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No, it's needed because forcing people to perform increasingly pointless tasks for wealthier humans in order to be granted the right to live is obscene. Unempl

No, it's needed because forcing people to perform increasingly pointless tasks for wealthier humans in order to be granted the right to live is obscene. Unemployment is _good_. Being poor is bad. They are only correlated because we decided that made sense in the past. It doesn't any more.

gwright 11y ago
I find it difficult to understand exactly what type of a social contract you are suggesting as 'making sense'. You seem to be suggesting that people shouldn't have to be 'forced' to be employed (i.e. trade their personal skills for $$) but instead should receive an income from the government for simply existing. They could then do whatever they wanted in their free time. This clearly doesn't work for everyone unless you are working under the assumption that the 'government' can just print money and everything will just work out. So you seem to be suggesting that there should be two groups of people. Those who simply live on income given to them no strings attached by the government and another group of people who are doing something bad by being employed and are forced to give up some of their income/wealth to the government to be given to the group of people who opt out of that system. This seems to be what you are advocating but I must be missing something. BTW, I'm actually interested in a basic income mechanism as a more efficient way of delivering a social safety net to those who need some assistance but in my mind that presupposes that only a fraction of the people need assistance. I can't see how that works if the basic income is an attempt to provide a minimal viable income for everyone!
- afterburner 11y ago
  "and another group of people who are doing something bad by being employed" Did you overlook the group of people that has huge capital resources from accruing it from generation to generation and can simply sit on this wealth as the robots it purchases bring in even more wealth? Or do you consider that "being employed"? And do you think that if someone cannot find employment because there are not enough jobs in the world that they should therefore have a shitty life in their one and only finite existence?
  - mycroft-holmes 11y ago
    Redistribute the group of people's wealth and then what?
    - afterburner 11y ago
      Why, what are you imagining?
  - gwright 11y ago
    > And do you think that if someone cannot find employment because there are not enough jobs in the world that they should therefore have a shitty life in their one and only finite existence? I think it is pretty clear from what I wrote: "delivering a social safety net to those who need some assistance" that I don't think that.
- stegosaurus 11y ago
  I think the point being missed here is that those with high incomes or wealth essentially have their lifestyles subsidised by those who are forced to take the basic jobs in order to live. Their labour is cheaper than it would be if they were truly free. Essentially, they have little negotiating power. I'm advocating for flipping that position and seeing where it leads us. I don't think that people would suddenly stop working entirely. I think there would be a redistribution from rich to poor. I think that's reasonable. If you feel that the world would fall apart and people would stop doing anything useful if they weren't coerced, then I would ask the question - why do the wealthy work? They already have a basic income. What proportion of people who could retire permanently at say, age 40, actually do? I think the picture being painted of a bunch of feckless, consuming meatballs, is wildly off base.
  - baddox 11y ago
    Isn't that a bit like saying that professional athletes or entertainers have their lifestyles subsidized by those who are forced to take basic jobs because they lack the athleticism or artistic skill of the professionals? Or would you say that athletes and entertainers are okay because their success is based more on their own merit?
    - quadrangle 11y ago
      Athletes and entertainers are mostly struggling people. There's tons of talented people who don't get rich at all. The smaller number who get rich are winners in a largely winner-take-all media system controlled by big corporations. Even most NFL players aren't rich, only the stars, the others just make a decent living but then have to quit at a young age and live with concussions. The best collegiate wrestlers are athletes of the highest order and have no living from it. And so on and so on. Regardless, these spectacles are barely productive or valuable really. They are mostly escapist distractions. The circus part of "bread and circuses". The idea that you can look at this completely unjust system and say "oh, the Gladiators deserve their fortunes though" is absurdly out of touch. > because they lack the athleticism or artistic skill of the professionals Your comment implies that we could have a functioning society if everyone were rock stars and athletes. That's absurd. The role of rock-star and athlete is a zero-sum game. We don't need a billion rock stars. If everyone were virtuoso musicians, then a few of them would still win the lottery as being the ones that make it over others, and nothing would be that different. We'd still be having the same discussions about economics etc.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  > receive an income from the government for simply existing well, what about "have access to food and basic resources". It's not like all value in the world only comes from labor. http://ninasadventures.com/inventionofwork http://ninasadventures.com/inventionofwork
