Election meaningless unless we change for the better

[Mark Leavy]

I am totally against jails of any kind.

I think criminal acts should be handled via:

Fines,
Caning,
Banishment,
Guillotine.

In that order.
Prisons are a horrific way to go.

[doodle]

I am totally against jails of any kind.

I think criminal acts should be handled via:

Fines,
Caning,
Banishment,
Guillotine.

In that order.
Prisons are a horrific way to go.

Lol...explain banishment

[Mark Leavy]

And doodle.

I agree with paying people for voluntary sterilization. Sign me up for that.

[Mark Leavy]

I am totally against jails of any kind.

I think criminal acts should be handled via:

Fines,
Caning,
Banishment,
Guillotine.

In that order.
Prisons are a horrific way to go.

Lol...explain banishment

You lost all your LA privileges

[doodle]

From a strictly evolutionary standpoint, it’s better if the unskilled don’t survive.

Mark

Ultimately I agree. It's how you get from A to B that's the issue.... paid sterilization programs?

Unfortunately we currently have the 180 degree inverse of this, where we pay poor people to have kids, paying per kid. With some women getting pregnant immediately after delivering to secure that extra $800/month government 18-year annuity.

Yeah, we didn't quite think through that policy. Definitely need to move on from that....but so many forces opposing solving issue...from conservatives opposing birth control and abortion to liberals opposing cutting off benefits to almost everyone probably against paid voluntary sterilization although that one probably makes the most sense.

[doodle]

I think paid birth control probably best option...how do we get the political right on board with that though?

[Mark Leavy]

I think paid birth control probably best option...how do we get the political right on board with that though?

Sterilization, not birth control.
Then you can sign me up.

(Not political, not right, not left. Just opinionated.)

[doodle]

The issue with sterilization is I can see a lot of smart young people hard up for money when young might make a decision they could end up regretting. Perhaps iuds up to age 30 at which point sterilization becomes possible.

[Mark Leavy]

The issue with sterilization is I can see a lot of smart young people hard up for money when young might make a decision they could end up regretting. Perhaps iuds up to age 30 at which point sterilization becomes possible.

It would be a mess at first, but then it would sort itself out. The smart young people would be exposed to information. If they then ignored it and took the quick cash...

But your point is valid. Something reversible - with a trial payment.

[Mark Leavy]

I got clipped in my late 20's. After two step-kids and one of my own. The doctor didn't want to do it, as I was too young. I had to talk to him rationally for about half an hour before he agreed.

Same thing with an ex I had. She was in college and knew she never wanted kids. She was going in for a procedure and wanted her tubes tied while the doc was already in there. She almost couldn't get it done.

And yet... we are both paying for other people's kids.

Idiocracy.

[pmward]

Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you” (Matthew 26:11).

It is definitely open for debate and subject to interpretation for what Jesus meant.

However, in my personal experience many of the poor are their own worst enemies, sabotaging themselves at every turn.

A lot of bad choices, choices totally under their control.

You can give them tons of opportunities and money and, in the end, they are going to end up poor.

Whether it is due to as I stated above to choices totally under their control or to their inabiilty acquire the life skills to manage an un-poor life, they are always going to be poor.

Finally, for how many people in the rest of the world would the lifestyles of the U.S. poor look like they were living like royalty compared to the way that they live?

I'm all for giving money and opportunities to the poor but only the ones who are only going to use those resources to stop being poor. Otherwise I'd rather give that money to the most productive in our society because they will contribute to elevating overall society with those benefits trickling down to the ever lasting poor.

This is written by a political independent. Neither a liberal or a conservative.

Vinny

Just because someone made poor choices doesn't mean they don't deserve help. Now that help can come in many forms, I'm not necessarily referring to endless hand outs. Mental health, rehab, career skill training, ditch digging jobs for the government, etc. There are plenty of ways to help. Every human alive deserves at least a bare minimum, imo. Even those that will not ever "contribute to elevating overall society" don't deserve to die in a ditch.

[yankees60]

Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you” (Matthew 26:11).

