3 ms·

Unfortunately, the explanation most consistent with data on happiness/satisfaction is that the primary utility gain from wealth is derived from gains in zero-su

by kauffj 10y ago

Unfortunately, the explanation most consistent with data on happiness/satisfaction is that the primary utility gain from wealth is derived from gains in zero-sum social status. We can tell this even from the language of the post itself: "everyone should have enough money to meet their basic needs." Basic needs? Everyone in America has their basic needs. Almost all of the _basic_ needs of a human, i.e. those that we received 50,000 years ago, could be provided for $1-$2k a year. We consider modern needs beyond these to be 'basic' because there is a nature in our humanity, or the humanity of most of us, that doesn't like it when people are so far apart from one other in power or status. As such, it's likely that this study will find, entirely correctly, that recipients are happier, more productive, etc. What they won't discover is how people behave when basic income is the status quo, rather than being the equivalent of a lottery winner. I suspect the results will be vastly different.

cm2012 10y ago
Not really. The biggest need that's expensive to make work is shelter - the cost has not gone down over time. There are millions of Americans either on the streets or living with toxic family members they need to be away from.
- kauffj 10y ago
  Tents or other very basic structures exceed or match the quality of shelter that humans lived in for tens of thousands of years. There is no innate need for modern conveniences, other than the innate need to not be so far away from the other guy.
  - clavalle 10y ago
    Where do you put the tents? How do you prevent disease in a tent city without plumbing? How do they prepare food? Basic Income wouldn't even be possible if it were not for modern society. Why try to divorce the standards of society from the implementation of basic income?
tlholaday 10y ago
> Everyone in America has their basic needs. No. Not everyone in America has safety. The Americans living on the street report that the homeless shelters are too risky.
mempko 10y ago
> those that we received 50,000 years ago, could be provided for $1-$2k a year. Dignity is probably a basic need that $1-2k can't buy.
- coldtea 10y ago
  Which is the parent's point precisely: basic needs is a social construct -- the physical basic needs are trivial.
- kauffj 10y ago
  Exactly. Hence the 'almost', at the beginning of the sentence you quoted. My point is we should acknowledge that the drive for basic income is driven by "people don't feel so great when other people have more significantly more shiny things than they do; people feel better when shiny things are more evenly distributed" and not "shiny things are a human right" or "it's an affront to human dignity that shiny things aren't distributed the way I find most preferable".
oskarth 10y ago
> Almost all of the _basic_ needs of a human, i.e. those that we received 50,000 years ago, could be provided for $1-$2k a year Assuming people (a) have the skills and/or (b) are OK being cut off from modern society. The goal with basic income is to allow _everyone_ to live a decent life without going all survivalist (and risk dying). Even people who are very skillful (can do repairs, have their own farm, in good health, etc) often live on ~10x that. Even if you disagree with the two above points, you've just argued for basic income being at a different number.
- kauffj 10y ago
  My argument is that a 'decent' life is completely relative, which you are basically making for me.
acgourley 10y ago
If what you are saying is that a large part of happiness is related to your distance to the mean wealth, wouldn't you say a society with a 'normal' wealth distribution is going to be on average happier than a society with a 'bimodal' distribution? The technologist view is that automation is taking us in an increasingly bimodal direction, and that BI can "raise the floor" to pinch the two humps closer together. That doesn't seem zero sum to me - because the function relating happiness to distance-from-mean isn't a linear one. Distribution types for reference: http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/data-collection-analysis-tools/overview/histogram2.html http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/data-collection-analysis-...
- kauffj 10y ago
  Yes, generally speaking the flatter the income distribution the greater mean happiness. However, even setting aside moral concerns about methods (which are tremendous), it's not a given we even _want_ to optimize for mean happiness. E.g. A society that possesses greater mean happiness may also possess more starvation, more work, or less robustness against future threats.
stale2002 10y ago
If the whole game is zero sum, then thats great! The solution to a zero sum game is easy. Redistribute wealth from everyone so that everyone is equally happy. There is no need to worry about innovation or discouraging people from working. Its zero sum, so we may as well go with the fair solution of 100% income redistribution and 100% basic income.
