The article says it will replace some other benefits that Finns currently have. If the project works then I assume other welfare programs will be folded into the basic income over time.
Yes. That is a smart thing to do but generally there is a strong resistance from different branches of government responsible for delivering those welfare schemes. The arguments tend to be "but that person will spend it on drugs".
> Why do criminals need to be treated humanely though?
Because to treat a human being like they are not a human being makes you evil.
> Won't the deterrent effect of prison be reduced if we go too easy on them?
Data says: no. Beyond the simple deterrence of losing one's liberty (which is significant), the harshness of prison has no real deterrent effect -- but does serve to acclimate prisoners to violence, coercion, and anti-social behaviour. What prison does is rehabilitate, or fail to rehabilitate. That is the metric which matters.
Because the way you're recommending treating them means they come out with no job skills, atrophied social skills, and otherwise ill-adapted for society. Thus, they'll turn to the only tool they have, and they end up right back in. Your method is far from a deterrent, it'll just encourage recidivism and lead to ever more populated jails. Treating people humanely ends up being a lot cheaper in the long run.
And this sort of retributive thinking has nothing to do with "feelings of moral superiority"?
The only argument that makes sense is the one that gets the best results, and it turns out treating people like subhuman trash has rather negative results in the long run.
> Won't the deterrent effect of prison be reduced if we go too easy on them?
I don't think this is true. More precisely, it's obviously true that extremes can change how much of a deterrent effect there is, (e.g. if prison is a 5-star resort people might prefer to be inside than out), but your position is like trickle-down economics.
The Laffer curve certainly exists in the sense that governments collect less revenue from taxing either 0% or 100% than they do from some intermediate amount. But using this tautology to assert we should categorically lower taxes ignores the crucial question of where we are in that curve.
Importantly there seems to be a fairly inelastic response to changes in sentencing; drastic changes in sentencing seem not to generally change criminal behaviour (see a wealth of statistics on the death penalty, also the crime rate collapse since the 90's).
To decide whether we want to make prisons more or less humane we need to address the purpose of prisons.
If you think prisons are primarily for justice/punishment, I'd urge you to consider the numerous lapses of our legal system, the fact that ~95% of prosecutions end in plea bargains instead of trials, endemic prosecutorial overreach, and the severe shortage of adequate counsel/public defenders for the poor. Additionally, consider the "three felonies a day" complaint --- that laws are poorly and vaguely written, general to the point of absurdity, and opaque --- which means that you could
probably be convicted of something by a sufficiently zealous prosecutor.
If you think prisons are primarily about effecting good outcomes for the rest of society I'd argue that a system that focuses on rehabilitation and reducing recidivism will necessarily be more humane.
Finally, as others have said though it bears repeating, we (as society) should treat people humanely. Full Stop. Not because they are human, but because we are.
Because they're human? Because wrongful convictions happen? Also, the deterrent effect of prison is more dependent on certainty of punishment, rather than severity of punishment.[1]
> Also, the deterrent effect of prison is more dependent on certainty of punishment, rather than severity of punishment.
Good point. I suspect its even more based on the perceived marginal increase in likelihood of punishment if an act which is intended to be deterred is committed vs. if it is not. Certainty of punishment is one factor that weighs in that, but certainty of nonpunishment of the act is not committed is also a factor.
I think it's fascinating how hostile some people can get towards Soylent. It's like they think the mere existence of it is an attack to the core of their identity. I wonder if it's just insecurity triggered by people liking something that they don't like or some other type of psychological defense mechanism.
* some kind of a "bad experience" with Soylent. It can be just an article about "busy people drinking Soylent" which creates negative internal representation of a Soylent as a drink for the crazy, out of this world busy people
While you're right that convincing people that they're being stupid is generally a waste of time, it's no more or less a waste of time than posting a comment on the internet wondering why other people post comments on the internet.
For me, it's hostility toward the race to the bottom and accompanying dehumanization that Soylent is nodding to.
I really don't understand people who think positively about Soylent. It's bland nutrient paste, similar to the kind fed to coma patients. How exciting and DISRUPTIVE!!!
