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> On the right is the infamous voucher system. It has been widely experimented, often with negative results, in fields such as education. The principle is to pr

> On the right is the infamous voucher system. It has been widely experimented, often with negative results, in fields such as education. The principle is to provide individuals with money and let them find providers on a lightly regulated market. Vouchers often deliver poor performance. The money distributed contributes to inflating the prices as the price elasticity of supply is negative—if only because nobody’s sure that the vouchers will last (everything depends on the next round of elections). Those with lesser means, having only the voucher to spend, are thus trapped with the worst providers (or no provider at all, despite the voucher), while the richest pay on top of the vouchers to secure access to the best offer, contributing even more to inflating prices. On the left, we find the giant social bureaucracy we are all fed up with. The quintessential bureaucratic social state is the British National Health Service (NHS). The advantage of a system such as the treasured NHS is that it guarantees everyone access to affordable and professional care providers whatever your location and your income level. The painful problem, which turned the NHS into a thorn in the side of every British government, is that in the current context of tax revolt, hatred of government, and fiscal austerity, the quality of the experience provided by the NHS can only go down, with longer waiting lines, less customized care, and ultimately a vicious circle in which everybody loses, patients as well as professionals. On one side, it's economically unsound, and will require massive taxation to be sustainable. Otherwise, it will only work until all the Angels run out of money, then it will cause massive inflation. Mathematically, there are no other options. Second, who's going to administer it? Governments, being made from people, are notorious for corruption and scandal, and poor service.

inflagranti 10y ago
Unlike which other entities exactly that are not made by people!? I guess you mean private companies which are always well run (how many banks had to be bailed out?), never susceptible to corruption (VW comes to mind just recently) and offer great customer service (any cable company ever)...
- geezerjay 10y ago
  > Unlike which other entities exactly that are not made by people!? You've missed the point. The point is that the foundation of the basic income concept is that the income redistribution scheme works flawlessly and according to the people's expectations. This assumption is patently false, as the system is established and managed by people, particularly elected officials and the regime's apparatchiks, who have a long and plentiful resume of manipulating, distorting and corrupting the state to fit their own personal agendas. I can tell you exactly what happened in my country's income redistribution scheme. It is supposed to be entirely independent of the state and self-managed. Yet' somehow the ruling regime managed to manipulate the system to finance golden parachutes to the nation's career politicians (golden pensions paid off to people who never contributed to the scheme) as well as forcing it as a cash cow to the state as a exceedingly cheap source of state loans. And it is supposed to be a simple system where worker contributes 1/3 of their salary to finance pensions and unemployment benefits. That's what these organizations made by people are used for, in reality, and reality always trumps fiction.
  - inflagranti 10y ago
    Maybe that was his point, it was absolutely not what he wrote though. I won't contest that any redistribution scheme will not work flawlessly, but nor will anything else! So if the argument is, it won't work because it's run by people, that's just silly, as any alternative will have the same 'limitation'. Now again, the fact that there is corruption in many countries and money is used wrongly simply means there might be initial or additional work be done, but it definitely does not mean it's inherently not possible, there are plenty of government with low corruption, too. Finally, what's the alternative? Let the market work and private companies, which I highlighted have the exact same flaws as the government, possibly just on a smaller scale!? Just putting our heads in the sand and saying this will never work is not a way forward, unless you think of course there's no problem in the first place.
alanwatts 10y ago
>On one side, it's economically unsound Actually, it is more economically unsound to maintain poverty in the midst of plenty (i.e, in the US there lies ~6 empty homes for every homeless person), if you consider the external effects. Poverty inevitably leads to violence, drug abuse, disease, overpopulation, war, and other erratic behaviors. How much more do we spend on bureaucracy in vain attempts to mitigate these resulting effects? Prevention is far more cost effective than maintenance in this case.
d4rti 10y ago
The NHS overall works pretty damn well. US insurance complexity wastes at least as much as NHS management. The NHS is also great value, costing us far less for universal healthcare than the US government spends on healthcare. The NHS is also amazingly popular, and until the ideological austerity movement was pretty much getting better. I'm not sure why so many people in the US think that government cannot run things effectively. The NHS is a great example. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than the alternatives? Clearly.
SubiculumCode 10y ago
Given the nature of fiat currencies, taxes are irrelevant except as a means to control inflation by removing excess circulating currency. Moreover, a certain quantity of currency in circulation leads to inflation only relative to a given capacity to produce goods and services. Given that our economic system sees only very limited inflation, and can quickly ramp up production further, your arguments seem mostly strawmen.
- stephengillie 10y ago
  Removing excess currency is entirely the point - our economic system sees very little inflation because we have a tax infrastructure consuming part of the money supply. Not all services can scale infinitely, so you will always have scarcity - and you can always use FOMO and other game mechanics to introduce artificial scarcity into infinite systems. Some goods and services will always be more inelastic than others, and so inflation will start there and spiral out of control, as those producers monopolize markets.
  - SubiculumCode 10y ago
    Well many do not recognize that taxes are a mechanism for controlling inflation, so this point was not targeted at you, obviously. I suppose that my previous comment's wording could be construed as assuming we couldexist in a post-scarcity economy. That was not intentional. However, universal basic income does not require a post-scarcity framework to be workable, and the claim that universal basic income will cause inflation to 'spiral out of control' is left unsupported. Money is currently created out of nothing through the banking system, and the FED controls inflation just fine through various mechanisms e.g. setting interest rates. Basic income proposals can have similar inflation controlling mechanisms e.g. tie payouts to inflation rate or changes in tax rate. In any case inflatuon caused by basic income could be offset by increasing the fed interest rate which is currently near zero.
SubiculumCode 10y ago
Given the nature of fiat currencies, taxes are irrelevant except as a means to control inflation by removing excess circulating currency. Moreover, a certain quantity of currency in circulation leads to inflation only relative to a given capacity to produce goods and services. Given that our economic system sees only very limited inflation, and can quickly ramp up production further, your arguments seem mostly strawmen.
naasking 10y ago
> On one side, it's economically unsound Dubious claim. Most serious proposals are largely revenue neutral and simply redistribute. > and will require massive taxation to be sustainable. Not anymore than already exists. > Second, who's going to administer it? Governments, being made from people, are notorious for corruption and scandal, and poor service. It requires no new infrastructure if given as a tax rebate. It also introduces no additional corruption than already exists via tax loopholes. Centralizing all debate and scrutiny over corruption in one location is a benefit of the proposal, not a problem.

