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Are you suggesting the majority of those people are completely, utterly useless? Useful contributions don't necessarily have to be intellectual. They may be ab

by barnacs 10y ago

Are you suggesting the majority of those people are completely, utterly useless? Useful contributions don't necessarily have to be intellectual. They may be able and happy to provide art, joyful company, social skills, physical assistance (eg. getting groceries, moving equipment) or other support to those in need.

mixedCase 10y ago
That moves the goalposts. Sure, I can't think of a human being that can be categorized as completely useless, that doesn't mean that an UBI program is sustainable for society just because "no one is absolutely, completely useless". In fact there is no shortage of individuals who, despite being outside of the category of "useless" by technicalities, dedicate their state-funded free time in making society worse. A couple examples just from my last 2-day visit to a relative in a neighborhood with a high number of welfare recipients: People with houses crumbling down, but with huge sound systems running at full volume at any time of day or night; or those in the same conditions getting stolen motorcycles (buying with taxpayer money from thieves or stealing themselves) and racing in the streets or parading around with their silencers removed. Doesn't stop there either, when our welfare system was first established, there were plenty of cases of people quitting a productive job to slob around. What for many in first world countries sound like "conservative scaremongering" is reality for us. Mind you, despite all this I'm not against having a social safety net (albeit the one we have I believe to be an absolute disaster), but UBI is a terrible option that cannot work outside of carefully selected groups of people.
- barnacs 10y ago
  Those may be the very same people who play music, build stages or give water to overly wasted kids at summer festivals. Or they might fix your motorbike better and cheaper than your local mechanic if you asked them to. Or they might not. Either way, I wouldn't consider them any more harmful to society than those probably millions of people working very hard to shove ads into peoples faces ever more efficiently, or those bankers and accountants looking for loopholes to effectively steal from others. Or corrupt politicians whose only concern is filling their pockets. Or I could name a bunch of other mostly useless leech industries. My point is, I think you are judging these people from a faulty perspective very much ingrained into our society, where one's usefulness to humanity is primarily judged based on how much money they can get their hands on either by stealing from others or selling their freedom to someone willing to pay for it, regardless of what value they actually contribute (if anything) as long as it's considered legal and they do so as part of the so called "workforce". UBI would fundamentally change that by allowing people to spend time doing things they consider useful, rather than working for whatever gets food on the table, however useless it may actually be. Of course, for that to work, people need to be open to other people's ideas of useful and the currently dominant view of measuring usefulness in GDP or whatever may become obsolete.

by barnacs 10y ago

mixedCase 10y ago

That moves the goalposts. Sure, I can't think of a human being that can be categorized as completely useless, that doesn't mean that an UBI program is sustainable for society just because "no one is absolutely, completely useless". In fact there is no shortage of individuals who, despite being outside of the category of "useless" by technicalities, dedicate their state-funded free time in making society worse. A couple examples just from my last 2-day visit to a relative in a neighborhood with a high number of welfare recipients: People with houses crumbling down, but with huge sound systems running at full volume at any time of day or night; or those in the same conditions getting stolen motorcycles (buying with taxpayer money from thieves or stealing themselves) and racing in the streets or parading around with their silencers removed. Doesn't stop there either, when our welfare system was first established, there were plenty of cases of people quitting a productive job to slob around. What for many in first world countries sound like "conservative scaremongering" is reality for us. Mind you, despite all this I'm not against having a social safety net (albeit the one we have I believe to be an absolute disaster), but UBI is a terrible option that cannot work outside of carefully selected groups of people.

barnacs 10y ago
Those may be the very same people who play music, build stages or give water to overly wasted kids at summer festivals. Or they might fix your motorbike better and cheaper than your local mechanic if you asked them to. Or they might not. Either way, I wouldn't consider them any more harmful to society than those probably millions of people working very hard to shove ads into peoples faces ever more efficiently, or those bankers and accountants looking for loopholes to effectively steal from others. Or corrupt politicians whose only concern is filling their pockets. Or I could name a bunch of other mostly useless leech industries. My point is, I think you are judging these people from a faulty perspective very much ingrained into our society, where one's usefulness to humanity is primarily judged based on how much money they can get their hands on either by stealing from others or selling their freedom to someone willing to pay for it, regardless of what value they actually contribute (if anything) as long as it's considered legal and they do so as part of the so called "workforce". UBI would fundamentally change that by allowing people to spend time doing things they consider useful, rather than working for whatever gets food on the table, however useless it may actually be. Of course, for that to work, people need to be open to other people's ideas of useful and the currently dominant view of measuring usefulness in GDP or whatever may become obsolete.