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Universal basic income. If you want to sit on your ass all day and stare at the wall, you are free to do so, while having enough food to eat, a shelter, clothing, and health care. If you want some shiny thing, then you can earn extra money to buy it. Once people are finally free of the fear of becoming homeless, then they'll be able to flourish and contribute great things.

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Good questions. You're pretty much talking to a misanthrope who has no faith that anyone is able to behave reasonably. My answer is that I don't think it's possible. Maybe the approach of 'forcing' it is the only one that would 'work.' Who knows


'autistic' behavior as you call it I think actually has a better regard for limits than typical 'macho' behavior does. The autistic dudes aren't the ones hitting on the girl behind the counter every five minutes. But yeah, the autists are the ones concerned with competency and they have no problem bringing gender into it.

It would fix people taking **** jobs just to survive. They could devote their time to things they actually give a **** about, resulting in a much better society.

All of the shiny things that people want would create enough housing, food, clothing, and health care. Not to mention that plenty of people would be genuinely interested in those things. If not, then we could have a system where people are conscripted to work in those areas for like, 2 weeks out of the year or something.

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I honestly dont think that you will ever achieve the equal society that most people who strive for it are talking about. If you started fresh today and were able to wipe out all privileged factors, erase all social conditions that create advantages for people of a certain skin color or gender, you would of course start out with an equal society. however, you would still have people who are more ambitious or more aggressive, willing to take more risks and want a greater gain. You would quickly fall back into an "unequal" society. unless of course you are interested in controlling everyone based on equal returns for unequal effort, but that would hardly be equal either. Honestly, as inherently (and possibly unreasonably) icky as i find all things "socialist" a guaranteed basic livelihood may not be that bad an idea.

As far as making males not see females as potential mates... you cant MAKE them do that. What IS possible though is a work environment where men and women and whomever treat each other with mutual respect in a working environment, but even that depends on the individual. you get one aggressive hormone addled teenager in there and BOOM your healthy working environment goes right out the window.

Also in regards to women in physically demanding fields, I really dont care what your gender is, if you can physically do the job you should be considered for it. Alternately though, if you cannot meet physical requirements for a job that places certain physical demands on the employee then absolutely 100% no, especially in areas where safety is involved.

I also seem to remember learning in my college history course that western industrial progress has always been fueled by foreign textile labor, be it African slaves, colonized Indians (in India), or sweatshop workers in modern Asia. And in the East, the 20th century also saw Russia pilfer the eastern bloc in the sick joke that was COMECON.

Do you guys want equality for those folks as well?? Because I'm definitely sure you'd have less cheap **** if your countries had to produce their own **** while paying domestic workers an honest wage.

I'd say that's part of what we're seeing right now. We're going to have global economic parity for the lower classes sooner or later and I can't really see it as a bad thing.

Someday we will evolve beyond our biology or surrender control to machines, and it will be glorious.

Until then our biology will continue to influence our reality/choices.

So I vote we hire the unqualified blonde supermodel...

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Yep. And to anybody getting overly idealistic / prissy about some unnaturally equitable and peaceful utopia, I just point them to the animal kingdom, and mention that it would be highly unexpected were a species descended from creatures with no sense of 'morals' to follow some abstract ideal in setting up the 'rules' for society. I would question whether or not such an ideal system would even be remotely efficient*. Anyway, the very existence of the entire evolutionary ecosystem is founded largely on aggressive parasitism, that is ultimately tempered by the macroscopic evolution of the local ecosystem toward a happy symbiotic middle-ground.

The golden rule is totally made up, a social construct, created by projecting our fears of being wronged or murdered into a agreed upon code of conduct we call the 'civilization'.

Edit: * of course, once we start making up the rules of the universe and its initial conditions, anything is possible. And highly unlikely. Even though somebody could surely dream up a universe that was fair and efficient. That's easy. Just start with the answer and say that God (you) made it.

That said, maybe an all-aware, all-powerful totalitarian regime in which artificial intelligence ruled the world could finally put an end to the prisoners dilemma the greedy bastards in power are continuously playing whereby they screw over each other and (especially) everybody else.

Although I question that even an ideal system would be 'equitable'. I seriously doubt that it would be mathematically likely that it so happened that the most efficient (society in which the largest number of people benefit the most) is the most equitable (society in which everybody benefits the same). There is surely a middle-ground, but it is subjective, which defeats the whole purpose of being ruled by a wholly objective A.I. overlord.

I'll just finish with this



-- a cool dude

(I think I'm philosophizing to myself at this point.)

Thank god that didn't happen:

Sorry, don't know how to play this video :(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy0Dldv7AOI

If we're going to have basic income, don't you think we also need some kind of birth rate restriction so that we don't merely give them enough Malthusian rope to hang their family with?

And aren't the biggest offenders outside our control and beyond our borders? Like in India? With nukes?

oddly enough, a cold and unsympathetic robot overlord might actually be able to implement an equitable system. Where everyone is allowed only enough to survive, but ALWAYS enough to survive. If equality is the goal, equally poor but alive is just as equal as equally wealthy.

Gee, thanks a bunch for proving my happiness is objectively meaningless.

I guess the totalitarian robot will also have to invade our brains and change our definition of happiness to something more noble like the pursuit of truth. And at that point, we have truly become appendages to a perfectly constructed machine, and have totally lost our humanity.

One perspective, may then be that it is our flaws that make us unique as humans.

(BTW, thanks for the nice webcomic, I enjoyed it.)

(It's secretly a criticism of capitalism)

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Wow, I totally missed that.

happiness = money
Felix ϵ Bankers

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IMO the biggest fault of apologists for the idea of capitalism writ large is their insufficiently nuanced look. You know, black and white thinking *. As well as their (conveniently) imaginary toy ideas about how the world works. And most of the time they aren't honest with themselves enough to admit they have a stake in the game, notwithstanding brainwashed Fox News types near the poverty line.

* Where did Sarn go?

I disagree. The biggest fault of capitalism's apologists is that they knowingly endorse a broken and corrupt system on the slight chance that they will be one of the winners some day.

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Oh, yes. Another big reason to promote mathematical education. If only probability was better understood.

Of course, the state-run lottery isn't exactly setting a good example.

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Actually, if there ever was a single defining aspect of American culture, this might be it.

(At least, that's what the ruling class likes to think.)

Sorry, don't know how to play this video :(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgjwjaBJ5Do

Steinbeck. "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

It also defines China, where public official corruption sees significant popular support because parents hope their children will some day become corrupt government officials.

People support the worst things for the worst reasons. Hurr hurr I'm a Christian, let's go lynch some queers and then never donate anything to charity.

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You know, I had a friend back in high school who really tried to convince me that gambling for high stakes was a rational thing to do, because of the way he defined happiness as a function of his financial worth. It was really kind of sad. He honestly believed that the (clearly above average) middle class life he was born into wasn't worth living to its fullest, and that his sole purpose in life was to exercise every opportunity to move into the upper class through luck (gambling).

I'm trying to decide whether he was just innumerate, or was so brainwashed by materialistic culture that he honestly valued increasing his material wealth above all else.

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With the climate change issue, I think it's akin to the boiling of the frog, who can't understand his plight until he's cooked.

Actually, now that I've typed it out, I see that the analogy works on a literal level as well.

I'll buy the occasional lottery ticket. Even if the expected payoff is exactly minus the ticket cost, the marginal utility of that money to me is low enough that I don't really care.

Know how you mill though money until you enter the upper class? Buy a little bit of everything until your wealth is representative of all of mankind, and then ride that inter-generational colony ship of economic growth. Well, you won't be rich, but your grandkids might be.