I used Soylent to lose weight. It helped me gain very precise control over caloric intake.
You know what? I didn't care that it was a bland nutrient slurry. I cared about the "dehumanizing" control it gave me. I cared about the options it brought to my life. Discovering significant extra time in my day by not cooking 8x a week was a nice bonus.
What I'm really seeing in your comments is that you're struggling to understand how someone could think so utterly differently from you.
If weight loss is your goal, it's actually cheaper and easier and far, far more pleasant to just make smoothies for a couple of meals a day. Here's an easy one that I make all the time:
* 1/2 cup yogurt
* 1/2 cup juice (apple, orange, whatever)
* 1 banana, peeled
* 3-4 frozen strawberries
* 1/2 cup frozen blueberries
Toss in blender. Blend. Consume. Rinse out blender. From assembling ingredients to rinsing the blender, the whole process can be performed in <10 minutes, and is far less disgusting and dehumanizing than consuming bland nutrient goo. Total ingredient cost for one week of daily smoothies is <$10.
A big part of what makes us human is that we take pleasure in eating good food. It's a shame to throw that part of your humanity away unnecessarily.
Perhaps I don't subscribe to your narrow definition of humanity. I found bland nutrient goo perfect for my needs. It meant no shopping, no dealing with perishables, and other logistical and organizational benefits.
Have you considered the possibility that perhaps not everyone thinks like you?
Another interesting trait of humans is that once they've subscribed to an opinion, they'll tie themselves in knots looking for ways to avoid changing their mind despite all contradictory evidence.
Is it possible that you really don't care about one of the core biological experiences that define human civilizations throughout history? The act that differentiates our cultures, has driven migration, evolution, wars and exploration? The act that is so ingrained in our biology that meal preparation is central to every human settlement?
Yeah, that's possible. It's also possible that you're a blowhard. But hey man, knock yourself out. I was just saying that it's pretty damned easy to make a smoothie.
You also declared that I had opted "to throw that part of your humanity away unnecessarily".
But nevermind that. Yes, it's easy to make a smoothie. Just not sufficiently easy that I preferred it to Soylent, which was a highly personal decision for me to make and relies upon choices and information not available to you.
Pay it no mind. It's the "I don't understand it and it doesn't specifically work for my life so it must be wrong" mindset. I've used Soylent as you have and it frees up time and funds as well as making calorie tracking easier.
> A system that allows insider trading discourages participation by amateurs
Not really, amateurs mostly make long term investments, they are not buying and selling based on quarterly reports. The only ones who would be affected by legal insider trading are the gamblers.
>Protectionism is how every nation on the planet developed
You must be joking. Countries with open markets develop way faster than protectionist countries. If mercantilism is so good then why are the Asian Tigers doing so well and communist countries doing so bad?
What does communism have to do with anything? Protectionism is exactly how the Asian Tigers developed their economies. You don't have to take it from me, read it from a prominent South Korean economist: http://www.amazon.com/Things-They-Dont-About-Capitalism/dp/1...
Cultural fit can definitely impact performance. Imagine a luddite working for a biotechnology company, or an anarchist working for the government, or a muslim working for an atheist non-profit. These people would never find the motivation to perform better than the absolute minimum required to keep their jobs because their goals and the goals of the organization are complete opposites. They could even go as far as sabotaging the performance of others by creating a toxic work environment.
Not necessarily. There are plenty of Muslims who could help an atheist non profit by maintaining their professionalism. Likewise for your other examples. By assuming that they will let their beliefs sabotage their work, you're judging a whole group by the potential actions of zero or more people. That's just discrimination against people with these various beliefs without proof. By this line of reasoning you could say that Catholics should never be hired at planned parenthood because they will sabotage it. Total load of bull shit and exactly the reason "cultural fit" should be illegal. It's just plain discrimination.
They can be professional all they like but if they only have money as a motivator to work at a place they hate then they'll just be poor performers. They won't have the energy to do more than the bare minimum. Motivation is just not something that you can command at will.
