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[scriver]

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...)

Yet strangely, all of those reasons are directly related to Rome's failing economy and the hoarding of wealth of her elite.

Sure, those things take resources.  I already covered this.

So you agree that there would be no reason to stay home and not get an income even if you had a home - a cheap home at that - and basic food secured?

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.

Nice attempt at derailing there, buddy.

[Duke 2.0]

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...)

Yet strangely, all of those reasons are directly related to Rome's failing economy and the hoarding of wealth of her elite.

I think Christianity held at least one of the halves together for a while. The Byzantine empire was kinda based on it, and they regarded themselves as Romans for a long while.

 A common theory for the cause was the outflow of riches from Rome to foreign countries in exchange for temporary luxury goods like spices and silk. It's the reason many more modern empires fell, so that seems in-line. Wealth was not being hoarded, it was being spent pretty freely.

 Although this is all just nitpicking over vague historical allegories in order to prove personal points, so I don't see much value in bringing it up. The modern world is not the Roman empire and the economic situations are vastly different.

[Andir]

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...)

Yet strangely, all of those reasons are directly related to Rome's failing economy and the hoarding of wealth of her elite.

But you cannot say that lack of wealth distribution cause the fall of Rome.  There's no evidence that Rome would still be here if all the citizens were given a fair share of wealth.  In fact, you'd probably end up with a weak government not able to defend property disputes and those now landowners fighting their neighbors.

fakeedit: ... agreeing with Duke here.  There's really no point arguing the unknown/speculative fall.

Sure, those things take resources.  I already covered this.

So you agree that there would be no reason to stay home and not get an income even if you had a home - a cheap home at that - and basic food secured?

It's not about reason, it's about will.  The reason is there, but I don't want to work in a coal mine to get enough coal to fuel the energy needs of a locality.  You'd have to create incentives for people to work there and you create disparity in wealth.  That disparity in wealth causes jealousy, arguments, and consumption of resources.  Let's say someone buys up 90% of the land in a county.  Now, where is that county going to get money to fund the other 10% of the landowners homes/food/etc.  You'd have to rule out ownership of land/homes in order to guarantee homes to people.  Could you pay to upgrade your home?  What happens when you leave the house/die and the government needs to put someone else in there?  Do they have to tear it down and create equal housing to all?

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.

Nice attempt at derailing there, buddy.

There's no derailing... It's a fact of resources.

[Bauglir]

Hey, if we're agreeing that it's an unfortunate necessity imposed by limited resources, I don't think I disagree with you. It's not how things should be, I think.

[SalmonGod]

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.

I'm one case of that.  My first job was scanning packages and stacking them in containers to be loaded onto a plane and shipped.  Did that for 2 1/2 years and loved it.  It wasn't something I'd like to spend my life doing or anything, but it just felt good and I was treated well.  I was one of the best employees there.  I did the work of three average workers by myself every day.

Then I went to my current data entry job, where I've been for roughly five years.  I'm not treated well and the work is miserable.  I'm one of the worst employees there.  I can outperform almost anyone in the office when I try, but I deliberately underachieve because there is no benefit to any other behavior.  I've streamlined my process so I can do the minimum required work in the least amount of time and spend the rest of it online.

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. 

I'll just respond with this.

Our system feeds of the fact that resources are limited and people need to compete to get them.

I think it's exactly the opposite, actually.  Our society throws out the majority of food it produces, and this is after many farmers are paid to underproduce.  Millions of people have been kicked out of their homes over the last few years, and a good portion of those homes are deliberately kept off the market to keep prices up.  All these necessities going to waste for nothing but an imaginary number game. 

The thing is, that number game was designed to deal with limitations of resources.  Everybody had to work for society to function, and allocating resources to people according to the value their work produced for society was generally fair.  It's always had problems, but once upon a time it was rather necessary.  Today, a relatively small portion of society actually needs to work for it to function, and the system was never designed to allocate resources in these circumstances.  Abundance makes it go haywire.  Crazy things happen, like people intentionally hoarding resources to make them appear scarce when they're not, to prevent their number games from exploding dramatically.

