservation of freedom. By preference we want citizens who'd sacrifice their lives and perhaps even the lives of their families to prevent tyranny. The current system rewards the opposite. It rewards slavish devotion to bosses. It almost requires a single-minded attention to personal finances and "security ( ... )

Re: Issues tandu September 21 2006, 00:04:38 UTC

Well, I can see no point in arguing with you. Your plan has serious flaws which cannot be brushed away with "people will see the value in it, and adopt it." You assume people are rational. They are not. You assume people will subsume their self interest AS THEY SEE IT to the greater good, or to what would actually help them in the short or long term. They will not. If they did, we'd all be fit athletes who didn't smoke.

It's a nice plan. Unfortunately, the number of players who have to work against their self interestas they see it in order for it to be implemented is so startlingly high, it will never get implemented.

But hey, committed dreamers can accomplish a startling amount. Go for it.

Future rubylexicon November 28 2006, 20:20:33 UTC

Parts of this plan sound like Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, "Player Piano."

Re: Future hairyfigment November 28 2006, 21:45:14 UTC

Sort of. As I understand it, the government in that book made a strange attempt to stop people from thinking about purpose by assigning make-work. That just pissed people off.

amblinwiseass December 4 2008, 15:48:16 UTC

Parts of this plan sound a lot like something Robert Anton Wilson laid out in one of his books; I haven't read him for a while but IIRC it was in one of the volumes of the Cosmic Trigger trilogy. I specifically remember, though, that "automate yourself out of a job and receive a $50,000 pension for life" was a major part of the plan.

hairyfigment December 8 2008, 06:08:08 UTC

I know he put something like this in Schrödinger's Cat. I didn't think it would work without a few changes.