Btw. I am not advocating for work programs as a particularly good solution, expelling and letting the parents to figure out what to do with their misbehaving child is a good solution too. School is a privilege for smart children to study, not a prison for those who do not want to learn.
>> School is a privilege for smart children to study, not a prison for those who do not want to learn.
It's actually neither of those things, because we discovered hundreds of years ago that having an educated population is good for everyone. No, it's not a prison, but it's not a privilege either - you have to be in school until certain age. Work is not substitute for education.
Have an educated population does not mean that every last uncivilized brat needs to participate. Especially if he is distracting other people from acquiring an education.
Being in school does not make one educated. Keeping disruptive child in the same room with normal children, means we get fewer educated people, not more.
Keeping them in school like it is done now, does not help them in any way, it merely transforms school from a place to learn into a mini prison where dysfunctional kids do not allow other kids to learn too.
15 year old who decides that he doesn't want to learn would be much better off if he gets expelled, goes to work at macdonalds, and comes back later, than the current situation where he gets to go to school and do nothing.
Also the mere possibility of being expelled and having to go to work will help many more children to keep studying.
>>Keeping them in school like it is done now, does not help them in any way
Well of course not, because schools don't have the support they need to help those students in turn.
>>goes to work at macdonalds
I don't know where you live where employing 15 year olds is legal, but even if we assume some kind of state where it's allowed, what mcdolands would employ a 15 year old that was expelled from school?
>>and comes back later,
How would that even work? You mean they enroll back at a private school to get their education? With what money?
The path isn't "well they get expelled so they just go to work" - most likely the path is that they just stay at home doing nothing all day if their parents let them, or they just turn to vagrancy/crime. No 15 year old is going to go "well I got kicked out of school so I better look for the most basic job" - it's some kind of unrealistic pipe dream of how society works.
But either way - you haven't really answered my question. In most places a child has to be in education until they turn 18. So when you kicked them out of school at 15, what is the state supposed to do with them?
> You mean they enroll back at a private school to get their education?
I mean the money that government wastes keeping them in school while they are 15 and don't want to learn, can be given to them later when/if they decide to learn.
> most likely the path is that they just stay at home doing nothing all day if their parents let them.
That's up to the parent to decide: leave them at home, convince them to find a job, go to special school or a class for misbehaving children, go to trade school etc.
Those who turn to vagrancy/crime do it anyway, as they have enough time outside of school too.
> child has to be in education until they turn 18.
> employing 15 year olds is [not] legal
These are not physical laws given to us from above, these are rather misguided attempts by politicians to look good, and are harmful to the society.
Imagine that instead of prisons we were forcing criminals to go spend time sitting in offices and disrupting normal work. What we do with children now is equally effective.
>>I mean the money that government wastes keeping them in school while they are 15 and don't want to learn, can be given to them later when/if they decide to learn.
So you want to financially incentivize kids to drop out of school? "Drop out now, we'll give you a bunch of money later".
>> these are rather misguided attempts by politicians to look good, and are harmful to the society.
Saying that keeping 15 year olds out of a job is harmful to the society is....certainly a take, for sure.
>>What we do with children now is equally effective.
Well, thank you for editing this sentence from what you wrote originally, but just to be clear - I'm not advocating that misbehaving kids should be forced to sit in normal classrooms and disrupt everyone else - rather that schools should be given the resources to deal with it - the school I went to had special classes for unruly kids which were much smaller and where you basically had to meet up with specialists every week and your grades were severely impacted. It does work in most cases. Sure there will be ones that are truly beyond any kind of help - but that is very very rare. Most of the time you just have kids who could get on the straight path if someone helped them, but public schools are usually so underfunded they can't help even if they want to.
> Drop out now, we'll give you a bunch of money later
Later they only get ability to sit at the same classes at the same public school, so there is no financial incentive.
15 year olds forced to sit in classes they don't want are way more miserable than those allowed to work and feel like adults. In any case people should be allowed to make choices by themselves not be forced by the government.