  - gwright 11y ago
    I'm having a hard time understanding the notion that some forms of effort ('labor') to sustain yourself are bad but other forms of effort (something other than labor) are good but apparently are insufficient for survival and that there is some obligation for the government (i.e. other people) to make up the difference. If you don't want to exchange your skills (physical or mental) for money, then you probably need to find a benefactor of some kind to sustain you and I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing if it is a mutually consenting relationship. Note, there is a difference between not wanting to sustain yourself through your own effort and being incapable of doing so. There is plenty of room to talk about government assistance in latter case, not so much in the former case.
    - quadrangle 11y ago
      Did you not look at the comic in the post you're replying to? The broader argument is that the topic at hand is not actually about labor to sustain yourself. It's about a system designed to actually deprive you of access to naturally-existing wealth and resources so that you are then forced to labor for someone else in order to gain sustenance. In other words, there was at one point fresh water and land and berries and such just available in the world. People had to labor to get them, but they were there. We've made far more value for society overall such that we have resources to support far more people, and it's mostly from a long evolution of technology and science. There's tons of productive things to do to keep things going. But since we have an attitude of "you deserve your share of resources only if you labor" we have a ton of make-work bullshit that people do that can even be counter-productive. We're not all working on things that actually add value to society. People who skim off the system such as high-speed traders get a huge share of the resources while laboring in ways that create no value whatsoever. So, we need to get rid of the "work to eat" idea because it leads people to do whatever to eat when they are desperate. We'd do better if we focus on promoting things that provide the most value, and we get that better if we provide other motivations than "do whatever it takes not to starve".
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  Basic income only works if everyone receives it. If it's like welfare and you lose it if you're employed, then no one works. If it's truly universal basic income, it actually encourages work because any additional income increases your standard of living.
  - baddox 11y ago
    While BI may not discourage work for most people, I don't see how it would encourage work for anyone, given the marginal utility of money.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      Versus existing programs that are poorly structured (some existing programs are poorly structured, some aren't), an unconditional program would remove some disincentives to work where increased work income leads to cuts in benefits and a net lower standard of living. (Of course fixing poorly structure programs is going to be easier than implementing a basic income)
      - baddox 11y ago
        That's a valid point. My previous comment wasn't considering that BI would replace the current means-tested welfare programs, mostly because I do not believe that a BI would actually lead to elimination of the other programs. There will still be people who waste their BI for a variety of reasons, and I don't think society will be fine with them living destitute with no additional safety net.
        dllthomas 11y ago
        "There will still be people who waste their BI for a variety of reasons, and I don't think society will be fine with them living destitute with no additional safety net." I am not "fine with them living destitute", but if a person cannot get by with a reasonable income provided then clearly they need some sort of help beyond the financial. "Means tested free stuff" doesn't seem a very good fit.
scarmig 11y ago
Context: I'm a big proponent of the basic income. That said, it seems too much to say "Unemployment is good." It's hard to disentangle the effects of poverty versus unemployment, but there are pretty strong hints that having a (good) job is good for health--prolonged unemployment from solidly middle class jobs leads to depression, and people die at higher rates after retiring. People need a purpose and outlet for their creativity, and a sense of order and direction for their lives: sitting at home all day playing video games would be disastrous, and encouraging automation (which a basic income will do) will make it even harder to get entry level positions. We've got to enable some kind of meaningful labor (market-compensated or not) that people still can engage in after the basic income is implemented.
