I think the fear some people have is that if everyone has free food and shelter, we'll lose a massive portion of the labor force because they would have no need to work.

It is not clear at all to me that it would be objectively good or bad, but some people appear to have picked the other side because they think we'd lose a lot of our nice things.

That makes the assumption that people don’t get bored doing nothing, and that peoples only motivation for work is money.

I’ve always felt that’s a very reductive view of humanity. Boiling us down to simple automatons that only seek to eat and reproduce, nothing more. I would hope the vibrancy of human civilisation would be enough to show that isn’t true.

Unfortunately people that seem to have little faith in humanity, alway believe that they, and their peers, are special and that the rest of humanity is a lost cause. That always makes me a little sad.

I wonder what it would be like (in a fantasy scenario) if everyone had their needs provided for at a basic level, and they could choose to spend their time doing whatever they felt passionate or curious about.

For example, some people might learn to play one or more instruments; others might become gardeners; others painters, tinkerers, makers, hackers (as in builders), cooks, and so on. I don't believe most people would just sit on their asses and do nothing. Some people really enjoy business and trade, and they would probably just work on creating some kind of business that they enjoyed (like procuring and selling high quality lamps!... and eventually designing their own).

We know that people tend to work harder at something they care about. So if we all got to work on things we cared about instead of what was available or what paid (or paid best), it's fathomable that society might have a higher and higher quality output.

It's impossible to know since we can't really test it, but I like to imagine that scenario.

The way our welfare system is structured in the United States, maintaining access to food and shelter is a huge amount of work and stress. Developing skills and gaining employment is difficult in the best of times—yet we insist on making it even harder.

Well then we may need to restructure in order to create a more effective system. Society does not benefit from people who are completely reliant on the government to meet basic needs.

That's an untested assertion. It's possible that society actually would benefit from every person being freed up from the stress and distraction of worrying about how to pay for basic necessities. Imagine how much creativity is being squandered by people being forced to work whatever job they can find just to make ends meet.

It's being tested right now. How many people are using their newfound quarantine free time to do creative work vs. watching trendy documentaries on Netflix? I have friends collecting unemployment benefits complaining on facebook how bored they are and playing WoW all day.

This is hardly normal times. Everyone is stressed, unable to access many resources (regardless of whether they can afford them), and dealing with unfamiliar situations. My work situation hasn't changed at all—I always work from home, and have a really good setup for avoiding distraction—and I'm at 50% productivity at best.

I don’t think meeting people’s needs and helping them to develop are mutually exclusive.

It’s perfectly fair we say that we should provide everyone with their basic needs as a safety net that prevents people from starving. Then building on top of that to give people the support they need to better themselves and reduce the need to rely on outside support.

Sure some people will abuse the system. But condemning the majority just to punish the minority feels a little petty.

that's impossible, all 5 levels?

Forget it

I recall that level 5 (self actualization) is something only 2% of people achieve currently.

Does Gallup do that survey? ('Are you self-actualized?') I suspect you're joking, but the notion that self-actualization can be measured with percentage points is a perversion of the term.

I want to help other people I donate a decent chunk of my paycheck to humanitarian and other charitable efforts. I hate seeing people hungry, I grew up in a difficult situation and I hate seeing children go hungry.

My problem isn't that I am against people getting free food and shelter I am opposed to being forced into charity at the point of gun by the state, and my liberties being eroded by moral busiebodies that fail to understand the very things that led us have a society that even has the capability of eliminating hunger are the very things they are trying to destroy.

Every advancement, every push for "just a little bit more welfare", or "think of the children" has behind it the unspoken assumption that the government can do a better job with my means to help people than I could. This same government with a 13% approval rating and that is universally despised in most everything they try and do.

Every inch of additional power that the government gets is an advancement that is set in stone and can only be rewound with great effort.

So please don't paint me as an amoral monster, I do care, but I also recognize that sometimes emotionally driven responses that are executed without much thought and planning, like California banning plastic bags, can cause a lot more harm than good, especially in the long run.

