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The economic system is at the core of this. People rise to meet opportunities, but jobs have become difficult, rare, and disconnected from purpose or benefit.
by m0llusk 10y ago
The economic system is at the core of this. People rise to meet opportunities, but jobs have become difficult, rare, and disconnected from purpose or benefit.
In the past there were plenty of jobs at all levels but modern business productivity is so high that demand for labor has become specialized and for many has essentially collapsed. What exactly will replace labor is not clear, but some kind of basic income would enable people to pursue meaningful contributions to society outside the dollars per hour context and thus open up many new possibilities.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- adamnemecek 10y agoI think that basic income should be temporary though. Like I'm having a hard time imagining a functioning society where a significant portion of the population is on basic income.
- cloverich 10y agoI think its fuzzy -- and perhaps because its so different, or perhaps because (as you suggest) it may not be realistic. But were it realistic, I'd assume hobbies would be a big part of a well functioning society. I think we'd see at least some blossoming of hobbyists where, free to pursue their highest interests, you'd see some truly spectacular music and art, some people becoming nearly professional at their sport of choice (and more esports). I think there's at least one (and perhaps many) hobbies for everyone, and that many people working and parenting never get around to discovering them. Having only more recently discovered mine, I can tell you I wish i had more time to pursue them!
- smallnamespace 10y agoThere's another problem with basic income: being able to earn an income is a signal of mate quality, and that norm might take a long time to unlearn. While it's better than letting people starve or get food stamps, you might find a large class of young, unemployed males who have trouble getting interest from potential mates. Historically, that's always been recipe for political unrest. And even if there's not, if basic income becomes a thing, I'll bet there is large positive status attached to someone demanding your labor. People on basic will be second-class citizens, and there will always be political pressure from the 'working class' to reduce the drain on the tax base.
- justin 10y agoWe already have large classes of "second class citizens" -- might as well make life more livable for them.
- eddy_chan 10y agoThe whole point of basic income is that it enables such young males to devote their time to pursuing non-monetary goals in music, arts which would signal 'mate quality'. Or longer term monetary goals such as autodidactically acquiring a skill e.g programming and building something. Poor people in the traditional sense would be able to pursue internships without pay to gain skills because they are underpinned by UB. An option not available today. As an employer I could take on more 'apprentices' on UBI, the contract being that I give them training, give them guidance whilst they work 'for free' until a certain point it becomes worthwhile to pay them above and beyond UBI because they're worth it.
- shagie 10y agoThis is known as "bare branches" http://www.ejhs.org/volume15/Bare.html http://www.ejhs.org/volume15/Bare.html
- zhemao 10y agoWell that's a rather euphemistic translation of guan gun. I've always thought of it as "bare stick" or "bare pole". The phallic connotations being 100% intentional.
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- zhemao 10y agoThat would happen anyway. Better that they have their basic needs met but have trouble finding a mate than they have to struggle to survive and have trouble finding a mate.
- Retra 10y agoDid you hear the news? Women have sex drive. Half the men on this planet could be drooling on themselves and they'd still get laid. >Historically, that's always been recipe for political unrest. Historically, unemployed men have no income whatsoever. That's the recipe for political unrest. Not men who "can't compete" for mates, however you imagine that could happen.
- ryandrake 10y agoI guess it depends on your definition of "functioning". People spend 1/3 of their lives at jobs they hate, assuming they are lucky enough to be part of the shrinking group who have employable skills, making barely enough to survive, while the majority of excess value created gets funneled to a smaller and smaller subset of society. That doesn't sound functioning to me (well, it's functioning to the small number of benefactors, I suppose).
- visarga 10y agoIt's not ideal, but it affords a higher level of dignity. People have something (work) to trade for money. After automation, the majority of people will have nothing of value to offer. That would affect their independence and dignity. I believe a better solution would be to put automation in the service of people directly, as property of the people. Maybe small communities would be able to combine work with automation to provide for all their necessities. In the future, a few solar panels, 3D-printers and robots could possibly bootstrap a whole community. Then the role of the government would be to provide the initial technology and to make sure each community has its own bootstrap working in order, not to distribute UBI. People would still have work to do - to supervise automation and work alongside with it, where necessary. Somehow, control and ownership of the means of production (automation) would need to be divided and spread equally in the population, otherwise, it will just detract from the value of people. But if we spread automation ownership, then there could be a new level of independence where a community could provide for all its needs internally and perhaps, even desire more autonomy from the state.
- nylsaar 10y agoPretty sure you just described Technocracy.
