Entitlement
Mar. 26th, 2006 08:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynOver a decade ago, I was entertaining the idea of writing a story set on a long-term colony ship. The ship would travel at sublight speeds and would take decades to move from its origin planet to the one its colonists planned to settle.
What would life be like aboard that generation ship? How would you guarantee that enough trained personnel were available for any given job? How would you handle a shortage, or a surplus of labor? How does the government treat the unemployed?
That last is a particularly interesting question, because on a starship, everything has a human cost. Everything is made and ultimately maintained by human hands. Not just food and clothing, but the ship that shelters you, the air you breathe, the water you drink. On Earth, the basics of human life exist even without human intervention. There was water and air and ground to walk on before there were any people to use it, and it'll all still be there when humans are extinct. We regard them as entitlements. No one manufactures the air I breathe, and no one charges me for it, either.
Now, to some degree, homelessness in this country *is* a crime: it's called "loitering". All of the land in America is owned by someone, whether individual, business, or government. None of it is free, no strings attached. But in practice, if I give up working and renounce money, I'm not going to be immediately executed. I might starve to death, but that's not quite the same as being shoved out an airlock.
What about being on a spaceship, where space and air are at a premium? There's no place to go where your presence is merely neutral, of no help or hinderance to anyone. You are taking up valuable and limited resources just by existing. How should society treat you if you don't give anything back?
"Shove them out an airlock" is one possibility. But I think that would only be implemented if the cost of air or space is comparatively high. If the ship just can't afford to have non-productive people around -- if the strain on the system from a non-contributor is so great that it threatens the whole -- then society might grit its teeth and execute anyone that couldn't provide for themselves.
But that's an unlikely scenario for a colony ship. I'd expect sufficiently advanced technology that the marginal cost of basics would be low. Not non-zero; everything would still need occassional maintenance and other human intervention. But most of the work would be done by machines; one man's labor would provide air for thousands if not millions. Food would likely also be inexpensive. These things are too important to be costly, because the costlier they are, the more
likely the whole venture would be to fail. How many people would get on a colony ship if they thought there was a good chance the food would run out or the air would fail?
Once I made the decision that these the basics of life should be comparatively low, it became harder to argue that the basics of life shouldn't be an entitlement. If it's cheap, am I really going to shove the bankrupt out an airlock? And if I'm already supplying the impoverished with air, water, and space to occupy, I might as well supply food too. Medical care? Well, maybe. But the question had become not "Are the colonists entitled to get anything for free?" but "how much are they entitled to get for free?"
The truth is, it's the same way on a planet, too. We all benefit from entitlements: "The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." No one seriously argues that we need to earn the right to breathe, or that homeless people shouldn't be allowed to take up space on land. The harshest of penalties imposed against the homeless is prison -- and that's actually providing them with a far more expensive form of shelter than a park bench. You get fed in prison, too! Minors net the largest range of entitlements: free education through high school, and the state will provide free room and board if the parents do not (or cannot).
My point in saying all of this is to explain why I'm not opposed to the concept of "an existance wage", of government providing a certain amount of money and/or necessities to all citizens. I don't think getting a handout is intrinsically bad; the world and our country offers a lot of handouts already, and getting free air and water doesn't seem to be harmful to me. What I like about Charles Murray's plan better than traditional welfare is its simplicity, and its comparative lack of disincentives to work. Yes, all forms of entitlements offer disincentives to work, but one that provides the same benefits to all citizens does so less than one that only benefits non-workers.
What I am concerned about is that such a handout would be too expensive for our society. My hypothetical colonists could provide everyone with free room and board on the assumption that the marginal cost of these things was low.
Mr. Murray proposes a $10,000 entitlement per adult citizen. Is that amount too high? Would it be too burdensome for the collective of those paying more tax than they're receiving in entitlement to cover? Would the disincentive it offered to work be too powerful, and lowering the number of net taxpayers to a point where it couldn't be sustained?
Is it too low? Are there beneficiaries of our current entitlement programs who need a higher level of assistance due to medical conditions, and would they be unable to receive it under Mr. Murray's flat-rate plan? (Perhaps the mandatory health insurance would cover such costs long-term, but I'm not sure how well the transition would or could be managed.)
