RE: Stupid Poor People
Thanks so much for this well thought out response @geekpowered, I appreciate that a lot! Even if I don't agree...
There also need to be easy job centers that help find everyone jobs...
Actually, no. Not everyone can have a job because then jobs wouldn't pay. Also not everyone can have a job because there are better things to do in life, like raising kids, painting paintings, writing songs, inventing new stuff... Also not everyone can have a job because we simply don't have to: when asked, more than 25% of the workers admit their job is useless and doesn't add anything of value. Also not everyone can have a job because Skynet is upon us...
The scarcity mindset is cultivated by a scarcity based economy we've hung on to while leaving the scarcity reality. It's the very thought that everyone has to work for a living that's outdated. For me, the only question is if it;s right that poverty even exists in the abundance we've created. The answer in my mind is a loud and resounding "no, of course not". Ending poverty would not only free up a lot of money, that's the least important thing in my mind; it would free up minds, making them available for true progression on the things that make us human, like science, art and technology. The old saying goes like "money makes the world go 'round" when in actuality money is the biggest obstacle for humanity to rise to a next level. Can we go and colonize Mars? We have the brainpower, the technology and even a healthy pool of volunteers willing to go on a one-way trip to the Red Planet. Literally nothing is stopping us but the money, the economy. We can do anything, but money won't make us do what's most important.
Yeah, we are approaching a point where we will start to enter a post scarcity economy, where practically everything is made by automated machines. But then, what's the point in money at all? To ration a certain number of things? Most people won't be able to figure out something they're good at enough to get paid well doing. If we were truly in a post scarcity economy, we wouldn't need money or to ration anything. But then you'd have the old people taking more than their share.
We aren't truly in a post scarcity economy yet and we won't be for a while. We have the technology for many things to be automated, perhaps even most of society now. But we will need time. Many people need time to change.
Of course it's not right that poverty exists. It's stupid. We grow more than enough food for everyone. And it makes more sense financially to provide healthcare for everyone.
It also makes more sense to switch to high speed rail as soon as possible and abandon cars for the most part, relying on small electric automated vehicles for local transpo. But we won't.
We need to take care of the things that people spend money on that everyone needs, for the benefit of society. Even if we gave money to everyone, they'd just have to pay for these things anyway, and then it would cost everyone more money. Instead, we need to just supply them.
And even if in the future many won't have the jobs they have now, companies still need to go somewhere to find people to fill the jobs they have, and people that want jobs to do have to go somewhere to find one. The current system is just wasteful and stupid. Seriously, we have to go door to door for a job?
You're turning to money to solve the problem of money. We should just solve the individual problems. Eventually we'll move beyond money. And maybe we should have a universal basic income...but we have a lot of other problems that need to be solved to lower how much basic income we need, because we all need to pay for them anyway.
And the problem with going to Mars isn't the money, it's politicians. They're unwilling to put the money forward that it would cost. In truth we could have a launch loop allowing cheap flights to the moon and launching satellites and going to Mars for less than the annual budget of many companies, just a few billion, but we don't. The cost to go to Mars is actually not that much. Instead we spend insane amounts on bombs and planes and big buildings to hold games that will never be used afterwards. The problem isn't money. The problem is people. We don't solve poverty because not enough people in positions to do something want to do anything. And we put them in those positions.