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

I think we'd actually have more production of goods that people actually desire, since they'd be working according to their interests instead of demands placed upon them by an upper class that is incredibly far removed in life experience from the majority of the population.  Think about the game or movie industries, where mega-corporate overlords demand artists produce the same watered down, recycled content over and over again because they want broadest demographics and guaranteed profits.  Think about transportation, where there isn't nearly enough research in alternatives because existing models are so financially entrenched.

I personally have really interesting ideas for digital storytelling formats that I came up with for my capstone project in college that I am very individually motivated to explore further, but that would take a large investment of time that I simply don't have while drudging through a job that occupies half my waking life, could be made obsolete with little effort, and does absolutely nothing of value for anyone.

Not only janitorial, but public sector jobs like water treatment, paving streets, or gathering resources.

The oldest person in my work group once made the comment to me, "Boy if this had been my first job straight out of school, I would have chosen to live the rest of my life in a cardboard box."  Funny thing is, he's worked several jobs, but his favorite and longest running was janitorial.

Besides, dirty jobs would get done because people would rather do the work then deal with the consequences of it not getting done.

[Andir]

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. 

I'll just respond with this.

"Least amount of work" was in-appropriate terminology.  I'm not saying that CEOs are the hardest workers.  What I'm saying is that those people who pick a career based on social status rewards should be penalized for their choice because someone else didn't pick or get that same career choice?  It all boils back to the jealousy effect which I'll touch later.

Our system feeds of the fact that resources are limited and people need to compete to get them.

I think it's exactly the opposite, actually.  Our society throws out the majority of food it produces, and this is after many farmers are paid to underproduce.  Millions of people have been kicked out of their homes over the last few years, and a good portion of those homes are deliberately kept off the market to keep prices up.  All these necessities going to waste for nothing but an imaginary number game. 

The thing is, that number game was designed to deal with limitations of resources.  Everybody had to work for society to function, and allocating resources to people according to the value their work produced for society was generally fair.  It's always had problems, but once upon a time it was rather necessary.  Today, a relatively small portion of society actually needs to work for it to function, and the system was never designed to allocate resources in these circumstances.  Abundance makes it go haywire.  Crazy things happen, like people intentionally hoarding resources to make them appear scarce when they're not, to prevent their number games from exploding dramatically.

Excess is necessary to a point.  If the populace had all it's needs met, don't you think the population would raise due to... well... affordability of children?  You'd need to feed them and their kids if you could continue that equilibrium or establish some sort of China-esque birthing limits.

It still doesn't touch on the fact that providing for basic needs would still run into these issues since people are greedy.  Someone would find ways to horde something to raise the overall price of it.  People will still game the systems to make their "social status" increase at the expense of others.  You'd go down a dark road of restricting ownership to things.

Not only janitorial, but public sector jobs like water treatment, paving streets, or gathering resources.

The oldest person in my work group once made the comment to me, "Boy if this had been my first job straight out of school, I would have chosen to live the rest of my life in a cardboard box."  Funny thing is, he's worked several jobs, but his favorite and longest running was janitorial.

Besides, dirty jobs would get done because people would rather do the work then deal with the consequences of it not getting done.

And this is where I get into the jealousy issue.  Someone may step up and run the works, but they may not want to do it the rest of their lives.  They may want people to swap it out on a regular basis, but what if nobody wants to do it?  I'm not sure if you noticed, but people are short sighted when it comes to that kind of stuff.  They have working sewage.  If it backs up, they'll complain to the city who will have to get someone to clean it out.  That's not a job people will want.  They are not going to take turns running down to the plant and running pH tests during it's operation to make sure it's all working.  They'll hope someone else does it.  Maybe one of them "less socially status-ed" folks across the river.

----------------

This is all really starting to get way off topic for the thread though.  I'm going to bed.  You can all put in your rebuttals if you like, but I'm not going to continue this conversation when I return.

[SalmonGod]

As usual, this is all boiling down to individual impressions of human nature.  Mine is that such a thing does not exist.  There are no universal personality features among the human race.  What you do when you assume that everyone has the same motivations and design society to be fueled by them, is you select for the people who do have those motivations to be a dominant class.  But that is purely theory based on personal observation, which is all anyone has to go on when it gets to this point.

