3 ms·

tl;dr: UBI has a whole host of problems, instead, we should be strengthening the unions to increase wages to force the capitalists to invest in technology that

by pj_mukh 11y ago

tl;dr: UBI has a whole host of problems, instead, we should be strengthening the unions to increase wages to force the capitalists to invest in technology that makes us more productive

afarrell 11y ago
But won't strengthening unions also mean that companies have to sign contracts that prevent them from implementing productivity-improving technology?
- pj_mukh 11y ago
  I'm not entirely for this and I pinged the author about clarifying that exact point. But it seems his hypothesis is that the contracts mostly have wage increases which long term will force the companies to invest in productivity-boosting technology to scale instead of just getting more labour.
  - jdmichal 11y ago
    I'm even more confused now. The general point of a basic income AFAIK is to permit everyone to live somewhere and eat regardless of their employment status. Boosting unions and forcing companies to scale existing labor rather than invest in new labor, and thus increasing the number of people with no income, sounds like movement in the exact opposite direction.
  - pj_mukh 11y ago
    "scale existing labor rather than invest in new labor, and thus increasing the number of people with no income, sounds like movement in the exact opposite direction." Sorry, this was never suggested? "Scaling" existing labour is the same as investing in new labor, is it not? Or do you mean new "types" of labour? Either way, most new productivity boosters allow you to do more with the same labour force. Ideally. So you let the labour force collectively bargain higher wages so the company is forced to invest in new technology (exp(n) boost) to scale their operations instead of increasing the size of the workforce (n boost).
    - wmf 11y ago
      But what if companies overreact and develop technology that lets them employ, say, half as many people as they do currently? Then some people would have cushy union jobs and even more people would be unemployed?
kapnobatairza 11y ago
I don't think the author adequately makes the case that a UBI has problems as a form of welfare. His argument seems to boil down to the following: 1) Labour being replaced by automation isn't going to happen because it is going to create more jobs than it displaces..... Not sure if I agree with this point. 2) That a basic income necessarily needs be IN PLACE OF existing welfare and labour protections... While some other forms of welfare may evaporate and some labour protections loosened, it doesn't have to. It provides flexibility for labourers and employers to negotiate without the looming threat of not having a basic living wage. It increases the labourers negotiating position more than the employers IMO. 3) Technology makes us more productivity, which means we can work less hours which means we can have more leisure time. The problem with this argument is that it assumes those "less hours" are equally distributed across the entire pool of laborers. What it just means is there are less hours for a limited pool of skilled labourers to fight over. Which means more unemployment. It does not mean that the taxi driver who has his 12 hour days eliminated by driverless ubers now gets to work 3 hours a day driving an uber or gets to work 3 hours a day programming those cars. 4) Instead of having a UBI, we should have a militant (violent) revolution against the rich where we demand increased welfare and labour protections. Increased welfare like a UBI? I'm not sure why the author feels like positive social institutions can't be a voluntary concession of the rich to satisfy discontent of the masses. Why do we have to get out our pitchforks to get bread if they are offering to hand out a livelihood to every citizen? This sounds like the sort of leftist rhetoric that comes from someone in a very comfortable position. Try telling someone in real need that they shouldn't accept a basic income because "it's just a bribe from the rich so we don't start some vague revolution!".
- s73v3r 11y ago
  The problem with argument #3, and the one no one ever brings up, is the fact that people still need to be able to pay for stuff. And you could argue that one now has the time to go back to school, but how are they going to pay for it? How are they going to support their family while doing it? UBI can be an answer to this, but given the political climate, I don't particularly think it's a viable solution in the short to medium term.
- pj_mukh 11y ago
fernly 11y ago
But isn't automation the most effective way to higher productivity? The zero-sized workforce is clearly the most economical one for the employer, and where's the union then? And it is precisely the loss of a big percentage of available jobs to automation, that the OP article offers as the elite's best motive to support BI.
Chos89 11y ago
Isn't that contradictory? Investing in technology that makes workers more productive would have a result of needing less workers?
nzp 11y ago
I think you summarize well, and that's one of the main problems with this essay. The author clearly works from the perspective of Marxist theory of capitalism, and manages to miss one of the big points of the theory – that increased productivity always leads to more exploitation in the form of increased extraction of surplus work. The theory is explicit that increasing productivity is the capitalist's last mechanism to extract value out of human labour when constrained by physical and biological limits and organized labour.
afarrell 11y ago
> technology has never reduced the amount of work. And then a couple sentences later... > At the end of the 18th Century, 90 percent of the US workforce was employed in agriculture. As of 2009 (the latest year for which there are figures), less than 0.7 percent are farmers. It’s not the case that now 90 percent of Americans are out of work; they’re now engaged in other, often less back-breaking labour. The percentage of people engaged in hard, dangerous and boring jobs has tumbled. That is a clear contradiction even if we had the same level of employment we did back then (which we don't when you account for child farm labor and low rates of retirement), "less back-breaking labour" is less labor.

