[shovel]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Great idea. However, research has shown that people who have 10hr work days don't accomplish any more work than those with 8hr work days. It's just difficult to be focused for that length of time.

Sweet, then we should work four 8's and require overtime pay for hours worked past 32/week. It's ridiculous in today's era of automation that we (employed folk) are dumping 40+ hours per week, half of our (waking) lives into our employment - before even factoring other necessary behaviors like bathing, laundry, using the lavatory, etc - exactly how much time is left to live?

You are comparing work that is meaningful and valuable to society such as design, to work that is immoral and has no benefit to society! I'm actually in favor of legalizing prostitution, but that is no endorsement from me that it is good, or is valuable to the community.

I don't see anything immoral about selling sex, after all it's legal to give away for free. It's legal for me to pay someone to rub my shoulders with their hands just to make me feel pleasure. Why is one kind of corporeal pleasure legal & "moral" and another not legal or "moral"?

Despite being deeply associated with love and reproduction, it would be ignorant to deny that a strong libido is a healthy and normal facet of being a living creature and much the reason any of us exist. I consider expression of that to be as necessary to adult humans as using the toilet, I even refer to the DIY process as "number three" - for most healthy people with normal limbic systems it's physically uncomfortable, at least for some duration of their lives, to avoid resolving the urge.

To that end, I consider prostitution as necessary and valuable as any other service which caters to biological needs - agriculture, plumbing work, medicine.. it's all there to address the corporeal needs of free humans. I was blessed with good health, fair social fluidity and acceptable genetics so I've never had the need to pursue this service but I've also never needed to buy a fishing rod, that doesn't mean I have a problem with people fishing.

Would basic needs not be met if we removed much of the welfare system? Of course not; we would see the return of compassion and charity, and a stronger work ethic.

Would we? Within a matter of hours before the millions of people currently living on some form of assistance (for whatever reason, legit or not) got hungry and realized a hot meal and a warm coat are only one homicide away? That's all on you, my friend.

I've been having a lot of trouble lately with a certain group of people - not suggesting you're one since you haven't exhibited a crucial component of that behavior - who complain about welfare but then consider tax evasion to be smart business... their mantra is "I'm sick of these losers exploiting the system to avoid paying their fair share, look how I exploited the system to avoid paying my fair share!!"

There are huge gaping loopholes for people at all levels, and frankly I believe that tax evasion by business and employed people amounts to a greater sum of money than unemployed people receiving "handouts". When someone wealthy puts their money into an offshore bank, the only reason they would do that is to deliberately evade taxes and exploit the system to avoid paying their fair share. Not cool.

We all use social services. If you're a so-called "job creator" you use the public education system every time you have an applicant who can read and write and interact in a socially normalized fashion. If you're a taxpayer you use the police and welfare system every time you don't get your neck slit for the money in your pocket. If you're a manufacturer or retailer or engineer you use every inch of the social safety net that your customers use, because if they weren't using them they wouldn't be able to be your customers. Even if you don't own a car, you use public roads every time something you buy gets delivered to your door or to the store.

If you don't want to be part of it, there are private islands for sale under a hundred grand and while you might be liable for some small amount of property tax to your host government (to cover military defense and such) you could probably get away with not paying any other tax to anyone. And you'd never waste a minute of your life commuting!
Of course there would be no customers or employers or police or restaurants or mechanics or doctors or entertainment or any of the other benefits society provides... but that's the price one pays for not wanting to pay the monetary price of admission to society.

I do not believe that money should be given to people for nothing - if you have working arms and legs, and there's public property in need of improvement, cleaning, whatever - that looks like a job to me. But for the exact same reason we should expect work from people who want to eat, we should also ensure that work is actually available for them to do. That's a complex system to actually implement even if we could magically agree to it and say yes right now - what do you do with people who are physically stout but mentally ill? What do you do with people who, for whatever reason, are actually broken? What about for single parents? I'm not saying any of them should get a free lunch, but a system has to be designed to actually work, or it won't work.

It becomes a mess of dependencies, and those are no excuse not to get started on it - only an explanation that even if we started today on such a project it would take a bit of time to sort out. I do hope it happens, though - an impossible ideal should never be the enemy of an achievable good.

For the same reason we should expect work from people who wish to share society's wealth, we also should demand that people who benefit most from society's wealth pay back into it fairly. Did you make a billion dollars? Could you have made it completely alone on an island? Without any customers, any roads, any food supply chain, any bureaus of standards, any police enforced stability? Really?

It's absolutely appalling that the government can have any say about the price I am willing to accept for my labor, especially in light of the fact that volunteering labor for free is completely legal.

Replace the word "labor" with the word "genitalia", but we do both agree on the necessary legality of prostitution

Anyway this all isn't meant to turn into a big flame festival of rage and whatever - it's a pretty huge digression from the topic of time wasted in commute.