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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

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.

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.