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This is one objection I really don't agree with. It's basically impossible to imagine a perfect (ie. time-unlimited) basic income experiment. For one thing, we

This is one objection I really don't agree with. It's basically impossible to imagine a perfect (ie. time-unlimited) basic income experiment. For one thing, we kind of need results sooner rather than later. I don't think waiting a generation to get crucial results for the future of political economics is tenable. Moreover, financing for such an experiment would have to be truly massive.

cpt1138 10y ago
You can imagine it coming from government, just like you can imagine the government lasting long enough to tax you the rest of your life, you could also imagine it reverse taxing you the rest of your life
- morgante 10y ago
  Sure, I can "imagine" it. If the government adopts a policy of basic income that's not really an experiment though.
JeffreyKaine 10y ago
You don't need to run the study for more than five years, but to get an accurate view of behavioral changes the test subjects need to be paid a basic income for life. So "we need it faster" isn't really a problem.
wartus 10y ago
Both points are true, however, the fact that the persons that receive the basic income will know it's ending, will definitely change their behavior...
- itchyouch 10y ago
  When looking at other temporary experiments such as the Stanford Prison experiment, the behaviors still reflected people in the prison mode. There are plenty of other experiments where the behaviors reflected the temporary experimental circumstances. I think it's safe to say that behaviors in this experiment will likely reflect real life.
simula67 10y ago
Experiments are designed to seek the truth of a theory. For example, if the participants who receive this money are poor and they know that the money will stop coming 5 years from now, they may save every penny they can. This may lead us to conclude that basic income does not lead to irresponsible spending. But if any government institutes basic income indefinitely based on the results of this study, it may produce a very different outcome.
- ncallaway 10y ago
  Right, but we have no data on this theory right now. Wouldn't it make more sense to start at a small-scale and validate that it's even possible that it works? What if they spend the money to do a 5-year study and find that all participants are massively irresponsible with the money and that BI would be a disaster of a social policy? Why commit to a 45-year experiment when we have no data right now? The scientists working on nuclear fission aren't saying: "Let's give up because we can't build a commercial scale energy positive reactor". They're saying: "Let's make progress one small-step at a time on a path that gets us there eventually".
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
> For one thing, we kind of need results sooner rather than later. We need results for every experiment today. Unfortunately that's unrealistic and not how science works. You can't simply compromise your study to get results faster; you'll never know how valid your study's results really are in such a case. It sucks that if you want a good study for basic income you pretty much have to do it, effectively, forever while aggregating and gathering results over time but you can't just shortcut science because "we kind of need results sooner".
zanny 10y ago
You don't actually need to wait until the participants in a lifelong UBI study die to draw conclusions based on their behavior. Just guaranteeing them the income will give some insight into their behavior immediately. The only downside of all UBI experiments I personally do not like is how there is no way to model the cultural shifts involved with it, and how the children of the UBI generation will grow up and mature into society, because I imagine it will be incredibly divergent once you can ask fundamental questions about what all the schooling is for and how one should best model their life for fulfillment.
- morgante 10y ago
  > You don't actually need to wait until the participants in a lifelong UBI study die to draw conclusions based on their behavior. That might be true, but financing basic income for life is a rather expensive research proposition.
  - adiabatty 10y ago
    Imagine how much it'll cost if it makes it into law.
    - zanny 10y ago
      At the society-level UBI costs very little. It is wealth redistribution, but its not like the military where significant productive efforts are wasted with tax dollars and where the marginal return for taxpayers is extremely low. UBI money comes out of the rich primarily and goes into the poor, and economics have demonstrated pretty concisely that the poors consumerist goods spending is significantly more stimulating to the economy than a capitalists investment spending. You can't really judge a states spending exclusively in tax dollars in, or you get where we are in the US with derelict infrastructure and understaffed hospitals, fire departments, and public schools. You are taxing money to spend it for a reason. As long as the results are worth the price paid (and infrastructure at least is enough of a force multiplier to give you a lot of overhead for corruption before it is inefficient) you aren't "spending a lot of money" because your economy is growing more than you shrink it by taxing it. It is only effectively dead weight taxes (corruption, the military, modern foreign aid, politicians salaries, bureaucracy, insane overregulation) that is tax money wasted. And sure, a lot of it is wasted. Which is half the argument for UBI - the metrics are simple and should be transparent to prevent anyone corrupting what would be a force multiplier.
kirrent 10y ago
I agree. I currently take a drug which has theoretical pathways that could cause significantly elevated cancer risk over the course of your lifetime. Research hasn't shown any significantly increased risk over 10 or 20 years but we don't have data from studies for longer periods in which it could significantly elevate cancer rates. Ultimately, shorter term studies are an approximation. They're the best you can do. We can't do a life long study on this drug before making it available but we can draw information from shorter studies. Similarly, we can't do a life long basic income experiment, there's not the money out there, but we can study the shorter approximation and do it with more people and draw conclusions from that. All experiments entail compromise. The fact that neither of these bodies of science can have the ideal experiment is not a flaw but just part of doing science.
tempestn 10y ago
Leaving aside the feasibility of providing indefinite basic income as part of the study, it doesn't necessarily follow that the results would take longer to achieve. The author's point, I think, is that people would behave differently if they were confident that the income would last forever, compared to only lasting 5 years. It's entirely possible that you could still get useful data within those first five years though. (And almost certainly more useful than in the time-limited case, because you wouldn't have to account for behavioural differences.)
ncallaway 10y ago
Right? You need to do small-scale pilot programs to see if the basic premises even make sense before you can do large-scale pilot programs that last for decades or install a BI at the scale of a state government, or a small country. The general critique seems to be: the only way to study BI at any level is to run experiments that last for a person's full lifetime. It seems insane to me that you wouldn't do small scale studies and pilot programs that gather data and build up to longer and longer studies. When I'm designing a new system I don't say: the only way to validate that the concepts are correct are to write the production-grade code at all levels and see if it works. You find ways to validate key assumptions and build smaller scale proof-of-concept models to see if any of your theories are just totally broken.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > The general critique seems to be: the only way to study BI at any level is to run experiments that last for a person's full lifetime. No, the experiments don't need to run a persons lifetime, the benefit, however, needs to be believably of indefinite duration, because we already have both an understanding of the economic rationale and empirical studies showing that explicitly-limited-term benefits or costs induce notably different behavioral impacts than open-ended ones. Its the benefit, not the study of the effects of the benefit that needs to be open-ended.