- rqebmm 11y ago
  It might be more accurate to say "being required to be employed is bad" since 'unemployment' is a loaded word. But then again, that's OP's point.
- intopieces 11y ago
  >We've got to enable some kind of meaningful labor (market-compensated or not) that people still can engage in after the basic income is implemented. Are there no charities, no community organizations, no sports teams? Why trade the forced labor of market compensation for forced labor of government compensation? Meaningful labor already exists outside of market compensation. Anything the government would implement would just be beaurocracy soaking up funds that should be going towards the basic income.
- pasquinelli 11y ago
  there're two distinct senses for the word "work" that're pertinent. let's call it toil when we're given work to do, and play when we find our own work to do. in my experience, i see we're conditioned from childhood to think that toil is the normal way in which we're to make ourselves useful, or rather that it's the normal way in which we're made useful. we're also conditioned to think that play is kids stuff, that it isn't serious. so play becomes stunted, not maturing past kids stuff, and toil becomes serious and responsible, when actually it's infantile. so, you get laid off and find yourself, first of all under stress because your financial situation is uncertain, but secondly wasting away as a person and frittering you newly abundant free time playing video games. i don't think that points to your deep need to toil, to be given work to do. it's evidence of a poorly developed ability to play, that is to find work to put yourself to. as for me, i've had a few stints of unemployment and it's improved everything in my life, except my bank account. and when i got work again, everything became worse, again, except my bank account. now, like i said, this is just my own experience, but though i hear often enough that people have a real need to toil, i've never seen it in my actual experience. on the other hand i can see a real human need to play, which most people are deprived of. and, of course, a need for money, which is the only tangible thing people get from their toil.
madspindel 11y ago
Unemployment isn't good. I get your point, and agree. But basic income is not about unemployment = good but more about giving you the time to transform to do what you really want to do in life. Doing nothing in your life sucks hard. Everyone gets depressed and suicidal in the long term.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  There are lots of things you could do that aren't menial jobs. Arts, crafts, travel...heck, fishing or bowling -- the list of things that are more rewarding than flipping burgers could go on for quite a long time.
- intopieces 11y ago
  Interesting that you automatically equate "unemployment" with "doing nothing in your life." It is possible for people to find meaning outside of labor.
  - madspindel 11y ago
    I think we are playing with words here. I read your other comment about sports team, charity etc. Of course that is "doing something". And one could argue that _working_ for the Red Cross is some sort of labor?
    - intopieces 11y ago
      The discussion, so far as I can tell, has rested on the notion that people "need something to do" and that -- I guess? -- the government should be responsible for making sure that Basic Income money isn't going to "waste" on people who are just "unemployed." I'm arguing that no such discussion is necessary. People are perfectly able to entertain themselves, work or no, and find meaning in their lives. Those that aren't won't be helped by the government, that bluntest of tools used for the most delicate of incisions. My point is: Basic Income should be free from stipulation. Play video games, care for a sick mother in law, grow plants on your balcony and sing to them in Hindi -- none of the government's concern. While we're at it, eliminate the minimum wage and let the small businesses hire workers at whatever they can afford to pay. Let someone work at the local bakery if that makes them happy. Let's see what the people come up with when they don't have to worry about how they're going to eat.
seivan 11y ago
I am all for basic income, that being said... Unemployment is bad overall. Too much free-time and not enough money (basic income won't cover "fun") will have consequences regarding crime. Look at Sweden. Even with free healthcare, education and living costs covered the suburbs are filled with crime and radicalisation.
lukasm 11y ago
What to do with alcoholics and drug addicts that need jobs to avoid addictions? What to do with people that some sort of purpose in life? Wouldn't negative tax be better?
- mrfusion 11y ago
  Perhaps they could have jobs helping alcoholics and drug addicts. Two birds ...
  - EC1 11y ago
    Yeah, two birds stoned at once.
baddox 11y ago
Why do you think that people's jobs are increasingly pointless? It seems to me that the opposite is true, since types of jobs disappear when they become much more efficiently performed by machines. To me, having someone plow a field by hand or operate a telephone switchboard is very pointless.
