On the other hand, you could argue against me. You could argue that there is still that plentiful state of nature today. Jobs are plentiful. While finding an ideal job might be difficult, jobs in general are still plentiful, like apples and oil in nature. You could also argue that even picking apples in nature is, while they are plentiful, still difficult in true nature. Apples trees are rare. They exist, and when you find them there are often many, but in true nature there are many trees. You have to find an apple tree, and if it was true nature you might have to learn apples are good to eat and not poisonous, which could take some skill, and so on. In nature, you might roam around and find trees with no fruit. You might find nuts, but have to soak them to eat them. You might find berries, but might have to ensure they are not poisonous. Or a squirrel, but have to set a trap or craft and aim a spear to eat it, then build a fire to cook it. Yes, nature is plentiful, but it is still not perhaps as simple as just picking easy apples off of trees. Perhaps that plenty of nature remains today in the form of the ubiquity of jobs. Yes, some people might work jobs they don't like, but maybe this prompts them to pursue better jobs; and at any rate, this is still like my nature argument where in a state of it, finding apples and nuts is a bit difficult, even if plentiful in general. In that sense, giving people The Civic Dividend might be like handing out apples to people. Not apples that have been taken in hoards, but just like a group of people, let's say, gathering apples and handing them out to others. There's nothing wrong with that if they want to do that, but forcing that as a kind of government mandate might be incorrect. I certainly wasn't arguing that in a state of nature someone should go around handing apples. Perhaps just getting a job is the same thing as finding an apple. They are, at least in theory and in proper environments, plentiful, and take some reasonable yet still attainable difficult, don't they?

So perhaps I'm mistaken in viewing The Civic Dividend as a good thing. As for people being motivated by the desire to work for good rather than fear of poverty, that perhaps might have been overzealous. Maybe a better metaphor would have been the difference between forcing people to work, i.e. slavery, versus what we do in modern capitalist or capitalist-esque systems, which is letting people work whenever and wherever they want, when work is plentiful, provided you are willing.

I'm kind of, in reading certain notable and informative texts, persuaded by this, and for a good reason. Maybe not forcing The Civic Dividend as a government program would lead to more genuine support for people, anyway. If people are allowed to help those they wish and not forced to pay welfare, maybe private individuals themselves would feel more compelled to help those in need and do more than a impersonal government body can, and do so far more effectively, on a nuanced case-level.

In that sense, I've perhaps changed my mind. I think I may be against The Civic Dividend after all if maybe the state of nature and modern jobs resemble each other in plenty but slight necessity of search. And if not forcing welfare prompts private individuals to look out for each other more effectively, anyhow. The same argument about the goodness of human nature can be applied to that dynamic, instead of forcing people to do so, especially in the modern world has plentiful resources, too, in the same way offered to the public.

Does it? It seems so, actually. So that's why I say this. Yet the sources below indicate The Civic Dividend has achieved success in certain areas? Granted, none of these seem to be widespread, total adoption of The Civic Dividend but limited to more specific cases like those facing unemployment to replacing benefits or certain families or villages. It may be different from giving everybody at large The Civic Dividend. Some people think that services like The Civic Dividend or benefits should only be reserved for those facing genuine need, who are trying their best but fall on hard times, and are trying to get out of it earnestly. That's what it's for. This makes sure people who do really need it and who contribute to that system–thereby a priori enabling its existence–actually have it when they need it. This makes sense. I think it can make more sense than giving The Civic Dividend out endlessly. However, to be sure, if there is more data than what I've seen, or more insight to be derived from it, let me gain it.

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I get it. If you want to stick with the state of nature argument, the more accurate analogy would be this, what have now. In the state of nature, apples existed in plenty and people picked them. Now, in this state, people decided to agree to form a government. This government went around and collected apples off the trees and formed them into orchards. Now the people can no longer go around in nature and pick apples off trees to live: the plentiful state of the commons has been stolen, violating the law of it.

Now, this recently elected government (from this ended state of nature) says that it will allow you to work on its orchards to make up for having taken all the apples. It says that this is still acceptable, because it took the apples only for a nobler purpose: to create an orchard which produces more apples and which it can use to create jobs. And it now offers those jobs, it argues, in equal plenty. What's wrong with this argument?

It's as you said, I think. It creates an unnatural barrier for the state of nature's resources. Nature was indeed indifferent. The apple off the tree, or the berries on the bush cared not who you were, and with any hand you could reach out and pick them. This new government is not the same. You can not freely go around and pick apples, but must pick and tend to the apples on the government's terms, whenever they wish for you to do so. This distorts the state. No matter how equal man thinks he makes it, it is not the true indifference that creates nature's plentiful state. Part of nature's plenty is its pure indifference. Any human oversight as to how the resources can be gained create this effect. The entire system of jobs equaling nature's apples collapses.