> the school I went to had special classes for unruly kids
That's a great solution too, and must be available option for parents. Sadly very few schools do that, making both unruly kids and good kids miserable as a result.
> schools should be given the resources
I don't think the problem is the lack of resources, specialist for helping unruly kids is not going to cost more than a math teacher. The problem is that most schools are simply opposed to the idea of splitting students based on their ability and willingness to study. As a result they have a system that harms everyone involved.
>>Later they only get ability to sit at the same classes at the same public schoo
I have to ask, what public school would accept adults taking classes along the rest of 15 year olds?
>> In any case people should be allowed to make choices by themselves not be forced by the government.
I'm sorry, but kids/teenagers are generally not allowed to make these choices, for good reasons. If you're an adult, then sure, do whatever. But kids should be in school, whether they like it or not - it's really not their choice to make. We can argue that maybe 15-16 year olds are at the cusp of being able to do this - but I'd say the cut off should stay at 18. You're under 18, you go to school. There's no other option. The question is how does the state manage this.
>>The problem is that most schools are simply opposed to the idea of splitting students based on their ability and willingness to study.
And I agree that it's an awful thing(that the schools are unwilling to do this)
I went to school at 6 years, our schools were for 10 years, and at 16 i went to university. At the university with us were some 20 year olds, who went to school at 7 years, were not able to get to university in their 17, were drafted to army at 18 and came back. 20 year old being around 16-17 year olds did not cause any catastrophe.
20 year old who wants to study is not going to cause any problem for the public school either, it will even be beneficial for the class as children will see that studying is useful.
> teenagers are generally not allowed to make these choices, for good reasons
When they are not allowed to make choices, the parents are supposed to make choices for them, not corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.
>> the parents are supposed to make choices for them
Parents don't have any choice in this either. A child under 18 should be in full time education - there is nothing to choose, maybe except for the school they can be in.
>>20 year old being around 16-17 year olds did not cause any catastrophe.
I like that you shifted "adults with 15 year olds" to 20 year olds with 16-17 year olds.
That's a very fucked up thing to say, governments or random strangers from internet do not have a right to decide how parent raises his child. Do you even have a child?
> I like that you shifted "adults with 15 year olds" to 20 year olds with 16-17 year olds
It was just my own experience, if you want another example in early years of Soviet Union there were 40 year olds learning to read with 6 year olds.
And in general i don't see why any combination of ages should be a problem?
I do. And like I said, you as a parent have a choice about the kind of school you send your child into. You don't have a choice whether they are in education or not.
>>And in general i don't see why any combination of ages should be a problem?
When you were at school were there many adult students in your classes?
>>you want another example in early years of Soviet Union there were 40 year olds learning to read with 6 year olds.
Yes, 100 years ago in the early days of the soviet union the classes were offered to everyone to increase literacy rates. I can assure you that throughout the rest of history of the soviet union you didn't have adults attending primary/secondary school, gymnasiums or other types of schools for children. Soviet union had schools for adults from very early on.
Laws like "do not kill", "do not steal", have been found long before politicians existed, by the natural selection of societies. That is groups of people who did not follow these laws were largely outcompeted by those who followed.
If you decide to break the law of "do not steal" in large extent you get millions dead like it have happened in communist Russia or Maoist China. If you break it in smaller extent (e.g. by very high tax) you get stagnant economy like in EU.
In contrast to that, the laws banning children to work were adopted at the point when children did not need to work, so they are largely irrelevant. If these laws existed in 18th century London or Paris they would cause many deaths too, since there was no other way to feed these children.
>I don't know where you live where employing 15 year olds is legal, but even if we assume some kind of state where it's allowed, what mcdolands would employ a 15 year old that was expelled from school?
I live stateside, and I've seen adverts saying they hire 14 year olds
> So when you kicked them out of school at 15, what is the state supposed to do with them?
