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Comment Re:Sure, some access is bad (Score 1) 53

"Unless they ask the IRS to make you accountable to them"

There is a better way: make taxes voluntary, fund the government at zero cost through the Fed. The private sector creates at least an order of magnitude more money than government, so there is plenty of room to expand the public money supply.

Indexation of everything (including savings, salaries, transfer payments) eliminates any potential "inflation tax".

Comment Re:if you think it's a free speech issue--- (Score 0) 311

Then let's fix society. Start with a basic income, so that no one has to worry about being on the streets if they lose a job (but you could still live on the streets if you wanted, the basic income should be opt-in). We produce enough surplus to support everyone at a certain minimum standard of living.

Then when people are freed from the fear of starving if they lose their job, they can work on changing societal attitudes, about naked pictures for example. Screw the hypocritical prudes who think the naked body is something shameful, to ridicule. Societal attitudes can turn on a dime; consider that Kerry lost the 2004 election because of anti-gay marriage sentiment. Things have changed.

Comment Re:Artists paid 16 times as much for Spotify than (Score 1) 305

Your economics are feudal and obsolete. There is no production capacity shortage; there is an artificial, imposed scarcity of money. Technology means we need far fewer production workers. Take ships: when Columbus came to America how many men did he need to sail his ships? Today the new supertankers can transport many, many orders of magnitude more cargo than Columbus could carry, with a crew of 13.

So instead of producing things, we employ people to watch over the huge surpluses accumulated, and to create liquidity via sketchy financial schemes such as toxic assets.

Basic Income frees individuals to be individually creative, without having to get some dumb boss to sign off on it first.

Comment Re:Fuck you for wanting to profit off your art! (Score 1) 305

No, leave the current system alone, so you can still choose to play in its game. Basic income provides a choice for those who want to play in games other than those dominated by economic motivations. I may have betrayed my own artistic preferences; but I would neither require anyone to take a basic income, nor restrict the market's desire to pay anyone what it can bear.

Comment Re:What's not to like (Score 0) 105

False equivalence. I try to minimize harm, and dream and scheme of/for a day when I don't have to eat.

But plants have different survival strategies than big game animals, hence the false equivalence. Most of the plants I eat produce fruit that birds eat, spreading the seeds to far-off lands. I'm happiest when I'm out somewhere where I can toss the seeds of the fruit I eat into some dirt where it might take hold; or maybe it lies dormant for eons...

Comparing eating a plant to eating meat ignores the body of thought that Jains have devoted to the issue of ahimsa, in the course of over 5000 years.

All eating is harmful, but eating plants, especially when the plant itself survives (i.e. don't eat root vegetables because the plant has to be killed), is less harmful than eating a cow or another animal that actively tries to get away when you kill it.

Jains also thought about microscopic creatures long before the microscope; so you should strain water, and not eat after sunset because your food is more likely to have organisms on it that sunlight hasn't killed. Yes it's regrettable that bacteria die by the sunlight; one day we will develop less violent techniques of preserving food, and synthetic meat that doesn't require animal-derived substrate to grow within, and/or we'll figure out how to get energy directly from the sun (as our friends and fellow mortals the plants do; they can teach us).

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