- kauffj 10y ago
  If you were optimizing for happiness only and had no ethical concerns about methods, then yes, a very flat or close to flat distribution is likely optimal. Like you, I believe that there are things more important from the perspective of society than mean happiness.
  - bweitzman 10y ago
    What could possibly be more important than happiness?
    - andyzweb 10y ago
      survival
  - stale2002 10y ago
    Well then why do you bring up happiness in the first place? Alright, fine, happiness doesn't matter it's these other things that matter, like preventing starvation. UBI seems like it would do a great job of solving starvation, and is certainly not zero sum.
mikeash 10y ago
For basic needs, I'd say that encompasses food, water, and shelter (at least in colder climates). A decent number of Americans don't have these met. Feeding someone on $3/day sounds somewhat challenging to me, and throw in shelter on top of that and I don't think your $2,000/year figure is going to cut it.
- mac01021 10y ago
  > Feeding someone on $3/day sounds somewhat challenging to me It seems pretty easy to me. $3 buys 24 chicken eggs, or 10 servings of Quaker Oats.
xrange 10y ago
>As such, it's likely that this study will find, entirely correctly, that recipients are happier, more productive, etc. I wonder what the right way is to measure happiness for a group. Say this test makes 20% of participants much happier, 70% about the same, and 10% overdose on heroine? And what metric can you use to quantify happiness on an individual level?
audleman 10y ago
> Almost all of the _basic_ needs of a human, i.e. those that we received 50,000 years ago, could be provided for $1-$2k a year Can you explain this? Basic needs include shelter, clothing, and food, which together cost much more than $1-$2k.
- kauffj 10y ago
  A tent, a pair or two of clothing, and meals of rice/beans/vegetables can be provided for less than $2k/year. A life comparable to this, but requiring more work, has been and continues to be lived by hundreds of millions.
  - acgourley 10y ago
    We are forced us to decide if forward progress alongside our neighbors is a moral right.
  - Yen 10y ago
    > [basic necessities] can be provided for less than $2k/year. I'm going to assume that this means "provided for approximately $2k/year". In any case, the value of that number isn't an argument against UBI, but rather, the amount UBI should be set at. Maybe the right value is $2k/person/year. > Basic needs? Everyone in America has their basic needs. Given that there are adults in the U.S.A. who earn less than $2k/year, there must be people who are either not getting their basic needs met, or are getting them met only through welfare programs. > A tent, a pair or two of clothing, and meals of rice/beans/vegetables Assuming this was the minimum, you also need a plot of land in which you can legally stake your tent - a pretty big problem for homeless today. The rent on this land also factors in to the necessary price per person per year. In my personal opinion, I'd say the full set of human needs includes food, shelter, hygiene, health care, companionship, and the opportunity for self-improvement/advancement. Food and shelter you've covered, companionship can be free, and hygiene doesn't have to cost much of anything. In our current society, an opportunity for self-improvement depends on education, reasonable transportation to economically viable areas, and communication technology (such as phone or internet). None of these things are necessarily extremely expensive, at the bare-bones, no-luxuries level. The overall cost might be a little more than $2k/person/year, it isn't necessarily as high as $10k/person/year. In any case, I expect that providing someone who doesn't have these things (food, shelter, hygiene, and opportunity for self-improvement) will cause an non-zero-sum increase in happiness, and right now, there are people who don't have all of these things.
derekp7 10y ago
Well, 50,000 years ago, if you were hungry you could find some edible plants, or throw a stick at an animal and eat it. In today's society there is limited hunting and the land that grows food is privately held. And if you try to build a shelter anywhere on land that you don't own, it will get torn down. Not to mention the fact that you really can't own land -- property taxes makes it a rental at best. Now one thing that would be neat -- what if most of the utility ground cover was actually directly edible by humans? Imagine replacing all the wild grass and weeds with edible vegetables. Of course they would have to be bio-engineered so that they are desirable for people, grow like weeds, yet not get consumed by vermin.
namenotrequired 10y ago
50,000 years ago we had a dramatically shorter average life span than today. Are you saying that improvements that cause us to not die are luxuries?