- stegosaurus 11y ago
  Right - that's the point. The jobs which actually need to be done in order for us to feed and clothes ourselves are increasingly done by machines. In some cases overseas labour is cheaper than automation, but we're still progressing there. As a result, because we're clinging to the idea that a person shouldn't eat unless they perform labour, we have to invent more and more categories of employment which become less and less essential - basically, people work in luxury sectors. I don't think we've quite reached the point at which the world can spin without unskilled labour, but I do think we can now afford to compensate it appropriately, and I think that giving the lower classes negotiation power via the basic income is the best way to achieve that.
  - baddox 11y ago
    > because we're clinging to the idea that a person shouldn't eat unless they perform labour I don't understand this way of phrasing the argument. Do people really "cling" to this idea? It sounds equivalent to saying "we're still clinging to the idea that a person shouldn't be in good physical shape unless they exercise and eat well." I don't think many people cling to these ideas in an ethical sense, as if it would be immoral to be healthy without exercising or wealthy without working [0]. The ideas are just reflections of the actual state of the world, even though it might suck. I'd certainly rather be healthy without exercising and wealthy without working, but I don't expect or demand a forceful restructuring of society to satisfy my wishes. [0] Actually, now that I think of it, many people even in this thread do condemn people who become wealthy without working. It's perhaps somewhat ironic.
    - stegosaurus 11y ago
      The distinction is that trading labour for money/capital is a creation of society. It's not a natural rule. There are gatekeepers. I can't simply decide to go out and kill some wild animals or whatever and eat, and I can't decide to chop trees down and build a house. Getting a job is not a simple matter of just deciding to do it. By contrast, eating well is, aside from in cases of poverty, completely a matter of free choice.
ZenoArrow 11y ago
Unemployment is neither bad nor good. What's bad is forced employment. Work can be a source of satisfaction and social cohesion, I don't see the benefit in getting rid of it completely, but the important difference is that work shouldn't determine your ability to survive. We are capable of letting everyone have a decent quality of life without being a wage slave (and without destroying the planet), any work beyond that should be based on what we're interested in doing.
lsc 11y ago
>Unemployment is _good_. Being poor is bad. They are only correlated because we decided that made sense in the past. It doesn't any more. The way I see it, the idea behind basic income in a largely capitalist society would be to make being poor a lot less bad. It'd still be bad, probably, as a lot of us like having nice stuff; we like living in desirable areas, and those things won't be available to people on basic income, assuming we continue to use markets to distribute those scarce goods. Those of us who come from middle class families who maintain good family relationships often have a similar option; crashing with mom and dad for a while. It's not really something you want to do for any length of time, but it's nice to know that if things really go south, you aren't homeless, and you don't have to do anything truly repugnant. But just like crashing with mom and dad, it's not really a desirable long-term option for most of us. Sure, sure, it's going to be better than the jobs that are the worst on the unpleasantness/compensation scale, and I predict would dramatically drive up wages in the least pleasant fields, (and I predict would lower the rates of the less remunerative forms of crime for money) but if you are a software developer or something, especially if you come from a middle-class family that you maintain ties to, a realistically-sized basic income isn't really going to change your motivation. Point being, unemployment (as usually defined in statistics, meaning people who want work but can't get it) will remain a bad thing, and assuming a realistically sized basic income, most people who currently work are going to want to continue working. And... this is important. We need people to continue working. The basic income choice is really, "do we want people to do really unpleasant jobs for not very much money?" and then "are we all willing to pay rather a lot to make it so that people don't have to do really unpleasant jobs for not very much money?" The argument in favor is the idea that if a job really is that unpleasant, it ought to be compensated for that unpleasantness, and effort ought to be put into automating that job away. Making workers less desperate would make those things happen. Making workers less desperate would also decrease the workforce participation rate. More people wouldn't work, and more people would work part time. The argument against is that this is going to be pretty expensive, both in terms of what we have to pay to get the difficult-to-automate unpleasant jobs done, and in terms of just the taxes that would be required to fund the scheme.

