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Eugine_Nier comments on Why is Mencius Moldbug so popular on Less Wrong? [Answer: He's not.] - Less Wrong
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When you refuse to treat humans as rational agents, it's easy to forget the most important aspect of human behavior: that it responds to incentives (even perverse ones). How hard-working or intelligent a human is depends on whether society rewards hard work and intelligence. If the products of someone's hard work are redistributed to those who are lazy on that grounds that being lazy is not the person's fault, there will suddenly be a lot fewer hard workers and a lot more lazy people.
Except that there is no such sudden change, and the numbers of unemployed people increase and decrease with the health of the economy, indicating that people are willing to take jobs when they are available, and that status is important as well as income, and that people can acquire money through luck and inheritance as well as hard work...
I could go on.
That's because most measures of the "health of the economy" give a very strong weight to the number of unemployed people.
And status is affected by a lot of things beside how hard one works.
No. The point remains true if you use a measure that doesn't.
Indeed. The non-worker Paris Hilton is much higher status than the average unemployed person,, which would motivate the average unemployed person to take up jobs where they are available.
Why? If your point is that they'll be motivated to work so that they can earn enough money to be as rich as Paris Hilton, then my point is precisely that redistributing wealth from those who work to those who don't makes this motivation less effective. If your point is something else, could you spell it out in more detail.
In a society with no welfare system, someone with no job or inherited wealth will have an income of zero and be a the bottom of the status ranking. In a society with a typical welfare system, someone with no job or inherited wealth will have a minimal income, and still be a the bottom of the status ranking. The people at the top will also have a little less in absolute terms, and still be top rank. So: no. Your point might apply to some extreme form of redistribution, that aims to give everyone the same income, but that has never been put into practice.
My point is that the shallower the slope of the pre vs. post-redistribution graph the more other factors besides money will motivate people. A big part of the problem is that (at least in the US) the slope is particularly narrow at right around the point where taking a low paying job would cause someone to loose their welfare benefits.
Cutting welfare to below subsistence level is not the only or best solution. You can also raise minimum wages, or supplement incomes
This does have the unfortunate side effect of reducing the number of entry level jobs they can get, so it's not at all clear this would make it easier for people to get of welfare.
Yes, Milton Friedman proposed something similar.
The evidence is mixed.. It's widely believed that minimum wage schemes negatively impact young people, but that can be worked around by exempting them.