How is that different from the majority of people who are only motivated by money to work? You're right, motivation is not something you can command at will. Nor is it something that you can detect in others or stereotype across a vast group of people as you're doing here.
> if they only have money as a motivator to work at a place they hate then they'll just be poor performers. They won't have the energy to do more than the bare minimum.
Sound like sour grapes and No True Scotsman to me. The president, who is leading negotiations, was elected democratically, and Congress, who decides whether this treaty becomes law or not, was also elected democratically. If the people dislike how the government is doing things they have only themselves to blame for electing these representatives.
To be honest I don't believe anybody really cares about the ideals of democracy. If the same secrecy was being used to push legislation you supported you wouldn't be whining at all, you would probably be defending it instead because you would rationalize that passing the law is more important than the method used to pass it.
That's not democracy. That's doublespeak. The US's "Founding Fathers" hated democracy and stressed it was a republic. Those slaveowners wanted to protect minorities against majority rule — the wealthy minority. (Obviously they didn't mean African Americans and women.)
Hating democracy is a massive overstatement. It was designed as a democratically elected representative republic. They didn't want a mob ruling, but at the base, the people select the representatives. That is how virtually every democracy runs itself.
Unions don't donate directly, they make independent campaign expenditures through Super PACs. Look in the Independent Expenditures tab in the page you gave me.
Most of those elections, at least in the US, are arranged to be a choice between two bad candidates with relatively small (even if sometimes important) differences. That's not a real choice and the fact that one of them won shouldn't be construed as approval.
There are primaries and third parties, you know? That the final choice comes down to two mediocre individuals says more about the intelligence of the average voter than any sort of corporate conspiracy.
I'll give you though that the first-past-the-post system is terrible and you would be better off with a proportional system.
Until third parties get the funding and backing by powerful people that already run the nation, they aren't able to produce a truly viable candidate.
They won't get the exposure. They'll be pigeonholed as the joke candidate by the well-funded machines that have interest in making sure you don't consider leaving the two-party system that's worked well for them.
Needing excessive funding and backing by elites to really be considered a candidate implies that only those who promise to uphold their interests will be portrayed as being a legitimate choice.
The option for a third party is in the specification, but we've purposely implemented it in such a way that power remains in the hands of the few.
Third parties do nothing useful. Primaries could be useful, but in practice aren't.
And sure, maybe it's voter intelligence or apathy rather than some conspiracy. Doesn't matter. I'm just saying the result isn't representative and shouldn't be framed as the will of the people. I'm not saying anything about the root cause.
> I'm just saying the result isn't representative and shouldn't be framed as the will of the people.
Fine, but then you can't really frame anything as being or not the will of the people as there's no point of reference. You can't say that TTIP and TPP and TISA are not the will of the people just because Reddit and a bunch of news sites like to hate on them, for instance.
First past the post is actually an inherently two party system [0]. It would take a monumental amount of effort to overcome that bias and an intelligent voter knows that they can't beat the system and have to work with it. Thus, the final choice for all voters is still two mediocre individuals.
Yep. Those of us who voted for Kucinich in the primaries were impressed by his fair treatment of the televised debate system and the amount of support he was able to garner from the Democratic party. I'm very grateful that we have a political system in this country in which money isn't at all a factor, because I don't know how I could handle living in a country in which wealth was directed towards those candidates that would be most likely to serve the interests of that wealth.
I bet a country like that would fall victim to a two-party system virtually over night. I wouldn't even be surprised if it ended up being a single-party system where the two parties were only superficially different.
Me too! That's why I lament the fact that it is not (maybe even quite opposite).
I think we should try it, like trias-politica and all, by trying to keep our legislative leg free from non-democratic influences. Like those mehhhh lobby organisations.
> Who are these people who want to eat this because it's faster so they can work more?
Or maybe they eat this so they can play more? I just find it totally disturbing that you've chosen eating food as one of your primary sources of entertainment. You must be a really boring person.
You shouldn't take modafinil daily though as you can develop a tolerance. You should take it 3 consecutive days and then rest the other 4 days of the week. Also extreme focus kills creativity so the rest days allow for a productivity/creativity cycle.
