9 ms·

I think this is where UBI leads if it ever happens.

by DougN7 10y ago

nwatson 10y ago
UBI will prime the pump, entrepreneurs will make alternate reality enticing, value will be found there, new goods and services will sprout. Manufacturing and service working parents and grandparents will complain about the alternative working kids, just like manufacturing workers didn't see value in being a service worker. "They're not making anything real."
wallace_f 10y ago
It's a real possibility, but consider thinking about it this way: Many jobs do not provide (marginal utility > income) to society, and many even produce negative marginal utility. Everything from utility companies to the financial sector to government to even academia has a heck of a lot of perverse incentives and corruption. Over half a century ago John Maynard Keynes--one of the most influential intellectuals to shape the world today--said "it's better for people to toil over their bank account than each other." I would easily wager it's better people toil over their virtual realities than their bank accounts, provided we're able to keep the scarcity problem solved (which I'd bet we'd be able to pull off).
- pbkhrv 10y ago
  > provided we're able to keep the scarcity problem solved (which I'd bet we'd be able to pull off). I'm curious as to how we can pull that off given that an ever increasing percentage of young smart capable people are opting out of solving real world problems in favor of "toiling over their virtual realities"...
  - psyc 10y ago
    I really dislike the romanticizing of employment as "solving problems." The effect of employment is that somebody's problems get solved, but as the employee, they aren't my problems, and subjectively it feels like mostly solving a lot of meta-problems like how to follow somebody else's process and get along with all kinds of coworkers. If employment felt like object-level problem solving, I'd be employed.
    - pbkhrv 10y ago
      I'm with you, to some degree. By "solving problems" I was referring to the parent comment's phrase "provided we're able to keep the scarcity problem solved", which I read as "let (vague, unidentified) them solve the scarcity problem while I play video games".
    - kcdev 10y ago
      Your objective is to get a paycheck. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. Then, use your off time do things more important to you.
      - projektir 10y ago
        Getting that paycheck saps the majority of the time and energy of a given person. Using a paycheck as a side effect to actually do something useful seems like a very strange system.
        kcdev 10y ago
        It's the capitalist system. If you want to set the objective, then get to work and create the means for yourself to do so. It's so easy to blame the boomers, but in my day job, all I see are younger people who expect a promotion after 6 months, while the boomers are happy to have a job, come in, do what's expected, and don't complain.
  - acjohnson55 10y ago
    Because technology give us massive leverage. The economic opportunities aren't going away, and to the extent that we still need labor, compensation will adapt to what makes it worth an individual's time.
- graeme 10y ago
  > Many jobs do not provide (marginal utility > income) to society, and many even produce negative marginal utility. What are some examples of this? Why are people paying those workers?
  - Untit1ed 10y ago
    A lot of middlemen roles - real estate agents, recruiters etc fall into this. The role starts out with utility (instead of selling your house yourself get someone experienced to do it!), but as using a middleman becomes ubiquitous and is maintained with rent seeking (you can't list on this real estate site unless you're a registered RE agent), there's no reason for them to do anything more than the bare minimum.
  - wallace_f 10y ago
    >Why are people paying those workers? In short, in modern, mainstream economic theory the ideas that explain this are what's called Market Failures. In 2001, the Nobel Prize in economics went to people who studied information asymmetries, which lead to market failures. A concrete and classic example is the Tragedy of the Commons. My earlier example of the financial sector, which in 2008 showed everyone how private gains created public losses in the form of subsidies, recession, inflation, bail-outs, moral hazard, public-sector risk, was created despite (and many argue in part, because) of government-oversight. Another, more benign example, is one I was reminded of while on vacation in France. A toilet bloc was guarded by an unhappy attendant who took 1 euro per use. It would be better to install a 100euro toll gate and give her the remaining profit to buy a computer to play video games (or art supplies, whatever she wants to do), in the hours between cleanings. Everyone wins. This is what's called pareto-efficient. Someone is made better off and no one is made worse off (tourists don't need to encounter an unhappy attendant, either).
    - graeme 10y ago
      How would UBI solve this? If the jobs were still profitable to the employer, they'd be done. It's not clear to me how UBI solves market failures.
ocschwar 10y ago
That's what scares the shit of me regarding UBI. I don't mind paying for it even if it does keep young men immersed in a fantasy world. But I have a daughter. And she will be surrounded by men whose idea of women will be shaped by game characters that fail the Turing test but have big tits. I guess for her first birthday after puberty I'll have to get her a taser.
