7 ms·

Basic income is better because you provide people with the money to feed themselves while preserving the free market and all its benefits (efficiency, choice, e

Basic income is better because you provide people with the money to feed themselves while preserving the free market and all its benefits (efficiency, choice, etc). We see over and over that cash assistance is preferable to providing goods (like food or housing) directly.

devoply 10y ago
The "free" market with companies under heavy competition looking to make consumers into fatty addicts obvious fails in many ways. The choice which is available is often extremely unhealthy and dominated by a few conglomerates. So though the argument for the free market works for many things, I think there is ample proof that it does not produce good outcomes for food. It's optimized to produce cheap, addictive food because that's what the people crave. Much like Brawndo.
- afarrell 10y ago
  It does not produce good outcomes for food you believe others should eat. But it produces enough of a variety and abundance of foods to serve a variety of needs from celiac to halal to vegan to allergies. How do you propose to do better by having the government mandate specific foods?
  - devoply 10y ago
    The variations you are talking about are not really variations, they are mostly marketing variations mixing the same stuff to produce things that appear different in the minds of consumers, but are really variations of the same thing. Our choice of food is severely limited, i.e. everything is made from corn. The variation of crops planted to feed our limited choice is again a mono-culture and optimized for profit, not for the environment or food diversity or animal rights. We have bad diets in general, any dietitian will tell you that. I don't propose the government mandate anything. I propose the government give out good, healthy food for free. The market can continue to compete for people who wish to participate in it. Food is already subsidized heavily. So what if we give a certain amount of it for free to anyone who wants it.
    - afarrell 10y ago
      That would raise the cost of healthy food if it is done wastefully. If the government purchases produce, that bids the price upward. If the produce is unconsumed and then rots, then there is no countervailing downward pressure on price. This would lead to lower dietary consumption of produce. So the burden is on you to propose a system that would be less-wasteful than our current method of destributing produce. Government-run systems can be more efficient (see: NHS), but the details matter. EDIT: by details, I mean the specifics of "give people food". If putting it on their doorstep every morning, is it already cooked? Who chooses what is in the packages? How do you know how many people live somewhere? Can I use the unretreived packages to find empty houses to rob?
      - devoply 10y ago
        Here it is. An extremely lean supply chain from farmer or producer to consumer facilitated by automation, probably drones or whatever. A website to order whatever you want and have it delivered to you in a day or two. Works on-demand with a JIT supply chain. Works with the market as the farmer or producer that agrees to such a program still supplies the normal market, and the government pays for the free food according to a certain allowance per citizen. System chooses supplier based on price offered or whatever criteria, for instance shipping cost, to optimize for cost.
    - tpm 10y ago
      Government giving out food = introducing inefficiency, throwing away valuable information flows. This may be reasonable in some cases (food banks/stamps for the poor), but in others, you will inevitably end up with unfortunate effects like people taking free 'healthy' food and feeding it to the pigs to support their 'unhealthy' cravings.
- lend000 10y ago
  The market isn't free; there are government farm subsidies in all the wrong places. It's no coincidence that cheap junk food is built on a subsidized corn industry.
  - devoply 10y ago
    Even if there were no subsidies, the market would still optimize for what people crave. Cheap addictive food.
    - damptowel 10y ago
      Humans are still hardwired for the state of nature where high caloric foods are a scarcity, evolution has not caught up yet. It is very silly and unrealistic to suggest that raising the profit motive above others will bring out the best results in every sphere of human endeavours.
- jlarocco 10y ago
  It's dubious to blame obesity on the free market. At the end of the day eating well and staying healthy is a personal responsibility. In most cities and towns there are just as many healthy options available as there are unhealthy options, and most of the time it's no more expensive (or even cheaper) to eat well than it is to buy junk. Fact of the matter is, a lot of people choose to eat poorly. I strongly disagree with the concept that another person knows better than I do which food I should eat or how I should otherwise live my life. That said, there should be more education around nutrition. Even free healthy food doesn't help anything if people are too dumb to choose it over junk.
  - devoply 10y ago
    > At the end of the day eating well and staying healthy is a personal responsibility. A significant portion of human beings are wired for addiction. It's a fiction to claim that people are all free and are responsible for every choice that they make. We for instance control market on all drugs that have any potential for addiction, food has a potential for addiction for lots of people. If people are so free to choose to stay healthy and eat well, then why are all drugs not freely available to anyone who wants them. Opiates, benzos, etc. No one is saying that anyone else should tell you what to eat. I am simply saying that free food that is healthy should be freely available. No friction and no excuses to not eat healthy. And economically there is a huge incentive to eat that free food as it's free.
