Yup I died because you said it, so thanks for that.

UBI is pretty bad, but only because capitalists would abuse it. Get rid of the capitalists and we'd be fine

There are real risks of a badly-designed UBI, and it unfortunately locks us more into capitalism instead of less, but innovators giving up on innovation is not one of them.

To be clear, I have no issue with most people working while others do not and live off the system. I think most people will still want to do that something.

UBI isn't going to do that.

You can point to a handful of small scale studies that show more money works, and yes, on a small scale that is exactly what you'd expect to happen.

This does not work when everyone has that same income. It's not a matter of 99% of people making smart choices, because I concede that the vast majority of people with sudden access to additional income would spend it wisely.

The issues are twofold.

A) when the people who've made it their career to suck every penny out of every possible person know that there are suddenly more pennies to be had, they're going to raise prices. It's frankly foolish and shortsighted to expect prices to remain the same or only raise a little. This issue is not raised with small scale experiments. So regardless of their obvious success, they're not telling the whole story.

2). UBI does absolutely nothing to address the problems it's actually trying to solve. All it does is print a check every month as a bandaid for some serious problems that will certainly persist. You can't fix housing without building housing. Individual healthcare will still be tied to your job. College education will be prohibitively expensive and require staffing a lifetime of debt, and we'll still throw away an obscene amount of food, and people will still go hungry. The only thing that will probably get better is more children will have a secure diet.

And none of that assumes prices would inflate the way they absolutely will. Because even if UBI happened, the people who want all the money the working class has aren't suddenly going to think it's ok to leave dollars unspoken for.

The cost of college will steadily increase by about the amount kids are expected to have been able to save by the time they get there. Rent prices will go up to accommodate the new found freedom of spending. And that's the stuff you have a choice on. You think Comcast will see people with so many extra dollars a month and think "well our customers don't have another option but we'll let them keep all that money?"

UBI is just a ticket to absolute dependency on a government check for 99% of Americans, and less financial freedom.

Address the actual problems, don't just slap a half baked bandaid on it

A strike can last much longer if workers are not worried about their bread and roof.

Even without organization, a secure worker can bargain harder for higher wages and better conditions.

Even a UBI specifically for food- food stamps for all- would make a massive change and improve millions of lives.

In principle, and even in it's intended general practical application, I agree with you.

But in America, I can see both parties getting on board with a UBI, only because they'll use it to gut all other social welfare programs.

Need healthcare? UBI

Hungry? UBI

UBI can't pay for both at once? Tough shit. We abolished EBT and Medicare to pay for UBI.

You can't simply give people money without causing a devaluation in said money.

The government surely can.

The government has the power to levy taxes.

The government has comprehensive powers for regulating the value of currency, through control over the money supply.

At any rate, the government printing money for workers cannot possibility be worse for workers than the government printing money for businesses, as it is doing now.

I suppose, though, you might take comfort in how inflation now is being so effectively prevented, instead of causing needless human suffering.

first of all where the fuck did you get that statistic

second: Lotteries are rotten to the core, did you idiots really think you could avoid the punishments of capitalism by being magically whisked away by millions that are unlocked if you have the magic number?

Have you considered the actual reasons, to such a degree that you could share with us how you understand as meaningful the comparison with UBI?

Alternatively, are you simply deflecting thoughtlessly with a false analogy?

The point is that private healthcare is driven by the profit motive.

The state is the only institution under our current social organization both that carries capacities at the same scale as corporations, and that legitimately may be supporting the interests of the public.

I'm not quite sure your point. Any medical care program will be better at treating common diseases than rare diseases. There's just more data to pull in research and development. We get more examples of what works and doesn't.

But the point of socialized services is to make sure everyone gets served.

One of the major concerns regarding any good or service that is essential (not just medical care, but food, water and power) is that selling it as a commodity is a moral hazard. Since the customer is obligated to buy (or starve, freeze in the elements, die of dehydration) an unchecked capitalist can charge any price and, historically, has.

Before the age of states and movements away from monarchy towards (more) public-serving governments, we depended on the Church's (meager) charity, and just accepted that a lot of people were going to die year after year, from famine, plague, freezing and so on. But I think we're trying to do better than the middle ages.

Here in the US, the federal and state governments are completely captured by plutocratic interests, and it's moving back towards autocracy. And our Republican officials have expressed that they're okay with letting small children work long hours in hazardous environments, and letting poor children starve.

All money is free. It is not taken from some limited store, but rather created by government, freely.

The value, stability, and legitimacy of money is sustained by the supremacy of state power. By such power, the government both determines the supply and shapes the distribution of money, and is assured never to be insolvent.

