6 ms·

Instead of income, what about necessities for a modern life? Shelter, safety, medical care, nutrition and internet access? These could be provided at a minimum

by runT1ME 10y ago

Instead of income, what about necessities for a modern life? Shelter, safety, medical care, nutrition and internet access? These could be provided at a minimum instead of the income (ostensibly) designed to be used for these things.

monknomo 10y ago
Of course, giving people money to buy these things is easier and probably cheaper than giving either the things themselves or special vouchers that the merchants for approved necessities can exchange for money. Someone has to administer all of these things and come up with rules for them and monitor compliance. I mean, look at SNAP and the ridiculous recurring argument over what parts of a cow it is permissible to purchase with a voucher. With vouchers, you are ultimately giving someone with a gun the power to enforce that the voucher is spent correctly, with cash you are not (although the why is proving hard to articulate, I'm pretty sure this is true)
- jacalata 10y ago
  Vouchers are central planning (each person should spend this much money on this particular good). Cash is distributed planning.
  - monknomo 10y ago
    That's a pretty catchy way of phrasing what I was trying to get at. I'm pretty sure central planning is inherently coercive and tends to be more expensive than distributed planning. I also think distributed planning is generally more efficient
- runT1ME 10y ago
  No i'm literally talking about eliminating the free market from the equation for the bare necessities. No vouchers, you give people the minimum required nutrition, whoever wants it. Soylent or whatnot. Not vouchers for housing, you build specific housing for this purpose. Basically communism for the bottom rung of society, though anyone is free to participate in the capitalistic parts of society anytime they wish. High wealth individuals coudl just as easily decide to reap the benefits of free housing and/or nutrition. Just a thought.
  - monknomo 10y ago
    That's even harder to do than vouchers. Instead of centrally managing certificates you have an entire country's worth of logistic problems. I can't even begin to imagine the government structure needed to buy store and cart Soylent from Puerto Rico to Alaska. Let alone government built housing keeping up with population distribution changes. I like how your proposal doesn't imply a big public -> private wealth transfer, but I think what you are suggesting is much, much harder than making it rain on everybody
    - monknomo 10y ago
      Hold up on my last line ^ Where do you get the soylent/electricity/housing/phone/internet from? Are you proposing that the government fire up soylent plants, buy power plants, build, own and maintain housing and become a telecom provider? Or is the government going to buy from private companies?
      - Grishnakh 10y ago
        Yep, this is a very bad idea for the most part; these things already exist with private industry, so it's much easier for government to just allocate and distribute money, and let people buy things from existing providers instead of getting the government into the distribution of goods business. There's definitely room for more government regulation, especially with housing (that one's a mess, with all the foreign investors pumping up the realty prices; some simple laws should fix that), and also telecom (basically we need to copy whatever Europe's doing there).
        monknomo 10y ago
        Euro-style telecoms do seem to be kicking US style telecom ass, from a consumer perspective. I know I'm jealous. I think it's hard to untangle foreign investment from local real estate prices without running into some of the US's fundamental "freedom" tenets, but I haven't looked very closely into what we might do. I feel like it is more of a NIMBY problem, most places