It is definitely open for debate and subject to interpretation for what Jesus meant.

However, in my personal experience many of the poor are their own worst enemies, sabotaging themselves at every turn.

A lot of bad choices, choices totally under their control.

You can give them tons of opportunities and money and, in the end, they are going to end up poor.

Whether it is due to as I stated above to choices totally under their control or to their inabiilty acquire the life skills to manage an un-poor life, they are always going to be poor.

Finally, for how many people in the rest of the world would the lifestyles of the U.S. poor look like they were living like royalty compared to the way that they live?

I'm all for giving money and opportunities to the poor but only the ones who are only going to use those resources to stop being poor. Otherwise I'd rather give that money to the most productive in our society because they will contribute to elevating overall society with those benefits trickling down to the ever lasting poor.

This is written by a political independent. Neither a liberal or a conservative.

Vinny

Just because someone made poor choices doesn't mean they don't deserve help. Now that help can come in many forms, I'm not necessarily referring to endless hand outs. Mental health, rehab, career skill training, ditch digging jobs for the government, etc. There are plenty of ways to help. Every human alive deserves at least a bare minimum, imo. Even those that will not ever "contribute to elevating overall society" don't deserve to die in a ditch.

People have to first want to help themselves. For some people giving them any form of help is literally just burning $100 bills. It is not going to bring them any farther along in life.

I know that this is one of the causes for a lot of Trump voters. I'm referring to the ones on the lower end of the economic scale who themselves are far from gifted. Yet they drag themselves out of bed every day to go to a job they hate just to make enough money in life to just scrape by. They do not want to see money / resources going to people just for them to waste it.

I was in favor of Yang's program whereby every person gets $10,000 annually. So say we have our family of five who get their $50,000. Then by July 1st they have spent it all. Do they get more? For some people it is just endless. As much as they have, they'll spend it and more. It then turns out no better than just burning all that money that went to them. It does no more good than burning that money.

Vinny

[doodle]

Tom, I don't disagree with you but how do you feel about the fact that our current system doesn't really provide people freedom for many options. It's not like you can say well, I don't really want to drive a taxi...I guess I'll just go become a hunter gatherer. Our system of private land ownership rights has taken one of the essential components of survival away from people. It's like if we privatized air. I understand how one has the right to own his body and the fruits of his labor but how do you extend that to something that no man created, the earth itself? So when our society says, if you don't produce then you die in a ditch...it sounds kind of anti libertarian to me....it sounds more like a gulag forced labor camp. I especially feel for the native americans on this one....many of whom are dying in ditches. Out here in the west, lands that they used to hunt and fish and farm are now tied up as million acre ranches by dicks like Ted Turner. How's that fair?

[doodle]

I think this is one of the arguments behind the citizens dividend...that some part of the value that we benefit from comes from things no one created...that were done with work that doesn't belong to us...the sun and water and carbon built those trees...not some man with his own hands...trees, fish, oil, minerals...the rights to those are commonly held. Some part of the value of those resources belongs to everyone.

[Cortopassi]

How do you come to the conclusion people who will never contribute to society don’t deserve to die in a ditch?

For me, my thought process is this. And please don't put politics into it, with democratic cities being the problem.

A child born to a 16 YO unwed mother in the inner city is generally effed from the start, through no fault of their own. Compare that to a child born to a stable couple in the suburbs. Why that 16 YO is having a baby in the first place is a different thread.

What are the chances of that first one contributing to society? Less than 1%? If that same child magically became part of that suburban family, what does the chance go to? 95%?

These useless citizens failed for the most part because they were born into a situation which is very difficult to excel in, not because of some inherent defect. Again, a different thread.

You think the homeless man shitting on the streets in SF had that as a goal in their "what do you want to be when you grow up" essay in 5th grade, for example?

We are long past the environment, disease, animals, etc. being used for natural selection, so we have to try to improve the situation for everyone.

My bottom line is no child is born useless.

[pmward]

Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you” (Matthew 26:11).

It is definitely open for debate and subject to interpretation for what Jesus meant.

