4 ms·

The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the cu

by throwaway2048 11y ago

The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system. Well, not the entire point (there's lots of different reasons that people advocate UBI), but its certainly one of the points.
brbsix 11y ago
By unworthy I assume you mean unworthy of our support and sympathy? What differentiates the "19th century style" worthy and unworthy poor is that unworthy poor are thought to have made poor decisions and brought about their circumstances on themselves whereas the worthy poor were seen as suffering through little to no fault of their own. Prior to the welfare state (which makes no such distinction) the "unworthy poor" served as an example of what not to do. Do we really want to discard that wisdom (even more than we already have)? Put another way, is every poor person equally deserving of our support and sympathy? I would think not.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- c22 11y ago
  I think throwaway2048 meant something more along the lines of "worthy to participate in our society" and, unfortunately, whether you deem them worthy or not they are participants of society so reducing the friction of their interaction with society benefits all. (Friction rubs both ways.) The argument is that dropping this "distinction" could help lead to more pragmatically sound policies.
  - golemotron 11y ago
    How do you think this can be done when it is not controlled by policy as much as outrage culture in media and social media?
    - c22 11y ago
      I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you saying policy is controlled by the media?
      - golemotron 11y ago
        Whether a distinction exists in the minds of the public or not is not something that can be controlled by policy. Especially in a world where people can communicate freely on social media, and where mainstream media has a financial incentive to to amplify outrage.
        c22 11y ago
        > Whether a distinction exists in the minds of the public or not is not something that can be controlled by policy. I disagree with this, I think the interplay between policy, public opinion, and the media is more nuanced than that. I believe they can all have effects on eachother.
- throwaway2048 11y ago
  The arguement is that such distinctions are a (massive) net harm to soceity, and mostly born of fake outrage news cycyle "trailer park welfare queen" bullshit. We would be better off without such nessisarily subjective judgements, and just do a better job of ensuring everyone can meet their basic needs.
  - golemotron 11y ago
    So the plan is to do UBI rather than get rid of "fake outrage news cycle 'trailer park welfare queen' bullshit"?
golemotron 11y ago
> The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system. So noble. When people see others spending their money in ways that they wouldn't, do you really think notions of 'worthy' and 'unworthy' will go away? People are judgmental. History and current events show it to be a dependably consistent aspect of our nature. As an aside, I think that the biggest challenge in this century will be to cast aside idealistic visions of 'tabula rasa' humanity (largely based in Marxism and subsequent modernism) that were part of the 20th century's program. You can't fix people, you can only create systems that accommodate, deflect, and channel toward positivity rather than work against their nature.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > So noble. When people see others spending their money in ways that they wouldn't, do you really think notions of 'worthy' and 'unworthy' will go away? Its not so much to make the notions "go away" from existence in society (which is a harder problem), but to make them "go away" from producing the inefficiencies the particular current reflections of them in public benefit programs and their administrative rules do in the application of government policy and expenditure of public resources.
notahacker 11y ago
Except that in any conceivable scheme in the future it doesn't, it just makes "worthy person" equal to "person with the decency to be born with the right passport" rather than "person who will be expected to contribute to our society in future if they can"

The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system. Well, not the entire point (there's lots of different reasons that people advocate UBI), but its certainly one of the points.

brbsix 11y ago

By unworthy I assume you mean unworthy of our support and sympathy? What differentiates the "19th century style" worthy and unworthy poor is that unworthy poor are thought to have made poor decisions and brought about their circumstances on themselves whereas the worthy poor were seen as suffering through little to no fault of their own. Prior to the welfare state (which makes no such distinction) the "unworthy poor" served as an example of what not to do. Do we really want to discard that wisdom (even more than we already have)? Put another way, is every poor person equally deserving of our support and sympathy? I would think not.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
c22 11y ago
I think throwaway2048 meant something more along the lines of "worthy to participate in our society" and, unfortunately, whether you deem them worthy or not they are participants of society so reducing the friction of their interaction with society benefits all. (Friction rubs both ways.) The argument is that dropping this "distinction" could help lead to more pragmatically sound policies.
- golemotron 11y ago
  How do you think this can be done when it is not controlled by policy as much as outrage culture in media and social media?
  - c22 11y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you saying policy is controlled by the media?
    - golemotron 11y ago
      Whether a distinction exists in the minds of the public or not is not something that can be controlled by policy. Especially in a world where people can communicate freely on social media, and where mainstream media has a financial incentive to to amplify outrage.
      - c22 11y ago
        > Whether a distinction exists in the minds of the public or not is not something that can be controlled by policy. I disagree with this, I think the interplay between policy, public opinion, and the media is more nuanced than that. I believe they can all have effects on eachother.
throwaway2048 11y ago
The arguement is that such distinctions are a (massive) net harm to soceity, and mostly born of fake outrage news cycyle "trailer park welfare queen" bullshit. We would be better off without such nessisarily subjective judgements, and just do a better job of ensuring everyone can meet their basic needs.
- golemotron 11y ago
  So the plan is to do UBI rather than get rid of "fake outrage news cycle 'trailer park welfare queen' bullshit"?

golemotron 11y ago

> The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system. So noble. When people see others spending their money in ways that they wouldn't, do you really think notions of 'worthy' and 'unworthy' will go away? People are judgmental. History and current events show it to be a dependably consistent aspect of our nature. As an aside, I think that the biggest challenge in this century will be to cast aside idealistic visions of 'tabula rasa' humanity (largely based in Marxism and subsequent modernism) that were part of the 20th century's program. You can't fix people, you can only create systems that accommodate, deflect, and channel toward positivity rather than work against their nature.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> So noble. When people see others spending their money in ways that they wouldn't, do you really think notions of 'worthy' and 'unworthy' will go away? Its not so much to make the notions "go away" from existence in society (which is a harder problem), but to make them "go away" from producing the inefficiencies the particular current reflections of them in public benefit programs and their administrative rules do in the application of government policy and expenditure of public resources.

notahacker 11y ago

Except that in any conceivable scheme in the future it doesn't, it just makes "worthy person" equal to "person with the decency to be born with the right passport" rather than "person who will be expected to contribute to our society in future if they can"