inflagranti 10y ago

Unlike which other entities exactly that are not made by people!? I guess you mean private companies which are always well run (how many banks had to be bailed out?), never susceptible to corruption (VW comes to mind just recently) and offer great customer service (any cable company ever)...

geezerjay 10y ago
> Unlike which other entities exactly that are not made by people!? You've missed the point. The point is that the foundation of the basic income concept is that the income redistribution scheme works flawlessly and according to the people's expectations. This assumption is patently false, as the system is established and managed by people, particularly elected officials and the regime's apparatchiks, who have a long and plentiful resume of manipulating, distorting and corrupting the state to fit their own personal agendas. I can tell you exactly what happened in my country's income redistribution scheme. It is supposed to be entirely independent of the state and self-managed. Yet' somehow the ruling regime managed to manipulate the system to finance golden parachutes to the nation's career politicians (golden pensions paid off to people who never contributed to the scheme) as well as forcing it as a cash cow to the state as a exceedingly cheap source of state loans. And it is supposed to be a simple system where worker contributes 1/3 of their salary to finance pensions and unemployment benefits. That's what these organizations made by people are used for, in reality, and reality always trumps fiction.
- inflagranti 10y ago
  Maybe that was his point, it was absolutely not what he wrote though. I won't contest that any redistribution scheme will not work flawlessly, but nor will anything else! So if the argument is, it won't work because it's run by people, that's just silly, as any alternative will have the same 'limitation'. Now again, the fact that there is corruption in many countries and money is used wrongly simply means there might be initial or additional work be done, but it definitely does not mean it's inherently not possible, there are plenty of government with low corruption, too. Finally, what's the alternative? Let the market work and private companies, which I highlighted have the exact same flaws as the government, possibly just on a smaller scale!? Just putting our heads in the sand and saying this will never work is not a way forward, unless you think of course there's no problem in the first place.

alanwatts 10y ago

>On one side, it's economically unsound Actually, it is more economically unsound to maintain poverty in the midst of plenty (i.e, in the US there lies ~6 empty homes for every homeless person), if you consider the external effects. Poverty inevitably leads to violence, drug abuse, disease, overpopulation, war, and other erratic behaviors. How much more do we spend on bureaucracy in vain attempts to mitigate these resulting effects? Prevention is far more cost effective than maintenance in this case.

d4rti 10y ago

The NHS overall works pretty damn well. US insurance complexity wastes at least as much as NHS management. The NHS is also great value, costing us far less for universal healthcare than the US government spends on healthcare. The NHS is also amazingly popular, and until the ideological austerity movement was pretty much getting better. I'm not sure why so many people in the US think that government cannot run things effectively. The NHS is a great example. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than the alternatives? Clearly.

SubiculumCode 10y ago

Given the nature of fiat currencies, taxes are irrelevant except as a means to control inflation by removing excess circulating currency. Moreover, a certain quantity of currency in circulation leads to inflation only relative to a given capacity to produce goods and services. Given that our economic system sees only very limited inflation, and can quickly ramp up production further, your arguments seem mostly strawmen.

stephengillie 10y ago
Removing excess currency is entirely the point - our economic system sees very little inflation because we have a tax infrastructure consuming part of the money supply. Not all services can scale infinitely, so you will always have scarcity - and you can always use FOMO and other game mechanics to introduce artificial scarcity into infinite systems. Some goods and services will always be more inelastic than others, and so inflation will start there and spiral out of control, as those producers monopolize markets.
- SubiculumCode 10y ago
  Well many do not recognize that taxes are a mechanism for controlling inflation, so this point was not targeted at you, obviously. I suppose that my previous comment's wording could be construed as assuming we couldexist in a post-scarcity economy. That was not intentional. However, universal basic income does not require a post-scarcity framework to be workable, and the claim that universal basic income will cause inflation to 'spiral out of control' is left unsupported. Money is currently created out of nothing through the banking system, and the FED controls inflation just fine through various mechanisms e.g. setting interest rates. Basic income proposals can have similar inflation controlling mechanisms e.g. tie payouts to inflation rate or changes in tax rate. In any case inflatuon caused by basic income could be offset by increasing the fed interest rate which is currently near zero.

SubiculumCode 10y ago

naasking 10y ago

> On one side, it's economically unsound Dubious claim. Most serious proposals are largely revenue neutral and simply redistribute. > and will require massive taxation to be sustainable. Not anymore than already exists. > Second, who's going to administer it? Governments, being made from people, are notorious for corruption and scandal, and poor service. It requires no new infrastructure if given as a tax rebate. It also introduces no additional corruption than already exists via tax loopholes. Centralizing all debate and scrutiny over corruption in one location is a benefit of the proposal, not a problem.