However, in my personal experience many of the poor are their own worst enemies, sabotaging themselves at every turn.

A lot of bad choices, choices totally under their control.

You can give them tons of opportunities and money and, in the end, they are going to end up poor.

Whether it is due to as I stated above to choices totally under their control or to their inabiilty acquire the life skills to manage an un-poor life, they are always going to be poor.

Finally, for how many people in the rest of the world would the lifestyles of the U.S. poor look like they were living like royalty compared to the way that they live?

I'm all for giving money and opportunities to the poor but only the ones who are only going to use those resources to stop being poor. Otherwise I'd rather give that money to the most productive in our society because they will contribute to elevating overall society with those benefits trickling down to the ever lasting poor.

This is written by a political independent. Neither a liberal or a conservative.

Vinny

Just because someone made poor choices doesn't mean they don't deserve help. Now that help can come in many forms, I'm not necessarily referring to endless hand outs. Mental health, rehab, career skill training, ditch digging jobs for the government, etc. There are plenty of ways to help. Every human alive deserves at least a bare minimum, imo. Even those that will not ever "contribute to elevating overall society" don't deserve to die in a ditch.

People have to first want to help themselves. For some people giving them any form of help is literally just burning $100 bills. It is not going to bring them any farther along in life.

I know that this is one of the causes for a lot of Trump voters. I'm referring to the ones on the lower end of the economic scale who themselves are far from gifted. Yet they drag themselves out of bed every day to go to a job they hate just to make enough money in life to just scrape by. They do not want to see money / resources going to people just for them to waste it.

I was in favor of Yang's program whereby every person gets $10,000 annually. So say we have our family of five who get their $50,000. Then by July 1st they have spent it all. Do they get more? For some people it is just endless. As much as they have, they'll spend it and more. It then turns out no better than just burning all that money that went to them. It does no more good than burning that money.

Vinny

It may not "bring them any farther along in life"... but it allows them life...

So what you're saying is you support helping people that can help themselves, but you support leaving the people that cannot help themselves for whatever reason (physical, mental, whatever) to rot? These are the very people that need our help the most. Money is not the most important thing in the world. Who gives a shit if it's burning $100 bills? I would rather burn money and keep these people alive and well then to turn my back and tell them to F off, because it's the right thing to do. Sometimes we need to put money into something that is not going to grow simply because it is the right thing to do. This is what separates modern civilized culture from the cave man era, we recognize that every human being is a valuable life worth fighting for. We cannot let the idea of money close our hearts down to the people in our society that need our help the most, especially since money is not really a limitation in helping them (queue up MMT discussion now, haha), it is simply willingness to help them that is the sole thing that is lacking. I could care less if the money is wasted. I care that every human being has the bare minimum to support their right to life; a roof, food, and access to physical and especially mental health care, birth control, etc.

Your point about blowing through money is moot for one reason. Giving cash is not the only way to do this. Certainly we should have welfare, unemployment, social security and the like to help people in the times of life that they need it. But these things have their obvious limits. But most of these people are falling into the category I mentioned above of helping people that help themselves. What about the mentally ill homeless population living on the streets? Do we not have the money to build more shelters for them? Do we not have enough money to feel them and cloth them? Do we not have enough money to provide them with access to basic physical and mental health services of some kind? Too often we want to throw money at a problem to try to make it go away, when often times there are better solutions available that actually wind up with less money being "burned".

[pmward]

Even those that will not ever "contribute to elevating overall society" don't deserve to die in a ditch.

Not trying to be a dick, and I don’t necessarily disagree, but you made a normative statement here and I’d like you to back up your rationale. Harry Browne has frequently said you have no rights. It’s a made up fiction. I think anytime someone says they or another person “deserves” something, I raise an anarchy capitalist eyebrow.

How do you come to the conclusion people who will never contribute to society don’t deserve to die in a ditch?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

Your arguments all equate to money and nothing else. You're saying money is more important than life, but clearly the right to life was the FIRST and most important of the "self-evident" "unalienable rights". It is more important than money.

