The basic concept he is probably missing is that when a _real_ safety net exists, money is less desirable.

If I am backstopped by a home and food near my family and they are too, I won't be as motivated by riches. The entire reason I even need money is to buy a home and to build retirement funds... anything else is a toy (and in Western countries is probably trivially cheap compared to housing).

What that means is that I have much more freedom to do whatever I want to do. If I want to be a bin man or a doctor or a truck driver or a car salesman... whatever; I have much more autonomy to follow my dreams in a system that does not mean I live paycheck to paycheck doing half of those jobs.

Right now, I don't have a home, and so it is basically irrational (given that I don't want to be nomadic and leave my family behind) for me to take lower paying jobs ever. This is really a stupid situation to be in; it means that capitalism almost decides what I spend my entire life doing without me having that much free choice (choosing to be poor is not a valid choice).

Using this argument, who would clean the toilets at the airports? Certainly the people who do that wouldn't be "following their dreams". Presumably it's the lower-skilled class doing those jobs but why would they scrub dirty toilets when they could make coffee or scan groceries at the market for the same pay?

Look, I appreciate what you all are saying and your noble intent--I just don't see this working in the US at all. The "American dream" of hard work as a path to wealth and comfort is practically built into the DNA of every new immigrant upon landing in our country.

Two possibilities:

a) The unskilled will choose to clean airports anyway. They can't get a job as a doctor and they want to buy toys (TV, smartphone, holiday, etc). Equivalent salary does not mean that jobs are just as accessible - academic positions tend towards min wage, but the working classes aren't scrambling for those because they are locked out via credentials or lack of education in general.

b) If clean airports require exploiting the poor (basically, relying on the fact that people will starve and die or suffer mental illness if they don't do it), then maybe we shouldn't have clean airports.

I think that part of what makes some jobs so crap is the fact that employers know that their employees are reliant. Senior management jobs are cushy precisely because people have FU money and can just leave. This should be expanded.

That this system is working elsewhere is evidence that it could work in the USA as well.

Less desirable jobs would offer higher pay, and the offered pay would keep increasing until the demand for clean airport toilets are met.

Who would clean airports? Do you really think that there would simply not exist any people who would do this kind of work for pay?

But we are free in America..

I need money for rent, food, clothes, electricity. Of course this need for money affects how I spend my life. I certainly wouldnt be working if not for this need.

These doctors are not working for free, are they?

Of course he values money. And so do you. I can tell because of the site where you're making these comments.

Because he's commenting on HN he 'values money'? Why do people on HN specifically value money more than people on another site? As far as I can tell the only common denominator for this site traitwise is valuing interesting stories.

Yeah not all HN readers are yuppies

Wrong. I'd like to get a cut of the huge tech capitals cake to convert it into charity.

That is only possible because you value money.