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[Andir]

If these places exist, why don't some of the brightest and smartest people come from these places?

France is in fact known for its philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians.  Similarly, consider Poland when it was a satellite state, or Russia under communism: both produced some of the very best mathematicians and novelists the world has ever known.

Wow.  Your nationalism is moot.

I'm not sure what this conversation has to do with nationalism...

Does France give free homes and food to everyone?

Andir, you've just made my point for me, several times over.

People (other than you, apparently) generally don't work for basic "necessities", they work for social and cultural reasons. The motivations that make most people work would still exist, even if they were giving a stipend each month they could live off of, or were provided with healthcare. Its the same reason rich people work, even though many of them could stop immediately and live comfortably for the rest of their lives.

I'm not actually sure what we disagree on anymore.

The social pressure is that of another burden.  They are pressuring you to ease their own burden.  If everyone was given a free home, food, and care this burden would not exist.  the person living in that situation could just go get their own place and would feel no social pressure to move out and/or make an income.

[Andir]

While these things are problems, they're also evidence against the claim that people are lazy.  In fact, they're proof of our ingenuity applied to maximizing our return return/investment ratio in regards to fulfilling our natural drive to work.  In essence, we've worked really hard over decades of game development to perfect our ability to avoid working hard.

I think you're proving my point.  People may want something to do, but they want the easiest thing to do that will grant them reward.  You'd have an entire population trying to do the least amount of work that leads them to the reward they want.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

While these things are problems, they're also evidence against the claim that people are lazy.  In fact, they're proof of our ingenuity applied to maximizing our return return/investment ratio in regards to fulfilling our natural drive to work.  In essence, we've worked really hard over decades of game development to perfect our ability to avoid working hard.

I think you're proving my point.  People may want something to do, but they want the easiest thing to do that will grant them reward.  You'd have an entire population trying to do the least amount of work that leads them to the reward they want.

He's disproving your point. People have a natural inertia to work that they desperately want to fulfill, and sometimes people use various technologies to make themselves an instant mental gratification machine and to glue themselves to it until they burn out. These people are called addicts, no matter if their poison is heroin or World of Warcraft, and they are not even close to being a meaningfully large part of the population.

Most people's inertia to work is put towards worthwhile endeavors, but if they don't have a set of ground tools provided to them most people will have no idea where to go and flounder.

[SalmonGod]

It does and it doesn't.  You're claiming that society can't function unless people are forced to work by making it an immediate and constant requirement for their survival.  This is essentially an argument of work for its own sake.  What I just explained shows that we're driven and capable of minimizing the amount of work that is required of us, whether it's for maintaining a functioning society or simply feeling like we're working when we're not.

Part of the problem with the job market today is so many jobs have been going obsolete over the last several decades.  We're constantly able to accomplish more with less effort.  Those with control over resources necessary for job creation don't need any more people working for them.  But your position is that we must require them to work anyway.

This centralized control coupled with belief that a person must have a job to justify their existence is very much blocking humanity from progress.  We're working backwards.  We're forcing ourselves to struggle to invent work to do, no matter how unnecessary it may be, and in the process we're generating extreme excesses of material wealth that only goes to waste because it's just not needed and less people over time are able to justify by virtue of their labor their own privilege to share in the product.

[Aqizzar]

While these things are problems, they're also evidence against the claim that people are lazy.  In fact, they're proof of our ingenuity applied to maximizing our return return/investment ratio in regards to fulfilling our natural drive to work.  In essence, we've worked really hard over decades of game development to perfect our ability to avoid working hard.

I think you're proving my point.  People may want something to do, but they want the easiest thing to do that will grant them reward.  You'd have an entire population trying to do the least amount of work that leads them to the reward they want.

Yep, I knew this would come up again eventually.  I did a quick forum search, and I think this exact same argument happened at least three times, all last year.

I point to the counter example I always have before.  The dynamic you're describing, that people will always work as little as it takes to survive (which runs starkly contrary to your other beliefs that it's regulation and not lack of ambition keeping people down) has only born out once in any real-world scenario.  In the 1990s, Sweden was finally delivering a high enough standard of social services - guaranteed housing, guaranteed public transit anywhere, guaranteed 2000 calories a day if you can't afford it, guaranteed healthcare on demand for all, and essentially free higher education - that they finally saw people dropping out of the labor force on purpose.  They slightly lowered income taxes (from like 65% to 60%) and people went back to work.

