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[Expat living in France, leaving soon] France is a very bad example of UBI. I see it as a society where everyone expects their rights, but no one sees anything
by ucaetano 10y ago
[Expat living in France, leaving soon]
France is a very bad example of UBI. I see it as a society where everyone expects their rights, but no one sees anything as their duties. People see all public (as in owned by the society) assets as responsibility of someone else, not themselves. In other words, it is a terrible place to implement UBI.
It is the worst type of selfishness: instead of "everyone should take care of themselves" it is "someone should be forced to take care of others, but not me". It is easy to see how that leads to the very bad Nash equilibrium of the tragedy of the commons.
Is that a product of the social support system, or is the social support system a product of that?
That being said, there is a lot that worked in the French system, specially around making maternity economically sustainable: France has one of the highest fertility rates in the developed world, while maintaining a high female workforce participation rate. This should be copied by other countries, specially ones (such as Germany) facing a population crisis.
I agree on your point about innovation, I see France as a country far too worried about protecting its past: every tradition is sacrosanct and protected by law. When you protect the past, you outlaw the future.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- weddpros 10y agoWhen you expect your very subsistance from the State, when you start to believe that "it costs nothing, because the state is paying" (said french president lately), then you lose what the french have lost: responsibility. As for maternity, it has to be seen if population growth is better than prosperity for happiness. The Swiss are at the other extreme: prosperity and aging population... yet they are the happiest in the world.
- ucaetano 10y agoWe all know that having no babies isn't sustainable in the long term. Having babies is an extremely important social function, that most developed societies are leaving behind. I'm not advocating for the French model (I do advocate the Swiss model), but to dissect it and try to adopt what works, ignoring what doesn't. Of course, sometimes they're two sides of the same coin, so you can't have the cake and eat it too.
- drewrv 10y agoContinued population growth isn't sustainable either. The economic problems caused by low birth rate can be solved through immigration.
- ucaetano 10y agoYes, they can! And IMHO they should. But that's a very controversial suggestion these days... IMHO the largest problem humanity will face in the next 100 years might be decreased fertility rates. Unless our robot overlords solve that first.
- vkou 10y agoWhy would the human population shrinking to, optimistically, say, 3 billion people be a problem? Looking at our productivity, and unemployment rates, we have the labour, and the productivity to assist the elderly.
- ucaetano 10y agoBecause of the dependency ratio. An inverted age pyramid would wreak havoc in social welfare systems, unless you were able to triple or quadruple labor productivity. Today we barely have the labor and productivity to assist the elderly, imagine if the situation worsens dramatically. Sure, there's always the chance that AI and robotics and singularity will change everything and scarcity will be over and so one, but we shouldn't bet our chips on that.
- vkou 10y agoWe have already quadrupled labour productivity, compared to the 60s. Including agriculture, we have multiplied it by more then a factor of ten, compared to the start of the 20th century. We barely have the labor and productivity to assist the elderly for the same reason we barely have the labor and productivity to fix potholes on my street, or keep human waste out of a San Francisco alley (All while we sit at 7% unemployment.) We don't care to.
- grondilu 10y ago> France has one of the highest fertility rates in the developed world, Not by much, and it's still not enough to renew generations.
- ucaetano 10y agoDepending on the country, by a lot: France: 2.01 UK: 1.90 US: 1.88 Switzerland: 1.52 Germany: 1.38 Replacement rate for industrialized countries: ~2.1
- antisthenes 10y ago> It is easy to see how that leads to the very bad Nash equilibrium of the tragedy of the commons. Tragedy of the commons in the classical sense does not have a Nash equilibrium, because an actor can always chose to consume the extra unit of resources to benefit themselves more. This lack of equilibrium is precisely why it's called a tragedy, because it inevitably leads to the over-exploitation (usually destruction) of the common good.
- ucaetano 10y agoAt any given time, you have two agents, each one has the option: a) Use more resources: +1 for them, -1.5 for everyone else b) Use same resources: +0.5 for them, +0 for everyone else There is only one Nash equilibrium: (a,a) with payout (-0.5,-0.5). Repeat it again and again without cooperation and you have the tragedy of the commons. Nash equilibrium isn't about a repeating game reaching equilibrium over time, but about the decisions multiple agents face in one specific round.
- antisthenes 10y agoIf both actors have the options of the first 2 outcomes you described then where does the (-0.5, -0.5) come from? That outcome cannot be NE by your own given inputs, since both actors can improve their outcomes by switching to a different strategy.
- ucaetano 10y agoThe outcomes of the individual decisions are added, so (-0.5, -0.5) comes from each agent picking options a, resulting in +1 for themselves and -1.5 to the other. The outcome for each agent in this case is +1-1.5=0.5 The payout matrix is: (-0.5, -0.5) (+1, -1) (-1, +1) (+0.5, +0.5) As you can see, from the [a,a] option, no agent can improve their situation by UNILATERALLY changing. In the case of [a,b], [b,a] and [b,b], one (or both) of the agents can always improve their own payout by switching from b to a. So there's only one Nash equilibrium, at [a,a].