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I often see articles like these result in a broad call for a universal basic income. The reasons are simple: it doesn't dictate what you should or should not sp

I often see articles like these result in a broad call for a universal basic income. The reasons are simple: it doesn't dictate what you should or should not spend your money on; it provides a standard-of-living floor; it balances out the inequalities of a globalized and increasingly automated world. I have a different proposal: instead of guaranteeing basic income, guarantee broad access to basic services. Off the top of my head, I see five basic services anybody in an industrialized society ought to have provided for them: food/water, shelter, transportation, health care, electricity/information. If these needs can be met cheaply enough, then we won't need a guaranteed income. The basics are cheap enough and if you want a higher standard of living, you can work towards it, but in a market society there are winners and there are losers, and at least under the guaranteed service mechanism, the losers aren't mired in poverty. In the short term, food/water and electricity/information are nearly cheap enough to be universal. We just don't choose to provide it in a low-tax society. Medium term, health care costs can be reduced through automated diagnosis and operations. Some automated surgeons exist today and there was a recent report that IBM's Watson was able to correctly diagnose patients. Long term issue will be shelter and transportation. Even with self-driving automobiles, providing shelter for everybody will require a delicate balance between dense urban housing (which is currently in high demand and very expensive) and suburban sprawl (which is harmful to the environment and requires vast and expensive infrastructure like roads and water). By investing heavily in an ultra-low-cost society, governments can ensure all people have access to the services they need, while refraining from redistribution-via-taxation, which, while good in intentions, dents the very growth and ROI necessary to make these big investments.

al_biglan 10y ago
This. One other thing I might suggest is some sort of variable cost model where every person gets 1 unit of water per day for free and then consumption above that scales up. Most people will consume more than the bare minimum to survive (lets say the unit is 2 liters). Doing this raises the base for everyone to be able to contribute to society yet still collects money needed for infrastructure costs, etc. ) One we have some of the utilities under this system, things like health care would be nice follow-ons.
ap22213 10y ago
The problem with that approach is that it's very centralized in a soviet kind of way. You have a small group of people deciding what people should get and how they should get it. The state then becomes the decider of what people need - and that distorts market forces. In that model, you will get bread queues and tenements. If you give people real money, it allows them to 1) be creative in how they use it, and 2) stimulate 2-sided markets, which enables creation of new things.
- contingencies 10y ago
  While it's true that centralization does have its problems (nobody wants a Soviet style system), I feel that you are conflating political issues with the original point, which was that giving out money is unnecessary if access to basic services is guaranteed. I do think that's an interesting point. On the political side, since the Soviet system we have seen some incredibly effective centralized planning from China, who have an arguable 3000 year nominal history of political meritocracy and no democratic hangups. Also, we now have new options emerging through technology: direct, lower cost referendum-like voting on a broader range of issues being one. Finally, "real money" is a very loaded phrase... just because a government guarantees a scrip does not make it any more real than, say, Bitcoin or human time. What drives fiscal systems, fundamentally, is the shared belief that a dollar acquired today can be useful if spent tomorrow. If you look at the key properties of money - ie. medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value - then what the centralized, universal access to basic services proposal removes is all three properties of the handout: exchange, accounting, and storage. What are the impacts here? Exchange: people are properly accounted for by the government when seeking services and cannot ask for things they do not use personally. (This could be seen as positive, but could also be seen as negative if the government is particularly inefficient at scheduling the supply of services.) Unit of account: There is no need to account monetarily for services that are provided, instead they are simply recorded has having been provided and the supply-side costs (medicine, food ingredients, etc.) are accounted for as standard. Storage: Society as a whole has an interest in allocating efficiently the resources used in basic services (shelter/food/medicine/education) as this is cheaper overall and results in less wasted resources; allowing recipients to store and hoard these is probably not in society's interest. Overall then, perhaps there are some positive points in avoiding executing UBI in terms of cash handouts, and instead focusing on services. Of course, the real gotcha is going to be transition and utility ... without major society-wide restructuring, the cash-based approach promises a far simpler path of transition.
morgante 10y ago
Are you proposing the the government directly provide these services? No thanks. You're providing an alternative to UBI without providing any explanation of why it would be superior, while ignoring the very real impact which competition has on lowering costs and increasing quality. What is the benefit of that? Generally, government services are inferior to those provided by the market. Just take a sample of public housing or government cheese to see why having the government provision services is suboptimal. If the government wants to get into these businesses, it should do so as a non-profit corporation directly competing with private sector alternatives. Then we can see if government cheese is actually more desirable than private alternatives. > in a market society there are winners and there are losers, and at least under the guaranteed service mechanism, the losers aren't mired in poverty. UBI would be a market solution and could still prevent losers. Poverty reduction and personal choice are not mutually exclusive. What you're proposing has been tried before and failed.
- contingencies 10y ago
  the very real impact which competition has on lowering costs and increasing quality. Oh please, what fallacy. Here on HN you have neoliberal truisms like this being repeated, at the same time as articles about celebrated icons of American capitalism clearly stating that in business they always seek to establish monopolies and that competition is for losers. As an example of how fallacious this line of bullshit is, look at what privatization and 'competition' did to Australian telecommunications (instantly bought by foreigners, now a national security threat... some of the most expensive internet in the western world... metered downloads in 2016... new government program to fund infrastructure is broken down in to a government-pays, private-industry profits model... fiber is virtually unheard of, and is exceptionally difficult to acquire even eg. for a relative who lives right opposite the Sydney Opera House in central Sydney!) Whereas, here in China everyone can have fiber and a flat screen and a mobile phone for almost nothing, and they had no infrastructure at all 20 years ago.
  - morgante 10y ago
    > Here on HN you have neoliberal truisms like this being repeated, at the same time as articles about celebrated icons of American capitalism clearly stating that in business they always seek to establish monopolies and that competition is for losers. The fact that you don't understand how those are literally two sides of the same coin shows how limited your understanding of economics is. Competition driving down prices is precisely why as a businessman I want to avoid it and establish a monopoly. Since you lack even the critical thinking skills or economic understanding to see how monopoly benefiting businesses and hurting consumers is entirely self-consistent, it's not really worth arguing with you much more. I'll just point out that we have numerous examples of competition benefiting consumers. For example, airline deregulation has led to a sharp reduction in ticket prices. In the unfortunate cases where supposed "privatization" has had ill effects, if you look below the surface it's usually the case that the underlying market is anything but free. For example, internet service where only incumbent providers are allowed to offer operate and new entrants are barred from entrance while costs are subsidized by taxpayers. I suspect that the Australian telecommunications industry falls into that category.
Mz 10y ago
I think we need minimum basic housing a lot more than we need basic income. I think basic income is a problem. We are suffering from "housing inflation" in the US and that is causing serious problems.
- morgante 10y ago
  > We are suffering from "housing inflation" in the US and that is causing serious problems. No, we really don't. There are huge portions of the country where housing is cheap and plentiful. The problem is that there aren't jobs there. If we had UBI, people could avoid barely scraping by on low-wage jobs in cities and instead thrive in low-cost areas.
  - Mz 10y ago
    I do not just mean increased cost. I mean houses have literally gotten bigger on average, while holding fewer people. Meanwhile, supply of affordable housing has shrunk and homelessness is on the rise. http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/money-is-not-wealth.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/money-is-not... http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/minimum-decent-housing-not-minimum-wage.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/minimum-dece...
    - morgante 10y ago
      > I mean houses have literally gotten bigger on average, while holding fewer people. What's wrong with that? In areas where we have plenty of space, it seems perfectly fine. I agree that affordable housing is a major problem. I think UBI would easily solve it because if housing doesn't need to be concentrated in urban areas it's much cheaper to build abundant affordable housing. Heck, there are areas of the country where you could get housing for almost nothing—as long as you didn't need to be tethered to a job in an urban locale.
      - Mz 10y ago
        What is wrong with it is that it is directly related to the lack of affordable housing and rise in homelessness. Even where there is abundant space, it makes homes too expensive for ordinary people with ordinary wages. I supplied two links, stuff I wrote previously. I don't care to get into a pointless internet fight. Suffice it to say I think you are wrong about this. I am not tethered to a job. I have portable income, in spite of being chronically ill and currently homeless. It allowed me to move someplace cheaper, a stepping stone in my plan to get off the street. I think UBI is not a good solution. Gig work done right and more appropriate housing options for our new demographic reality are needed.

