I play all kinds of old games, Japanese games that require patching, and use mods. That technical stuff is why I haven’t tried Linux yet, because things are already irksome with a well-known OS. I don’t want to imagine what edge cases on Linux could be.
Unfortunately, I might be forced to make the switch if Microsoft decides to ally with the Trump Regime. 😱
I think you could address that by using what I call “Universal Ranked Income”. The idea is that there are floors and ceilings on income, wealth, and so forth. The floor is basically a minimum wage, while the ceiling of the highest income bracket is absolute - people simply do not get any more income at that level, regardless of their job or investments.
In addition to this, job classes should be assigned a rank based on the effort, risk, and knowledge required to perform the task. The job class has a fixed income, that employers can’t alter. They cannot manipulate the number of workdays, the income of a job is fixed, with each month delivering a set wage. Workhours and days are also fixed, to prevent employer manipulation.
Next, is a small pool of income archetypes, from lowest to highest. By keeping the diversity in job ranks to a dozen at most, employees can say “My boss isn’t supposed to get that much money, they are only X. Something smells!”. By creating a framework of obvious rules, it would be easier for society to nip potential oligarchs in the bud.
Here are some ranks from my notes as a baseline sample:
Rank 0: $10,000 per year, 05% / 10% cultural & social taxes, resulting in -$1,500. Has no work obligations.
Rank 1: $10,000-20,000 per year, 10% / 10% cultural & social taxes, resulting in up to -$4,000. For students, who receive a level of income based on grades.
Rank 2: $40,000 per year, 15% / 10% cultural & social taxes, resulting in -$10,000. Waiters, clerks, curbside hawkers, daycare staff.
Rank 3: $60,000 per year, 20% / 10% cultural & social taxes, resulting in -$18,000. Crop pickers, athletes, sex workers, couriers, nurses, police, teachers, journalists, soldiers in cold zones.
Rank 4: $80,000 per year, 25% / 10% cultural & social taxes, resulting in -$28,000. Doctors, engineers, lawyers, professors, researchers, hot zone troops.
Rank 5: $100,000 per year, 30% / 10% cultural & social taxes, resulting in -$40,000. Astronauts, Firemen, ambulance staff, hot battlefield leaders, surgeons, diplomats, lumberjacks, lead researchers.
If you look at the example, notice that education has become a job. It delivers a variable income based on performance, but is still less valuable than being a waiter, who has a fixed $40k income. Education is a pathway to a career, and people can focus on the path, since education offers an income for being studious. The current method of education sucks, because a person has to balance their survival, wellbeing, and education against each other. This is extremely inefficient and punishes people.
Further, I think the URI can potentially negate inflation. This is because the value of money has to be judged against the fixed incomes of society. Remember, jobs lost value, largely because employers keep the fruits of productivity to themselves. By enforcing fixed incomes for everyone and placing heavy restrictions on organizations, we can mitigate that siphoning of wealth. Price controls are much easier when you don’t have a huge variety of income factors to confuse the calculation.
Honestly, I think it would require being raised in a society where social welfare is the norm before it can be considered ordinary.
It would take a revolution with people of vision in order to create a social welfare society. Similar to the Founding Fathers of America, where people of intelligence, character, and spine agreed that a change must be made. We will need people who can fight like hell to lead us into battle, and coolheaded types who will spend a great deal of midnight oil on drafting and workshopping a new way of living.
It won’t be easy nor intuitive, but the crisis caused by Yarvin’s Cabal might be the kindling we need for people to give up on the way we have lived. After all, the old ways are dying with the Constitution. When cowardice offers no shelter, all that is left is to fight.
Yeah. There was a time that I wanted to believe conservatives were merely misguided. Now I know: they are straight up evil. As dehumanizing and unkind as it is, I have started to mentally replacing them with orcs, goblins, and dragons.
A small part of me is sad about the death of my naivety. Then my brain reminds me what price society has paid for hosting these malicious turds. If there is a Reconstruction 2.0, these words must be followed: “Rip and tear, until it is done.”
Trump mandated that lead piping won’t be replaced. That stuff correlates with crime rates, far as location goes. Brilliant. 🤦♂️
I started turning my American Dollars into Euros. Here’s hoping that mitigates the economic damage that will come from Elon’s stupidity.
Honestly, I don’t like messing around with money since I don’t really understand it…but if I don’t, I fear that I won’t be able to get onto a lifeboat. It also makes me feel silly being proactive. Here’s hoping my Blue State would either vindicate or placate my fears.