Sweden consistently has something like 10% willful unemployment.  The rest of the work eligible population account for among the most dollar-per-hour productive workers in the entire world, even though they could slack off all the want or even not work at all, and would be legally prevented from being destitute.

[GlyphGryph]

You'd have an entire population trying to do the least amount of work that leads them to the reward they want.

You do realize this is exactly the mentality that has given us the great many technological, scientific, and economic boons we enjoy today, right?

But guess what - it turns out giving people more generally doesn't tend to make them stop working so much as aim for more rewards.

[Bauglir]

Provided that a situation where all these nice things can be plausibly provided, should people be forced to work? My experience is that only people who hate their jobs do the bare minimum to avoid being fired. You only get brilliance from people who want to be where they are, anyway. Besides that, while I know this sounds likely to lead to an imbalance of a world with no janitors, there are bound to be people who'll seek a job for extra money even if all their necessities and several luxuries besides are met without work, because money is more personally fulfilling to them than whatever else they could be doing. The number of teenagers working lousy minimum wage jobs is nonzero, after all.

[scriver]

All I'm gonna say is if I had my medical bills paid for, my housing taken care of and my food provided... I'd do jack shit all day long and screw around.  I'd lose all productivity.

See: Roman empire, actually. They gave out free food and entertainment (in the form of gladiator matches and such).

Did they provide housing for everyone that entered the gates of Rome?  Cause that would be sweet... until of course Rome falls from lack of income from freeloaders.

Ironically, and unfortunately for you, one of the main - probably even the main - reasons Rome fell was extreme capitalism and concentration of wealth, which eventually caused the economy to not just crash, but to drive of a cliff, ignite midair, create an atomic explosion, and rain napalm all over the landscape before finally landing in a volcano and burning up. In short, Rome fell because she did not give enough to her poor segments.

The social pressure is that of another burden.  They are pressuring you to ease their own burden.  If everyone was given a free home, food, and care this burden would not exist.  the person living in that situation could just go get their own place and would feel no social pressure to move out and/or make an income.

People want to go to the movies, concerts, and sport games. They want to eat out and yo clubing, or invite friends over to dinner. Theg want to buy status symbols, be it furniture, cars, or brand clothes. They want a basic car and gas yo drive it in the first place. They want more than yhe basic tv-channels, faster than the lowest Internet speed, eat expensive and exotic, or just varied food. They want to provide a good, joyful life for their kids, with games, toys, sports, interest-clubs, camps and happy summertimes. They want to go on vacation, see the world, own a summer house or winter cabin where they can go and relax. They want to give to charity and help other people. They want to feel richer and better than their neighbour.

People want a lot of things. Every thing, even. All of that are things people can't afford just by having their basic need for home, food, and clothes covered by the state. So why would people stay at home and not work, when they wouldn't be able to afford anything else than sit at their windows staring and have cheap noodles, beans and bacon for dinner every night?

Sweden consistently has something like 10% willful unemployment.

Sweden, in not-good-not-bad times, usually have around 4-5% unemployment. Even now in these times, we only have an unemployment percent of 8. Though, I suppose they might only be counting the job seeking population. Otherwise, that number would be very off.

[Andir]

People can work all they want, but if nobody needs the product they provide (ie: people have basic needs provided) the demand for those workers is infinitesimal.  You can have the brightest and smartest mathematicians in the world, but what will they produce that people need?  Will they produce more houses for all the new kids in this world?  Would there be enough people who enjoyed making houses to cover this need?  If not, wouldn't they start taking bribes to work on someone's house first?  Wouldn't they have to start resorting to charging people for this service in exchange for their house-building skill?  Isn't that were we are now?  Humanity had a hundred (thousand?) chances to provide the basic necessities for everyone.  We fought wars over resources because there wasn't enough.  Land, food, gold... humanity created several systems throughout the hundreds of thousands(?) f years of our existence and we've yet to see humanity reach the level we are today because we found a system where people are required to work to obtain their needs.  Our system feeds of the fact that resources are limited and people need to compete to get them.  There has been no successful system in history that allows people to do whatever they want without someone else taking what that want from them or being able to support the entirety of that population.

You'd have an entire population trying to do the least amount of work that leads them to the reward they want.

You do realize this is exactly the mentality that has given us the great many technological, scientific, and economic boons we enjoy today, right?

But guess what - it turns out giving people more generally doesn't tend to make them stop working so much as aim for more rewards.

More rewards to do what?  Pay for housing, food, and electricity.