- TOMDM 10y ago
  Interesting conclusion you have come to. Is this because you believe people playing these games are not able to separate the fantasy of the game from real life? If so, what differentiates them from pornography?
  - ocschwar 10y ago
    6 hours of running around a fantasy world, rescuing damsels in distress who fall out of their dresses and embrace you. Or 10 minutes watching real people having sex, knowing those people use aliases so that after the camera shuts down and the paper towels come out, they can go and live their own real lives. That's the difference I see.
    - TOMDM 10y ago
      I think you underestimate peoples abilities to comprehend what a game is. I think Princess Zelda's flirtatious tendencies are about as formative to real relationships with women as call of duties role in informing me on gun violence is realistic. They are clearly fantasies with no bearing on reality, that's the appeal of escapism focused games. I think the issue comes about when people don't have any other experiences to form real expectations of the world around them.
    - yorwba 10y ago
      I think you underestimate the time someone who would play a game for 6 hours would spend watching porn (hint: it's probably closer to 6 hours). Would you rather have your daughter date a guy who has skewed opinions on how to impress a girl, based on video games, or a guy who has skewed opinions on how enjoyable anal fisting is on average, based on pornography?
AnthonyMouse 10y ago
This is the thing UBI prevents. A large benefit of a UBI compared to the status quo is that it reduces marginal tax rates on low income people. Right now you can get a lot of assistance if you have little to no income, but if you make a dollar you lose 90 cents in benefits. Who wants to work for 10 cents on the dollar? With a UBI you make a dollar and you keep most of it, so there is more incentive to work.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  How does a UBI prevent this? The people described in the article don't seem to want more money. They want to play video games. Giving them enough money to live off of would allow them to do exactly that while producing nothing of benefit to society. Right now, at least, some of them seem marginally productive (contractors, the cashier, etc). Utility, as a function of money, generally has a negative second derivative - think Utility(income)=log(income) rather than Utility(income) = income. Utility'(0) > Utility'(UBI), so the UBI is still a massive work disincentive regardless of marginal tax rates. A better solution is work incentives - EITC, Basic Job (UBI but only if you do government work), that kind of thing.
  - Tossrock 10y ago
    Twitch seems to be an existence proof against the idea that playing video games produces nothing of benefit to society. Clearly, people playing video games has produced in excess of $1B benefit to society. "Make something people want", and all. You could argue that watching people play video games isn't a real "benefit" to society in the way that food or houses are, but I don't see it as being fundamentally different than, say, televised sports. Are televised sports of no benefit to society? What about art, or music?
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      A small number of gamers are productive, just as a small number of artists are. Most aren't.
  - chongli 10y ago
JDiculous 10y ago
Even if that's the case, is that a bad thing? Should we not have the freedom to spend our own time as we please in a post-scarcity society?
- brightball 10y ago
  I keep hearing that term lately...but nobody can explain to me how post scarcity is even possible
  - lovich 10y ago
    We already have classes of goods/services that are post scarcity. Music for instance is post scarcity in that it costs effectively nothing to reproduce. Before anyone argues creation of _new_ music is not post scarcity. Anyway as manufacturing techniques improve more item will become post scarcity or effectively so if we can provide all the demand for an item for little to no cost.
  - smaddox 10y ago
    It's not. At least, not as long as the "passion between the sexes" remains unbalanced by birth control. Even if it does become balanced, there are finite resources.
  - anonemouse145 10y ago
    Read Heinlein's For Us The Living. Robots make all essential goods, and everyone has a minimum basic income. People only work to get extra income for nice things. That is a societal wide post scarcity society- no one who desires a basic living will ever lack anything they need. But post scarcity happens all the time. It used to be the domain of nobles, who had easy access to basically anything they could desire. Now it belongs to middle to upper class first world residents, a growing class of people who can lean on mommy if they ever get in trouble and who generally are never more than an Amazon Prime delivery away from any good or service they need. People will say oh but a feudal lord didn't have an iPhone it's all relative. And sure that's one argument, but I'm sure you can see the point being made. You can work a lousy job, and play video games, eat pizza, and be basically happy. Or you can take on tens of thousands in student debt to work a much more stressful job, and wish you had enough time to play games, and stop eating pizza because it doesn't fit your lifestyle. A growing number of people can't rationalize the latter option. There's no need to endure that hardship, goods aren't that scarce. Hence, people bring up post scarcity.

