laotzu

Define sentient entities

Why should students be forced to use such outdated technology?

If we are trying to teach students how to work in the real world, shouldn't we let them use computers that they would be using in the real world as opposed to obsolete computers that were made before they were born?

Vice laws

It used to be 90% of the population was working to produce food, now its around 1% and decreasing with increasing efficiency. So it is an increasingly negligible amount of labor needed to provide an already surplus amount of food.

It is cynical and ignorant to assume the dollar is the monotheistic deity of motivation for everyone. There are and have been countless cultures across the world who don't require monetary payment to produce the requisite food for the community.

You are saying it isn't my right to consume what I choose?

That's what the law says actually. Not trying to be snide here but unfortunately the law does not allow for sovereign domain over one's own body (at least in the US -- and elsewhere) in many cases. Though I realize you are asking in regards to advertisements.

if it's only unconsciously influencing me a tiny amount

If it is unconsciously influencing you how would you know if it is only doing so "a tiny amount"?

At the moment the problem in the US is labor scarcity. Robots haven't replaced these jobs, these jobs just don't get done.

Labor scarcity in the sense that there's not enough people who need work, or in the sense that there is not enough people who have the necessary skills? I would have to assume the latter. If that is the case, aren't most of these scarce skills the type which are used to service and maintain the very automation which would be used to implement a UBI?

When robots provide the same level of services to the US middle class, that would be a signal that we might need to think about something like a BI.

Automation already provides a much higher level of services than human workers in many areas. Do we really want to wait to the very end of this process to begin the transition?

It's really about being able to match growth with sustainability.

The measurement problem, if by quantitative you mean "relating to, measuring, or measured by the quantity of something".

There is no consistent mathematical standard of measurement by which money is created. Instead, the monetary value of some good or service used as capital for a loan is largely up to the arbitrary appraisal of the bank.

In my university finance classes we were forced to use calculators that were invented in 1976[1] to run calculations on formulas we had to memorize that could easily have been automated in Excel. Since then I've been prejudiced that "the invisible hand" ;) was deliberately keeping electric technology out of finance in order to maintain a legacy business model. Like that of the MPAA towards VCRs and DVDs etc.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_Business_A...

I think the author is referring to increasingly distributed networks as opposed to the more centralized legacy networks. So electric networks vs. Paper based networks.

They gave up because of general lack of opportunity.

The self-titled militia organizations, however, use a warped view of history that glorifies their role in the American Revolution

As a proponent of non-violence I have no real support for such activities but after having read much of the constitutional debates I feel compelled to point out the fact that a civilian militia as a check/balance on government power as well as for auxiliary military purposes was a very considerable topic of discussion in the constitutional debates of the founding fathers:

No man has a greater regard for the military gentlemen than I have. I admire their intrepidity, perseverance, and valor. But when once a standing army is established in any country, the people lose their liberty. When, against a regular and disciplined army, yeomanry are the only defence,--yeomanry, unskilful and unarmed,--what chance is there for preserving freedom? Give me leave to recur to the page of history, to warn you of your present danger. Recollect the history of most nations of the world. What havoc, desolation, and destruction, have been perpetrated by standing armies! An instance within the memory of some of this house will show us how our militia may be destroyed. Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia. [Here Mr. Mason quoted sundry passages to this effect.] This was a most iniquitous project. Why should we not provide against the danger of having our militia, our real and natural strength, destroyed? The general government ought, at the same time, to have some such power. But we need not give them power to abolish our militia. If they neglect to arm them, and prescribe proper discipline, they will be of no use.

-George Mason, "The Father of the Bill of Rights", Debate in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/print_documents/a1_8...

However, others such as Alexander Hamilton noted the logistical difficulties of sustaining such a militia:

A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country, to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.

-Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, 1788

http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa29.htm

Against zombies

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." -Margaret Mead

"He who knows enough is enough will always have enough" -Lao Tzu

Yes, I would agree that implementing a basic income is not a problem of technical feasibility or lack of resources but a problem of user buy in. I've read at least half of Graeber's book Debt: The First 5000 Years, pretty interesting stuff which points out some of the false assumptions at the heart of the mainstream sociopolitical game. For anyone interested, here is the pdf version:

https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf

It will definitely change the way you view "debt" which is such an ambiguous term in this day and age of trillion dollar debts.

