The other comments are good too and have been mostly answered by others, but I think that yours is the most core reaction to the points I touched on.
No: no restrictions or anything like that. I read somewhere that socialism typically requires roughly a daily 6 hour commitment from workers to keep things running. Communism might be spiritually closer to my points, but also suffers from gamification of work where bosses are still produced which maintain authority but don't actually participate in the making of things, so the result is yet another class system dividing rich and poor. Those heavy-handed systems result in the same rat race we have under capitalism.
What I'm suggesting is more like a trust for all citizens. So how wealthy people in the US get mailbox money and enjoy the benefits of large corporations generating steady dividends. The bottom 50-90% of the US is denied that since it wasn't born with generational wealth to invest. We have to work entire lifetimes to barely afford a home.
Short of coming up with $10,000-100,000 of investment capital per person (although that money already exists in the hands of the very wealthy), I'm saying that we could automate basic needs to make them free or nearly free. For example, there's no reason why we couldn't have made something like the Aptera solar electric car 20 years ago, just after lithium iron phosphate batteries were invented (or 40 years ago when solar panels became viable). We could all be driving for free for life right now, but the market prefers to build giant $60,000 trucks that get replaced every 10 years. We could be building $10,000 tiny homes and using 3D printing methods to grow produce robotically in our own neighborhoods.
My experience the last 20 years has been only work. It takes so much effort to make rent that I never got to invest in basic tools that would have made my life a lot easier and more pleasant. The opportunity cost of work is so high that it eclipses all else.
Had it not been for work, I would have done what my ancestors did: build a house in about 2 months from materials on the land, and work the land seasonally for food. My time beyond that would be mine to use for inventing and building things. I actually got to experience a time like that, it was called the 1980s and 90s, but now leisure time is a distant memory. I'm kind of joking, but what we have today is anathema to what I thought the future would bring. More like a libertarian's paradise than a futurist's utopia. And I live in one of the more rural places in the country. I can't imagine being locked into a big city where every second of every day goes towards mere survival.
As far as 20 kids and immigration and all that: the way of this trust system is to provide for basic needs. Meaning that it's self-sufficient and scalable. It would strike at the basic causes of immigration like hunger and wealth inequality so that people could stay where they live. Having 20 kids would certainly put a burden on the system, but I think that people are driven to do that either due to the scarcity mindset of not being able to afford birth control, or from religious indoctrination that tells them to go forth and procreate in the face of environmental devastation, or both. There's also the patriarchy which overrides whatever the mother has to say about all that.
To answer your original question: with basic needs met and a 10 hour workweek, the other 6 days would go towards "real work" that pays dividends beyond survival. For example, I made a shareware game before 9/11 that took me a whole year (about 200-365 days) while living with my dad. Today with Saturdays free only, that would take me 7 years (it ain't gonna happen). I have at least 100 ideas that would generate residual income that ain't gonna happen either. My life is a daily withering of expectation, suppressing the callings I feel in my heart to instead go satisfy whatever obligations are demanded of me. I have no children, so there's a futility to it of sacrificing to a next generation that isn't mine. And even if I had kids, by induction I would question the sacrifice of every generation to the one that follows. Surely we can do better than that.
Since I've never seen any real movement on these things, I think they might require a cultural revolution and grassroots effort to implement an opt-in trust system with UBI in a distributed fashion. I think maybe software co-ops like the Humble Indie Bundle that distribute a win to the losers and funds open source could do it. 3D printing and home automation will help. Better tax policy (keeping capital gains taxes higher than self-employment taxes) could do it. Rather than complaining to the critics like I've been doing, it would be better to create viable alternatives that are compelling enough that the arguments against them become moot.
No: no restrictions or anything like that. I read somewhere that socialism typically requires roughly a daily 6 hour commitment from workers to keep things running. Communism might be spiritually closer to my points, but also suffers from gamification of work where bosses are still produced which maintain authority but don't actually participate in the making of things, so the result is yet another class system dividing rich and poor. Those heavy-handed systems result in the same rat race we have under capitalism.
What I'm suggesting is more like a trust for all citizens. So how wealthy people in the US get mailbox money and enjoy the benefits of large corporations generating steady dividends. The bottom 50-90% of the US is denied that since it wasn't born with generational wealth to invest. We have to work entire lifetimes to barely afford a home.
Short of coming up with $10,000-100,000 of investment capital per person (although that money already exists in the hands of the very wealthy), I'm saying that we could automate basic needs to make them free or nearly free. For example, there's no reason why we couldn't have made something like the Aptera solar electric car 20 years ago, just after lithium iron phosphate batteries were invented (or 40 years ago when solar panels became viable). We could all be driving for free for life right now, but the market prefers to build giant $60,000 trucks that get replaced every 10 years. We could be building $10,000 tiny homes and using 3D printing methods to grow produce robotically in our own neighborhoods.
My experience the last 20 years has been only work. It takes so much effort to make rent that I never got to invest in basic tools that would have made my life a lot easier and more pleasant. The opportunity cost of work is so high that it eclipses all else.
Had it not been for work, I would have done what my ancestors did: build a house in about 2 months from materials on the land, and work the land seasonally for food. My time beyond that would be mine to use for inventing and building things. I actually got to experience a time like that, it was called the 1980s and 90s, but now leisure time is a distant memory. I'm kind of joking, but what we have today is anathema to what I thought the future would bring. More like a libertarian's paradise than a futurist's utopia. And I live in one of the more rural places in the country. I can't imagine being locked into a big city where every second of every day goes towards mere survival.
As far as 20 kids and immigration and all that: the way of this trust system is to provide for basic needs. Meaning that it's self-sufficient and scalable. It would strike at the basic causes of immigration like hunger and wealth inequality so that people could stay where they live. Having 20 kids would certainly put a burden on the system, but I think that people are driven to do that either due to the scarcity mindset of not being able to afford birth control, or from religious indoctrination that tells them to go forth and procreate in the face of environmental devastation, or both. There's also the patriarchy which overrides whatever the mother has to say about all that.
To answer your original question: with basic needs met and a 10 hour workweek, the other 6 days would go towards "real work" that pays dividends beyond survival. For example, I made a shareware game before 9/11 that took me a whole year (about 200-365 days) while living with my dad. Today with Saturdays free only, that would take me 7 years (it ain't gonna happen). I have at least 100 ideas that would generate residual income that ain't gonna happen either. My life is a daily withering of expectation, suppressing the callings I feel in my heart to instead go satisfy whatever obligations are demanded of me. I have no children, so there's a futility to it of sacrificing to a next generation that isn't mine. And even if I had kids, by induction I would question the sacrifice of every generation to the one that follows. Surely we can do better than that.
Since I've never seen any real movement on these things, I think they might require a cultural revolution and grassroots effort to implement an opt-in trust system with UBI in a distributed fashion. I think maybe software co-ops like the Humble Indie Bundle that distribute a win to the losers and funds open source could do it. 3D printing and home automation will help. Better tax policy (keeping capital gains taxes higher than self-employment taxes) could do it. Rather than complaining to the critics like I've been doing, it would be better to create viable alternatives that are compelling enough that the arguments against them become moot.