2016 Election -- Part II

Quote: MathExtremist

We all have basic needs and wants, and our "every man for himself" economy is set up to let Joe Sixpack fail when he can't (or won't) adapt to the next set of economic circumstances, or the next one after that, or the one after that. The Darwinian solution would be to let them fail and then throw them in debtors' prison when they run out of money. Except that's what foments the revolution I was talking about, and revolutions are worse than what got Trump elected, so let's not consider that further.

But if we're not going to just sit around and let "those that can't intellectually compete in today's America" fail, then the only alternative is to give them what they need to be successful and as productive as they want to be. For most people, that's time. Time to figure out what to do next -- or time to get the help to figure out what to do next -- while they're not busy worrying about being broke or unemployed or feeding their kids or paying the rent. An out-of-work coal miner might have the talent and inclination to be the next great movie director, or even just a better machinist than coal miner, but we'll never know if he's too busy trying to get another mining job. As a society, we absolutely suck at optimizing the productivity of the average worker. We're pretty good about letting the cream rise to the top, but we don't apply resources to the middle, where most people are. Most people just drift into a career and swirl around in an industry or two until they retire. How many people even get career counseling? If our society were designed to maximize the economic productivity of its citizens, it would absolutely not just let them flail around, guessing at what to do, and hoping they get lucky enough to not fail. That's where we are now, and look at how happy everyone is. Instead, we need more investment in our people. We need to give them time, and since time is money, that really means just giving people money, or the equivalent in basic needs so they don't need to spend that money in the first place. Why shouldn't every U.S. citizen be granted the right to sufficient nutrition, shelter, and clothing? Unlike last century, we now have the resources. It's really a distribution problem.

Except you're right -- the government can't do that. It's too much of a political grenade. It would require everyone to agree to, basically, socialism, and that will never happen at the federal or even state level.

But there is a potential solution.

We live in a world where society and corporations are distinct. You live in society, you work for a corporation. Corporations come and go, society smooshes around it. Most of the time corporations pay taxes and follow the rules society sets out for them, but there's tension when society acts to harm corporations and vice versa.

The way to get rid of that tension is to get rid of the distinction.

I propose that a corporate structure, if large enough, could supplement the government in providing for the basic needs of its "employee citizens." I haven't fully thought through the details -- because I lack the time and the macroeconomic skills -- but my instinct tells me that if enough people signed on to be part of "the company," and agreed not only to share a significant portion of their net worth but economic production during and even after their employment, we could make the math work. Here are a few major benefits:
a) There is no coersion -- the bane of libertarian philosophers. This is a voluntary association. It's a contract -- you have to agree to uphold your end of the bargain -- but nobody's forcing you to join. In other words, you can still be an American without being part of the company. But you don't get the benefits.
b) At the same time, a critical mass of, say, 100,000 people would go a long way to getting pretty favorable deals on everything. IBM has 400,000 people and they get to do things like providing their own self-underwritten health insurance. A critical mass of 1,000,000 people would be even stronger, and a mass of 10,000,000 people could -- if acting as a unified whole -- even swing elections. 10,000,000 people is bigger than all but 10 states.
c) Transferring resources from one employee to another inside a company is not a taxable event. If I'm a farmer growing food, and you're a tool-maker making farming equipment, and we're both members of the company, we can trade tools for food with no transactional friction from government taxes. Naturally, since bartering is so 18th century, there would be an internal corporate currency and economy.
d) Employees either work outside (at normal jobs) or they work inside, for the company. Working for the company may result in lower dollar compensation but higher corporate-currency compensation. Working for outside firms just means you pay a vig on any cash income to the company as part of your ongoing obligation. Nothing's free, after all. And maybe the vig doesn't even exist until there's a critical mass large enough to make things work at a minimum level. Eventually everything comes from inside the company and you don't need (outside) money at all. You can still get it, so as to interface with the outside world, but as the inside world grows your need to do that shrinks.
e) The company would, I expect, acquire many other firms. The employees of those firms would not be required to join, but the acquired firm itself would become another asset of the company, producing resources.
f) Over time, the company would acquire what it needed to become self-sufficient, leading to a virtuous cycle of increased employment, therefore increased total productivity, therefore stronger incentives for more people to join, etc. And as it grows, the company can provide higher and higher levels of employee benefits. Not just food and shelter but healthcare, education. Work up the Maslow pyramid, etc. The company is a non-profit, for the benefit of its employees, so it's not driven by profit motive and outside shareholders. It's driven by maximizing the welfare of its citizen-employees -- those are the shareholders. Sort of like "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."
g) Citizen employee innovations would inure to the benefit of the company, just like any other employee-company relationship, so after a while the company would be the world's largest IP holder. But unlike most other companies, this one would actively encourage innovation and research. It's a lot easier to be creative and/or spend years pursuing research when you're not worried about covering basic needs.
h) And yes, if you want to screw around all day, drinking beer and playing Xbox, you get to. Maybe you don't get extra benefit levels if you're not productive, but everyone's basic needs are met. But like you said, "most Joe Sixpack's actually want to go work and be valuable somewhere" and I think working to make a corporation/society where everyone can succeed and nobody gets left behind is worth sucking up a few leeches along the way.