[pmward]

The answer to the question of "what is more important, money or life" is ALWAYS 100% LIFE!!!

[Cortopassi]

How do you come to the conclusion people who will never contribute to society don’t deserve to die in a ditch?

For me, my thought process is this. And please don't put politics into it, with democratic cities being the problem.

A child born to a 16 YO unwed mother in the inner city is generally effed from the start, through no fault of their own. Compare that to a child born to a stable couple in the suburbs. Why that 16 YO is having a baby in the first place is a different thread.

What are the chances of that first one contributing to society? Less than 1%? If that same child magically became part of that suburban family, what does the chance go to? 95%?

These useless citizens failed for the most part because they were born into a situation which is very difficult to excel in, not because of some inherent defect. Again, a different thread.

You think the homeless man shitting on the streets in SF had that as a goal in their "what do you want to be when you grow up" essay in 5th grade, for example?

We are long past the environment, disease, animals, etc. being used for natural selection, so we have to try to improve the situation for everyone.

My bottom line is no child is born useless.

I can’t really respond to this given the restrictions you setup of allowable topics. An analogy that comes to mind is:

Let’s say we discussed that people on the sun burn a horrific death. On the actual surface of the sun. And you want to discuss how to cool the sun down. Perhaps burn the sun out entirely. And ignore the secondary consequences such as everyone on earth dying.

And I want to figure out how these people keep finding themselves on the surface of the sun and disincentive that. And those that do die on the surface of the sun, I want to put up billboards on the surface of the moon so that show the burnt corpses of those people so others on this path turn around.

But instead we ignore how they got to the surface of the sun, feel bad for them, and are willing to consider extinguishing the sun, killing all life on earth, to help the handful who made it out there.

San Francisco is fucked. They’re not looking at what liberal policies brought the homeless epidemic. And they keep throwing money at it making it far worse. Everything SF liberal politicians are doing to help the homeless is only making the problem far worse. It’s a star extinction event for that city and with remote work being a thing, the city will be the tech Detroit in 20 years.

We agree the current system is messed up. It almost guarantees failure in a lot of circumstances. But those children did not willingly become part of it, so they are society's responsibility.

And I have no idea how to fix it. Even if everyone were able to succeed, it seems like there would not be enough opportunities to go around? Especially with continued automation of everything.

[pmward]

The answer to the question of "what is more important, money or life" is ALWAYS 100% LIFE!!!

Is there a difference between money and life? In a world of limited resources where animals must spend a bulk of their lives acquiring resources or die, their life is quite literally the equivalent of those resources.

And in human society in 2020, money is the intermediary resource used for all things.

That’s abstract, so let’s get more specific. Most people work from age 18 to age 65, 40+ hours a week. To make money. They take jobs doing things they wouldn’t otherwise do, at least not for 40+ hours a week, and have to forgo seeing loved ones, have to forgo doing activities they’d prefer to do more, have to forgo living their life.

Yes, they’re breathing, and biologically alive, but it’s effectively wage slavery. Not quite as bad as 1700s era slavery since you have some choice of when to work, how to work, what work to do, but you must work. Or no money, and you’ll die.

No different than Doodle’s rose colored glasses of pre-capitalist hunter/gatherer tribes where if you didn’t go out and get food, through hard work, you’d starve to death.The Earth is a harsh mistress.

Now that we’ve established people need to trade their life energy for resources (and I highly recommend the book “Your Money Or Your Life”), then I argue life = money.

If a person spends 40 years saving for retirement and at age 65 you go and steal 10% of that money, through force or through trickery, that person can no longer retire and must work a few more years to rebuild that nest egg. You’ve quite literally stolen time he would spend with his family or at his hobbies.

Money = life, and when you steal money, you are stealing life.

And anyone who disagrees may have difficulties arguing against actual human slavery. Because even though their masters took away their freedom to not work, at least they were biologically alive, right?

If you take someone’s money, you are equivalently taking away their freedom not to work, since they might work more to re-earn that money, and possibly through shit jobs like a 70 year old greeter at Wal Mart. How much freedom does a 70 year old you stole from really have in working and finding a new job?