I think this is where UBI leads if it ever happens.

by DougN7 10y ago

I think this is where UBI leads if it ever happens.

UBI will prime the pump, entrepreneurs will make alternate reality enticing, value will be found there, new goods and services will sprout. Manufacturing and service working parents and grandparents will complain about the alternative working kids, just like manufacturing workers didn't see value in being a service worker. "They're not making anything real."

wallace_f 10y ago

It's a real possibility, but consider thinking about it this way: Many jobs do not provide (marginal utility > income) to society, and many even produce negative marginal utility. Everything from utility companies to the financial sector to government to even academia has a heck of a lot of perverse incentives and corruption. Over half a century ago John Maynard Keynes--one of the most influential intellectuals to shape the world today--said "it's better for people to toil over their bank account than each other." I would easily wager it's better people toil over their virtual realities than their bank accounts, provided we're able to keep the scarcity problem solved (which I'd bet we'd be able to pull off).

pbkhrv 10y ago
> provided we're able to keep the scarcity problem solved (which I'd bet we'd be able to pull off). I'm curious as to how we can pull that off given that an ever increasing percentage of young smart capable people are opting out of solving real world problems in favor of "toiling over their virtual realities"...
- psyc 10y ago
  I really dislike the romanticizing of employment as "solving problems." The effect of employment is that somebody's problems get solved, but as the employee, they aren't my problems, and subjectively it feels like mostly solving a lot of meta-problems like how to follow somebody else's process and get along with all kinds of coworkers. If employment felt like object-level problem solving, I'd be employed.
  - pbkhrv 10y ago
    I'm with you, to some degree. By "solving problems" I was referring to the parent comment's phrase "provided we're able to keep the scarcity problem solved", which I read as "let (vague, unidentified) them solve the scarcity problem while I play video games".
  - kcdev 10y ago
    Your objective is to get a paycheck. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. Then, use your off time do things more important to you.
    - projektir 10y ago
      Getting that paycheck saps the majority of the time and energy of a given person. Using a paycheck as a side effect to actually do something useful seems like a very strange system.
      - kcdev 10y ago
        It's the capitalist system. If you want to set the objective, then get to work and create the means for yourself to do so. It's so easy to blame the boomers, but in my day job, all I see are younger people who expect a promotion after 6 months, while the boomers are happy to have a job, come in, do what's expected, and don't complain.
- acjohnson55 10y ago
  Because technology give us massive leverage. The economic opportunities aren't going away, and to the extent that we still need labor, compensation will adapt to what makes it worth an individual's time.
graeme 10y ago
> Many jobs do not provide (marginal utility > income) to society, and many even produce negative marginal utility. What are some examples of this? Why are people paying those workers?
- Untit1ed 10y ago
  A lot of middlemen roles - real estate agents, recruiters etc fall into this. The role starts out with utility (instead of selling your house yourself get someone experienced to do it!), but as using a middleman becomes ubiquitous and is maintained with rent seeking (you can't list on this real estate site unless you're a registered RE agent), there's no reason for them to do anything more than the bare minimum.
- wallace_f 10y ago
  >Why are people paying those workers? In short, in modern, mainstream economic theory the ideas that explain this are what's called Market Failures. In 2001, the Nobel Prize in economics went to people who studied information asymmetries, which lead to market failures. A concrete and classic example is the Tragedy of the Commons. My earlier example of the financial sector, which in 2008 showed everyone how private gains created public losses in the form of subsidies, recession, inflation, bail-outs, moral hazard, public-sector risk, was created despite (and many argue in part, because) of government-oversight. Another, more benign example, is one I was reminded of while on vacation in France. A toilet bloc was guarded by an unhappy attendant who took 1 euro per use. It would be better to install a 100euro toll gate and give her the remaining profit to buy a computer to play video games (or art supplies, whatever she wants to do), in the hours between cleanings. Everyone wins. This is what's called pareto-efficient. Someone is made better off and no one is made worse off (tourists don't need to encounter an unhappy attendant, either).
  - graeme 10y ago
    How would UBI solve this? If the jobs were still profitable to the employer, they'd be done. It's not clear to me how UBI solves market failures.

ocschwar 10y ago

That's what scares the shit of me regarding UBI. I don't mind paying for it even if it does keep young men immersed in a fantasy world. But I have a daughter. And she will be surrounded by men whose idea of women will be shaped by game characters that fail the Turing test but have big tits. I guess for her first birthday after puberty I'll have to get her a taser.

