Jophiel wrote:
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Once you realize that there's no limit to the acreage which can be farmed
Sure there is. There's always a limit to consumer demand, resources, etc.
A limit, but not a constant limit. Assuming you agree that there's more total "stuff" being purchased in our economy today versus say 100 years ago, that is. Of course, if you do place caps on things because you assume a zero sum game, you'll actually ****** economic growth over time and it will kinda become zero sum (ish).
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This really shouldn't be such a novel idea. It's human nature. If we take two classes of history students that test on the subject equally at the beginning of the year, and then one class is given As just for showing up (and know this), while the other class is graded normally, what do you suppose will happen when you test the classes at the end of the year?
You're a master at shitty analogies tonight then, huh?
What happens if you have two classes and give one an automatic "D-" for showing up but allow the potential to score higher if they put in D or greater effort?
How about we make it a C- (or whatever the minimum "passing grade" is)? That would work. My analogy was just to get you to acknowledge the broad concept that handing people any degree of success without effort will reduce the amount of actual effort they'll expend. I started with an extreme example, but it works all the way to the point of "good enough" (so subsistence in this case). Point being that you will affect the statistical rate at which people will choose to expend effort to obtain something if you grant them that something without effort. How much so is kinda directly related to how "free" the thing you're granting them is. In the case of "everyone gets an A", it's a good bet that zero percent will expend any effort. The lower the free grade, the higher the percentage of people who'll expend effort, right?
Which is a pretty strong argument that increasing the amount of these entitlements is counterproductive and reducing them is beneficial. Assuming we want people to expend effort and become successful on their own to as great a degree as possible, that is. Now, if the objective is to create a class of people dependent on the government so you can use this to political advantage, then you want to set that level of "free stuff" as high as possible. Which objective do you think the Democrats have?
Edited, Apr 2nd 2014 6:54pm by gbaji