That becomes the parents' problem. Let them find a school willing to take their abusive kid - or have the state come after them for having children not in school.
The threat of such should help encourage parents to actually raise decent children.
When we lived in tribes, people knew who did what job, and those who were taking more than they were contributing were punished harshly.
Money is merely a mnemonic device serving the same purpose, to mark those who did more good than received.
Average person does not know how to grow food and build shelter not because getting paycheck is convenient but because it is more efficient. If we do not want money, supermarkets etc. we'll be back to 10 mln people that the tribal way of life could sustain.
Being employed to get money is not really different from searching prey or edible roots, what is different now is that billions of people who were supposed to die because they couldn't find what to eat, or couldn't get along with their tribe, stay alive and complain that they did not receive more free stuff from complete strangers.
This - since you can live in a rural area with UBI - and you get more time in the day to manage your accommodations, the move to urban housing is not so critical.
Yes if you simply assert an upside down reality, this is a good solution.
However, people actually move toward higher COL areas as their income permits them to.
If more income meant people moved away from high COL areas, cities wouldn't exist. We'd have a flat distribution of people across approximately all land with ultra-low COL and ultra-low productivity everywhere.
You make a logical error here: you are supposing I'm referring to the case of someone moving to a place in order to earn more. I am not. I am referring to the case of when people earn more, they end up choosing to live in more expensive places. Both scenarios are true, but only one is the one I'm pointing to because it's economically identical to UBI.
No, I am not interested in the motivation at all, and it plays no role. That is the logical error you make. You are trying to make an argument based on current data, but that current data does not include the fact that income is correlated to location, but UBI is not. So your current data is not a proof of anything, really.
In general I agree with your view though that UBI could be captured by landlords, and that landlords are a special case. So let's introduce special laws for that along with UBI. Problem solved.
Alternatively though, if that turns out to be too complicated with too many side effects, I think there is a good chance that UBI leads to people being able to spread out more evenly, away from expensive and dense cities. You tried to make an argument why this will not happen, but as explained, your argument is not conclusive.
If majority of people in a country want to persecute an outnumbered subgroup, then what prevents the majority of delegates wanting the same as well?
You have an implicit assumption that the delegates are going to be smarter and better people that are going to lie to the majority to get elected and then will valiantly protect the subgroup.
But that have not happened anywhere. In fact in every case it is the delegates who organize persecution of various subgroups, even in situations when the share of population truly wanting to persecute subgroup is far from being a majority.
I refuse to believe that anyone reading this is incapable of remembering at least five historical examples in which the public was happy to treat an unpopular group unjustly.
There is no foolproof system that can guard against it, however declaring 'rights' and delegating the responsibility to protect them to the judiciary at least is a mitigation.
Direct voting does not replace judiciary or even senate, it only augments the house of congress.
If that is the Direct Democracy you had in mind, than we have no disagreement.
What I originally commented on was this:
So do you believe in democracy or not?
I take issue with the implication that it's all or nothing. If we characterize anything less than a direct vote on every issue as anti-democratic, then the only people left standing will be kooks.
I hope you will agree that the overall goal is maximizing freedom and autonomy, that is allowing every person or group to pursue happiness the way they want make mistakes or good choices and bear the consequences.
The representative democracy has a problem with delegates not faithfully representing the people they are supposed to represent. It allows politician to be elected by campaigning for issue X which is popular with majority, then do Y and Z that almost no one wants, and then campaign again on other party undoing X, leaving people no way to communicate that they want X and not Y Z.
Social media have greatly increased the impact of this instability, the only way to improve situation is adding some elements of direct voting that would improve efficiency of communication between people and the government.
No one in this thread have suggested to completely replace everything with direct voting, and yet many people vehemently argue against that. Meanwhile there is a much more interesting discussion: how to make cooperation between people more efficient using the new technologies that we have.