gwright 11y ago

I find it difficult to understand exactly what type of a social contract you are suggesting as 'making sense'. You seem to be suggesting that people shouldn't have to be 'forced' to be employed (i.e. trade their personal skills for $$) but instead should receive an income from the government for simply existing. They could then do whatever they wanted in their free time. This clearly doesn't work for everyone unless you are working under the assumption that the 'government' can just print money and everything will just work out. So you seem to be suggesting that there should be two groups of people. Those who simply live on income given to them no strings attached by the government and another group of people who are doing something bad by being employed and are forced to give up some of their income/wealth to the government to be given to the group of people who opt out of that system. This seems to be what you are advocating but I must be missing something. BTW, I'm actually interested in a basic income mechanism as a more efficient way of delivering a social safety net to those who need some assistance but in my mind that presupposes that only a fraction of the people need assistance. I can't see how that works if the basic income is an attempt to provide a minimal viable income for everyone!

afterburner 11y ago
"and another group of people who are doing something bad by being employed" Did you overlook the group of people that has huge capital resources from accruing it from generation to generation and can simply sit on this wealth as the robots it purchases bring in even more wealth? Or do you consider that "being employed"? And do you think that if someone cannot find employment because there are not enough jobs in the world that they should therefore have a shitty life in their one and only finite existence?
- mycroft-holmes 11y ago
  Redistribute the group of people's wealth and then what?
  - afterburner 11y ago
    Why, what are you imagining?
- gwright 11y ago
  > And do you think that if someone cannot find employment because there are not enough jobs in the world that they should therefore have a shitty life in their one and only finite existence? I think it is pretty clear from what I wrote: "delivering a social safety net to those who need some assistance" that I don't think that.
stegosaurus 11y ago
I think the point being missed here is that those with high incomes or wealth essentially have their lifestyles subsidised by those who are forced to take the basic jobs in order to live. Their labour is cheaper than it would be if they were truly free. Essentially, they have little negotiating power. I'm advocating for flipping that position and seeing where it leads us. I don't think that people would suddenly stop working entirely. I think there would be a redistribution from rich to poor. I think that's reasonable. If you feel that the world would fall apart and people would stop doing anything useful if they weren't coerced, then I would ask the question - why do the wealthy work? They already have a basic income. What proportion of people who could retire permanently at say, age 40, actually do? I think the picture being painted of a bunch of feckless, consuming meatballs, is wildly off base.
- baddox 11y ago
  Isn't that a bit like saying that professional athletes or entertainers have their lifestyles subsidized by those who are forced to take basic jobs because they lack the athleticism or artistic skill of the professionals? Or would you say that athletes and entertainers are okay because their success is based more on their own merit?
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    Athletes and entertainers are mostly struggling people. There's tons of talented people who don't get rich at all. The smaller number who get rich are winners in a largely winner-take-all media system controlled by big corporations. Even most NFL players aren't rich, only the stars, the others just make a decent living but then have to quit at a young age and live with concussions. The best collegiate wrestlers are athletes of the highest order and have no living from it. And so on and so on. Regardless, these spectacles are barely productive or valuable really. They are mostly escapist distractions. The circus part of "bread and circuses". The idea that you can look at this completely unjust system and say "oh, the Gladiators deserve their fortunes though" is absurdly out of touch. > because they lack the athleticism or artistic skill of the professionals Your comment implies that we could have a functioning society if everyone were rock stars and athletes. That's absurd. The role of rock-star and athlete is a zero-sum game. We don't need a billion rock stars. If everyone were virtuoso musicians, then a few of them would still win the lottery as being the ones that make it over others, and nothing would be that different. We'd still be having the same discussions about economics etc.
quadrangle 11y ago