> This same government with a 13% approval rating and that is universally despised in most everything they try and do.

Because there are many in and out of government that don't want the government to do its job, so that they can point at ineffective government and say "look, a private company [like mine wink wink nudge nudge] could do so much better than that."

Have you noticed that it is only American government (outside of dictatorships) that is highly despised by most of its citizens? Where is this anger from European, Canadian, Asian, South American citizens towards their governments? Could it be that those countries have a functional government that, despite failing in some areas, overall exceeds in providing basic necessities (i.e. healthcare) to its populace?

The idea that government will always fail is itself an unspoken assumption you are making. It doesn't have to be that way. We could have an efficient government if we wanted - the first step is to believe it's possible, like it has been possible in 100+ other countries.

I am not necessarily saying the government is doomed to failure, I just want to remind people that when they believe the govt. intervening will solve problems that they often are the cause of many problems as well.

As for your response that only the American government is highly despised by it is citizens I have to disagree with that, in fact the one universal feature I've found across all internet commentators, admittedly not a scientific survey, is that they all complain about their government, UK, Brazilians, Indians, in fact it often seems that the Chinese and the Russians are the people who love their government the most.

Beyond the internet you can also check out the riots and protests France had last year, generally not an example of people pleased with their government.

Ultimately however my argument against such was focused on a matter of principle and philosophy; however I am a pragmatic person and recognize I live in a real world and that compromise and discussion need to be had, I am cautioning against the simplistic thinking that "hey lets start doing x, y, or z to solve problem A, anyone who disagrees is a monster that hates people."

That kind of thinking leads to divisiveness, the Reds vs the Greens, shuts down discussion and leads to scorched earth tribalism.

Which that was what I was originally responding to, is the idea that because I have reservations around the idea of "just give everyone a house, food and healthcare" I am a miserly scrooge mcduck that hates poor people.

I don't think you're a bad person, or even poor that your philosophy is entirely wrong, and I don't think you hate people. I do however think you and I should focus on improving government rather than removing government - for example, rather than saying we can't have a free lunch program, let's figure out other places taxpayer money is being wasted, eliminate those leaks, and use the money we get from that to fund this program. Let's automate as many functions as we can (for example, online driver license renewal and mail-in voting) to reduce the labor costs while reaching higher levels of efficacy. These are just some examples, but I think there is an intrinsic part of your argument - that government is the cause of problems - that assumes that any action taken will have consequences that outweigh the good of the action. I don't believe that is the case if we are truly attempting to solve the problem and not, for example, just taking into consideration a set of KPIs.

"Universally despised in most everything" is nonsense.

Do you really think everybody hates NASA? The National Park system, or your local/state parks)? Libraries and Museums? Weather and tide forecasts (which depend heavily on NOAA)? The NSF and NIH are world-renowned for the scope and quality of research they support. Food, drugs, cars, highways, and airplanes are all relatively safe.

Most of the government stuff is effective enough that people don't even think about it. The big tragedy of the current administration is that it's injected political chaos that characterizes some hot-button issues into the rest.

What went wrong with California banning plastic bags?

Equating banning plastic bags to feeding the hungry probably makes it harder for someone to not see you as an amoral monster.

And if we do believe you are an amoral monster, which I do not, what does that say about what we believe about people worse than you?

If you are near our best, which you probably are, how else can we hope to help people than by leveraging government? It should be quite clear to everyone that personal donations do not even come close to covering need.

I apologize if my point on that was misstated. I was using that to illustrate that when California banned plastic bags they actually saw an increase in the amount of plastic and waste generated because there were many things the grocery plastic bags were being used for that people didn't think of.

I was illustrating the idea that just because something sounds like a simple and easy idea there is often a lot of nuance and complexity and that is involved that isn't being considered.

In general I'd say the more simplistic an issue appears to be, the more obvious the solution and the more villainous the other side seems, the less of a grasp an individual actually has on really understanding an issue.