No one in this thread have suggested to completely replace everything with direct voting
I take the original comment to imply exactly that, since it positions someone taking issue with any direct vote as being against Democracy wholesale. If I missed something, @terminalshort can reply to clarify.
the only way to improve situation is adding some elements of direct voting that would improve efficiency of communication between people and the government.
There are two issues:
1) What are a good set of rules for the system.
2) If the existing system can no longer self-correct, how can one implement a good set of rules.
'Direct vote' might address the second issue. It's not the only way, but it's better than a violent revolution.
I'm not opposed to all direct voting, but it does have inherent problems. The most obvious is that the world is far too complicated for a majority of citizens to research all the issues that affect them. In a well-functioning representative democracy, a politician would have the resources and time to understand the issues. Granted, that seldom is the case in reality.
That is the same argument proponents of planned economy use. It doesn't work in reality because no one knows what other people need and no one cares. Representatives care about being reelected, but they have a very hard time figuring out what people want of them because vote ones in 4 years, or angry people on social media is too unreliable channel of communication.
The monetary system under capitalism is not the same as direct democracy.
A planned economy under direct democracy would be at least as bad as a planned economy under a representative democracy because the average voter has even less knowledge about economics and business than a government planner.
The best thing about direct democracy is that, unlike representative democracy, we don't have it and therefore cannot instantly think of its flaws.
The average person reads under a sixth grade level, cannot perform long division, and quite possibly couldn't tell you how many years have passed since Jesus was born.
Whether a direct vote is appropriate for an issue depends on which is a greater danger: the corruption of a politician, or the ignorance and flakiness of the average voter.
Well it kinda is the same, in any transaction today two people vote to transfer goods and the rest of the people in the country vote to take a percentage of that as tax.
We only need to make sure that decisions affect the smallest number of people possible and only those who make decision bear its good or bad consequences.
Same can work with other issues, like do we want to build a road or stadium, how do we want to deal with homeless in our part of the city etc.
Online, open voting, with possibility to trade votes, and requirement to reach almost 100% accept vote for decisions, can work much better than systems we have now.
As for average person being not smart, average buyer poorly understands biology, and ends up buying things that are harmful to eat or eats to much, but we do not have representative doctors who will decide who eats how much in restaurants. The important thing is to create an arrangement where poor choices of a person do not affect others.
Why do you think that similar law could not be passed without direct vote? The problem is not direct democracy but the fact that it is being done in a wrong way.
Voting should be done without anonymity, online. One should be able to either vote for everything manually, or delegate the vote to any other person.
If some change is supported by 100% of the voters it should be implemented immediately. But if smaller percent supports the change, then there needs to be a vesting time (e.g. 10 years for 60%, infinity for 50%+1).
This allows people to either trade support for policies (i'll vote yes for your initiative if you vote for mine, or give me money), or to get high level of support locally and try out various laws on local level.
The same site that manages voting should also show detailed budget of city/state/country, where people can see where their taxes are being spent and should be able to redirect the money they have paid.
First, how about if you show that you've spent more than five seconds thinking about why every democratic country on earth uses secret ballots? Why are secret ballots codified in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights?
There are other parts of your scheme that are also spectacularly bad ideas, but let's just deal with this one for now.
That's a very good question, for instance for most of its republican period Rome did not have secret ballot, and voting was open. That have changed in 138BC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_laws_of_the_Roman_Repub... and have caused major instability, political violence and eventually demise of the republic.
The issue was that the poor people could vote for Gracchi brothers, but were too afraid to protect them, and one without the other only have brought to a worse outcome where they could not vote at all.
Even today if you are afraid of saying openly what policies or which politician you support, how can you hope to enact these policies?
Secret ballot started being introduced in US starting from 1888 and it did not bring any of positive changes that its supporters thought that it would.
In places where a group can intimidate majority of voters and force to vote one way, secret ballot does not help at all because that group can also fake the results. It even makes situation worse, by hiding the actual data from opposition.
Gosh, you make it sound like the near-universal use of secret ballots is all just some sort of misunderstanding that could be rectified if only everyone would listen to you. Tilt away if that's your favorite windmill, I guess.