It does and it doesn't.  You're claiming that society can't function unless people are forced to work by making it an immediate and constant requirement for their survival.  This is essentially an argument of work for its own sake.  What I just explained shows that we're driven and capable of minimizing the amount of work that is required of us, whether it's for maintaining a functioning society or simply feeling like we're working when we're not.

Part of the problem with the job market today is so many jobs have been going obsolete over the last several decades.  We're constantly able to accomplish more with less effort.  Those with control over resources necessary for job creation don't need any more people working for them.  But your position is that we must require them to work anyway.

This centralized control coupled with belief that a person must have a job to justify their existence is very much blocking humanity from progress.  We're working backwards.  We're forcing ourselves to struggle to invent work to do, no matter how unnecessary it may be, and in the process we're generating extreme excesses of material wealth that only goes to waste because it's just not needed and less people over time are able to justify by virtue of their labor their own privilege to share in the product.

What you are claiming then is that we go through a "correction period" where money is taken from those that desired social reward so much that they out competed the people would do the least amount of work.  What does that accomplish?  It may put the current generation in homes, give them food, and let them pop out a few billion more kids that will need more resources.  Someone is going to have to make those resources and without anyone "needing" them... what person is going to be mining some resource if they don't need to be?  We'd smack right up against a brick wall because we have to monetize and compete over raw material.

If we ever got to a point where energy production was free and resources were fabricated out of nothing then it might make sense to let people freely pick and choose what they want to be doing.

which runs starkly contrary to your other beliefs that it's regulation and not lack of ambition keeping people down

My beliefs?

I said my belief.  I believe that if everyone on Earth was given the ability to just do whatever they wanted and were guaranteed food, shelter, and care we'd have less production of goods that people desire and some people would find ways to take from others in order to provide for themselves instead of doing the work themselves.  You point to Sweden as an example, but without goods coming from other competitive states... the situation may not be so.  I'd even go so far as saying that they enjoy that ability due to the work people are doing outside that ecosystem.  Their whole economy is based around foreign trade.  They depend on exports and they depend on us. Not every country in the world can rely on that if they all follow the same systems.

Provided that a situation where all these nice things can be plausibly provided, should people be forced to work? My experience is that only people who hate their jobs do the bare minimum to avoid being fired. You only get brilliance from people who want to be where they are, anyway. Besides that, while I know this sounds likely to lead to an imbalance of a world with no janitors, there are bound to be people who'll seek a job for extra money even if all their necessities and several luxuries besides are met without work, because money is more personally fulfilling to them than whatever else they could be doing. The number of teenagers working lousy minimum wage jobs is nonzero, after all.

Not only janitorial, but public sector jobs like water treatment, paving streets, or gathering resources.  Sweden has a government owned mining company while practically every other service is provided by private companies.  There are simply jobs that would seem undesirable and without some motivation people would not do them.  People will claim that that motivation is getting money for more things but who will make the things if everyone has them?

Also, and since Sweden and France were brought up, skilled trade jobs... according to this:
Employers in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland all ranked skilled trades as their hardest jobs to fill in 2010.

Apparently, given the choice and necessities met, people did not want to work in these skilled labors jobs.

All I'm gonna say is if I had my medical bills paid for, my housing taken care of and my food provided... I'd do jack shit all day long and screw around.  I'd lose all productivity.

See: Roman empire, actually. They gave out free food and entertainment (in the form of gladiator matches and such).

Did they provide housing for everyone that entered the gates of Rome?  Cause that would be sweet... until of course Rome falls from lack of income from freeloaders.

Ironically, and unfortunately for you, one of the main - probably even the main - reasons Rome fell was extreme capitalism and concentration of wealth, which eventually caused the economy to not just crash, but to drive of a cliff, ignite midair, create an atomic explosion, and rain napalm all over the landscape before finally landing in a volcano and burning up. In short, Rome fell because she did not give enough to her poor segments.

I read a different angle... actually several of them.  Nobody seems to have a clear and vivid understanding of why Rome fell (or if it really did) but some historians believe that it was partly due to their excessive expenditures on military, a literal division of the country and gradual dissemination into the separate kingdoms that would make up the Middle Ages.  (Families splitting the lands...)  there are all kinds of theories for every angle (mercenaries that got strong enough to become traitors...Christianity...)

The social pressure is that of another burden.  They are pressuring you to ease their own burden.  If everyone was given a free home, food, and care this burden would not exist.  the person living in that situation could just go get their own place and would feel no social pressure to move out and/or make an income.

