If they're only getting just enough to subsist (has all their basic needs met), they probably don't have a lot of extra energy to produce more value. You need to eat to have energy to work, more so than just the bare minimum to live. They also probably won't be very effective at working if they only have the bare minimum to survive, since that doesn't include tools or places to actually work.

If some people only had a few hundred calories to eat a day, a basic sleeping mat, and a simple roof over their heads their basic needs will be met and will continue living but they probably won't be very good at producing much additional value. They won't be good at forming a symphony, as they don't have any instruments. They won't be good building things, since they won't have hammers or nails or saws or wood or any other construction materials (those fall outside the "basic needs").

So you'd probably need more than just the "basic needs".

And then once again, if they are expected to put out more than what they're getting in, they probably won't live very long. If you're only consuming a few hundred calories but putting out a couple thousand a day, you're not long for this world.

> If they're only getting just enough to subsist (has all their basic needs met), they probably don't have a lot of extra energy to produce more value. You need to eat to have energy to work, more so than just the bare minimum to live. They also probably won't be very effective at working if they only have the bare minimum to survive, since that doesn't include tools or places to actually work.

Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point: If someone has all their basic needs met plus enough to have energy, what mechanism would cause them to fail if they choose to produce more value (through labor) than the value required to meet their basic needs plus enough to have energy?

> And then once again, if they are expected to put out more than what they're getting in, they probably won't live very long. If you're only consuming a few hundred calories but putting out a couple thousand a day, you're not long for this world.

Input and output are obviously not measured in calories. Again it seems you're willfully missing the point.

I live pretty frugally, and easily live on ~$30K/year. I have at points been paid $180K/year (annualized) for significant periods of time. If I chose to do the same amount of work as when I made $180K/year, live on $30K/year, and give away the other $150K/year in work, receiving no income for it, by what mechanism would I wither away and die?

Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point: all your examples are clearly going above and beyond the basic needs.

> I live pretty frugally, and easily live on ~$30K/year. I have at points been paid $180K/year (annualized) for significant periods of time. If I chose to do the same amount of work as when I made $180K/year, live on $30K/year, and give away the other $150K/year in work, receiving no income for it, by what mechanism would I wither away and die?

So, clearly well above and beyond the basic needs, huh? I bet even the ~$30k/yr includes some amount of personal comforts, more than just the absolute bare minimum to survive? Probably meeting more than just the basic needs?

Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point, if someone is only getting the basic needs, they don't have anything left to give. Because otherwise they'd inherently be getting more than the basic needs, by evidence of being able to give some away without being below the basic needs.

Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point, if you need 5 units of something, and are given 5 units of something, how many units of something do you have left over to share? 5 - 5 = ??? And if you're given 7 or 8 of those units, clearly you were given more than just the basic need of 5, right?

You're able to produce that labor because you at some point had more than the basic needs to survive. And if you continue to only get the basic needs to survive, you literally won't have the energy to do it anymore or you won't continue to have as useful of knowledge or have access to the computing for that labor or tools or what have you. Getting the tools for generating that value goes above the basic needs of survival.

The same concept goes for that tool repair collective talked about in the sibling comment. If the organization isn't being refreshed with replacement parts for the broken tools or doesn't have a place to store things or doesn't have a place to work on stuff or energy to run a forge or what not, they won't be very effective at being a tool repair collective. Eventually the things they do have will fall apart and need "new" stuff to come in to keep it up. They'll need more than just having a small amount of food and a roof over their heads for the tool repair collective to be useful, more than just the basic needs of survival.

If all I'm given is a 150sqft prison cell of an apartment with a toilet and a sink and a loaf of bread and some beans a day, I'll survive. My basic needs are met. I probably won't be able to start up a tool repair collective though, I can't run a forge on a loaf of bread. A sink isn't a useful hammer. I won't have any books to tell me how to actually build or use a forge. And I'll probably tire pretty quickly since I'll barely have any extra calories.

> Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point: all your examples are clearly going above and beyond the basic needs.

Sure, I'm not contesting that point, which is why I rephrased to specifically agree with that point. You should read the post you're responding to.

Given that's the part of what I'm saying that you continue to focus on, you're still missing the point.

> Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point, if you need 5 units of something, and are given 5 units of something, how many units of something do you have left over to share? 5 - 5 = ??? And if you're given 7 or 8 of those units, clearly you were given more than just the basic need of 5, right?

I understand that if you only focus on one unit, that there are a lot of cases where units must be conserved. If you eat 2500 calories a day, you can't expend more than 2500 calories a day without running into problems. Obviously. Nobody is disagreeing with you on that completely irrelevant point.

It's completely irrelevant, because as it turns out, nobody gives a shit how many calories of software development you do. That's not how the value of software development is measured. If you consume 2500 calories a day and expend some fraction of it on 8 hours of software development per day, 8 hours of software development is worth more than 2500 calories of food in most contexts.

And sure, there's other inputs which are necessary to do software development besides calories, but as it turns out, no matter how many things you add as "necessary", software development seems to come out ahead, as evidenced by the fact that lots of people, myself included, are able to work as software developers and buy a whole lot of junk that nobody could reasonably argue enables them to produce value through software development. If you add up the value of the inputs in the form of food, housing, entertainment, travel, education, computers, and whatever else you think is necessary for optimal software development in a year, the fact is, I've produced an order of magnitude more value than that in the form of software development in the same year. The equation isn't even close to balanced. Going beyond basic needs doesn't change anything about this.

> No, even charities and non-profits need to make money—they need to make a profit, or break even exactly— otherwise they will cease to exist.

This is the original comment in this chain that I was really wanting to address and build on. Charities and non-profits need to have some kind of input more than just existing, or else they probably won't achieve their goals. If the FSF stopped being able to host things and potentially sponsor free software and lobby for the goals of free software, if a scholarship foundation's grants exceeded their incomes for too long, if the tool collective stopped getting parts of fuel to run the forge, they'll eventually for all practical purposes cease to be. If the inputs fall below the outputs, there will eventually be a time where the outputs stop. This was my main point. Do you disagree?

> If you add up the value of the inputs in the form of food, housing, entertainment, travel, education, computers, and whatever else you think is necessary for optimal software development in a year

Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point: all that stuff is beyond the basic needs. The fact you can work as a software developer is evidence of you having access to more than the basic needs for some period of time. You have computers. You have an education. You probably have an internet connection. You don't need computers to survive. You don't need much of an education to survive. You don't need an internet connection to survive. You don't need Linux to survive. You don't need GCC to survive. All of these things are massively above and beyond one's "basic needs". So if our standard is we'll just give people the basic needs, they won't be very good software developers.

I definitely agree, a software developer's labor will generate a massive ROI. I definitely agree, my employer isn't measuring my caloric expenditure and writing a paycheck based on that. Teaching a miner better mining strategies, equipping a miner with better mining tools, giving a miner better geologic analysis, etc will also massively increase a miner's ROI. But if I never had a computer, and I never had an internet connection, and I never had an education, I probably wouldn't be in software. If you just put an uneducated person in a mine without any tools or guidance, they won't be a very good miner. All of those things are above one's basic needs.

So arguing all we need to do is give people some "basic needs" and they'll magically create tons of extra value is a bit absurd. They need tools. They need education. These are all above and beyond the basic needs.

> This is the original comment in this chain that I was really wanting to address and build on. Charities and non-profits need to have some kind of input more than just existing, or else they probably won't achieve their goals. If the FSF stopped being able to host things and potentially sponsor free software and lobby for the goals of free software, if a scholarship foundation's grants exceeded their incomes for too long, if the tool collective stopped getting parts of fuel to run the forge, they'll eventually for all practical purposes cease to be. If the inputs fall below the outputs, there will eventually be a time where the outputs stop. This was my main point. Do you disagree?

Well, I'd have to wonder what units you're using that you think are relevant for all inputs and outputs. You might, for example, consider what units you'd measure "all of the inputs you think are necessary for software development" and whether that's an appropriate unit for measuring "software" in.

> Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point: all that stuff is beyond the basic needs.

Agreed! I never disagreed, I merely misspoke initially.

But I've amended that error two posts ago and you're still ranting on about how I don't understand all of this is beyond basic needs. You're trying to argue with me on a point we agree on. Until you stop doing that, it's clear you aren't reading what I'm writing, so I'm not sure why I'd keep writing it.