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  It depends on what it is. Giving people money to buy food is much easier and cheaper than setting up and administering a system to provide food for people, monitor compliance, etc. Food is available just about anywhere from an enormous number of vendors, producers, suppliers, etc. There's no reason to get government too closely involved there, except of course for food-safety inspections and the like, which we already have. Food is a very competitive industry. Healthcare, on the other hand, is totally different, and we're already seeing how trying to use a free-market approach there just doesn't work. This is an industry that needs some kind of nationalization (like single-payer coverage, plus a lot of regulation to keep costs down). No one calls up 3 different ERs and ambulance companies when they have a heart attack to see which one offers the best price and service.
  - monknomo 10y ago
    I'm on board with central healthcare. I think the government excels at organizing people and distributing people and tasks across the country, but I'm pretty skeptical of their ability to handle inventory or do construction that doesn't lean on private industry (I mean, I'm sure they could, it's just not what the government is set up to do right now) Of course, the military is a great logistics machine, but it's also a specialist branch of the government
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      The military is great at logistics, but it also doesn't do any construction (unless it's on a battlefield): all that stuff is contracted out, as is manufacturing of weapons. They have a big hand in the nitty-gritty details of these things, but ultimately they're done by private companies. Government doesn't even need to be in the healthcare business per se: that can all be done by private providers. Government's role is to regulate it to keep costs down (similar to however they do it in places like Belgium), and to provide the funding. If Belgium can do it, we should be able to do it too. But maybe we need to hire the Belgians to help us set up the system....
pesfandiar 10y ago
I haven't given a lot of thought to basic income, but coming from a third-world country, I immediately think of how that can lead to corruption, nepotism, and unfairness in general. (e.g. who gets higher-valued real estate?)
- mod 10y ago
  Also not a lot of thought, but my immediate reaction would be that none of the land that was "given away" (or provided to people) would be high value whatsoever. Basically just plots of land with viable homes, community space, no outright ownership. Private land would remain private. Of course, then you have "slums," essentially, and problems that come with that.
  - aminorex 10y ago
    They are not slums when the people are not living in poverty.
    - mod 10y ago
      Basic income would not lift people out of poverty.
      - SZJX 10y ago
        What's the very definition of "poverty"? Having no money for even the basic necessities. By its very definition, basic income deals with that. Surely there are drug addicts etc. who would just be fucked no matter whether they have money or not. But if you genuinely believe that every poor man is like that, you're way too brainwashed by the rightist elitist BS justifications for their own wealth, my friend.
    - matthewhall 10y ago
      There will be people in poverty when they spend their basic income checks on drugs...
geezerjay 10y ago
> These could be provided at a minimum Not this story again. If you provide any of those "at a minimum" then only the "minimum" will be available to the people, and those who will define what the minimum is will be those who have nothing to gain by providing those goods and services, and everythin to gain by cutting all costs and expenses right to the bone. Moreover, is it really necessary to point out the dangers of letting the state gain control over who accesses to the internet?
- justratsinacoat 10y ago
  This seems like a strange objection, relying as it does on "the gain" made by those who control what the "minimum" is. Postulates A2 and A3, which are assumed to hold for this question, make any savings from the cut "costs and expenses" seem a bit ridiculous. The state can control who can access the Internet even now, via the courts, should it decide someone needs to get b&. I'm not sure why a surfeit of every possible resource is going to make the government get more totalitarian. If the unrolled form of this argument is "human social competitiveness is impossible to extinguish, and even in the presence of historically unprecedented AI-based plenty, those who desire power will subjugate those they deem lesser, for the hell of it", then this makes a whole lot more sense.