- aninhumer 10y agoOne benefit I suspect basic income may have is a vast increase in the quality of jobs. When people are desperate for work, and jobs are hard to find, people will put up with all sorts of bullshit from their employer. When people know they'll be okay regardless, they're much more likely to quit when they get treated like shit. And I suspect for a lot of businesses, the cost of improving working environment may be lower than raising wages. For example, I think "customer is always right" policies cause a lot of employee stress for relatively marginal gains. A less desperate labour force may be willing to take lower wages at a restaurant that lets them tell obnoxious people to GTFO.
- panic 10y agoHow much of Silicon Valley is funded by selling ad space? Just imagine the ads are gone and the money is coming through the government instead. (And yes, I understand that companies would rather spend that money on ads rather than taxes... you can replace the ad industry with any other industry we'd be better off without.)
- WalterSear 10y agoYou are missing the point: everyone gets basic income, regardless of income. So people with nothing have enough to eat and live and people with jobs don't feel like they are being freeloaded - they are getting the same amount of money on top of their salary. People, justifiably, ask how we could possibly pay for all this, but the current US welfare system costs a comparable amount. Moreover, the US financial system is currently set up to allow money inflows to be controlled and to benefit the central banks. A much more sensible and effective method for controlling the velocity of the economy would be to put place monetary inflows into everyone's individual bank accounts, but obviously the people in control aren't going to give up the gravy.
- semigeek 10y agoHonest question; what numbers are you using to say it's a comparable amount? My quick search shows total 2016 expenditures of ~$3.9 Trillion. If you assume welfare is everything non-interest & defense related, that's about $3 Trillion; there's other non-welfare lumped in that number, but let's just use it anyway. That's $9,250 per person.
- zanny 10y agoAlmost every discussion about basic income comes to talking about it as a monetary black hole where you pour trillions in and your society has no reasonable expectation of return, much like military spending. That is not at all how it works. A basic income within reason would almost always be an economic growth mechanism by transferring money from investment class to consumption class. The market for the guaranteed needs of an adopting nations population would be an incredibly large, incredibly stable business center for competition and innovation, and it would increase market participation by eliminating the barrier to entry that is currently made by gated welfare. Of course we need long run, wide spread, UBI experiments. If all you are talking about is "what if" any reasonable scientist would balk at the conversation. But if you take historic evidence - that giving the poor money makes them, by overwhelming margins, and on average, spend it on their needs in predictable, immediate ways, you would be getting similar economic motivator returns on UBI taxes as you would on some forms of infrastructure. And by comparison, infrastructure projects also considered a net positive policy because the money made by businesses using your infrastructure vastly eclipses the costs of building and maintaining it. UBI works the same way, by creating stable demand for the necessities of life, and providing the means for a similar force multiplier in people wanting to contribute optimally to the economy by their own judgment than by the will of money in the hands of others for those individuals profit. Because sometimes, making a major stakeholder in a company richer does not mean the greatest source of economic growth for the society as a whole compared to the entrepreneurial potential of every citizen presently bound to that model.
- billmalarky 10y agoYour imagination is being limited by our current (though rapidly changing) model, which is humans are required for the production of goods and services. Basic income will allow capitalism as we know it (that is, end users making consumption choices, not an organization making choices for the end user) to continue in a society where production is completely automated. Supply is automated, but how does the system know what to produce? Well dollars are basically votes for production and basic income is enfranchisement in such a society. Most importantly, basic income provides a mechanism that can work during the harsh transition from "some highly skilled humans are still needed for production while the majority of people are no longer needed" to "zero humans are needed."
- pkaye 10y agoJapan however has a low unemployment rate.
- laurieg 10y agoDemographically speaking, I think Japan would be the perfect place to test the basic income: A largely homogenous society where there is almost no one from the outside to be seen as a "freeloading", collectivist values forming strong group bonds too. Unfortunately, I have spoken to a lot of people in Japan who are dead against any kind of social security. It's not an unusual to view unemployed and poor people as 100% responsible and worthy of no empathy.
- timwaagh 10y agowhich is likely due to the working conditions of twelve hour days and such. i have trouble empathising with such people myself when i have to put my life 'on hold' to attend a job.
- unprepare 10y agoIsnt Japans population aging quite quickly though? When some concentration of retirement aged people is reached, surely these attitudes will see a decline also? I always hear about how Japan is making robots to take care of the elderly, because there will soon be more elderly than young - so i guess im going off that.
- smsm42 10y agoI wonder if those two things are correlated - i.e. if the society has collectivist values and tolerates no "freeloading", it'd be easy to introduce basic income, technically, but the society would not want to do it.
- nihonde 10y agoI can say from first hand experience that Just about everyone I know in Japan is an A+ student by American standards. That goes for the chief of an aerospace subcontractor right down to the kid behind the counter at 7-11. You might think I'm being hyperbolic, but I'm not.