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Continuing, nature's law dictates the following. There were abundant apples growing off of trees in nature, more than enough for everyone. The people in this world then agree to form a government, at last. They direct this government to pick the apples off of trees and create orchards, so that the people as a whole in the society may profit from its plenty more efficiently. Yet, as stated, now the people can no longer go about and pick the apples freely as they used to. They have all been picked, and formed into an orchard.

The government, in order to abide by nature's law, should provide a limited supply of those apples to people, roughly equal to what a normal person would be reasonably assumed to benefit from by dutifully attending to the fruits of nature. In other words, the government in this world has picked the apples that people had access to, so they need to provide a small amount of apples back that a normal person would be able to pick. This restores nature's balance.

Creating orchards and jobs is fine, but the counter-argument seemed to almost assume that jobs were a product of government. Jobs have always existed, even in the state of nature. A man could start a garden, and then, if someone agreed, have that person work on it for a reasonable deal. But that person had the option of going out into nature and picking their own apples off of trees instead. They were abundant. Saying that the government provides jobs instead of natural apples is silly! Because jobs always and already existed in nature. The government has not traded one thing for something else. They've just removed one thing, and claim the other thing is still there, so it's equal. The argument is fallacious in a number of avenues.

Money is representative of resources and work. If the government collects apples that belonged to the commons such that they can no longer be accessed when the people own them, then those resources that people would have had access to belong to them. Now, it is true that money is a complex thing. I should define it more accurately. What is money exactly? Is it a store of resources, of resources and work, or or of work? Property, in natural law, is defined as when man mixes with labor with the environment. Money is a form of property, and is representative of property, is it not? Money is usually defined as work, as representative of work. In this context, money is probably representative of that same thing. An apple that grows off of a tree in this state is not worth anything. It is worth $0, because an apple growing off a tree is no use to anybody, to quote Locke. The minute someone picks the apple, let's say that's worth $5. The action of picking the apple from the tree was worth $5. Is the apple also worth $5? It may be worth some amount close to that.

At any rate, the government has picked all the apples, but now the people cannot pick them themselves, violating nature's law. The question is, because this will help me rectify it exactly, is that which should be restored the apples themselves, or the picking of the apples? In other words, if money is representative not of resources, but of the harvesting of natural resources, then the government does not owe handing out apples to people, but offering apples that can be freely harvested to people. But this runs into the same issue, because the government now has to decide how to offer an apple to harvest to someone. It's for this reason and others the government should give the result of picking those apples to the people, in the form of its representation: money. Let me know if this is making sense so far.

The other reason that this is the case also hinges heavily on one of the opposition's core tenets to rebut me. The opposition typically says The Civic Dividend is a bad idea because work is inherently valuable, it provides dignity. But under a closer analysis, it is this very tenet which demands a government that takes apples from the common supply such that they can no longer be freely picked provide the result of picking those apples to the people. Why? Because if it's true that genuine work provides dignity, then this government has not only stolen apples from the people, but they have also stolen the people's work. A man can no longer perform the dignified and fulfilling action of going into nature and of his own accord and risk picking an apple. This is true work, because it is done of his own free will, by an indifferent judge: nature. Now, with the new government, the man has to ask this government to work on the orchard, and he cannot perform the same dignified work, because no matter how generous the employer he must work on their terms. Unlike nature which had jobs (given by humans, indeed), he has no choice but to work on the terms of this government. If he disagrees with any terms, no matter how generous, he cannot go into nature and pick apples and take his own risks, performing work that is genuinely dignified because it is of a man's free will and without oversight. This government has not only stolen apples from the people, they've also stolen the fulfillment of picking those apples from the people.

The only way to balance that is to provide the receipt of both those apples and the fulfillment of picking them, which is that work's representation; in this case, money. If my opposition believes work is inherently valuable, then they are wrong to think The Civic Dividend denies people the fulfillment of work. On the contrary, it gives people the work that was taken from them, and the truly dignified form of work where nature is the only employer, not any man. It's important for my opposition to remember that this is what existed in the state of nature, not the other way around, and that that is what work, in its most fundamental state, really is: where you have all choice to work. Being compelled to work is not dignified, let the opposition remember. The Civic Dividend is not denying the fulfillment of work. On the contrary, it is giving the people representation of the fulfillment of the work that existed in nature being taken from them. Because work is fulfilling, the government picking the apples also owes the people the fulfillment of picking them. This is central to a true understanding of work's dignity.