cpt1138 10y ago

You can imagine it coming from government, just like you can imagine the government lasting long enough to tax you the rest of your life, you could also imagine it reverse taxing you the rest of your life

morgante 10y ago
Sure, I can "imagine" it. If the government adopts a policy of basic income that's not really an experiment though.

JeffreyKaine 10y ago

You don't need to run the study for more than five years, but to get an accurate view of behavioral changes the test subjects need to be paid a basic income for life. So "we need it faster" isn't really a problem.

wartus 10y ago

Both points are true, however, the fact that the persons that receive the basic income will know it's ending, will definitely change their behavior...

itchyouch 10y ago
When looking at other temporary experiments such as the Stanford Prison experiment, the behaviors still reflected people in the prison mode. There are plenty of other experiments where the behaviors reflected the temporary experimental circumstances. I think it's safe to say that behaviors in this experiment will likely reflect real life.

simula67 10y ago

Experiments are designed to seek the truth of a theory. For example, if the participants who receive this money are poor and they know that the money will stop coming 5 years from now, they may save every penny they can. This may lead us to conclude that basic income does not lead to irresponsible spending. But if any government institutes basic income indefinitely based on the results of this study, it may produce a very different outcome.

ncallaway 10y ago
Right, but we have no data on this theory right now. Wouldn't it make more sense to start at a small-scale and validate that it's even possible that it works? What if they spend the money to do a 5-year study and find that all participants are massively irresponsible with the money and that BI would be a disaster of a social policy? Why commit to a 45-year experiment when we have no data right now? The scientists working on nuclear fission aren't saying: "Let's give up because we can't build a commercial scale energy positive reactor". They're saying: "Let's make progress one small-step at a time on a path that gets us there eventually".