by kauffj 10y ago

cm2012 10y ago

Not really. The biggest need that's expensive to make work is shelter - the cost has not gone down over time. There are millions of Americans either on the streets or living with toxic family members they need to be away from.

kauffj 10y ago
Tents or other very basic structures exceed or match the quality of shelter that humans lived in for tens of thousands of years. There is no innate need for modern conveniences, other than the innate need to not be so far away from the other guy.
- clavalle 10y ago
  Where do you put the tents? How do you prevent disease in a tent city without plumbing? How do they prepare food? Basic Income wouldn't even be possible if it were not for modern society. Why try to divorce the standards of society from the implementation of basic income?

tlholaday 10y ago

> Everyone in America has their basic needs. No. Not everyone in America has safety. The Americans living on the street report that the homeless shelters are too risky.

mempko 10y ago

> those that we received 50,000 years ago, could be provided for $1-$2k a year. Dignity is probably a basic need that $1-2k can't buy.

coldtea 10y ago
Which is the parent's point precisely: basic needs is a social construct -- the physical basic needs are trivial.
kauffj 10y ago
Exactly. Hence the 'almost', at the beginning of the sentence you quoted. My point is we should acknowledge that the drive for basic income is driven by "people don't feel so great when other people have more significantly more shiny things than they do; people feel better when shiny things are more evenly distributed" and not "shiny things are a human right" or "it's an affront to human dignity that shiny things aren't distributed the way I find most preferable".

oskarth 10y ago

> Almost all of the _basic_ needs of a human, i.e. those that we received 50,000 years ago, could be provided for $1-$2k a year Assuming people (a) have the skills and/or (b) are OK being cut off from modern society. The goal with basic income is to allow _everyone_ to live a decent life without going all survivalist (and risk dying). Even people who are very skillful (can do repairs, have their own farm, in good health, etc) often live on ~10x that. Even if you disagree with the two above points, you've just argued for basic income being at a different number.

kauffj 10y ago
My argument is that a 'decent' life is completely relative, which you are basically making for me.

acgourley 10y ago

If what you are saying is that a large part of happiness is related to your distance to the mean wealth, wouldn't you say a society with a 'normal' wealth distribution is going to be on average happier than a society with a 'bimodal' distribution? The technologist view is that automation is taking us in an increasingly bimodal direction, and that BI can "raise the floor" to pinch the two humps closer together. That doesn't seem zero sum to me - because the function relating happiness to distance-from-mean isn't a linear one. Distribution types for reference: http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/data-collection-analysis-tools/overview/histogram2.html http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/data-collection-analysis-...

kauffj 10y ago
Yes, generally speaking the flatter the income distribution the greater mean happiness. However, even setting aside moral concerns about methods (which are tremendous), it's not a given we even _want_ to optimize for mean happiness. E.g. A society that possesses greater mean happiness may also possess more starvation, more work, or less robustness against future threats.

stale2002 10y ago

If the whole game is zero sum, then thats great! The solution to a zero sum game is easy. Redistribute wealth from everyone so that everyone is equally happy. There is no need to worry about innovation or discouraging people from working. Its zero sum, so we may as well go with the fair solution of 100% income redistribution and 100% basic income.