People want to go to the movies, concerts, and sport games. They want to eat out and yo clubing, or invite friends over to dinner. Theg want to buy status symbols, be it furniture, cars, or brand clothes. They want a basic car and gas yo drive it in the first place. They want more than yhe basic tv-channels, faster than the lowest Internet speed, eat expensive and exotic, or just varied food. They want to provide a good, joyful life for their kids, with games, toys, sports, interest-clubs, camps and happy summertimes. They want to go on vacation, see the world, own a summer house or winter cabin where they can go and relax. They want to give to charity and help other people. They want to feel richer and better than their neighbour.

People want a lot of things. Every thing, even. All of that are things people can't afford just by having their basic need for home, food, and clothes covered by the state. So why would people stay at home and not work, when they wouldn't be able to afford anything else than sit at their windows staring and have cheap noodles, beans and bacon for dinner every night?

Sure, those things take resources.  I already covered this.  Also, feeling richer and better than your neighbor (on a global scale) leads to things like military buildup and claiming rights to a stretch of land where your religious leaders want to worship or that part of land that contains oil that you need to keep your people happy.

[Vector]

What mathematicians produce that is needed is the same thing as priests, the same thing as mothers, and the same thing as naturalists.

A connection to the divine.

You can't measure well-being in dollars.  It is possible to live well and be poor.

[Andir]

What mathematicians produce that is needed is the same thing as priests, the same thing as mothers, and the same thing as naturalists.

A connection to the divine.

You can't measure well-being in dollars.  It is possible to live well and be poor.

You're telling this to an atheist...

Math/physics seeking to define our world is neat, but it's not something I spend an extreme amount of time studying.  I find the things Astronomers find cool, but it doesn't change my day to day life.  Maybe if they found alien life, but I just don't hedge my bets on it in my lifetime.

[Vector]

Math doesn't seek to define our world.  It's poetry, not science.  Sometimes it produces something which can become useful to engineers or physicists.  Mostly, it connects people with themselves, and makes better men and women out of them.  I'm not sure why we've thrown this away as an inherent good.

You can spend all the time you like narrowing your definition of "brilliant experts" so that all it contains is engineers and other workers in the natural sciences, and that's fine.  But you need to recognize that you're doing it.

Furthermore, I'm not sure why what you study should be germane or decisive here.  I hate studying physics and chemistry or writing poetry, but I still appreciate the people who do these things, even if I never see their products in my life.  I'm probably going to date a guy who models salmon populations.  What the fuck do I care about that?  I'm a vegetarian!  No influence on my life!

It still matters.  It's something.  It shapes the person and how you are in the world.

Life isn't all about who invents the most widescreen TVs, and the scientists you want to call the most brilliant cannot be mass-produced or forced into existence.  They are a product of their time, and called brilliant because of the surrounding populace.  The opportunity for scientific revolution does not always come just when you might want it to.

[Bauglir]

If the measure of a life's value is its material contributions to the world, then obviously it's morally wrong for anybody to be not working. This conclusion, though, seems unacceptable - it implies that any contentment is a sin. Reductio ad absurdum is basically why I can't accept that the only meaning in a life is what nice things you leave behind.

[Vector]

Oh, and there's the usual interesting implications for disabled people.

[GlyphGryph]

More rewards to do what?  Pay for housing, food, and electricity.

This is bullshit and you know it. The person who is content with the above is rare indeed, and almost as rare is the person who will not find something new to covet once they had what they previously sought. Entertainment, tools, additions to that house, fancier food, trips to distant places, services, experiences. There are a great many rewards out there, fields where demand is lower than it could be because those who would be interested in partaking are too busy focusing on the essentials. It shifts demand, it doesn't eliminate it.

Andir, you don't seem to have a grasp of how markets work... if something is worth doing, the rewards it offers will rise until its worth someones time to do it. Thats how it is now. This wouldn't change that in the slightest.

Apparently, given the choice and necessities met, people did not want to work in these skilled labors jobs.

Apparently these skilled labor jobs are not in high enough demand to make the risk and investment in pursuing them worth the pay off. So be it.

I could say I think the US suffers from a severe lack of skilled artists willing to work for me 24/7 churning out pictures of pigs. But the problem isn't with the US -  the problem is that I don't want it bad enough to invest in and incentivize those who could make it happen.

That is how markets work. That is what opportunity costs ARE. A shortage of skilled labor is the natural state of things, because it doesn't mean "there aren't enough people to do these jobs", it means "we wish there were more people doing these jobs so we could get higher return for a lower investment"