by pj_mukh 11y ago

tl;dr: UBI has a whole host of problems, instead, we should be strengthening the unions to increase wages to force the capitalists to invest in technology that makes us more productive

afarrell 11y ago

But won't strengthening unions also mean that companies have to sign contracts that prevent them from implementing productivity-improving technology?

pj_mukh 11y ago
I'm not entirely for this and I pinged the author about clarifying that exact point. But it seems his hypothesis is that the contracts mostly have wage increases which long term will force the companies to invest in productivity-boosting technology to scale instead of just getting more labour.
- jdmichal 11y ago
  I'm even more confused now. The general point of a basic income AFAIK is to permit everyone to live somewhere and eat regardless of their employment status. Boosting unions and forcing companies to scale existing labor rather than invest in new labor, and thus increasing the number of people with no income, sounds like movement in the exact opposite direction.
- pj_mukh 11y ago
  "scale existing labor rather than invest in new labor, and thus increasing the number of people with no income, sounds like movement in the exact opposite direction." Sorry, this was never suggested? "Scaling" existing labour is the same as investing in new labor, is it not? Or do you mean new "types" of labour? Either way, most new productivity boosters allow you to do more with the same labour force. Ideally. So you let the labour force collectively bargain higher wages so the company is forced to invest in new technology (exp(n) boost) to scale their operations instead of increasing the size of the workforce (n boost).
  - wmf 11y ago
    But what if companies overreact and develop technology that lets them employ, say, half as many people as they do currently? Then some people would have cushy union jobs and even more people would be unemployed?

kapnobatairza 11y ago

I don't think the author adequately makes the case that a UBI has problems as a form of welfare. His argument seems to boil down to the following: 1) Labour being replaced by automation isn't going to happen because it is going to create more jobs than it displaces..... Not sure if I agree with this point. 2) That a basic income necessarily needs be IN PLACE OF existing welfare and labour protections... While some other forms of welfare may evaporate and some labour protections loosened, it doesn't have to. It provides flexibility for labourers and employers to negotiate without the looming threat of not having a basic living wage. It increases the labourers negotiating position more than the employers IMO. 3) Technology makes us more productivity, which means we can work less hours which means we can have more leisure time. The problem with this argument is that it assumes those "less hours" are equally distributed across the entire pool of laborers. What it just means is there are less hours for a limited pool of skilled labourers to fight over. Which means more unemployment. It does not mean that the taxi driver who has his 12 hour days eliminated by driverless ubers now gets to work 3 hours a day driving an uber or gets to work 3 hours a day programming those cars. 4) Instead of having a UBI, we should have a militant (violent) revolution against the rich where we demand increased welfare and labour protections. Increased welfare like a UBI? I'm not sure why the author feels like positive social institutions can't be a voluntary concession of the rich to satisfy discontent of the masses. Why do we have to get out our pitchforks to get bread if they are offering to hand out a livelihood to every citizen? This sounds like the sort of leftist rhetoric that comes from someone in a very comfortable position. Try telling someone in real need that they shouldn't accept a basic income because "it's just a bribe from the rich so we don't start some vague revolution!".

s73v3r 11y ago
The problem with argument #3, and the one no one ever brings up, is the fact that people still need to be able to pay for stuff. And you could argue that one now has the time to go back to school, but how are they going to pay for it? How are they going to support their family while doing it? UBI can be an answer to this, but given the political climate, I don't particularly think it's a viable solution in the short to medium term.
pj_mukh 11y ago

fernly 11y ago

But isn't automation the most effective way to higher productivity? The zero-sized workforce is clearly the most economical one for the employer, and where's the union then? And it is precisely the loss of a big percentage of available jobs to automation, that the OP article offers as the elite's best motive to support BI.

Chos89 11y ago

Isn't that contradictory? Investing in technology that makes workers more productive would have a result of needing less workers?

nzp 11y ago

I think you summarize well, and that's one of the main problems with this essay. The author clearly works from the perspective of Marxist theory of capitalism, and manages to miss one of the big points of the theory – that increased productivity always leads to more exploitation in the form of increased extraction of surplus work. The theory is explicit that increasing productivity is the capitalist's last mechanism to extract value out of human labour when constrained by physical and biological limits and organized labour.

afarrell 11y ago

> technology has never reduced the amount of work. And then a couple sentences later... > At the end of the 18th Century, 90 percent of the US workforce was employed in agriculture. As of 2009 (the latest year for which there are figures), less than 0.7 percent are farmers. It’s not the case that now 90 percent of Americans are out of work; they’re now engaged in other, often less back-breaking labour. The percentage of people engaged in hard, dangerous and boring jobs has tumbled. That is a clear contradiction even if we had the same level of employment we did back then (which we don't when you account for child farm labor and low rates of retirement), "less back-breaking labour" is less labor.