by runT1ME 10y ago

monknomo 10y ago

Of course, giving people money to buy these things is easier and probably cheaper than giving either the things themselves or special vouchers that the merchants for approved necessities can exchange for money. Someone has to administer all of these things and come up with rules for them and monitor compliance. I mean, look at SNAP and the ridiculous recurring argument over what parts of a cow it is permissible to purchase with a voucher. With vouchers, you are ultimately giving someone with a gun the power to enforce that the voucher is spent correctly, with cash you are not (although the why is proving hard to articulate, I'm pretty sure this is true)

jacalata 10y ago
Vouchers are central planning (each person should spend this much money on this particular good). Cash is distributed planning.
- monknomo 10y ago
  That's a pretty catchy way of phrasing what I was trying to get at. I'm pretty sure central planning is inherently coercive and tends to be more expensive than distributed planning. I also think distributed planning is generally more efficient
runT1ME 10y ago
No i'm literally talking about eliminating the free market from the equation for the bare necessities. No vouchers, you give people the minimum required nutrition, whoever wants it. Soylent or whatnot. Not vouchers for housing, you build specific housing for this purpose. Basically communism for the bottom rung of society, though anyone is free to participate in the capitalistic parts of society anytime they wish. High wealth individuals coudl just as easily decide to reap the benefits of free housing and/or nutrition. Just a thought.
- monknomo 10y ago
  That's even harder to do than vouchers. Instead of centrally managing certificates you have an entire country's worth of logistic problems. I can't even begin to imagine the government structure needed to buy store and cart Soylent from Puerto Rico to Alaska. Let alone government built housing keeping up with population distribution changes. I like how your proposal doesn't imply a big public -> private wealth transfer, but I think what you are suggesting is much, much harder than making it rain on everybody
  - monknomo 10y ago
    Hold up on my last line ^ Where do you get the soylent/electricity/housing/phone/internet from? Are you proposing that the government fire up soylent plants, buy power plants, build, own and maintain housing and become a telecom provider? Or is the government going to buy from private companies?
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      Yep, this is a very bad idea for the most part; these things already exist with private industry, so it's much easier for government to just allocate and distribute money, and let people buy things from existing providers instead of getting the government into the distribution of goods business. There's definitely room for more government regulation, especially with housing (that one's a mess, with all the foreign investors pumping up the realty prices; some simple laws should fix that), and also telecom (basically we need to copy whatever Europe's doing there).
      - monknomo 10y ago
        Euro-style telecoms do seem to be kicking US style telecom ass, from a consumer perspective. I know I'm jealous. I think it's hard to untangle foreign investment from local real estate prices without running into some of the US's fundamental "freedom" tenets, but I haven't looked very closely into what we might do. I feel like it is more of a NIMBY problem, most places
Grishnakh 10y ago
It depends on what it is. Giving people money to buy food is much easier and cheaper than setting up and administering a system to provide food for people, monitor compliance, etc. Food is available just about anywhere from an enormous number of vendors, producers, suppliers, etc. There's no reason to get government too closely involved there, except of course for food-safety inspections and the like, which we already have. Food is a very competitive industry. Healthcare, on the other hand, is totally different, and we're already seeing how trying to use a free-market approach there just doesn't work. This is an industry that needs some kind of nationalization (like single-payer coverage, plus a lot of regulation to keep costs down). No one calls up 3 different ERs and ambulance companies when they have a heart attack to see which one offers the best price and service.
- monknomo 10y ago
  I'm on board with central healthcare. I think the government excels at organizing people and distributing people and tasks across the country, but I'm pretty skeptical of their ability to handle inventory or do construction that doesn't lean on private industry (I mean, I'm sure they could, it's just not what the government is set up to do right now) Of course, the military is a great logistics machine, but it's also a specialist branch of the government
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    The military is great at logistics, but it also doesn't do any construction (unless it's on a battlefield): all that stuff is contracted out, as is manufacturing of weapons. They have a big hand in the nitty-gritty details of these things, but ultimately they're done by private companies. Government doesn't even need to be in the healthcare business per se: that can all be done by private providers. Government's role is to regulate it to keep costs down (similar to however they do it in places like Belgium), and to provide the funding. If Belgium can do it, we should be able to do it too. But maybe we need to hire the Belgians to help us set up the system....

pesfandiar 10y ago

I haven't given a lot of thought to basic income, but coming from a third-world country, I immediately think of how that can lead to corruption, nepotism, and unfairness in general. (e.g. who gets higher-valued real estate?)

mod 10y ago
Also not a lot of thought, but my immediate reaction would be that none of the land that was "given away" (or provided to people) would be high value whatsoever. Basically just plots of land with viable homes, community space, no outright ownership. Private land would remain private. Of course, then you have "slums," essentially, and problems that come with that.
- aminorex 10y ago
  They are not slums when the people are not living in poverty.
  - mod 10y ago
    Basic income would not lift people out of poverty.
    - SZJX 10y ago
      What's the very definition of "poverty"? Having no money for even the basic necessities. By its very definition, basic income deals with that. Surely there are drug addicts etc. who would just be fucked no matter whether they have money or not. But if you genuinely believe that every poor man is like that, you're way too brainwashed by the rightist elitist BS justifications for their own wealth, my friend.
  - matthewhall 10y ago
    There will be people in poverty when they spend their basic income checks on drugs...

geezerjay 10y ago

> These could be provided at a minimum Not this story again. If you provide any of those "at a minimum" then only the "minimum" will be available to the people, and those who will define what the minimum is will be those who have nothing to gain by providing those goods and services, and everythin to gain by cutting all costs and expenses right to the bone. Moreover, is it really necessary to point out the dangers of letting the state gain control over who accesses to the internet?

justratsinacoat 10y ago
This seems like a strange objection, relying as it does on "the gain" made by those who control what the "minimum" is. Postulates A2 and A3, which are assumed to hold for this question, make any savings from the cut "costs and expenses" seem a bit ridiculous. The state can control who can access the Internet even now, via the courts, should it decide someone needs to get b&. I'm not sure why a surfeit of every possible resource is going to make the government get more totalitarian. If the unrolled form of this argument is "human social competitiveness is impossible to extinguish, and even in the presence of historically unprecedented AI-based plenty, those who desire power will subjugate those they deem lesser, for the hell of it", then this makes a whole lot more sense.