So besides that I will only nitpick one thing.

If the populace had all it's needs met, don't you think the population would raise due to... well... affordability of children?  You'd need to feed them and their kids if you could continue that equilibrium or establish some sort of China-esque birthing limits.

Successful, developed countries have lower population growth rates than broken, impoverished ones.  It's also generally tied to education level, which is a good incentive to fund everyone's education no matter the cost if this is something you're worried about.

If this were a thing at all, people in Africa wouldn't be having children.

[Vector]

Oddly enough, when women get to do other things than pop out child after child, often they choose to do those other things.

Childbirth is no joke.

[G-Flex]

As usual, this is all boiling down to individual impressions of human nature.  Mine is that such a thing does not exist.  There are no universal personality features among the human race.

To say that there are no characteristic neurological/psychological qualities of any given species is fairly absurd, in my opinion. People, on the whole, have similar needs and are driven by similar things. Fundamentally, none of us are all that different from each other, for the most part.

[SalmonGod]

There are common psychological mechanisms that when prodded certain ways will tend to produce consistent reactions, but these are things that apply to specific circumstances or can be taken advantage of to manipulate people and are still never 100%.  They aren't things that have much to do with an individual's life goals, perspectives, and values.  You could say that we have similar needs that inform our motivations, but this is very broadly speaking.  For instance, we all have similar material survival needs, but will to survive is variable.  Most people have similar social needs, but to greatly varying degrees... and then there are sociopaths, who constitute a much more significant portion of the population than most people realize.

[Virex]

As usual, this is all boiling down to individual impressions of human nature.  Mine is that such a thing does not exist.  There are no universal personality features among the human race.  What you do when you assume that everyone has the same motivations and design society to be fueled by them, is you select for the people who do have those motivations to be a dominant class.  But that is purely theory based on personal observation, which is all anyone has to go on when it gets to this point.

So besides that I will only nitpick one thing.

If the populace had all it's needs met, don't you think the population would raise due to... well... affordability of children?  You'd need to feed them and their kids if you could continue that equilibrium or establish some sort of China-esque birthing limits.

Successful, developed countries have lower population growth rates than broken, impoverished ones.  It's also generally tied to education level, which is a good incentive to fund everyone's education no matter the cost if this is something you're worried about.

If this were a thing at all, people in Africa wouldn't be having children.

Except that in countries like Africa, there is an economic incentive to get children; they'll be there to fend for you when you get old. On the other hand, in western countries, there's a disincentive; you're being taken care of when you're old anyway and you've got to invest a lot in children, both in time, money and strain on your career.

[Leafsnail]

So, Andir - about Sweden.  It was mentioned to you as a specific example by two people (after you asked for a specific example), but you completely ignored it.  It's a place where you basically are provided with food, shelter and healthcare.  And it has a lower unemployment rate (or at least a similar unemployment rate) to the US.  Care to respond to this relevant example rather than ignoring it and attacking some other element of a person's post?

[Phmcw]

Wow, a lot has been said.

A few argument and a few responses :

A) Poeple would leave off welfare : I don't care and neither should you.
People that would be content with minimum social security would make terrible workers anyway, they don't have any ambition  and are lazy. The productivity of the country (and thus the price of the work-hour) would rise and it's better for everyone.

B) It's expensive : Not as much as the alternative. Let's say one of ten of those people living of welfare turn to crime against one of five in an welfare-less country, we'd still save money. In practice number show that not only it reduce crime, it also make it considerably less violent. And violent crime is VERY expensive to the country.
Of course, children of welfare recipient are given a real education in school and later at the university, it will be a net gain for the country, instead the hereditary convicts you can see in the US. (We got some cases of hereditary welfare recipient, sadly, but it's still less expensive than the alternative.)

C)It's immoral that I have to work for someone else : If you're ready to leave them die in the snow instead, you're a failure as an human being, period.

D)It ruin the economy : the richest countries in the world use this model.