We have no lack for resources in 2020.

Philosophically speaking, there are only 2 things that are truly priceless. Life and time (and both are priceless for the same reason, right?). Anybody who tries to quantify the price of life, as a means to try to decide when it is most cost effective to take away that life, is an asshole. Plain and simple.

Also, you assume we need to tax to support these hopeless cases I'm referring to. I hate to tell you, but you can print all the money needed to provide basic shelter, food, physical and mental health care, etc for all the hopeless cases in this country and it's not going to cause massive inflation. There is no tax required. Or they could even stick to the tried and true method of increasing debt, which let's be real here, is not much different since no government ever in history has ever actually paid down their debt, it's intended to be rolled infinitely into the future. These tax limitations we all dislike are illusionary limitations that we place on ourselves. We do not have to steal from retirees in order to help the hopeless cases out there. In a world that we choose to constrain ourselves by these illusionary boundaries, yes you are right this tradeoff would exist. But we do not live in such a world. Money is not a limited or priceless resource; life is.

[glennds]

Even those that will not ever "contribute to elevating overall society" don't deserve to die in a ditch.

Not trying to be a dick, and I don’t necessarily disagree, but you made a normative statement here and I’d like you to back up your rationale. Harry Browne has frequently said you have no rights. It’s a made up fiction. I think anytime someone says they or another person “deserves” something, I raise an anarchy capitalist eyebrow.

How do you come to the conclusion people who will never contribute to society don’t deserve to die in a ditch?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

Your arguments all equate to money and nothing else. You're saying money is more important than life, but clearly the right to life was the FIRST and most important of the "self-evident" "unalienable rights". It is more important than money.

I think this is a valid point. Many comments seem to imply the only prism through which to view these issues is economics. Economics is important, but so are other values.
Instead of characterizing it as though people don't "deserve" to die in a ditch, maybe it would be better stated to say it is not in your (our our collective) interest for people around us to be dying in ditches.
There is a balancing act between individualism and collective interest. I don't think it is possible for a society to exist that is 100% one or the other, so the question becomes what is the optimal blend.
Some countries like Canada and Singapore take the position that individual opportunity ought to be unlimited with no forced socialistic "ceiling". However for a healthy sustainable society to exist, a "floor" on poverty can be established. In this way there should not be people dying in ditches or starving in the streets. Instead of money, the society's infrastructure will give them access to health care, basic education, basic food and maybe social services. At the same time, the opportunity exists for entrepreneurs to become billionaires.

It's difficult to judge with certainty whether someone will ever contribute to elevating society or not. I'm not so sure that unskilled labor doesn't play a role in elevating society anyway.

BTW, Singapore is a fantastic story of a country that went from third world backwater to a global economic power in a single generation. If prosperity is your yardstick then Singapore measures up.

[pmward]

Even those that will not ever "contribute to elevating overall society" don't deserve to die in a ditch.

Not trying to be a dick, and I don’t necessarily disagree, but you made a normative statement here and I’d like you to back up your rationale. Harry Browne has frequently said you have no rights. It’s a made up fiction. I think anytime someone says they or another person “deserves” something, I raise an anarchy capitalist eyebrow.

How do you come to the conclusion people who will never contribute to society don’t deserve to die in a ditch?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

Your arguments all equate to money and nothing else. You're saying money is more important than life, but clearly the right to life was the FIRST and most important of the "self-evident" "unalienable rights". It is more important than money.

I think this is a valid point. Many comments seem to imply the only prism through which to view these issues is economics. Economics is important, but so are other values.
Instead of characterizing it as though people don't "deserve" to die in a ditch, maybe it would be better stated to say it is not in your (our our collective) interest for people around us to be dying in ditches.
There is a balancing act between individualism and collective interest. I don't think it is possible for a society to exist that is 100% one or the other, so the question becomes what is the optimal blend.
Some countries like Canada take the position that individual opportunity ought to be unlimited with no forced socialistic "ceiling". However for a healthy sustainable society to exist, a "floor" on poverty can be established. In this way there should not be people dying in ditches or starving in the streets. Instead of money, the society's infrastructure will give them access to health care, basic education, basic food and maybe social services. At the same time, the opportunity exists for entrepreneurs to become billionaires.