It's all hypothetical for now; political resistance to such a notion will be much too strong for decades to come.
But as America becomes wealthier and technology more advanced, I think the answer to the question "Is it too expensive?" will one day become a clear "No." But whether that's true today or not, I truly don't know.
What would life be like aboard that generation ship? How would you guarantee that enough trained personnel were available for any given job? How would you handle a shortage, or a surplus of labor? How does the government treat the unemployed?
That last is a particularly interesting question, because on a starship, everything has a human cost. Everything is made and ultimately maintained by human hands. Not just food and clothing, but the ship that shelters you, the air you breathe, the water you drink. On Earth, the basics of human life exist even without human intervention. There was water and air and ground to walk on before there were any people to use it, and it'll all still be there when humans are extinct. We regard them as entitlements. No one manufactures the air I breathe, and no one charges me for it, either.
Now, to some degree, homelessness in this country *is* a crime: it's called "loitering". All of the land in America is owned by someone, whether individual, business, or government. None of it is free, no strings attached. But in practice, if I give up working and renounce money, I'm not going to be immediately executed. I might starve to death, but that's not quite the same as being shoved out an airlock.
What about being on a spaceship, where space and air are at a premium? There's no place to go where your presence is merely neutral, of no help or hinderance to anyone. You are taking up valuable and limited resources just by existing. How should society treat you if you don't give anything back?
"Shove them out an airlock" is one possibility. But I think that would only be implemented if the cost of air or space is comparatively high. If the ship just can't afford to have non-productive people around -- if the strain on the system from a non-contributor is so great that it threatens the whole -- then society might grit its teeth and execute anyone that couldn't provide for themselves.
But that's an unlikely scenario for a colony ship. I'd expect sufficiently advanced technology that the marginal cost of basics would be low. Not non-zero; everything would still need occassional maintenance and other human intervention. But most of the work would be done by machines; one man's labor would provide air for thousands if not millions. Food would likely also be inexpensive. These things are too important to be costly, because the costlier they are, the more
likely the whole venture would be to fail. How many people would get on a colony ship if they thought there was a good chance the food would run out or the air would fail?
Once I made the decision that these the basics of life should be comparatively low, it became harder to argue that the basics of life shouldn't be an entitlement. If it's cheap, am I really going to shove the bankrupt out an airlock? And if I'm already supplying the impoverished with air, water, and space to occupy, I might as well supply food too. Medical care? Well, maybe. But the question had become not "Are the colonists entitled to get anything for free?" but "how much are they entitled to get for free?"
The truth is, it's the same way on a planet, too. We all benefit from entitlements: "The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." No one seriously argues that we need to earn the right to breathe, or that homeless people shouldn't be allowed to take up space on land. The harshest of penalties imposed against the homeless is prison -- and that's actually providing them with a far more expensive form of shelter than a park bench. You get fed in prison, too! Minors net the largest range of entitlements: free education through high school, and the state will provide free room and board if the parents do not (or cannot).
My point in saying all of this is to explain why I'm not opposed to the concept of "an existance wage", of government providing a certain amount of money and/or necessities to all citizens. I don't think getting a handout is intrinsically bad; the world and our country offers a lot of handouts already, and getting free air and water doesn't seem to be harmful to me. What I like about Charles Murray's plan better than traditional welfare is its simplicity, and its comparative lack of disincentives to work. Yes, all forms of entitlements offer disincentives to work, but one that provides the same benefits to all citizens does so less than one that only benefits non-workers.
What I am concerned about is that such a handout would be too expensive for our society. My hypothetical colonists could provide everyone with free room and board on the assumption that the marginal cost of these things was low.
Mr. Murray proposes a $10,000 entitlement per adult citizen. Is that amount too high? Would it be too burdensome for the collective of those paying more tax than they're receiving in entitlement to cover? Would the disincentive it offered to work be too powerful, and lowering the number of net taxpayers to a point where it couldn't be sustained?