No distribution of money is natural or naturally superior.

Money is a social construct directed by political will.

Price inflation currently occurring is largely due to the political choice to distribute money to corporations.

That is, as a consequence of particular political choices, the already imbalanced distribution has become even more unfavorable toward workers.

If the political will were rather toward distributing money to workers, then prices may follow a pattern of gradual inflation, but as long as workers' income keeps pace, workers would not be harmed by it even in the slightly.

You do seem offended. Whatever are you talking about?

I don't see your point other than an explicit joy in the suffering of others. Do I have that right? You think people should go hungry for your personal pleasure?

I recommend you read about Modern Monetary Theory. The US has Monetary Sovereignty in a fiat currency, and therefore is not limited by taxation when it comes to federal funding. Instead, the US is limited by the real economy, which is worth trillions of dollars more than the federal budget. If the federal government stopped with the federal budget and just spent on the real economy, it wouldn't impact inflation in any way. We do this already with the military, like outspending the USSR on military tech for a decade, sending hundreds of billions of dollars worth of equipment to Ukraine, and spending billions to support Israel's genocide.

The fuck you on about, mate?

because america underfunds the shit out of its public services and then pretend its their fault in order to privatize different parts

Because it isn't? It's up by about 6%. The numbers are more accurate as well.

Frankly, even if your statement was correct, it would be the equivalent of asking why only people who go to the doctor have cancer.

Lastly, if we are throwing out random facts and trying to extrapolate the value of a system, why is Cuba's literacy rate always close to 100%?

Probably some combination of our definition of literacy being adjusted, and the availability of more accurate data about populations and how educated they are.

Great question, why is it always Republican States as well?

A friend of mine ran a grocery store in the 70s in Texas, and tells me it was routine at the time for grocers to hand out their unsold just-expired meat and vegetables out at closing time. There was always a line to a Dutch door where someone handed out the food by the bag.

It was also known to reduce shoplifting.

So yes, it's interesting that the practice of tainting discarded food has become acceptable again.

One of the USDA's responsibilities is to track food waste like this, since 30%-40% of all food in the US is wasted, and discarded food makes up the largest factor in our managed solid waste. I can't say it is a crime to mass-dispose of food in the US, but it is regarded as a harm, at least by the USDA.

It is certainly regarded as harmful when grocers and restaurants taint their disposed food to deter dumpster diving. But this is done to deter homeless people from trying to forage, e.g. disregarding the humanity of those desperate enough to eat discarded food.

Make sure to get the unabridged version as theres a lot of abridged versions out there for the grapes of wrath.

Please explain why farmers in capitalist economies were grinding up crops after the lockdowns started.

The Keynesian theory that was enforced by the largest military in the world has arguably failed at this point.

Free markets don't exist. It's just a load of assumptions.

Socialism wasn't even mentioned, dipshit.

The largest famine in the world since we figured out economic policy happened in a socialist country (China).

are you willfully ignoring the bengal famine or do you just love pretending you're not a racist piece of shit?

'murica alone wastes enough food to feed ALL of their homeless population MORE THAN 10x OVER. Get the fuck out of here with your rightwing rethoric.

Since then most famines have been caused by political instability.

Like you're so close. What causes the political instability?

In Canada, regulation is the reason they dump milk. Regulation creates milk quotas that they are not allowed to exceed. Farmers do not benefit from this, they would certainly sell more milk at a lower price if it was allowed.

Which farmers have

I would suggest anyone concerned about food production under socialism look up Lysenkoism to find the real pitfall.

The fatal flaw in any collective system will always stem from authoritarian policies, but all you need to avoid the greatest errors is simply not, you know, rule by terror.

Yes it clearly has and if it hadn't, they'd be the exceedingly rich countries with massive militaries, but they're not. The U.S., the corporate oligarchy, is. So their social structure loses, and the one we both hate wins.

Life just favors evil in that way.

Just don't.

Any path you follow will quickly lead to a truckload of babble about social Darwinism and other pseudoscientific dribble.

Then let's just kickstart human expansion into space so resources and land can be unlimited. That would be the only highly organized society you could convince me is legitimate.

We have more than enough land mass for every single human being to have at least one acre to themselves and then some right now, though. We just can't distribute it evenly because humans are apes that form dominance hierarchies and control over the land goes to the dominant apes. Only when humans are genetically engineered to be egalitarian will it ever change, so I guess our debate is pretty moot.

Is society entirely capitalist?

You are welcome to feed the world bro, I have enough with my family and pets

I suppose, though, most would not call profit the value created by one's own labor.