> receive an income from the government for simply existing well, what about "have access to food and basic resources". It's not like all value in the world only comes from labor. http://ninasadventures.com/inventionofwork http://ninasadventures.com/inventionofwork
- gwright 11y ago
  I'm having a hard time understanding the notion that some forms of effort ('labor') to sustain yourself are bad but other forms of effort (something other than labor) are good but apparently are insufficient for survival and that there is some obligation for the government (i.e. other people) to make up the difference. If you don't want to exchange your skills (physical or mental) for money, then you probably need to find a benefactor of some kind to sustain you and I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing if it is a mutually consenting relationship. Note, there is a difference between not wanting to sustain yourself through your own effort and being incapable of doing so. There is plenty of room to talk about government assistance in latter case, not so much in the former case.
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    Did you not look at the comic in the post you're replying to? The broader argument is that the topic at hand is not actually about labor to sustain yourself. It's about a system designed to actually deprive you of access to naturally-existing wealth and resources so that you are then forced to labor for someone else in order to gain sustenance. In other words, there was at one point fresh water and land and berries and such just available in the world. People had to labor to get them, but they were there. We've made far more value for society overall such that we have resources to support far more people, and it's mostly from a long evolution of technology and science. There's tons of productive things to do to keep things going. But since we have an attitude of "you deserve your share of resources only if you labor" we have a ton of make-work bullshit that people do that can even be counter-productive. We're not all working on things that actually add value to society. People who skim off the system such as high-speed traders get a huge share of the resources while laboring in ways that create no value whatsoever. So, we need to get rid of the "work to eat" idea because it leads people to do whatever to eat when they are desperate. We'd do better if we focus on promoting things that provide the most value, and we get that better if we provide other motivations than "do whatever it takes not to starve".
Mikeb85 11y ago
Basic income only works if everyone receives it. If it's like welfare and you lose it if you're employed, then no one works. If it's truly universal basic income, it actually encourages work because any additional income increases your standard of living.
- baddox 11y ago
  While BI may not discourage work for most people, I don't see how it would encourage work for anyone, given the marginal utility of money.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Versus existing programs that are poorly structured (some existing programs are poorly structured, some aren't), an unconditional program would remove some disincentives to work where increased work income leads to cuts in benefits and a net lower standard of living. (Of course fixing poorly structure programs is going to be easier than implementing a basic income)
    - baddox 11y ago
      That's a valid point. My previous comment wasn't considering that BI would replace the current means-tested welfare programs, mostly because I do not believe that a BI would actually lead to elimination of the other programs. There will still be people who waste their BI for a variety of reasons, and I don't think society will be fine with them living destitute with no additional safety net.
      - dllthomas 11y ago
        "There will still be people who waste their BI for a variety of reasons, and I don't think society will be fine with them living destitute with no additional safety net." I am not "fine with them living destitute", but if a person cannot get by with a reasonable income provided then clearly they need some sort of help beyond the financial. "Means tested free stuff" doesn't seem a very good fit.

scarmig 11y ago

Context: I'm a big proponent of the basic income. That said, it seems too much to say "Unemployment is good." It's hard to disentangle the effects of poverty versus unemployment, but there are pretty strong hints that having a (good) job is good for health--prolonged unemployment from solidly middle class jobs leads to depression, and people die at higher rates after retiring. People need a purpose and outlet for their creativity, and a sense of order and direction for their lives: sitting at home all day playing video games would be disastrous, and encouraging automation (which a basic income will do) will make it even harder to get entry level positions. We've got to enable some kind of meaningful labor (market-compensated or not) that people still can engage in after the basic income is implemented.

