John Berry <[email protected]> wrote:
> 3: Free stuff, have the staples of life given freely, though not > unlimitedly. > It is easier and more efficient to hand out money. People who run soup kitchens and disaster relief say so. Given a choice between donations of canned goods from families and donations of cash money, they prefer the latter. Handing out actual physical goods causes many problems because people often do not need or want the goods you happen to have on hand. > People who don't work would essentially live a moneyless life. > This idea has plenty of downsides that I can see, but an upside would be > that the motivation of wanting extra stuff that only money could buy could > be a drive to earn money by being productive somehow. > You can accomplish the same thing by limiting the amount of money you hand out. It has been suggested that given the present state of the US economy and technology, a limit of ~$10,000 per year per person would be a good target. I do not know the details but that sounds plausible. Obviously we cannot go directly to a system where everyone gets lavish sums of money such as $100,000 a year. That would cause inflation, and it would also mean that many important but tedious or dirty jobs will not be done. In the distant future when robots are perfected I see no reason why people should not get $100,000 a year (adjusted for inflation). Heck, if the robots can make enough stuff without hurting the ecology, give everyone $1 million a year. Who cares? The only situation I want to avoid is where my neighbor buys a dozen Rolls-Royces and parks them on the street in front of my house, or builds a giant McMansion that blocks my view. Like the situation in Los Angeles where people living in 20,000 square-foot mansions are complaining about other people building 50,000 square-foot mansions: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/style/in-los-angeles-a-nimby-battle-pits-millionaires-vs-billionaires.html As long as people's consumption does not take away resources from other people, or bother me, or hurt the ecology, I don't care how much they get or how much they consume. Given today's limited resources, it is morally wrong to live in a gigantic house with hundreds of rooms, or to spend millions on your wardrobe. But in the future when we have unlimited resources such behavior will be at worst childish, or silly, or a sign of mental illness. Probably that kind of conspicuous consumption will lose its charm. When anyone can do such things, most people will not bother. I do not see anything inherently pleasurable about living in a house with dozens of empty rooms. - Jed