    - jlarocco 10y ago
      Drugs are kind of a straw man, but FWIW, I think those should be legal too. I'd rather my tax money not be spent baby sitting people. But they are a great example of just how useless it is trying to control people. Heroin is illegal, yet overdoses are at an all time high. A lot of people only end up on heroin because it's so difficult to get less powerful opiate pain killers. Prohibition doesn't work. People are going to do what they want to do anyway. Some portion of the population are going to make really stupid decisions no matter what. The rest of us need to get over it and stop trying to "help" them if they don't want it.
  - 10y ago
toomuchtodo 10y ago
As long as you build the proper taxation into bad foods, to pay for their higher healthcare costs (soda tax). Basic income doesn't remove the need for proper economic signaling.
- lend000 10y ago
  Economic signaling based on opinion of good/bad is the bane of the free market. Pollution tax: yes; you are being taxed for affecting others. Soda tax: no; you are hurting no one but yourself, and it is a stretch to say otherwise. Not that we should be providing government healthcare anyway. But to the previous commenter's point, free food is exactly how you end up with famines. We are NOT beyond the era of great famines. Food production rose faster than population in the 20th century but there is only so much land, so much sunlight. It will catch up. When there are good times, people multiply. Poverty is inherent to nature -- some bears are born rich (big and strong), while others scrape by their entire lives, and may or may not reproduce. If they all had as much salmon as they wanted, their population would increase until there was poverty again. Same principle, in the long term at least. Only workaround is eugenics, and I would rather have freedom to reproduce and poverty than totalitarianism and the "theoretical promise" of no poverty.
  - woofyman 10y ago
    >Not that we should be providing government healthcare anyway. I believe that healthcare is a basic human right.
    - lend000 10y ago
      /s? It's a service. A product. It didn't even exist 200 years ago. There is certainly nothing fundamental about it.
      - lend000 10y ago
        Because I think it's really important people stop thinking healthcare is a fundamental human right: Somebody has to provide healthcare for you. There is limited supply. There is INFINITE demand. That's right, infinite demand. People demand exponentially more healthcare as they get closer to death, and the majority of a person's lifelong costs are incurred in the final year of their life. The entire healthcare sector couldn't keep one person alive forever, and there is a diminishing return on each dollar that is spent on keeping a dying person alive for another hour (measured in hours/$).
matthewaveryusa 10y ago
Perhaps a hybrid of the two is good. Some form of basic income coupled with a basic food box, not unlike how the Finnish maternity boxes operate[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternity_package https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternity_package
dispose13432 10y ago
The thing with basic income is that I'm not sure it's currently practical: The US has a bit over 315 million people. To pay everyone minimum (barely livable) wage, every person should get $15,000 ( http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-are-annual-earnings-full-time-minimum-wage-worker http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-are-annual-earnings-full... ). That's $4.5 trillion per year. The GDP of the US is 16.77 trillion. So unless we have close to 100% tax on above-(federal) minimum wage, UBI won't work.
- gpm 10y ago
  If we're comparing free food to basic income, the comparison should be against basic income that's just enough to feed yourself. Somewhere around $1000/person. Even if you want full basic income, I'd argue that $15,000 is high. As a (Canadian) student in an expensive city my living expenses (everything but tuition) are easily under $10,000 USD. Using the numbers you linked we're almost certainly talking about less than $8,000/person to keep everyone above the poverty line (the exact number depends on what the average family unit looks like, which I don't know). (All numbers per year)
  - dispose13432 10y ago
    > my living expenses (everything but tuition) are easily under $10,000 USD You rent a room or have a few room-mates? New York (which has skyscrapers) average rent is $3000 a month for a one bedroom apartment. https://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/map-of-average-rent-by-nyc-neighborhood-is-as-depressing-as-youd-expect-082115 https://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/map-of-average-rent-by-... There's a reason minimum wage is so high, and it's not because the government is so generous.
    - gpm 10y ago
      I have a roommate (which really means shared kitchen, separate bedrooms and bathrooms). New york is a really expensive place to live, the conclusion is that people who are relying on only basic income shouldn't live there. Likewise living alone is expensive. The conclusion is people living only on basic income shouldn't (especially if they are living somewhere which is already well above average pricing wise). Basic income isn't "everyone lives a luxurious life", it's "everyone can afford food, clothes, and a roof over their heads".

