Care is not something that is magically performed by the state or money.
At some point someone has to physically wash and feed the elderly in the retirement homes.
If past governments or cultural environments messed up demographics, states might end up with a significant fraction (Germany already has 22% aged 65+) of the population in need of that care, which requires another significant share of the population to just do that instead of producing actual stuff.
This will either get ugly in one way or another or we will need scalable tech solutions.
I don't think anyone's talking about forcing, or slavery.
Foreign workers are improving their lot (and that of their families back home). In a world where they don't have the same economic opportunities in their home countries, and the locals don't want to do those "shit jobs", it's a win win.
Even talking about shit jobs is pejorative. Foreign workers don't just pick fruit, they're also essential talent in healthcare and other critical areas.
Why is that? Do you think shit jobs don't exist? You think wiping other old people's asses is NOT a shit job? Are you lining up for these kinds of jobs yourself or did you work and study hard to not have to do them because you knew those jobs are shit and are usually given to the lowest underclass class of people who don't have better options due to various factors?
> Foreign workers don't just pick fruit
I never said such thing. The thread I replied was about importing workers for elderly care.
You're trying to project some things I didn't say onto me.
They're promised path to citizenship and an ok money. Then they discover that they work for an agency that takes away big chunk of their money. They can not change the employer since they'll be deported etc. etc. And the worst part is that at the end they still have to leave the country.
Actually... they kinda can? If they don't work, they get deported back. Also they are in debt to the agency that got them here. It's a hair above modern slavery the way it currently works, especially in EU countries with more... lax standards than Germany.
lol, nice joke, how many illegals has Germany for example deported? Deporting people in the EU is a huge hassle and the source countries often don't want to cooperate in taking back people. You'll have to murder someone to actually get the authorities in the EU go through the hassle of deporting you, but refusing to work shit jobs isn't enough to get you deported, just have your welfare access cut off.
Plus they can also claim asylum once they get here to escape their slave drivers and not get deported.
>especially in EU countries with more... lax standards than Germany
Germany already has lax standards on that regard. Many there are raking in huge profits by bringing in these vulnerable workers and having them work in terrible conditions.
> lol, how many illegals has Germany for example deported? Deporting people in the EU is a huge hassle and the source countries often don't want to cooperate in taking back people.
> Plus they can also claim asylum once they get here to escape their slave employers and not get deported.
You are confusing two groups of people. One group consists of illegal migrants, usually from MENA countries that claim asylum and are a hassle to deport back.
Migrant workers usually come from southeast Asia (India, Nepal, Philippines..) and there is no problem sending them back because those countries are considered safe. Also they got families back home, their motivation is not really to stay here long term but to earn a decent amount of money (from their perspective). And despite sometimes poor treatment and shitty jobs, EU is a much better place to work than gulf countries.
No, I read what you wrote and I meant what I said. Let me explain again: people are willing to do anything, even jobs they dislike, just to get a visa. That doesn't mean they'll want keep doing that shitty job once they get the visa and can start looking for workarounds. Otherwise there wouldn't be a shortage of staff in those sectors if all workers would stick around for long.
well, except for the fact that, as the article states, it doesn't scale. Or rather, it scales poorly: the quality of care provided by a nation state is going to differ in degree and quality compared to the 1:1 care that humans probably need (and certainly traumatised humans).
I'm not sure this comes as a surprise to anyone except for those who have had no interaction with state-provided social services. I'd also say that a level of care that does not reach to that 1:1 standard is still appreciably better than no care, which may be what one might otherwise receive.
The open question is can we work out better, decentralized ways of providing support that take advantage of the new social technologies that we've developed since the construction of the modern state and its welfare services in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
Care doesn't scale, but a lot of activities around care should be scalable. A caregiver can be helped so they can spend as little time as possible on auxiliary tasks like admin or logistics.
I don't think there is any contradiction here. Government care can work, but it simply cannot benefit from economies of scale. Gonna need to double the income tax to pay for elders that have been abandoned by their children.
He means that they messed up by investing in their children and providing them a good life instead of putting everything in an index fund. They didn't realize the rug pull they were about to eat.
Just because the government does something, doesn't mean it has to be centralised. Eventually the care has to be given from one human to another human. On the other hand, it shouldn't matter where you live to receive care or how good the care is.
And the week in which private companies will be able to provide this, is the same week which has two Tuesdays.
Doing it by a state does not make it magically scale in any way shape or form. You still need something like one-to-one or one-to-a-few for care work to be effective. Trying to provide it through the government does absolutely nothing to change this fact.
The state is ideally suited to manufacture public goods, more efficiently than private enterprise.
That means armies, judiciaries, policing municipalities, governance amongst others.
They address issues like management of the commons.
This does not translate into scaled care - care for orphans (from the article) still needs large numbers of skilled manpower, which is in short supply across the world.
These services are also often underfunded, since they are not really a first class citizen for voters.
Voters today, are also deeply targeted by emotional campaigns and identity campaigns, since that is the current political state of the art.
The state can be efficient, but some things don’t scale unless they are also resourced correctly.
Such services will also be amongst the first to cut, since “X will render it obsolete”, is a promise as old as time, and aren’t directly tied to overall societal survival.
Compared to something like defense / emergency funding
My argument is, that care is a public good. There will never be a situation in which care can fund itself. To fund care is a political decision and when the decision is made to to not fund it or leave to a market or private enterprises it will fail, because private enterprises need something which will eventually scale.
> The state is ideally suited to manufacture public goods, more efficiently
The government does not provide a more efficient military or education. It compels individuals to pay for something which is in the collective good, but not their personal interest.
Economists argue markets are efficient because of the incentive structure they place on actors. There is a plethora of writing about government inefficiencies due to not having these. It the most distilled form: they are insulated from both positive and negative consequences of behaving efficiently.
Due to this, government entities have a unique set of traits, but efficiency tends to not be one of them. But who cares? Efficiency isn't always the goal. When it comes to making laws, efficiency isn't the goal, long term values are more important.
The post office was created with full knowledge that it would be a net loss, but it was felt to be institutionally important to have universal access to communication across the nation. Now that this is an antiquated method of communication, and there is a market for the remaining services, it is mostly an inefficient make-work program for a well organized voting block.
Now you I can imagine all the distopian problems of a private military, but I'm going to guess efficiency is not one of those (The US Gov believe Blackwater saves them money, btw).