TOMDM 10y ago
Interesting conclusion you have come to. Is this because you believe people playing these games are not able to separate the fantasy of the game from real life? If so, what differentiates them from pornography?
- ocschwar 10y ago
  6 hours of running around a fantasy world, rescuing damsels in distress who fall out of their dresses and embrace you. Or 10 minutes watching real people having sex, knowing those people use aliases so that after the camera shuts down and the paper towels come out, they can go and live their own real lives. That's the difference I see.
  - TOMDM 10y ago
    I think you underestimate peoples abilities to comprehend what a game is. I think Princess Zelda's flirtatious tendencies are about as formative to real relationships with women as call of duties role in informing me on gun violence is realistic. They are clearly fantasies with no bearing on reality, that's the appeal of escapism focused games. I think the issue comes about when people don't have any other experiences to form real expectations of the world around them.
  - yorwba 10y ago
    I think you underestimate the time someone who would play a game for 6 hours would spend watching porn (hint: it's probably closer to 6 hours). Would you rather have your daughter date a guy who has skewed opinions on how to impress a girl, based on video games, or a guy who has skewed opinions on how enjoyable anal fisting is on average, based on pornography?

AnthonyMouse 10y ago

This is the thing UBI prevents. A large benefit of a UBI compared to the status quo is that it reduces marginal tax rates on low income people. Right now you can get a lot of assistance if you have little to no income, but if you make a dollar you lose 90 cents in benefits. Who wants to work for 10 cents on the dollar? With a UBI you make a dollar and you keep most of it, so there is more incentive to work.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
How does a UBI prevent this? The people described in the article don't seem to want more money. They want to play video games. Giving them enough money to live off of would allow them to do exactly that while producing nothing of benefit to society. Right now, at least, some of them seem marginally productive (contractors, the cashier, etc). Utility, as a function of money, generally has a negative second derivative - think Utility(income)=log(income) rather than Utility(income) = income. Utility'(0) > Utility'(UBI), so the UBI is still a massive work disincentive regardless of marginal tax rates. A better solution is work incentives - EITC, Basic Job (UBI but only if you do government work), that kind of thing.
- Tossrock 10y ago
  Twitch seems to be an existence proof against the idea that playing video games produces nothing of benefit to society. Clearly, people playing video games has produced in excess of $1B benefit to society. "Make something people want", and all. You could argue that watching people play video games isn't a real "benefit" to society in the way that food or houses are, but I don't see it as being fundamentally different than, say, televised sports. Are televised sports of no benefit to society? What about art, or music?
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    A small number of gamers are productive, just as a small number of artists are. Most aren't.
- chongli 10y ago

JDiculous 10y ago

Even if that's the case, is that a bad thing? Should we not have the freedom to spend our own time as we please in a post-scarcity society?

brightball 10y ago
I keep hearing that term lately...but nobody can explain to me how post scarcity is even possible
- lovich 10y ago
  We already have classes of goods/services that are post scarcity. Music for instance is post scarcity in that it costs effectively nothing to reproduce. Before anyone argues creation of _new_ music is not post scarcity. Anyway as manufacturing techniques improve more item will become post scarcity or effectively so if we can provide all the demand for an item for little to no cost.
- smaddox 10y ago
  It's not. At least, not as long as the "passion between the sexes" remains unbalanced by birth control. Even if it does become balanced, there are finite resources.
- anonemouse145 10y ago
  Read Heinlein's For Us The Living. Robots make all essential goods, and everyone has a minimum basic income. People only work to get extra income for nice things. That is a societal wide post scarcity society- no one who desires a basic living will ever lack anything they need. But post scarcity happens all the time. It used to be the domain of nobles, who had easy access to basically anything they could desire. Now it belongs to middle to upper class first world residents, a growing class of people who can lean on mommy if they ever get in trouble and who generally are never more than an Amazon Prime delivery away from any good or service they need. People will say oh but a feudal lord didn't have an iPhone it's all relative. And sure that's one argument, but I'm sure you can see the point being made. You can work a lousy job, and play video games, eat pizza, and be basically happy. Or you can take on tens of thousands in student debt to work a much more stressful job, and wish you had enough time to play games, and stop eating pizza because it doesn't fit your lifestyle. A growing number of people can't rationalize the latter option. There's no need to endure that hardship, goods aren't that scarce. Hence, people bring up post scarcity.