devoply 10y ago

The "free" market with companies under heavy competition looking to make consumers into fatty addicts obvious fails in many ways. The choice which is available is often extremely unhealthy and dominated by a few conglomerates. So though the argument for the free market works for many things, I think there is ample proof that it does not produce good outcomes for food. It's optimized to produce cheap, addictive food because that's what the people crave. Much like Brawndo.

afarrell 10y ago
It does not produce good outcomes for food you believe others should eat. But it produces enough of a variety and abundance of foods to serve a variety of needs from celiac to halal to vegan to allergies. How do you propose to do better by having the government mandate specific foods?
- devoply 10y ago
  The variations you are talking about are not really variations, they are mostly marketing variations mixing the same stuff to produce things that appear different in the minds of consumers, but are really variations of the same thing. Our choice of food is severely limited, i.e. everything is made from corn. The variation of crops planted to feed our limited choice is again a mono-culture and optimized for profit, not for the environment or food diversity or animal rights. We have bad diets in general, any dietitian will tell you that. I don't propose the government mandate anything. I propose the government give out good, healthy food for free. The market can continue to compete for people who wish to participate in it. Food is already subsidized heavily. So what if we give a certain amount of it for free to anyone who wants it.
  - afarrell 10y ago
    That would raise the cost of healthy food if it is done wastefully. If the government purchases produce, that bids the price upward. If the produce is unconsumed and then rots, then there is no countervailing downward pressure on price. This would lead to lower dietary consumption of produce. So the burden is on you to propose a system that would be less-wasteful than our current method of destributing produce. Government-run systems can be more efficient (see: NHS), but the details matter. EDIT: by details, I mean the specifics of "give people food". If putting it on their doorstep every morning, is it already cooked? Who chooses what is in the packages? How do you know how many people live somewhere? Can I use the unretreived packages to find empty houses to rob?
    - devoply 10y ago
      Here it is. An extremely lean supply chain from farmer or producer to consumer facilitated by automation, probably drones or whatever. A website to order whatever you want and have it delivered to you in a day or two. Works on-demand with a JIT supply chain. Works with the market as the farmer or producer that agrees to such a program still supplies the normal market, and the government pays for the free food according to a certain allowance per citizen. System chooses supplier based on price offered or whatever criteria, for instance shipping cost, to optimize for cost.
  - tpm 10y ago
    Government giving out food = introducing inefficiency, throwing away valuable information flows. This may be reasonable in some cases (food banks/stamps for the poor), but in others, you will inevitably end up with unfortunate effects like people taking free 'healthy' food and feeding it to the pigs to support their 'unhealthy' cravings.
lend000 10y ago
The market isn't free; there are government farm subsidies in all the wrong places. It's no coincidence that cheap junk food is built on a subsidized corn industry.
- devoply 10y ago
  Even if there were no subsidies, the market would still optimize for what people crave. Cheap addictive food.
  - damptowel 10y ago
    Humans are still hardwired for the state of nature where high caloric foods are a scarcity, evolution has not caught up yet. It is very silly and unrealistic to suggest that raising the profit motive above others will bring out the best results in every sphere of human endeavours.
jlarocco 10y ago
It's dubious to blame obesity on the free market. At the end of the day eating well and staying healthy is a personal responsibility. In most cities and towns there are just as many healthy options available as there are unhealthy options, and most of the time it's no more expensive (or even cheaper) to eat well than it is to buy junk. Fact of the matter is, a lot of people choose to eat poorly. I strongly disagree with the concept that another person knows better than I do which food I should eat or how I should otherwise live my life. That said, there should be more education around nutrition. Even free healthy food doesn't help anything if people are too dumb to choose it over junk.
- devoply 10y ago
  > At the end of the day eating well and staying healthy is a personal responsibility. A significant portion of human beings are wired for addiction. It's a fiction to claim that people are all free and are responsible for every choice that they make. We for instance control market on all drugs that have any potential for addiction, food has a potential for addiction for lots of people. If people are so free to choose to stay healthy and eat well, then why are all drugs not freely available to anyone who wants them. Opiates, benzos, etc. No one is saying that anyone else should tell you what to eat. I am simply saying that free food that is healthy should be freely available. No friction and no excuses to not eat healthy. And economically there is a huge incentive to eat that free food as it's free.
  - jlarocco 10y ago
    Drugs are kind of a straw man, but FWIW, I think those should be legal too. I'd rather my tax money not be spent baby sitting people. But they are a great example of just how useless it is trying to control people. Heroin is illegal, yet overdoses are at an all time high. A lot of people only end up on heroin because it's so difficult to get less powerful opiate pain killers. Prohibition doesn't work. People are going to do what they want to do anyway. Some portion of the population are going to make really stupid decisions no matter what. The rest of us need to get over it and stop trying to "help" them if they don't want it.
- 10y ago