rqebmm 11y ago
It might be more accurate to say "being required to be employed is bad" since 'unemployment' is a loaded word. But then again, that's OP's point.
intopieces 11y ago
>We've got to enable some kind of meaningful labor (market-compensated or not) that people still can engage in after the basic income is implemented. Are there no charities, no community organizations, no sports teams? Why trade the forced labor of market compensation for forced labor of government compensation? Meaningful labor already exists outside of market compensation. Anything the government would implement would just be beaurocracy soaking up funds that should be going towards the basic income.
pasquinelli 11y ago
there're two distinct senses for the word "work" that're pertinent. let's call it toil when we're given work to do, and play when we find our own work to do. in my experience, i see we're conditioned from childhood to think that toil is the normal way in which we're to make ourselves useful, or rather that it's the normal way in which we're made useful. we're also conditioned to think that play is kids stuff, that it isn't serious. so play becomes stunted, not maturing past kids stuff, and toil becomes serious and responsible, when actually it's infantile. so, you get laid off and find yourself, first of all under stress because your financial situation is uncertain, but secondly wasting away as a person and frittering you newly abundant free time playing video games. i don't think that points to your deep need to toil, to be given work to do. it's evidence of a poorly developed ability to play, that is to find work to put yourself to. as for me, i've had a few stints of unemployment and it's improved everything in my life, except my bank account. and when i got work again, everything became worse, again, except my bank account. now, like i said, this is just my own experience, but though i hear often enough that people have a real need to toil, i've never seen it in my actual experience. on the other hand i can see a real human need to play, which most people are deprived of. and, of course, a need for money, which is the only tangible thing people get from their toil.

madspindel 11y ago

Unemployment isn't good. I get your point, and agree. But basic income is not about unemployment = good but more about giving you the time to transform to do what you really want to do in life. Doing nothing in your life sucks hard. Everyone gets depressed and suicidal in the long term.

Turing_Machine 11y ago
There are lots of things you could do that aren't menial jobs. Arts, crafts, travel...heck, fishing or bowling -- the list of things that are more rewarding than flipping burgers could go on for quite a long time.
intopieces 11y ago
Interesting that you automatically equate "unemployment" with "doing nothing in your life." It is possible for people to find meaning outside of labor.
- madspindel 11y ago
  I think we are playing with words here. I read your other comment about sports team, charity etc. Of course that is "doing something". And one could argue that _working_ for the Red Cross is some sort of labor?
  - intopieces 11y ago
    The discussion, so far as I can tell, has rested on the notion that people "need something to do" and that -- I guess? -- the government should be responsible for making sure that Basic Income money isn't going to "waste" on people who are just "unemployed." I'm arguing that no such discussion is necessary. People are perfectly able to entertain themselves, work or no, and find meaning in their lives. Those that aren't won't be helped by the government, that bluntest of tools used for the most delicate of incisions. My point is: Basic Income should be free from stipulation. Play video games, care for a sick mother in law, grow plants on your balcony and sing to them in Hindi -- none of the government's concern. While we're at it, eliminate the minimum wage and let the small businesses hire workers at whatever they can afford to pay. Let someone work at the local bakery if that makes them happy. Let's see what the people come up with when they don't have to worry about how they're going to eat.

seivan 11y ago

I am all for basic income, that being said... Unemployment is bad overall. Too much free-time and not enough money (basic income won't cover "fun") will have consequences regarding crime. Look at Sweden. Even with free healthcare, education and living costs covered the suburbs are filled with crime and radicalisation.

lukasm 11y ago

What to do with alcoholics and drug addicts that need jobs to avoid addictions? What to do with people that some sort of purpose in life? Wouldn't negative tax be better?

mrfusion 11y ago
Perhaps they could have jobs helping alcoholics and drug addicts. Two birds ...
- EC1 11y ago
  Yeah, two birds stoned at once.

baddox 11y ago

Why do you think that people's jobs are increasingly pointless? It seems to me that the opposite is true, since types of jobs disappear when they become much more efficiently performed by machines. To me, having someone plow a field by hand or operate a telephone switchboard is very pointless.