Is it too low? Are there beneficiaries of our current entitlement programs who need a higher level of assistance due to medical conditions, and would they be unable to receive it under Mr. Murray's flat-rate plan? (Perhaps the mandatory health insurance would cover such costs long-term, but I'm not sure how well the transition would or could be managed.)
It's all hypothetical for now; political resistance to such a notion will be much too strong for decades to come.
But as America becomes wealthier and technology more advanced, I think the answer to the question "Is it too expensive?" will one day become a clear "No." But whether that's true today or not, I truly don't know.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-27 08:34 am (UTC)This lack of space means that when you set out on such a mission a decision has to be made about the crew that you're going to harbour, are you going to start with a relatively small crew and let biological reproduction inflate your crew size? Or start with a full crew and ban biological reproduction? And if you're prepared to ban something so personal, how much control are you willing to exert to get the point across. A developing child takes up a -great- deal more resources than an adult does, and is incapable of producing anything to offset this cost, but its an investment into the future health of the community, because that child will, with careful nurturing, develop into a productive member of society.
The bigger question that hasn't been asked in this scenario, is how much control are you willing to exert on the populace, are you willing to make work mandatory, make reproduction illegal if uncertified, make the rearing of children carefull supervised. And what about people who simply consume more resources by their nature, people who keep their spaces unclean or are socially abrasive, or who eat more food.
The problem becomes that once you start looking at the -real- situation of taking a pre-determined number of people from one place to the next in such a manner, is who do you take? Its not honest to assume that everyone will have a skill that will enrich the lives of others on the ship, should people have to learn such a skill before they're allowed to be part of the crew? And what about the diversity of tasks, is an engineer worth more than a bartender? Are bartenders unimportant in their entirety?
So many questions would have to be asked, and this is the problem when we try to contain so large an issue as the world, its very difficult to bottle it up into a small space and try to keep it from exploding. Its fine in the strict, millitary environment that Star Trek revolves around, where everyone is either part of the crew or they're transitory, but when everyone must have a purpose (because why would you include anyone on such a vessel who couldn't provide for themselves) things become complex, over-pressurized. We either have a system of totalitarian control in which participation is enforced for the good of the ship and the mission, or a loose system where the honor of people would either compel them to work towards the common goal... or they would -have- to be pitched out the airlock.
Because if the guy one block down from me is living the same life I am, but not working like I am, what's my motivation?
People are inherrently lazy.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-27 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-27 05:26 pm (UTC)Unfortunately, I have too many issues with the welfare-state concept to really run them all down without writing an article on it. As it stands, we have a tremendous percentage of people on welfare who are deliberately abusing it. I'd have no qualms at all about welfare if part of your qualification to receive it involved time on 'labor gangs', unless precluded by medical qualification.
You might say that I don't believe in 'entitlement'. IMNSHO, if you don't contribute to the state and the community around you, the state has no real cause to contribute to you beyond 'feel good' programs...Which is what we have, make no mistake. If you won't work, can't feed or shelter yourself and are so odious that no friend will shelter or feed you, I don't see why my tax dollars should be applied. If you literally can't work in the normal labor pool, it's in society's best interest to spend some time finding a job you can do, or training you if training is an issue...But in both cases, if you expect to receive continuing societal support you must do said job, or attempt to excel at said training until you're ready to go on to a job that deserves support, then proceed on to said job.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-28 07:54 am (UTC)Granted, but that doesn't remove the additional flaws from the analogy. And those flaws 'do' make it a more difficult platform from which to laud the idea of entitlement, because it draws a much sharper line between the spaceship and the real world.
On the spaceship, entitelment would work because there is a critical mission and a system of control that must be upheld for the mission to come to fruition. On the earth, it 'doesn't' work because no one can agree on what we should be able to force people into doing without harming their unalienable rights and freedoms.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-28 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-28 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 06:52 am (UTC)That is the main reason why I think alcohol should be basically unrestricted in any rational legal framework, regardless of its functionality as a minor tranquilizer (which normally is worth FDA class II). It's the only low-technology water preservation technique we have, culturally.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-31 12:29 pm (UTC)Plus there is the Roman trick, using half and half with water.
And agreed. If alcohol was new on the scene it'd be ban-listed within a couple months. Probably tobacco too. Yay grandfathering.