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

> For one thing, we kind of need results sooner rather than later. We need results for every experiment today. Unfortunately that's unrealistic and not how science works. You can't simply compromise your study to get results faster; you'll never know how valid your study's results really are in such a case. It sucks that if you want a good study for basic income you pretty much have to do it, effectively, forever while aggregating and gathering results over time but you can't just shortcut science because "we kind of need results sooner".

zanny 10y ago

You don't actually need to wait until the participants in a lifelong UBI study die to draw conclusions based on their behavior. Just guaranteeing them the income will give some insight into their behavior immediately. The only downside of all UBI experiments I personally do not like is how there is no way to model the cultural shifts involved with it, and how the children of the UBI generation will grow up and mature into society, because I imagine it will be incredibly divergent once you can ask fundamental questions about what all the schooling is for and how one should best model their life for fulfillment.

morgante 10y ago
> You don't actually need to wait until the participants in a lifelong UBI study die to draw conclusions based on their behavior. That might be true, but financing basic income for life is a rather expensive research proposition.
- adiabatty 10y ago
  Imagine how much it'll cost if it makes it into law.
  - zanny 10y ago
    At the society-level UBI costs very little. It is wealth redistribution, but its not like the military where significant productive efforts are wasted with tax dollars and where the marginal return for taxpayers is extremely low. UBI money comes out of the rich primarily and goes into the poor, and economics have demonstrated pretty concisely that the poors consumerist goods spending is significantly more stimulating to the economy than a capitalists investment spending. You can't really judge a states spending exclusively in tax dollars in, or you get where we are in the US with derelict infrastructure and understaffed hospitals, fire departments, and public schools. You are taxing money to spend it for a reason. As long as the results are worth the price paid (and infrastructure at least is enough of a force multiplier to give you a lot of overhead for corruption before it is inefficient) you aren't "spending a lot of money" because your economy is growing more than you shrink it by taxing it. It is only effectively dead weight taxes (corruption, the military, modern foreign aid, politicians salaries, bureaucracy, insane overregulation) that is tax money wasted. And sure, a lot of it is wasted. Which is half the argument for UBI - the metrics are simple and should be transparent to prevent anyone corrupting what would be a force multiplier.

kirrent 10y ago

I agree. I currently take a drug which has theoretical pathways that could cause significantly elevated cancer risk over the course of your lifetime. Research hasn't shown any significantly increased risk over 10 or 20 years but we don't have data from studies for longer periods in which it could significantly elevate cancer rates. Ultimately, shorter term studies are an approximation. They're the best you can do. We can't do a life long study on this drug before making it available but we can draw information from shorter studies. Similarly, we can't do a life long basic income experiment, there's not the money out there, but we can study the shorter approximation and do it with more people and draw conclusions from that. All experiments entail compromise. The fact that neither of these bodies of science can have the ideal experiment is not a flaw but just part of doing science.

tempestn 10y ago

Leaving aside the feasibility of providing indefinite basic income as part of the study, it doesn't necessarily follow that the results would take longer to achieve. The author's point, I think, is that people would behave differently if they were confident that the income would last forever, compared to only lasting 5 years. It's entirely possible that you could still get useful data within those first five years though. (And almost certainly more useful than in the time-limited case, because you wouldn't have to account for behavioural differences.)

ncallaway 10y ago

Right? You need to do small-scale pilot programs to see if the basic premises even make sense before you can do large-scale pilot programs that last for decades or install a BI at the scale of a state government, or a small country. The general critique seems to be: the only way to study BI at any level is to run experiments that last for a person's full lifetime. It seems insane to me that you wouldn't do small scale studies and pilot programs that gather data and build up to longer and longer studies. When I'm designing a new system I don't say: the only way to validate that the concepts are correct are to write the production-grade code at all levels and see if it works. You find ways to validate key assumptions and build smaller scale proof-of-concept models to see if any of your theories are just totally broken.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> The general critique seems to be: the only way to study BI at any level is to run experiments that last for a person's full lifetime. No, the experiments don't need to run a persons lifetime, the benefit, however, needs to be believably of indefinite duration, because we already have both an understanding of the economic rationale and empirical studies showing that explicitly-limited-term benefits or costs induce notably different behavioral impacts than open-ended ones. Its the benefit, not the study of the effects of the benefit that needs to be open-ended.