badger

Honestly I am very dubious of the idea of automation  "giving options" to anyone. In the short term at least, I think it is locking people out of access to wealth.

Personally, I used ChatGPT to go from doing repetitive work at almost minimum wage, to being an engineer. In a sense, it is not automating work as much as changing the nature of the work. And different work creates a different reward structure. It is no longer only the most patient, diligent person who is only successful. Soon, you can have an individual maintaining the same software that might have needed an entire company otherwise. Tech monopolies can train a giant pre-trained model, then others just use that to distil it into a much cheaper model that performs equally well. That is why I call it a race to the bottom, I see it as levelling the entire system. Technology proliferates connections faster than the control systems can recuperate them and restore balance.

The conservatives in the United States have created a plan to pay everyone a minimum basic income for just existing. It is called "The fair tax" as a marketing ploy. Democrats here typically shoot it down because it involves a tax on consumption so it would make it so you can't weaponize the tax system against political opponents.

If you think that it really takes a billion dollars to bring a drug to market that there is no room for a university biochemistry lab to design a drug and have the FDA test it for say 100 million instead of a billion than maybe I can't have a rational conversation with you .

We all can only speculate. What I will say is that when technology replaces a certain skillset, the need for other skillsets is also created. Such as when automobiles took over horses and carriages, the need for car and engine designers and manufacturers and mechanics arose.

I’m not sure what you’re asking here. In contrast to what? Private individuals own the means of production currently.

Never said I was.

As machines do more and more work previously done by paid human labor, the subject of “universal basic income” rears its head. There was a candidate for president in 2020 who made this the center of his platform.

This is why the working class cannot minimum wage itself into prosperity.

FDA

Centrally planned economies just don't work well. 

I posted some of my thoughts in post 66. When I have seen business owners asked about minimum wage increases, they usually have responded with a variation of these three things:

- “Depending on the size of the increase, I might have to raise prices a bit.”

-“I might need to increase my use of automation and reduce my staffing.”

-“I already pay higher than the minimum, so I expect the effects to be negligible.”

-“I might need to increase my use of automation and reduce my staffing.”

This is the shell game I am talking about.

I read this thread out of morbid curiosity to see just how impervious to logic and reason you are, and it's over the top.

I also think you are debating a person who isn't giving his real premises. My guess is the real argument that GP has but fails to give is as follows.

premise 1- Government only exists to protect private contracts

Premise 2- A minimum wage increase interferes with the voluntary right to set contracts between 2 people

conclusion- The government is overstepping their authority by increasing minimum wage or in fact having a minimum wage at all

This has a lot to do with what Wylted explained to you about how all the mom and pop businesses were run underground because of competition regulations pushed by millionaire corporations. 

When the government forces the mom and pop stores to raise prices, most of them will go bankrupt. This is exactly why millionaires support those kinds of regulations. Wyted already explained that aspect very well, so I am not going to rehash his points. It's the poor business owners that suffer because they live on tight margins. The rich can afford it. And when the competition is gone, they can charge whatever they want, and send a little to their politician's coffer to keep it that way.

It's idiotic to think a plan that millionaires support is superior than simply providing cash in hand to poor people.

Your dumb shell game amounts to:

The rich actually want to be forced to pay a higher wage.

This is somehow exactly what they wanted all along and will somehow make the poor poorer.

Only solution is to do nothing. Let the rich have their way. Stay poor.

But wait... oh no, what if the rich just increase wages themselves then? Does that mean we cannot avoid this terrible trap?

Oh no they're paying me more money! This is the disastrous situation GP warned me about! Somehow I'm ruined!

Who fucking conned this dude into believing that enforcing higher salaries is a trap by rich people? How did you do that?

Your dumb shell game amounts to:

The rich actually want to be forced to pay a higher wage.

This is somehow exactly what they wanted all along and will somehow make the poor poorer.

Only solution is to do nothing. Let the rich have their way. Stay poor.

But wait... oh no, what if the rich just increase wages themselves then? Does that mean we cannot avoid this terrible trap?

Oh no they're paying me more money! This is the disastrous situation GP warned me about! Somehow I'm ruined!

Who fucking conned this dude into believing that enforcing higher salaries is a trap by rich people? How did you do that?

There's ways to provide relief and welfare for the poorest, but this surely isn't it. If the rich support it, you know it's a bad idea.

so the poor living on dirt get to live on more expensive dirt just so they can think it's not overpriced dirt. got ya.

It's countered linearly by the costs of supply. Increased demand for costlier supplies has a known effect.

Raising the minimum wage affects more than just the poorest workers. It creates upward pressure on wages across the spectrum (known as "wage compression"), which further increases demand as people in multiple income brackets suddenly have more spending power. This amplified demand for housing, food, and other essentials drives up costs for everyone—especially in areas where supply can’t keep up, like housing markets. So while the argument claims demand isn’t tied to poor people's incomes alone, boosting wages at the bottom affects the broader economy in ways that indirectly raise costs.

Again, high prices for living is an observable outcome in every city with high minimum wages. It's effectively a welfare tax affecting primarily those barely scraping by and on the margins of these high costs of living, which is why the rich support it. Raising the costs of living is one of the primary goals of the crony rich. And the income disparities are greatest in the cities with large minimum wages.

Maybe. What about degrees that are known not to increase odds of getting a good job?

Depends on the policy, I guess. Universal healthcare I'd support depending on implementation, rent control I'd oppose.

Ok, but you realize this attitude is kind of my point? Like as long as other divisions between people exist, it's near impossible for all laborers to band together.

And to your thought experiment, you are right on.  Everybody seems to think AI will eventually do everything and nobody will have to work and that will be great, that is so naive, the only people that will be good for are the bazillionaires that own the AI, when AI gets to the point where nobody has to work, it will also be when nobody has a job, and they don't have any money either, and the ruling Oligarchy is not going to give them any.  There is no AI utopia in our future, there is only an AI utopia for the ruling oligarchs, and then the revolution.  

Racism has always been the scapegoat of the bourgeoisie.

Racism is the classic tool of division used by the bourgeoisie, the ruling class, to distract the working masses from the deeper, more pressing issues of class inequality and economic exploitation. It's how the powerful elites maintain control by preventing solidarity among working-class people of all races, thereby keeping them focused on superficial divisions rather than the shared economic struggles they face due to the concentration of wealth and power. It deflects attention from the systemic corruption and economic systems (the things Doge is working to dismantle) that disproportionately benefit the few while keeping the many in poverty.

The Bourgeoisie class makes sure that the working class spends all their valuable time and effort directing their anger and frustration toward one another, rather than uniting against the true cause of their suffering: the corrupt system itself. This manufactured war is what keeps the status quo  in place, with the elite benefiting from both economic and racial divisions. We saw this with the whole ESG bullshit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social,_and_governance

Racism is the pervasive scapegoat that perpetuates the power dynamics that allow the rich to stay rich and the poor to stay oppressed, all while diverting attention from the genuine structural issues like crony regulations and crony capitalism. That scapegoat is currently on life support as the American society moves to reject that narrative.

It really doesn't matter if the preferred skin color was white 50 years ago or black today, the point is to continue the manufactured war to sustain the current system.

racist

Capitalism is the gold rush. That's its roots. Men with pickaxes and ambition in a wide open world. Now an increasingly small few own all the land. We'll be lucky if they let us handle rakes.