[MonkeyHead]

The UK has an unusual situation at the moment, which has led to some tension and irrational responses from some...

So, we have an extensive welfare system. People "seeking" work get benefit cash, but not a whole lot. Thing is, this can be topped up with various allowences - housing, child, disabality... and as a result is abused by a signifigant number of individuals. We also have a minimum wage. Feel free to google the details yourself. Now, the trick here is to "engineer" a benefits package that is better than the minimum wage. A family freind of long standing works in a benefit office, and it is her job to filter out the genuine cases from the people abusing the system - I do not envy her one little bit. Seriously, it goes on a lot. A not very wel liked "family member" with little education and no emplyment prospects has a greater disposable income than me, thanks to the amount they claim and thier heavily subsidised outgoings. Fair? Hardly. Add to this the fact that people can retain most of thier benefits provided they work below a certain threshold - people are either better off not working at all or better off doing a small amout of work than taking a minimum wage post. Which brings me on to my second point.

As we are an EU state, people can more here from other European states to work. Bear in mind that many countries in Europe are way poorer than the big guns (like the UK, Germany, France etc).  Our minimum wage is attractive to people living in pooer countries, so they use thier common sense and quite rightly legally move here for a better life through gaining meaningful employment, and most make meaningful contributions to society through taxation, cultural means, or other mechanisms. The slightly off colour jokes made about this often refer to Polish builders putting good old british builders out of work by undercutting them. So lets say a Polish worker moves to my area, gets a job as a hospital porter, which is vacant as any number of local 18 yr olds is better off on benefits than taking the post. This hard working immigrant does a good job, working hard in the job they value. The local 18 yr old continues to be a drain, consuming tax money and probably offering little, maybe even engaging in a little petty crime. When asked about why they dont work (just like in a recent BBC radio news story), the response is never "I get more by not working, raise the minimum wage and cut benefits", it is usually "all the bloody foringers have taken the jobs"... and yes, they have taken them, as they will work harder for an honest days pay. The ConDems are undertaking an extensive overhaul of the system (as there are many, many more issues such that are broken within it) which will peg all benefits below a minimum wage, but this wont come in until around 2015, so stands a chance of never actually ocuring.

Conclusions/opinions from my observations on life in the UK:

1) People will sit on thier arses happily collecting what the goverment says they are entitled to (even if they are actually defrauding the system), not working or on occasion activley avoiding work. Concern about offering nothing to society seems not to be a deterrent. Whilst at risk of generalizing here, from those I have met in such a situation, it would appear that a commonly held veiw is that they state owes them, not the other way around.

2) People will make a lot of effort to defraud the system in order to get better off (this ironically includes having more children than they can reasonably support and care for), possibly more effort than working for a living would entail.

3) Whilst financially the country is in a bad way, there are jobs out there that people would rather be on benefits than undertake - people immigrate to take them. "Market forces" suggest this isnt a bad thing - people doing a good job for a modest wage probably will benefit a company/state in the long run. If locals took the jobs, did it well, earned a wage, paid taxes and so on then they wouldnt have to complain about migrant workers keeping them out of work. Its not the migrant workers fault we have such a high level of taxation to feed the welfare system.

[Phmcw]

Yeah, there are some total dick out there, but short of killing them, I don't see how we could better mitigate their impact on society.
I'll explain, you describe them as dishonest, lazy and stupid, as they'd rather take the rather dangerous path of scamming the system by basically using the money given to them to take care of their kids (one of the rare ways to avoid being cutted of when you're unemployed for too long), than to take one of the readily available jobs.

But it's a good thing to have them off our job market : could you imagine them working for you? Stealing office supplies, botching theirs jobs, harassing their co-workers,...
A country, for the market, is a provider of raw material, security and workforce, basically. And our richer countries are valuable for their highly trained and reliable workforce (minimum wage force are just a by-product of those, and will be shipped in cheaper countries if possible, anyway) .A well designed welfare is a way to filter the trash and to protect the individuals from the fantasies of the market. It should also allow you to recover from your mistakes and use your unemployment time to train new and useful skills.