Oh poor Charlie, so willing to quote Keynes - yet so horribly unable to recognize that Bitcoin passes his “Good for the worker” and “Good for other people” test. After his last screed, I can hardly take him seriously anymore. He’s for the working population, yet doesn’t understand how Bitcoin can liberate those that are enslaved by the legacy system he rails against?
I suppose this is what happens when you ossify and become unable to see other points of view. You know that the world is wrong, but are unable to recognize the tools and technologies that can help - they’re too “scary” for you.
He’ll end up like the rest, mumbling to his grave yet not brave enough to try anything effective. How sad.
Is there a word for BitCoin monomaniacs? BitCoin is not the bleeding answer to the world’s problems, so please stop recasting every single economic topic into whether or not it’s solvable by BitCoin in particular, and putting every pundit on a scale of supportive or deprecatory of BitCoin. You aren’t convincing anyone.
Err it is rather beholden to you to explain why Bitcoin is both good for the worker and good for other people. Since it is a currency and not a job I’m not even sure I see how to apply your analogy and definitely fail to see why its use would satisfy those conditions.
I’m not sure if that’s quite true. A lot of people want to fill their higher order Maslow’s needs through the sense of purpose that a job (however you want to define job) provides. Personally, there are several things I do in my spare time that I’d like to do more of if I didn’t need the money from my 9-5 to eat and whatnot. The point being that if my lower order Maslows were filled by magic, I’d still want - need - to do something to fill the higher needs. Whether being able to spend 40 hours a week on what are currently hobbies would transform the hobby into a job is probably a matter of personal taste and semantics.
I think we (all) agree that people want to spend their lives doing something meaningful. There is a distinction that needs to be made, though, between the work we do for our own enjoyment and satisfaction, and the obligation to do work to pay our bills. While the two can overlap (for the fortunate), they are motivated differently. I believe we can reduce that obligation if we can all share and cooperate a little bit.
If all that magic happened, some people might want to continue doing what they’re doing now. But I don’t believe any would miss the obligation to do it. I think we agree on that, right?
The obligation is what I was referring to by “job”. I know it’s a vague word, and I’m sorry if it confused things.
Something that I’d like to see is a “food stamp tax” imposed on any company whose workers claim food stamps. I read that for example, Walmart receives 18% of the total food stamp spend in the USA, and that WalMart employees receive $300M in foodstamps from the US Government. WalMart receives $14B of food stamps a year, and it has $17B “profits” once you factor out share buybacks and other vehicles that allow the extra profit to be disguised as capital gains rather than direct payments to investors. Why should WalMart be granted a wage supplement from the Federal government? The gross income of WalMart is over $100B, so adding $300M to the salaries of it’s workers would correspond to a 0.3% price rise on all products they sell - surely not enough to influence the shopping habits of their customers. The US government should create a ‘poverty tax’ or ‘inequality tax’ whereby if any employer has someone on the pay roll who claims food stamps, that company is taxed at say, 5 times the value of the food stamps claimed by their employees. That would create a financial incentive to pay a living wage to the staff wherever possible, without imposing by law a minimum wage. I’ve got no problem with people becoming rich, until it comes at the expense of holding other people in poverty. The difference between $17B profits and $16.7B profits is not significant to the people at the top of the organisation, whereas the difference between struggling to feed your family and being able to exist with dignity is important. The original rationale for the USA to exist was to provide a better alternative than autocratic rule, by providing freedom of opportunity; whereas in fact to have opportunity in the USA one also needs capital.
Haha, GCHQ would teargas me if I asked them for a job. I’m a scruffy fool with a chequered past and wretched finances. They wouldn’t even let me water the plants. Not that I would, fuck 'em. And their office aspidistras.