It's difficult to judge with certainty whether someone will ever contribute to elevating society or not. I'm not so sure that unskilled labor doesn't play a role in elevating society anyway.

That is a wonderful way to paint the picture from a different angle. Yes I totally agree with this. Balance is always key. Too often the human mind wants to limit things to binary black and white choices, when the reality is there is a massive chasm between both ends and the most ideal point to be is probably somewhere in the middle.

To your point about elevating society, even from an economic perspective they are at least still consuming, which is the backbone of our economy anyways. It's not like the funding that would go to help these people would not create job, profits, etc from the people and companies involved with helping them.

The archaic cave man idea is a darwinistic survival of the fittest. What defines a civilized society is precisely this value on the life of others and the acceptance of the consequences of our actions that cause loss of life (human, animal, and environmental consequences all apply) as fundamentally wrong. We as a species are evolving. The direction of survival of the fittest is de-evolution. The path of valuing life and trying to provide that floor you eloquently called it, is the evolution forward. We can't get there in a day, it's a gradual process, but it is worthwhile, and it is the right thing to do. Just because it seems impossible, and just because it may require some sacrifice, doesn't mean it isn't worth trying.

[doodle]

Tom, I don't disagree with you but how do you feel about the fact that our current system doesn't really provide people freedom for many options. It's not like you can say well, I don't really want to drive a taxi...I guess I'll just go become a hunter gatherer. Our system of private land ownership rights has taken one of the essential components of survival away from people. It's like if we privatized air. I understand how one has the right to own his body and the fruits of his labor but how do you extend that to something that no man created, the earth itself? So when our society says, if you don't produce then you die in a ditch...it sounds kind of anti libertarian to me....it sounds more like a gulag forced labor camp. I especially feel for the native americans on this one....many of whom are dying in ditches. Out here in the west, lands that they used to hunt and fish and farm are now tied up as million acre ranches by dicks like Ted Turner. How's that fair?

I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. This is one of the most ridiculous arguments I’ve heard in any topic so kudos to you, my friend, for outdoing yourself.

So if corporations and privatized land ownership didn’t come into existence, then nomadic hunter/gatherers with no skills in hunting nor gathering, who were “useless” in their times would somehow be able to feed themselves on the abundance of berries falling out of the sky into their mouths and deers running past them into trees, knocking themselves unconscious and falling onto sharp rocks that field dressed them via gravity?

Or you’re suggesting the homeless living/dying in ditches are only useless at 2020-era skills like cleaning toilets and excel spreadsheets but somehow have massive innate skills in hunting and gathering that would allow them to thrive off the land if not for greedy capitalists?

That's because you're not too well versed it seems in the issues of libertarianism and land ownership. You want to have your cake and eat it too...in other words you want freedom from tyrannical governments except when they are enforcing your specious claims to own, exploit, and reap the value of that which you did not create.

The citizen's dividend is a proposed policy based upon the principle that the natural world is the common property of all persons. It is proposed that all citizens receive regular payments (dividends) from revenue raised by leasing or taxing the monopoly of valuable land and other natural resources.

Does that make more sense?

[pmward]

Tom, I don't disagree with you but how do you feel about the fact that our current system doesn't really provide people freedom for many options. It's not like you can say well, I don't really want to drive a taxi...I guess I'll just go become a hunter gatherer. Our system of private land ownership rights has taken one of the essential components of survival away from people. It's like if we privatized air. I understand how one has the right to own his body and the fruits of his labor but how do you extend that to something that no man created, the earth itself? So when our society says, if you don't produce then you die in a ditch...it sounds kind of anti libertarian to me....it sounds more like a gulag forced labor camp. I especially feel for the native americans on this one....many of whom are dying in ditches. Out here in the west, lands that they used to hunt and fish and farm are now tied up as million acre ranches by dicks like Ted Turner. How's that fair?