Growth for the sake of growth is cancer

Yes, some people will be able to pay off the loan + interest but this anecdote ignores the others that by design cannot. As Hörmann explains, the amount of money in existence + the amount of money that is contracted as being owed is a negative sum.

I am familiar with the credit-theory of money as opposed to the debt-theory which we currently use. David Graeber explains it in Debt: The First 5,000 Years[1], for anyone interested in further reading.

[1] https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf

While it is a two-way street (both parties "agree"), what I'm saying is that in an honest, straightforward arrangement people should not be contractually obligated to run in the rat race their whole lives trying to pay off a debt that by design can never be paid off. So yes, a zero sum game sounds quite logical.

No. That would take infinite time to comprehend, right?

Is there matter with no space in it?

Basic income is an idea which has been made practical due to electric automation.

Why is it then that everyone assumes the surplus created by electric automation should be distributed using such a primitive legacy paper based information system as the dollar? That's 19th century thinking

My question was in regards to fundamental basis and not the abstractions built on top of that basis.

The founding fathers had a lot to say about a strong executive who is primarily interested in providing security as opposed to liberty and its inevitable corruption:

In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

-James Madison, Speech at Constitutional Convention, 1787

A politic minister will study to lull us into security, by granting us the full extent of our petitions. The warm sunshine of influence would melt down the virtue, which the violence of the storm rendered more firm and unyielding. In a state of tranquillity, wealth and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war, and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our assistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin, and render us easier victims to tyranny. Ye abandoned minions of an infatuated ministry, if peradventure any should yet remain among us!—remember that a Warren and Montgomery are numbered among the dead. Contemplate the mangled bodies of our countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices ? Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood, and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude, than the animating contest of freedom—go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

-Samuel Adams, American Independence Speech, 1776

They both said it. And no, Abraham Lincoln invented the internets.

Indeed. After winning the right to vote in 1965, King greatly redefined his scope of action targeting economic justice for the poor in general, regardless of skin color.

I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about "Where do we go from here?" that we must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. (Yes) There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. (Yes) And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. (Yes) But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. (All right) It means that questions must be raised. And you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, "Who owns the oil?" (Yes) You begin to ask the question, "Who owns the iron ore?" (Yes) You begin to ask the question, "Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that's two-thirds water?" (All right) These are words that must be said. (All right)

Now, don't think you have me in a bind today. I'm not talking about communism. What I'm talking about is far beyond communism. (Yeah) My inspiration didn't come from Karl Marx (Speak); my inspiration didn't come from Engels; my inspiration didn't come from Trotsky; my inspiration didn't come from Lenin. Yes, I read Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital a long time ago (Well), and I saw that maybe Marx didn't follow Hegel enough. (All right) He took his dialectics, but he left out his idealism and his spiritualism. And he went over to a German philosopher by the name of Feuerbach, and took his materialism and made it into a system that he called "dialectical materialism." (Speak) I have to reject that.

What I'm saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. (Yes) Capitalism forgets that life is social. (Yes, Go ahead) And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis. (Speak) [applause] It is found in a higher synthesis (Come on) that combines the truths of both. (Yes) Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. (All right) These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

-Where do we go from here? MLK, 1967[1]

You can see plainly why the establishment labeled him as one of the greatest threats to national security.

[1] http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentse...

Ah, forgive my ignorance. But when you speak of amplitude and frequency, you are referring to wave-like phenomenon correct? Are not waves binary, or "black and white" in the sense that they go up and down and that the these two dualities are relative and dependent on each other for their definition?

It pains me to see my "right" and "left" leaning friends blame one side of the coin while completing ignoring the damage wrought by the flip side.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and many others explicitly warned about this.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty. Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

-George Washington, Farewell Address

It's the age old strategy of divide et impera. It couldn't work if the masses weren't arguing futilely among themselves:

Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.

-MLK, I've Been to the Mountaintop. Last speech given the night before assassination.