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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

by 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
  > I do think that's an interesting point. It's really not. The system you've described is literally how the Soviet union operated, and is in fact the norm for poverty reduction programs today (ex. public housing, public healthcare, etc.). Without competition, programs inevitably acquire bloat and siphon off money to those with political connections. It's ironic that you mention China as an effective example of communism when most of their growth has come since moving more towards a free market. What exactly do you think is the advantage of the government directly providing services? Please don't inflict a communist nightmare on the rest of us.
  - contingencies 10y ago
    It's really not You are entitled to an opinion, but it is no more correct than any other. how the Soviet union operated I believe that we have new technology, statistical and information literacy in the population, and technical and social means of validating the actions of government now. Though I wouldn't suggest this in practice, it would for example be possible to run UBI-style services on a smart-contract system off a blockchain... It's ironic that you mention China as an effective example of communism I didn't mention communism. I think you are conflating anything state-operated with "evil socialist-communist-coldwar Russian China Cuba impending failure!" in the way Americans often do, very much untruly. What I said was that China has some good modern examples of strong achievements from centralist planning on a society, which is true, as I live there and see them first hand. In the last few decades China has established the best network of infrastructure in the world, the most electric vehicles, and has pulled the highest number of people out of illiteracy and poverty of any country or political period ever in the entire history of humanity. That's pretty impressive by any measure. What exactly do you think is the advantage of the government directly providing services? As discussed, potentially a direct service model can offer better capacity to account for the ultimate use of resources allocated through such programs, as well as less waste through discouraging hoarding and providing more efficient allocation. In addition, there is probably a psychological benefit to such an approach since, as Kennedy's speech posted above indicates so eloquently, economic figures so often miss the point. Happiness, health, purpose, safety, comfort, wellbeing, education. These are not things you can simply buy on a national scale by giving token quantities of money to people.

by ap22213 10y ago

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
> I do think that's an interesting point. It's really not. The system you've described is literally how the Soviet union operated, and is in fact the norm for poverty reduction programs today (ex. public housing, public healthcare, etc.). Without competition, programs inevitably acquire bloat and siphon off money to those with political connections. It's ironic that you mention China as an effective example of communism when most of their growth has come since moving more towards a free market. What exactly do you think is the advantage of the government directly providing services? Please don't inflict a communist nightmare on the rest of us.
- contingencies 10y ago
  It's really not You are entitled to an opinion, but it is no more correct than any other. how the Soviet union operated I believe that we have new technology, statistical and information literacy in the population, and technical and social means of validating the actions of government now. Though I wouldn't suggest this in practice, it would for example be possible to run UBI-style services on a smart-contract system off a blockchain... It's ironic that you mention China as an effective example of communism I didn't mention communism. I think you are conflating anything state-operated with "evil socialist-communist-coldwar Russian China Cuba impending failure!" in the way Americans often do, very much untruly. What I said was that China has some good modern examples of strong achievements from centralist planning on a society, which is true, as I live there and see them first hand. In the last few decades China has established the best network of infrastructure in the world, the most electric vehicles, and has pulled the highest number of people out of illiteracy and poverty of any country or political period ever in the entire history of humanity. That's pretty impressive by any measure. What exactly do you think is the advantage of the government directly providing services? As discussed, potentially a direct service model can offer better capacity to account for the ultimate use of resources allocated through such programs, as well as less waste through discouraging hoarding and providing more efficient allocation. In addition, there is probably a psychological benefit to such an approach since, as Kennedy's speech posted above indicates so eloquently, economic figures so often miss the point. Happiness, health, purpose, safety, comfort, wellbeing, education. These are not things you can simply buy on a national scale by giving token quantities of money to people.