I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. This is one of the most ridiculous arguments I’ve heard in any topic so kudos to you, my friend, for outdoing yourself.

So if corporations and privatized land ownership didn’t come into existence, then nomadic hunter/gatherers with no skills in hunting nor gathering, who were “useless” in their times would somehow be able to feed themselves on the abundance of berries falling out of the sky into their mouths and deers running past them into trees, knocking themselves unconscious and falling onto sharp rocks that field dressed them via gravity?

Or you’re suggesting the homeless living/dying in ditches are only useless at 2020-era skills like cleaning toilets and excel spreadsheets but somehow have massive innate skills in hunting and gathering that would allow them to thrive off the land if not for greedy capitalists?

That's because you're not too well versed it seems in the issues of libertarianism and land ownership. You want to have your cake and eat it too...in other words you want freedom from tyrannical governments except when they are enforcing your specious claims to own, exploit, and reap the value of that which you did not create.

The citizen's dividend is a proposed policy based upon the principle that the natural world is the common property of all persons. It is proposed that all citizens receive regular payments (dividends) from revenue raised by leasing or taxing the monopoly of valuable land and other natural resources.

Does that make more sense?

Yep, the idea of ownership is a fallacy. It is not truly possible to own anything. The very concept of ownership is a concept invented by the human mind. Deep philosophical territory there, but true none the less.

[doodle]

Tom, I don't disagree with you but how do you feel about the fact that our current system doesn't really provide people freedom for many options. It's not like you can say well, I don't really want to drive a taxi...I guess I'll just go become a hunter gatherer. Our system of private land ownership rights has taken one of the essential components of survival away from people. It's like if we privatized air. I understand how one has the right to own his body and the fruits of his labor but how do you extend that to something that no man created, the earth itself? So when our society says, if you don't produce then you die in a ditch...it sounds kind of anti libertarian to me....it sounds more like a gulag forced labor camp. I especially feel for the native americans on this one....many of whom are dying in ditches. Out here in the west, lands that they used to hunt and fish and farm are now tied up as million acre ranches by dicks like Ted Turner. How's that fair?

I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. This is one of the most ridiculous arguments I’ve heard in any topic so kudos to you, my friend, for outdoing yourself.

So if corporations and privatized land ownership didn’t come into existence, then nomadic hunter/gatherers with no skills in hunting nor gathering, who were “useless” in their times would somehow be able to feed themselves on the abundance of berries falling out of the sky into their mouths and deers running past them into trees, knocking themselves unconscious and falling onto sharp rocks that field dressed them via gravity?

Or you’re suggesting the homeless living/dying in ditches are only useless at 2020-era skills like cleaning toilets and excel spreadsheets but somehow have massive innate skills in hunting and gathering that would allow them to thrive off the land if not for greedy capitalists?

That's because you're not too well versed it seems in the issues of libertarianism and land ownership. You want to have your cake and eat it too...in other words you want freedom from tyrannical governments except when they are enforcing your specious claims to own, exploit, and reap the value of that which you did not create.

The citizen's dividend is a proposed policy based upon the principle that the natural world is the common property of all persons. It is proposed that all citizens receive regular payments (dividends) from revenue raised by leasing or taxing the monopoly of valuable land and other natural resources.

Does that make more sense?

Yep, the idea of ownership is a fallacy. It is not truly possible to own anything. The very concept of ownership is a concept invented by the human mind. Deep philosophical territory there, but true none the less.

This isn't a new fangled socialist idea either...

Thomas Paine summarized his view by stating that "Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds." Paine saw inheritance as being partly a common fund and wanted to supplement the citizen's dividend in a tax on inheritance transfers.

That's how you get the concept of universal basic income off the ground...and provide for the basic needs of individuals so they don't die in ditches. Revenue from land leases and inheritance transfer tax....sorry Don Jr.

i think what the more anarchist and libertarian minded are suggesting is not that there is no value in the collective or collective advancement, but that it cannot be achieved with a top down, imposed from above methodology, the collective only benefits from individual advancement by the individual, not from some government fix..