General > General Technical Chat
What is a good about Covid 19 related?
nctnico:
--- Quote from: IDEngineer on March 31, 2020, 12:04:23 am ---
--- Quote from: nctnico on March 30, 2020, 11:43:49 pm ---If you go back in history a bit then you'll see wellfare has been 'invented' to keep the poor people from criminal behaviour and providing them with a basic sanitary living standard so they don't endanger the rest of the people with diseases.
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You'd think people would NOT want to accept "welfare", UBI, etc. and thus be lumped in with the "poor people" who are associated with "criminal behavior".
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No. I'm saying that every society has a certain amount of people who get money (welfare) for literally doing nothing. Contrary to the UBI idea this group on welfare should be kept as small as possible and the amount of money as low as possible so it pays quickly to get a job.
@Sredni: Who is going to make the Lamborghini? In a short while there won't be any Italians left!
maginnovision:
Volkswagen already owns lamborghini.
coppice:
--- Quote from: Sredni on March 31, 2020, 12:44:02 am ---
--- Quote ---@Sredni: Who is going to make the Lamborghini? In a short while there won't be any Italians left!
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The [add the Country you like] investors who bought the company for peanuts?
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Lamborghini have been part of the VW Audi group fro quite a while, and many of the key parts in a Lamborghini are common to Audi cars.
petert:
--- Quote from: james_s on March 30, 2020, 04:56:16 am ---I hadn't realized there was anywhere that actually had UBI. I've known enough people who can barely be motivated to get a job even when they can't pay the bills and will always do the bare minimum they can get away with to survive.
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Every system will always have negative counter examples, but also people who take them and exaggerate the amount of people who really are lazy vs. those who are in troubling situations. If people who get by having several jobs, and only sleep, work, eat are a better alternative is questionable as well, which a system of "self-reliance" creates. Too many have to get by with minimum wage and an unclear future.
People who achieve truly great things do so out of their own motivation, not by an external one. Quite a few have become very poor or bankrupt as well and risked their health and life. But many early scientists and intellectuals were actually well off.
I don't believe in the carrot and stick method.
But the main point is that UBI is not necessarily a good or the only solution, but the problems it tries to address matter.
Automation will keep increasing the efficiency of production, and will result in few people accumulating more wealth with increasingly less need to distribute it again, by having employees. The goal of any company (in our current economy) is to reduce costs, including labor cost as much as possible. That in itself is a major problem, that the UBI tries to address. Certainly not in the best way, but a safety net of some sort is necessary if you want to advance society and keep innovating. It's simply unrealistic to compete with others who are a lot more resourceful.
To find good solutions, we need to move away from that "lazy people" idea, and instead move to thinking what can be done to remove barriers for motivated people to succeed. Currently, this is usually understood as allowing big companies to grow even bigger, or people accumulating more wealth. But what we need is people being able to innovate and improve the world. The tools required for the latter are quite different. A basic safety net so that you can focus on the task is one ingredient, easier access and collaborations with universities and advanced gear would be another. Citizen science labs for example, where you pay a regular fee, or can rent space or tools for limited periods, maybe even some hours, without being enrolled in a university, would be another. Access to knowledgeable people, chairs that get payed and valued for making science more accessible, i.e., clear but not dumbed down, is still rare. Currently, as a scientist, being understandable is not a "currency" that advances your career, while more clarity is important to accelerate innovation and knowledge transfer.
People who focus on clarity, summarizing, writing overview papers, and actually do research on how to present knowledge in an unambigious way, not just for highschool, but academia and higher level research as well, are very necessary.
But back to topic, UBI or not, the problems that UBI tries to solve are real.
petert:
--- Quote from: nctnico on March 31, 2020, 12:39:06 am ---No. I'm saying that every society has a certain amount of people who get money (welfare) for literally doing nothing. Contrary to the UBI idea this group on welfare should be kept as small as possible and the amount of money as low as possible so it pays quickly to get a job.
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It's a common thing for people to say, but I wonder how many people really fall into this group. I do believe it is one of the ways to make people accept that "it's all their fault". I doubt that many people are truly happy with a "useless" life. Increased automation will further reduce the amount of people needed as employees, and I predict the "lazy people" argument will get stronger as this progresses, to hide this issue.
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