Well if you knew a good reason for secret ballots you could tell us that, instead of telling that you are smarter than me. You really should take another look at hn commenting guidelines, it is useful outside of hn too https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Billionaire goes: get $10 off at my store, called Scamazon, for these votes (lists votes). And naturally even the $10 is manipulated to be recouped with dynamic pricing.
What we have now is a politician saying vote for me and i'll pass laws that will give you 10k in next 4 years, people vote for the politician who then takes money from scamazon gives 10 to voters and takes 10mln to get elected again.
Eliminating the middleman makes things better already.
But more importantly with vesting time, large number of votes, ease of reversing a decision in a new vote, take $10 and vote for something that costs you more simply won't work.
The main factor reducing gulf stream is increase of fresh water runoff into Arctic ocean. So maybe we should invest into building Sibaral Canal diverting some of the water of northern rivers towards Aral sea, and by that saving both Nordic and Central Asian countries.
Fitting the concept of god into a cosmological model is rather easy.
If we agree that everything we see is described by physics, then everything including us is simply a computation. And in principle someone can build a machine to carry out such a computation.
People in such a machine will be more or less like us, and the creator of that machine will be exactly like god, outside of space and time, omnipotent, omniscient but having to run the simulation to see what everyone does.
From this point of view creating universe 6000 years ago and making it look billions of years old does not look that insane, just a workaround for finite machine time.
So the main disagreement is not about existence of god, or materialism vs idealism, but whether a human is equivalent to a computation or not.
Alternately, an individual set things in motion that they couldn’t control or stop, and thus the universe was born. God could just be a random entity that got in over their proverbial head. We think creating a universe requires thought or intention but it could be a big mistake.
The main idea of what I am saying is that some entity could have kicked things off, for whatever reason, and not be able to stop or control it. Perhaps they were just like you or I, and they released some tech which formed the universe as we know it today. Perhaps they are outside of this universe and cannot see into it or control it, perhaps they were inside and were obliterated, perhaps they are still here somewhere sitting around waiting for the universe to end, who knows! Everyone expects a god to be all-powerful or something, but they could be some mortal being who only had a lot of power for a moment when they knocked over the first domino. We probably can't know how the universe started, in any case, so this is all just brainstorming for new sci-fi and fantasy novels at this point.
Russians also had the money until government did not start to take away that from people who had lot of it. When government can confiscate all of the money of a rich person, only those on the side of government will remain rich.
If you look closer you'll see that this rockets are key to billions of people living on other planets, to cheaper internet, to better telescopes, to satellites controlling weather.
Ultimately this is an important step towards a future with healthcare providing thousands of years of life, and unlimited housing space.
Well, US spends 1.5 trillion on social security and only 20 billion on NASA, so "present" is kind of overrepresented. Redirecting that little bit so that a few more people can live without working, or can get expensive treatment to live a few more years is stupid, not inspiring.
We live in the present, so I'd expect it to be overrepresented. I expect most people don't give their kids more money than they spend on themselves, for instance.
Your second sentence showcases some wildly negative biases. I suspect we could probably save money by improving the efficiency of our social programs and end up with even more to spend on scientific advancement.
Historically most people used to spend for children and grandchildren significantly more that on themselves. The current situation when people go to other countries and then say we do not have money for more than one child is abnormal, and can't go on very long.
I agree that there are many better ways to organize social programs, e.g. replace all of them with negative tax, when some percentage of all tax collected past year is divided equally between all citizens of any age.
Sure well organized society is very impressive, e.g. invention of capitalism and private ownership is the greatest invention ever made, but the point i was trying to make is that it is only a foundation for really exciting stuff like science spaceships, immortality.
Btw. I am not advocating for work programs as a particularly good solution, expelling and letting the parents to figure out what to do with their misbehaving child is a good solution too. School is a privilege for smart children to study, not a prison for those who do not want to learn.
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