al_biglan 10y ago

This. One other thing I might suggest is some sort of variable cost model where every person gets 1 unit of water per day for free and then consumption above that scales up. Most people will consume more than the bare minimum to survive (lets say the unit is 2 liters). Doing this raises the base for everyone to be able to contribute to society yet still collects money needed for infrastructure costs, etc. ) One we have some of the utilities under this system, things like health care would be nice follow-ons.

ap22213 10y ago

The problem with that approach is that it's very centralized in a soviet kind of way. You have a small group of people deciding what people should get and how they should get it. The state then becomes the decider of what people need - and that distorts market forces. In that model, you will get bread queues and tenements. If you give people real money, it allows them to 1) be creative in how they use it, and 2) stimulate 2-sided markets, which enables creation of new things.

contingencies 10y ago
While it's true that centralization does have its problems (nobody wants a Soviet style system), I feel that you are conflating political issues with the original point, which was that giving out money is unnecessary if access to basic services is guaranteed. I do think that's an interesting point. On the political side, since the Soviet system we have seen some incredibly effective centralized planning from China, who have an arguable 3000 year nominal history of political meritocracy and no democratic hangups. Also, we now have new options emerging through technology: direct, lower cost referendum-like voting on a broader range of issues being one. Finally, "real money" is a very loaded phrase... just because a government guarantees a scrip does not make it any more real than, say, Bitcoin or human time. What drives fiscal systems, fundamentally, is the shared belief that a dollar acquired today can be useful if spent tomorrow. If you look at the key properties of money - ie. medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value - then what the centralized, universal access to basic services proposal removes is all three properties of the handout: exchange, accounting, and storage. What are the impacts here? Exchange: people are properly accounted for by the government when seeking services and cannot ask for things they do not use personally. (This could be seen as positive, but could also be seen as negative if the government is particularly inefficient at scheduling the supply of services.) Unit of account: There is no need to account monetarily for services that are provided, instead they are simply recorded has having been provided and the supply-side costs (medicine, food ingredients, etc.) are accounted for as standard. Storage: Society as a whole has an interest in allocating efficiently the resources used in basic services (shelter/food/medicine/education) as this is cheaper overall and results in less wasted resources; allowing recipients to store and hoard these is probably not in society's interest. Overall then, perhaps there are some positive points in avoiding executing UBI in terms of cash handouts, and instead focusing on services. Of course, the real gotcha is going to be transition and utility ... without major society-wide restructuring, the cash-based approach promises a far simpler path of transition.