The fundamental definition of capitalism is that all means of production are privately owned.

The reason I say that it's theoretical and hypothetical is that you won't find any real economies where that's the case. Just like we don't find any instances of the platonic ideal of Communism the way Marx described it.

What we have instead is a set of systems with varying degrees of public vs private ownership and various implementations of what should and shouldn't be considered a public vs private resource.

I'm not sure why you would site "product stratification" as a requirement of capitalism. That literally just means that you sort products into different categories. It has nothing to do with any particular economic system.

Most modern economic theory does involve marginalization, but probably not the way you think. The requirement is just that either consumers have different preference curves or producers have different production abilities. That's it and there's nothing particularly sinister about it. Communism makes the same assumptions since those differences are a requirement for, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need," to make sense.

Deprivation isn't a requirement of capitalism either. It's a basic assumption of economics. The idea is that we have unbounded capacity to consume but bounded capacity to produce. If that isn't the case you don't need an economy, everyone just gets everything they want. The difference between Communism and Capitalism is in how they prioritize using limited resources.

You can cite a single statistic on food scarcity but the data is very clear that we're living in an era of unprecedented food excess. If you look at data sets that cover more than a few decades you'll see strong trends of decreased malnutrition, both within the US and around the world.

One of the chief problems with getting these facts wrong is that they lead us to making bad decisions. Food donations are a prime example. The US subsidizes food production. That's generally a good thing since it improves food security. However that screws food prices. The US deals with this by having the government buy up excess food at guaranteed minimum prices. It then has a bunch of food that nobody wants so, in an effort to kill to birds with one stone, it ships a lot of that food to poor countries at below market prices. That feeds some people but it also massively undercuts the local agriculture industry. There's no way a near-subsistence farmer can come close to competing on price against a modern mechanized farm. That's theoretically OK if we came up with some alternative economic activity but we don't.

Why do you only get 290$ for 3 people? I thought that was the amount for one person.

The American idea of socialism is having to beg strangers to pay their medical bills on GoFundMe.

Food production IS the best it has ever been, and farming is exceptionally productive.

Do you have any thoughts about why food insecurity continues alongside edible food being discarded

I do know it's not because farmers are some rich powerful group that wants to throw their product away, like OP seems to be suggesting in this Meme. I also know that having farmers just give their product away for free is not a good solution.

My point is that the image would have you believe they don't exist "because capitalism," when in fact they do have them, and I know this because I volunteer and fucking hate potato day.

Something (intuition I suppose) also tells me that they also exist/have existed in socialist countries, and monarchies, etc, and I'd argue the soviet union's breadlines were actually an example of a food bank by a different name, seeing as both serve the same function (passing out free food to the hungry), and that "free food locations" by whatever name under whatever communist utopia you envision would also be indistinguishable from food banks, and even if we get the replicators, those are food ATMs (pun, 'cause "bank" lol.)

Yes, and when the cost of a product becomes too high for it's true value, alternatives are created, which is why you're probably on lemmy right now. Right now, made to break profits are marketed to be cheaper, and while they are not, people believe it which is why they are still in high demand. There is an abundance of supply with many options, this is very different from low supply.

Capitalism is not inherently the problem. It's the corruption of governments that allow artificial scarcity to exist.

Supply and demand is basic economics and applies to any form of trading. You can make a point about artificial scarcity but diamonds aint it because the demand is also artificial.

I have a complete understanding, but I don't think what I said supports radical capitalism in any way. I want US dollars spent domestically. Period. Minimal global support, just like every other major nation of the world. The United States should no longer do anything more than the 2nd place country.

A 180 turn to what? OP made no actual proposal for feeding more people.

Give credit where it's due.

Great imagination certainly was required to speculate the "plan is to establish a colonial empire".

I'm pepetuating a system that feeds billions

It's the government's responsibility to feed the people that elected them. This is not the responsibility of producers. Producers have a right to make money from their work.

Rent seeking, manufacturing wants/needs, extortion, the list goes on and on, but…

Aside for your idea of "manufacturing wants/needs" (as they are unlimited), rent seeking and extortion (such as subsidies and taxation) are not legit means to profit in a market-setting.

"Those who particularly flourish on the free market, therefore, will be those most adept at production and at serving their fellow men; those who succeed in the political struggle for subsidies, on the other hand, will be those most adept at wielding coercion or at winning favors from wielders of coercion."

You’ve defined capitalism so that all these inevitable features of a capitalist economy are “external factors”.

Corporatocracy is not the same as capitalism. The state is not intrinsically bounded to the formation of markets and voluntary exchange.

because any solution that would end scarcity for a good or service would thereby end profitability for the same.