kauffj 10y ago
If you were optimizing for happiness only and had no ethical concerns about methods, then yes, a very flat or close to flat distribution is likely optimal. Like you, I believe that there are things more important from the perspective of society than mean happiness.
- bweitzman 10y ago
  What could possibly be more important than happiness?
  - andyzweb 10y ago
    survival
- stale2002 10y ago
  Well then why do you bring up happiness in the first place? Alright, fine, happiness doesn't matter it's these other things that matter, like preventing starvation. UBI seems like it would do a great job of solving starvation, and is certainly not zero sum.

mikeash 10y ago

For basic needs, I'd say that encompasses food, water, and shelter (at least in colder climates). A decent number of Americans don't have these met. Feeding someone on $3/day sounds somewhat challenging to me, and throw in shelter on top of that and I don't think your $2,000/year figure is going to cut it.

mac01021 10y ago
> Feeding someone on $3/day sounds somewhat challenging to me It seems pretty easy to me. $3 buys 24 chicken eggs, or 10 servings of Quaker Oats.

xrange 10y ago

>As such, it's likely that this study will find, entirely correctly, that recipients are happier, more productive, etc. I wonder what the right way is to measure happiness for a group. Say this test makes 20% of participants much happier, 70% about the same, and 10% overdose on heroine? And what metric can you use to quantify happiness on an individual level?

audleman 10y ago

> Almost all of the _basic_ needs of a human, i.e. those that we received 50,000 years ago, could be provided for $1-$2k a year Can you explain this? Basic needs include shelter, clothing, and food, which together cost much more than $1-$2k.

kauffj 10y ago
A tent, a pair or two of clothing, and meals of rice/beans/vegetables can be provided for less than $2k/year. A life comparable to this, but requiring more work, has been and continues to be lived by hundreds of millions.
- acgourley 10y ago
  We are forced us to decide if forward progress alongside our neighbors is a moral right.
- Yen 10y ago
  > [basic necessities] can be provided for less than $2k/year. I'm going to assume that this means "provided for approximately $2k/year". In any case, the value of that number isn't an argument against UBI, but rather, the amount UBI should be set at. Maybe the right value is $2k/person/year. > Basic needs? Everyone in America has their basic needs. Given that there are adults in the U.S.A. who earn less than $2k/year, there must be people who are either not getting their basic needs met, or are getting them met only through welfare programs. > A tent, a pair or two of clothing, and meals of rice/beans/vegetables Assuming this was the minimum, you also need a plot of land in which you can legally stake your tent - a pretty big problem for homeless today. The rent on this land also factors in to the necessary price per person per year. In my personal opinion, I'd say the full set of human needs includes food, shelter, hygiene, health care, companionship, and the opportunity for self-improvement/advancement. Food and shelter you've covered, companionship can be free, and hygiene doesn't have to cost much of anything. In our current society, an opportunity for self-improvement depends on education, reasonable transportation to economically viable areas, and communication technology (such as phone or internet). None of these things are necessarily extremely expensive, at the bare-bones, no-luxuries level. The overall cost might be a little more than $2k/person/year, it isn't necessarily as high as $10k/person/year. In any case, I expect that providing someone who doesn't have these things (food, shelter, hygiene, and opportunity for self-improvement) will cause an non-zero-sum increase in happiness, and right now, there are people who don't have all of these things.

derekp7 10y ago

Well, 50,000 years ago, if you were hungry you could find some edible plants, or throw a stick at an animal and eat it. In today's society there is limited hunting and the land that grows food is privately held. And if you try to build a shelter anywhere on land that you don't own, it will get torn down. Not to mention the fact that you really can't own land -- property taxes makes it a rental at best. Now one thing that would be neat -- what if most of the utility ground cover was actually directly edible by humans? Imagine replacing all the wild grass and weeds with edible vegetables. Of course they would have to be bio-engineered so that they are desirable for people, grow like weeds, yet not get consumed by vermin.

namenotrequired 10y ago

50,000 years ago we had a dramatically shorter average life span than today. Are you saying that improvements that cause us to not die are luxuries?