morgante 10y ago

Are you proposing the the government directly provide these services? No thanks. You're providing an alternative to UBI without providing any explanation of why it would be superior, while ignoring the very real impact which competition has on lowering costs and increasing quality. What is the benefit of that? Generally, government services are inferior to those provided by the market. Just take a sample of public housing or government cheese to see why having the government provision services is suboptimal. If the government wants to get into these businesses, it should do so as a non-profit corporation directly competing with private sector alternatives. Then we can see if government cheese is actually more desirable than private alternatives. > in a market society there are winners and there are losers, and at least under the guaranteed service mechanism, the losers aren't mired in poverty. UBI would be a market solution and could still prevent losers. Poverty reduction and personal choice are not mutually exclusive. What you're proposing has been tried before and failed.

contingencies 10y ago
the very real impact which competition has on lowering costs and increasing quality. Oh please, what fallacy. Here on HN you have neoliberal truisms like this being repeated, at the same time as articles about celebrated icons of American capitalism clearly stating that in business they always seek to establish monopolies and that competition is for losers. As an example of how fallacious this line of bullshit is, look at what privatization and 'competition' did to Australian telecommunications (instantly bought by foreigners, now a national security threat... some of the most expensive internet in the western world... metered downloads in 2016... new government program to fund infrastructure is broken down in to a government-pays, private-industry profits model... fiber is virtually unheard of, and is exceptionally difficult to acquire even eg. for a relative who lives right opposite the Sydney Opera House in central Sydney!) Whereas, here in China everyone can have fiber and a flat screen and a mobile phone for almost nothing, and they had no infrastructure at all 20 years ago.
- morgante 10y ago
  > Here on HN you have neoliberal truisms like this being repeated, at the same time as articles about celebrated icons of American capitalism clearly stating that in business they always seek to establish monopolies and that competition is for losers. The fact that you don't understand how those are literally two sides of the same coin shows how limited your understanding of economics is. Competition driving down prices is precisely why as a businessman I want to avoid it and establish a monopoly. Since you lack even the critical thinking skills or economic understanding to see how monopoly benefiting businesses and hurting consumers is entirely self-consistent, it's not really worth arguing with you much more. I'll just point out that we have numerous examples of competition benefiting consumers. For example, airline deregulation has led to a sharp reduction in ticket prices. In the unfortunate cases where supposed "privatization" has had ill effects, if you look below the surface it's usually the case that the underlying market is anything but free. For example, internet service where only incumbent providers are allowed to offer operate and new entrants are barred from entrance while costs are subsidized by taxpayers. I suspect that the Australian telecommunications industry falls into that category.

Mz 10y ago

I think we need minimum basic housing a lot more than we need basic income. I think basic income is a problem. We are suffering from "housing inflation" in the US and that is causing serious problems.

morgante 10y ago
> We are suffering from "housing inflation" in the US and that is causing serious problems. No, we really don't. There are huge portions of the country where housing is cheap and plentiful. The problem is that there aren't jobs there. If we had UBI, people could avoid barely scraping by on low-wage jobs in cities and instead thrive in low-cost areas.
- Mz 10y ago
  I do not just mean increased cost. I mean houses have literally gotten bigger on average, while holding fewer people. Meanwhile, supply of affordable housing has shrunk and homelessness is on the rise. http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/money-is-not-wealth.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/money-is-not... http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/minimum-decent-housing-not-minimum-wage.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/minimum-dece...
  - morgante 10y ago
    > I mean houses have literally gotten bigger on average, while holding fewer people. What's wrong with that? In areas where we have plenty of space, it seems perfectly fine. I agree that affordable housing is a major problem. I think UBI would easily solve it because if housing doesn't need to be concentrated in urban areas it's much cheaper to build abundant affordable housing. Heck, there are areas of the country where you could get housing for almost nothing—as long as you didn't need to be tethered to a job in an urban locale.
    - Mz 10y ago
      What is wrong with it is that it is directly related to the lack of affordable housing and rise in homelessness. Even where there is abundant space, it makes homes too expensive for ordinary people with ordinary wages. I supplied two links, stuff I wrote previously. I don't care to get into a pointless internet fight. Suffice it to say I think you are wrong about this. I am not tethered to a job. I have portable income, in spite of being chronically ill and currently homeless. It allowed me to move someplace cheaper, a stepping stone in my plan to get off the street. I think UBI is not a good solution. Gig work done right and more appropriate housing options for our new demographic reality are needed.