toomuchtodo 10y ago

As long as you build the proper taxation into bad foods, to pay for their higher healthcare costs (soda tax). Basic income doesn't remove the need for proper economic signaling.

lend000 10y ago
Economic signaling based on opinion of good/bad is the bane of the free market. Pollution tax: yes; you are being taxed for affecting others. Soda tax: no; you are hurting no one but yourself, and it is a stretch to say otherwise. Not that we should be providing government healthcare anyway. But to the previous commenter's point, free food is exactly how you end up with famines. We are NOT beyond the era of great famines. Food production rose faster than population in the 20th century but there is only so much land, so much sunlight. It will catch up. When there are good times, people multiply. Poverty is inherent to nature -- some bears are born rich (big and strong), while others scrape by their entire lives, and may or may not reproduce. If they all had as much salmon as they wanted, their population would increase until there was poverty again. Same principle, in the long term at least. Only workaround is eugenics, and I would rather have freedom to reproduce and poverty than totalitarianism and the "theoretical promise" of no poverty.
- woofyman 10y ago
  >Not that we should be providing government healthcare anyway. I believe that healthcare is a basic human right.
  - lend000 10y ago
    /s? It's a service. A product. It didn't even exist 200 years ago. There is certainly nothing fundamental about it.
    - lend000 10y ago
      Because I think it's really important people stop thinking healthcare is a fundamental human right: Somebody has to provide healthcare for you. There is limited supply. There is INFINITE demand. That's right, infinite demand. People demand exponentially more healthcare as they get closer to death, and the majority of a person's lifelong costs are incurred in the final year of their life. The entire healthcare sector couldn't keep one person alive forever, and there is a diminishing return on each dollar that is spent on keeping a dying person alive for another hour (measured in hours/$).

matthewaveryusa 10y ago

Perhaps a hybrid of the two is good. Some form of basic income coupled with a basic food box, not unlike how the Finnish maternity boxes operate[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternity_package https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternity_package

dispose13432 10y ago

The thing with basic income is that I'm not sure it's currently practical: The US has a bit over 315 million people. To pay everyone minimum (barely livable) wage, every person should get $15,000 ( http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-are-annual-earnings-full-time-minimum-wage-worker http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-are-annual-earnings-full... ). That's $4.5 trillion per year. The GDP of the US is 16.77 trillion. So unless we have close to 100% tax on above-(federal) minimum wage, UBI won't work.

gpm 10y ago
If we're comparing free food to basic income, the comparison should be against basic income that's just enough to feed yourself. Somewhere around $1000/person. Even if you want full basic income, I'd argue that $15,000 is high. As a (Canadian) student in an expensive city my living expenses (everything but tuition) are easily under $10,000 USD. Using the numbers you linked we're almost certainly talking about less than $8,000/person to keep everyone above the poverty line (the exact number depends on what the average family unit looks like, which I don't know). (All numbers per year)
- dispose13432 10y ago
  > my living expenses (everything but tuition) are easily under $10,000 USD You rent a room or have a few room-mates? New York (which has skyscrapers) average rent is $3000 a month for a one bedroom apartment. https://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/map-of-average-rent-by-nyc-neighborhood-is-as-depressing-as-youd-expect-082115 https://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/map-of-average-rent-by-... There's a reason minimum wage is so high, and it's not because the government is so generous.
  - gpm 10y ago
    I have a roommate (which really means shared kitchen, separate bedrooms and bathrooms). New york is a really expensive place to live, the conclusion is that people who are relying on only basic income shouldn't live there. Likewise living alone is expensive. The conclusion is people living only on basic income shouldn't (especially if they are living somewhere which is already well above average pricing wise). Basic income isn't "everyone lives a luxurious life", it's "everyone can afford food, clothes, and a roof over their heads".