The trillion-dollar question, of course, is whether such an organization can grow to a critical mass to accomplish the goal of providing basic needs and then the secondary goal of demonstrating higher productivity than individual-centric capitalism. I think it can, but I'm not sure it would get there before the government realized there was meaningful competition and moved to shut it down.

Maybe this is a crackpot idea that won't work for some reason that's obvious to everyone but me. Or maybe not. Please feel free to pick this apart.

Edit: after posting that, I realized just what a wall of text that is. I wonder if that's the longest post ever on this forum -- except for the numeric gibberish that gets posted from time to time when people are convinced their betting system works or their online casino is cheating them.

Quote: ams288

Stop with the personal insults already.

Quote: terapined

No comments from the right regarding the union head that fact checked Trump?
Why did Trump throw the head of the Carrier union under the bus?
All he did was review the FACTS regarding the Carrier deal
Why are Trump supporters sending death threats to the Carrier Union
What is it about facts that make Trump supporters want to kill somebody?

Fake news is a problem
Trump promotes fake news by saying how great the Carrier deal is

Quote: ams288

There's gonna be a lot of "no comment" by the Trumpsters over the next four years.

All the shady conflicts of interest, the blatant pay-for-play taking place in his cabinet... all would have elicited the utmost outrage if done by Hillary. Trump? *crickets* from the right.

It's hypocrisy at its finest.

Quote: EvenBob

We are China's biggest customer, they need
us more than we need them. We're so
financially intertwined now that we'll never
be separated. The world will be run by the
Chinese one day, and they know it. They're
in it for the long haul, they have eternal
patience.

Quote: terapined

This is way more offensive to me then discussing Trumps kids
Wow
He thinks vaccines equals autism
That is simply sick

Quote: bobbartop

You conveniently left something out. He said "massive one-time shots for children". Should I expect you to misquote and misrepresent facts in the future?

Quote: ams288

but hey, I can't allow MaxPen and bobbartop to have all the fun!!

Quote: terapined

I did not purposefully misquote
I read the tweets
my evaluation of the tweets
"He thinks vaccines equals autism"
I stand by my evaluation

There is no connection between autism and vaccines and yet he refers to both in the same short tweet more then once.

Quote: bobbartop

What part of "massive one-time shots for children" did you not understand?

How many products have labels that say "not for children under 2" or something like that? Maybe there is something to cramming all these vaccines down a CHILD'S throat so young and fresh? I don't know. I'm not a doctor. Which wouldn't mean squat if I was. Doctors are quacks. You can quote me.

And don't get me started about Big Pharma. Amazing how many good little soldiers are on this forum.