stegosaurus 11y ago
Right - that's the point. The jobs which actually need to be done in order for us to feed and clothes ourselves are increasingly done by machines. In some cases overseas labour is cheaper than automation, but we're still progressing there. As a result, because we're clinging to the idea that a person shouldn't eat unless they perform labour, we have to invent more and more categories of employment which become less and less essential - basically, people work in luxury sectors. I don't think we've quite reached the point at which the world can spin without unskilled labour, but I do think we can now afford to compensate it appropriately, and I think that giving the lower classes negotiation power via the basic income is the best way to achieve that.
- baddox 11y ago
  > because we're clinging to the idea that a person shouldn't eat unless they perform labour I don't understand this way of phrasing the argument. Do people really "cling" to this idea? It sounds equivalent to saying "we're still clinging to the idea that a person shouldn't be in good physical shape unless they exercise and eat well." I don't think many people cling to these ideas in an ethical sense, as if it would be immoral to be healthy without exercising or wealthy without working [0]. The ideas are just reflections of the actual state of the world, even though it might suck. I'd certainly rather be healthy without exercising and wealthy without working, but I don't expect or demand a forceful restructuring of society to satisfy my wishes. [0] Actually, now that I think of it, many people even in this thread do condemn people who become wealthy without working. It's perhaps somewhat ironic.
  - stegosaurus 11y ago
    The distinction is that trading labour for money/capital is a creation of society. It's not a natural rule. There are gatekeepers. I can't simply decide to go out and kill some wild animals or whatever and eat, and I can't decide to chop trees down and build a house. Getting a job is not a simple matter of just deciding to do it. By contrast, eating well is, aside from in cases of poverty, completely a matter of free choice.

ZenoArrow 11y ago

Unemployment is neither bad nor good. What's bad is forced employment. Work can be a source of satisfaction and social cohesion, I don't see the benefit in getting rid of it completely, but the important difference is that work shouldn't determine your ability to survive. We are capable of letting everyone have a decent quality of life without being a wage slave (and without destroying the planet), any work beyond that should be based on what we're interested in doing.

lsc 11y ago

>Unemployment is _good_. Being poor is bad. They are only correlated because we decided that made sense in the past. It doesn't any more. The way I see it, the idea behind basic income in a largely capitalist society would be to make being poor a lot less bad. It'd still be bad, probably, as a lot of us like having nice stuff; we like living in desirable areas, and those things won't be available to people on basic income, assuming we continue to use markets to distribute those scarce goods. Those of us who come from middle class families who maintain good family relationships often have a similar option; crashing with mom and dad for a while. It's not really something you want to do for any length of time, but it's nice to know that if things really go south, you aren't homeless, and you don't have to do anything truly repugnant. But just like crashing with mom and dad, it's not really a desirable long-term option for most of us. Sure, sure, it's going to be better than the jobs that are the worst on the unpleasantness/compensation scale, and I predict would dramatically drive up wages in the least pleasant fields, (and I predict would lower the rates of the less remunerative forms of crime for money) but if you are a software developer or something, especially if you come from a middle-class family that you maintain ties to, a realistically-sized basic income isn't really going to change your motivation. Point being, unemployment (as usually defined in statistics, meaning people who want work but can't get it) will remain a bad thing, and assuming a realistically sized basic income, most people who currently work are going to want to continue working. And... this is important. We need people to continue working. The basic income choice is really, "do we want people to do really unpleasant jobs for not very much money?" and then "are we all willing to pay rather a lot to make it so that people don't have to do really unpleasant jobs for not very much money?" The argument in favor is the idea that if a job really is that unpleasant, it ought to be compensated for that unpleasantness, and effort ought to be put into automating that job away. Making workers less desperate would make those things happen. Making workers less desperate would also decrease the workforce participation rate. More people wouldn't work, and more people would work part time. The argument against is that this is going to be pretty expensive, both in terms of what we have to pay to get the difficult-to-automate unpleasant jobs done, and in terms of just the taxes that would be required to fund the scheme.