There is no such thing as a permanent solution to the economic problem of scarcity. Any superabundance theory is destined to fail, such as keynesian economics.

Or in the case of the Great Depression, they’d sooner set fresh produce and livestock on fire than let other consume it without profit to themselves.

The Great Depression represented the most visible sign of a necessary correction in an economy artificially inflated by expansionary monetary policy. The interventionist measures made to boost the economy only drove it further into depression.

"Future recessions can be prevented by reforming the monetary system that creates the boom in the first place."

Markets cost us nothing because they emerge spontaneously? Things that emerge spontaneously cost us nothing?

"We might object to this on the grounds that markets, like any other construct, are man made, and therefore entail a real cost. While it is true that markets are a human construct, we must bear in mind that they are, as Hayek put it, the result of human action, but not the result of human design."

I think the point is that capitalism may be wonderfully humane, as long as it is confined within a mental box, and never touched by daylight.

I think you misnamed this community. It's spelled "Communism".

I guess capitalism would never dream of creating monopolies and artificial shortages to increase profit?

The only way to be a monopoly is to have a government-grant privilege, for gaining legal rights to be a preferred producer is the only way to maintain a monopoly in a market setting.

"Artificial shortages" are created by the mere existence of intellectual property. Even what you define "artificial shortage" is probably not artificial at all, as the price of a final consumer good is not determined by its cost of production.

And it wouldn’t dream of trying to trick customers to pay more for less?

"Prices are only incidental manifestations of [economic] activities, symptoms of an economic equilibrium between the economies of individuals." This means that the emergence of a realized price […] coincides not only with the consummation of the exchange process but also with the attainment of a momentary state of rest by the parties involved in the exchange.

No. You can also profit by appropriating the fruits of somebody else's labor
Capitalism violates the ethical basis of property rights of getting the positive and negative fruits of your labor.

An entrepreneur can't "appropriate" somebody else's labor if the employee who agreed to work for a wage did it voluntarily. Denying this would imply denying the natural right of the worker to free will. Social cooperation is not the same as slavery.

and taking advantage of market failures.

These so-called "market failures" are the product of an utilitarian and scientific economic theory to understand the causes and effects of economic relationships, as it ignores completely the difference between the study of Human Action and economic history.

In fact, the intervention of the government makes it more difficult to have a good allocation of resources.

Often times, actions that benefit consumers fail to receive adequate funding due to involving public goods.

"Every good is useful "to the public," and almost every good […] may be considered "necessary." Any designation of a few industries as "public utilities" is completely arbitrary and unjustified."

Food is not scarce.

Food is not a superabundant resource. If it was, then the ends it satisfies would already have been attained, and there would be no need for action. Resources that are superabundant no longer function as means, because they are no longer objects of action.

An example of an actual superabundant resource is the air:

"Thus, air is indispensable to life and hence to the attainment of goals; however, air being superabundant is not an object of action and therefore cannot be considered a means, but rather what Mises called a "general condition of human welfare." Where air is not superabundant, it may become an object of action, for example, where cool air is desired and warm air is transformed through air conditioning."

Rising food prices are not because of food scarcity.

Of course. Rising the price of something could be caused by a lot of things. However, we should differentiate a change of the price caused by voluntary exchange of it caused by institutional coercion.

Milk hasn’t nearly doubled in price in the past two years because of a scarcity of dairy cows.

Descriptive economics is not the same as explanatory economics.

One example alone I can think of of how privatisation is bad is that redundancy is ignored because it is not profitable.
At worst, it leads to people suffering, at best, it needs constant regulation and enforcement by the government to stop them running in an unsafe manner.

There you go. The classical myth of "natural monopolies" and the intervention of the government, such as licenses, protectionism, "public utilities", subsidies, etc. are the mere cause of this problem.

"The fact that the government must give permission for the use of its streets has been cited to justify stringent government regulations of 'public utilities,' many of which (like water or electric companies) must make use of the streets. The regulations are then treated as a voluntary quid pro quo. But to do so overlooks the fact that governmental ownership of the streets is itself a permanent act of intenention. Regulation of public utilities or of any other industry discourages investment in these industries, thereby depriving consumers of the best satisfaction of their wants. For it distorts the resource allocations of the free market."

Companies will literally use child labour if you let them

"[...] the only reason our children don't have to do this type of labor is that we are wealthier, not because of our child-labor laws nor because we are somehow culturally or racially superior."

Any ban on child labor is utterly counterproductive and potentially life-threatening to the very people the government is "trying to protect". Only economic development can improve the lives of these children, and nothing short of unrestricted free trade will do.