Quote: terapined

There is no connection between any shots and autism

Quote: VCUSkyhawk

Well, I am nobody. However, I can read. See below. Not that it will matter, its all a big conspiracy anyways, right?

http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/committee/topics/mmr/mmr_autism/en/

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/autism.html

https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/immunization/Pages/vaccine-hesitant-parents.aspx

The WHO, CDC, APA...all disagree with you. You know, actual learned people.

Quote: bobbartop

Did I mention I finished 8th grade? But you can probably tell that already.

Anyway, WHO, CDC, APA, .... BFD.

Is there a consensus on jamming ALL of the vaccines into a very young child all at once? Because that's what was brought up earlier in this thread.

By the way, LOL @ W.H.O.

Quote: terapined

Seriously
Are you a Scientologist?

Quote: bobbartop

That should be worth a 3-day suspension. MODERATOR!

:-)

Quote: terapined

Just curious because a lot of your views regarding the medical profession conforms to the beliefs of Scientology

Quote: bobbartop

I just found out that eating Wakame seaweed lowers my blood pressure. I found that out by accident. No wonder the Japanese live long.

Quote: rxwine

Maybe your heart is starting to fail since you've not been taking proper medicine.

I'm not a doctor, so not one of those "quacks." You can trust me.

Quote: RS

I think part of it is that you should be eating healthy foods to begin with. Pills aren't supposed to "make you healthy". Pills are for people who eat healthily and are still sick.

Quote: EvenBob

Tillerson, what a great choice for SoS. He has
vast experience dealing with foreign nations.
He even got some kind of an award a couple
years ago from Russia. He has a tight relationship
with Putin, which is just what we need after the
Obama debacle.

Quote: beachbumbabs

Couldn't disagree with you more about him being a good pick. Zero experience as a diplomat.

Quote: beachbumbabs

Couldn't disagree with you more about him being a good pick. Zero experience as a diplomat. Stopped from making 500B deal with Russia by Obama for good reason. We are not Russia and don't need to be any closer to them.

Quote: ams288

It's becoming clear EvenBob's only job over the next four years will be to blindly defend every single action Donald takes no matter how bad it is.

The only people who truly think Tillerson is a good pick live in Russia....

Quote: RS

And it's becoming clear ams288's only job over the next four years will be to blindly oppose every single action The Donald makes, no matter how good it is.

Ba dum tss.

Quote: ams288

It's becoming clear EvenBob's only job over the next four years will be to blindly defend every single action Donald takes no matter how bad it is.
.

Quote: EvenBob

Tillerson, what a great choice for SoS. He has
vast experience dealing with foreign nations.
He even got some kind of an award a couple
years ago from Russia. He has a tight relationship
with Putin, which is just what we need after the
Obama debacle.

Quote: bobbartop

He said "Putin is a thug, a bully, and a murderer, and anyone who says different is a liar."

Quote: bobbartop

Kinda strange, I don't know much about Tillerson but I find myself agreeing with Barbara's reasoning and thus Ams288's also. Maybe once they see me agree with them they will change their minds.

Quote: RS

And it's becoming clear ams288's only job over the next four years will be to blindly oppose every single action The Donald makes, no matter how good it is.

Ba dum tss.

Quote: RS

And it's becoming clear ams288's only job over the next four years will be to blindly oppose every single action The Donald makes, no matter how good it is.

Ba dum tss.

Quote: bobbartop

I don't know what to say or think about our diplomatic relationship with Russia, but being diplomatic with a thug, a bully, and a murderer, just seems to me there is something wrong with this picture.

Quote: SanchoPanza

So there was nothing wrong when the Obama regime sold a significant chunk of our uranium resources to Putin or paid off hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom to another non-terrorist, Sayyid Ali Khamenei. How the world has changed in just about a month!

Quote: bobbartop

Why are you talking to me like this? I think you've got the wrong person.

Quote: rxwine

Now if only we can find a Trump.

Quote: MaxPen

Settled on completion of all ballets in regardless of date but before inauguration. Delays are being implemented to fuel the fires. I that is acceptable consider it a done deal.