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[Truean]

We hardly need megaprojects to find productive employment for people.  Most places in the US and Europe have cut back on police and teachers, some pretty essential services.

Wouldn't road tiles like that become unsafe to drive on every time there's a freeze?

You cover em with asphalt or cement, a comparatively (inch or two instead of 6 inches) thin layer. The idea is it cuts down on the setting/curing time and the amount of pour asphalt.

[Blargityblarg]

We hardly need megaprojects to find productive employment for people.  Most places in the US and Europe have cut back on police and teachers, some pretty essential services.

Wouldn't road tiles like that become unsafe to drive on every time there's a freeze?

You cover em with asphalt or cement, a comparatively (inch or two instead of 6 inches) thin layer. The idea is it cuts down on the setting/curing time and the amount of pour asphalt.

I think there's a reason roads are meters deep; I don't think a little concrete and an inch of asphalt is quite gonna cut it.

[Shinziril]

I think people have pretty much covered these basic points, but here's my overview:

Capitalism is effective because it assumes the "worst-case scenario", that people are completely and utterly selfish, and manages to work anyway.  The problem is that keeping a human being alive, healthy, and reasonably happy takes a significant amount of effort.  The hypothetical completely selfish people say "Why should we go to all that effort?  Justify the expense of keeping you alive."  As such, people have to work to stay alive.  If they cannot work, bad things happen.

Welfare is an attempt to mitigate this issue, by providing the basic necessities "for free", but the effort has to come from somewhere.  The people providing the effort (or who are made to provide the effort) can end up unhappy about providing services to people who aren't necessarily giving anything back; perhaps not quite as badly as the hypothetical completely selfish person, but the sentiment is there. 

The ideal solution might be to simply provide the welfare anyway, and have the unhappy people simply DEAL WITH IT (insert your preferred memetic image here), but this is subject to the same problem as other "ideal solutions" like communism, namely that evolution has left humans fairly selfish, even if they aren't completely selfish.  It's not a stable situation. 

[nenjin]

this is an interesting read that addresses some of your topic: http://michael-hudson.com/2012/04/productivity-the-miracle-of-compound-interest-and-poverty/

Wow, that was an excellent read. His bias is obvious but I feel like it cuts through all the economic double-speak. I'll share this around.

It definitely re-affirmed one thing I've always believed in: I'd rather be poor and homeless than living in perpetual debt.

[mainiac]

Welfare is an attempt to mitigate this issue, by providing the basic necessities "for free", but the effort has to come from somewhere.  The people providing the effort (or who are made to provide the effort) can end up unhappy about providing services to people who aren't giving anything back; perhaps not quite as badly as the hypothetical completely selfish person, but the sentiment is there. 

The thing is that the actual effort provided is pretty minimal.  Sure the wall street types bitch about being taxed for social programs and claim they can go galt at any time.  But what we are actually providing to these people in concrete terms are things like food, clothing, etc.  We as a society have a vast surplus of material goods like food and clothing.  Isn't it strange that poverty even exists?

In ages past providing basic material necessities to everyone was a monumental task.  Now it's an afterthought, a task performed by a small subset of our population.  But everyone else still spends their whole life working their asses off to earn their share of those material goods.

[Durin Stronginthearm]

Isn't it strange that poverty even exists?

Not just strange, but obscene.

[Leafsnail]

The ideal solution might be to simply provide the welfare anyway, and have the unhappy people simply DEAL WITH IT (insert your preferred memetic image here), but this is subject to the same problem as other "ideal solutions" like communism, namely that evolution has left humans fairly selfish, even if they aren't completely selfish.  It's not a stable situation.

Wheras not providing welfare and thus creating an increasingly resentful criminal underclass is a completely stable situation that could have no possible repurcussions.

[King DZA]

The more I tend to think about it, the more firmly I stand in the conclusion that the entire fucking thing has simply become obsolete.

[Shinziril]

Durin, you messed up the quote there, it should be from Maniac. 

Wheras not providing welfare and thus creating an increasingly resentful criminal underclass is a completely stable situation that could have no possible repurcussions.

Nobody said that there had to actually be a stable solution.  Hope you can work one out!

[Mictlantecuhtli]

The more I tend to think about it, the more firmly I stand in the conclusion that the entire fucking thing has simply become obsolete.

[kaijyuu]

Obsolescence requires a superior option.


While there are plenty of potential improvements I can see, none encompass changing the "entire fucking thing." Just most of it.

[Osmosis Jones]

Obsolescence requires a superior option.


While there are plenty of potential improvements I can see, none encompass changing the "entire fucking thing." Just most of it.

Don't forget the upgrade costs; huge bloody revolution for the most parts...

[Leafsnail]

The more I tend to think about it, the more firmly I stand in the conclusion that the entire fucking thing has simply become obsolete.

What exactly is "it"?  I can think of several possibilities.

The more I tend to think about welfare, the more firmly I stand in the conclusion that the entire fucking thing has simply become obsolete.

The more I tend to think about jobs, the more firmly I stand in the conclusion that the entire fucking thing has simply become obsolete.

The more I tend to think about the road system, the more firmly I stand in the conclusion that the entire fucking thing has simply become obsolete.

The more I tend to think about poverty, the more firmly I stand in the conclusion that the entire fucking thing has simply become obsolete.

...Yeah, I'll need you to clarify.

Nobody said that there had to actually be a stable solution.  Hope you can work one out!

I'm not sure if welfare is a particularly unstable solution.  A few people will grumble for a while but a tiny portion of your income isn't really enough to create revolutionary resentment or anything.  Those people will still be fundamentally a lot better off than the people on welfare they're annoyed about.

[Lord Dullard]

The more I tend to think about it, the more firmly I stand in the conclusion that the entire fucking thing has simply become obsolete.

What exactly is "it"?  I can think of several possibilities.

Capitalism?

I mean, it is obsolete. Or at least growing increasingly obsolete as increased production and mechanization continue to throw it out of whack.

The richest/most powerful have no incentive to fix it, though, since for them it makes just as much sense to continue propagating a broken system so that they can maintain authority over a poverty-stricken underclass. In fact, as labor becomes less and less necessary, wealth disparity will inevitably become more and more prominent. Ironically the people with the power to feed, clothe, and educate the entire world have no incentive to do so. Of course we've already seen that centralized/planned systems are even more FUBARed than capitalism, so... it is what it is.

I suspect one of two things has to happen eventually: 1.) bigass First World revolt against a system that becomes so painfully broken and disparity-ridden that anything else would be unthinkable, 2.) the people at the top wise up to the fact that #1 is inevitable and create some kind of 1984-esque situation in which poverty is purely a forced/controlled situation rather than something that happens naturally, for the purposes of consciously keeping the masses weak and separated.

[mainiac]

A lot of people back in the Great Depression concluded that capitalism was obsolete in the face of rapid technological change.  When the depression ended, inequality plummeted and we had a robust welfare state and social contract, suddenly it didn't seem so obsolete anymore.