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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

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
What happens when technology progresses to the point where they can't be productive at all? Where it simply costs money to give them a job. Are you okay with paying people to dig holes and fill them back up again?
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I'll worry about that when it happens. We're not even close yet. https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_our_jobs.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_ou... Similarly, the average American fat person shouldn't eat 6 cheeseburgers on the theory that starvation is coming.
  - chongli 10y ago
    So you want to turn all those unemployed dudes who eat cheeseburgers and play video games all day into your domestic servants, but pay them the same amount of money they're receiving as part of their benefits right now? Do you have any idea how angry they'd be if that happened? It would make la Terreur look like an episode of Teletubbies.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      I'm glad we've gone from moral imperative to recognition that these folks are merely extortionists. But on practical grounds I disagree with la terreur - call of duty is not really a substitute for military training. Senseless violence of the sort you almost seem to be advocating (am I misreading?) could be easily suppressed by a modern police force.
      - Turing_Machine 10y ago
        "Senseless violence of the sort you almost seem to be advocating (am I misreading?) could be easily suppressed by a modern police force." What makes you think the police are going to be on your side in such a situation?
        yummyfajitas 10y ago
        It's true that of late, the police do seem to look the other way when anti-intellectual thugs assault political dissidents (e.g. Murray, Milo). They do obey the orders of the ruling class. But why would the cops side with a bunch of layabout gamers seeking only to pillage and plunder?
- astrange 10y ago
  > What happens when technology progresses to the point where they can't be productive at all? If nobody can ever improve on anything, either everything is free or we're all dead, and in neither case do you need a job in the first place. Just having a lot of manufacturing robots does not mean there is nothing to do!
  - chongli 10y ago
    do you need a job in the first place The real reason people need jobs, as evident by the number of able-bodied people who don't work at all, is for acquiring status. UBI (nor any other welfare measure) will not solve this problem.
    - astrange 10y ago
      Although it would if we lived in a Cory Doctorow novel. http://craphound.com/down/download/ http://craphound.com/down/download/
AnthonyMouse 10y ago
If all you want is to live in a low rent area and play video games then you can already do it with existing government assistance. The change is that you don't lose the assistance by getting a job. Work incentives for low-utility jobs are highly inefficient when people choose the makework jobs over real jobs, and work incentives for arbitrary real jobs are just a UBI with unnecessary paperwork, since you can just "work" for your friends and vice versa to do things you were going to do anyway.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  The IRS is reasonably good at cracking down on the fraud you suggest. Existing welfare/disability fraud/etc does allow one to exploit the taxpayer as you suggest, but it requires active work to do so. That too is a disincentive, and to an extent a social stigma. UBI has no such mitigating factors.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    > The IRS is reasonably good at cracking down on the fraud you suggest. The problem is it isn't fraud. These are all real jobs: Cook, landscaper, courier, housekeeper, driver, repair tech, janitor, etc. They aren't any less a "job" when you're doing them for your roommate, but they're also the list of things that are already on the chore wheel. Nobody bothers to tell the government about them right now or do the accounting in dollars because there is currently no financial advantage in that. If you change that all it does is cause the same amount of real work to have more deadweight paperwork around it. > Existing welfare/disability fraud/etc does allow one to exploit the taxpayer as you suggest, but it requires active work to do so. It requires the same amount of active work regardless of whether or not you're "exploiting the taxpayer". Creating a bunch of paperwork for everyone is not an advantage. > That too is a disincentive, and to an extent a social stigma. The thing with a social stigma is playing video games all day, which hasn't changed. Eliminating the social stigma of low income people using government programs for low income people is an advantage. There are poor kids suffering in America because their parents are too proud to apply for programs they qualify for, or don't understand that they qualify for them. What's the point in having assistance programs if the only people you expect to use them are the most unabashed moochers because you shame honest people into not applying even though they qualify?
robertcorey 10y ago
Video games provide value to the Capitalist class by sedating a historically violent demographic (Unemployed Young Men), more soma anyone?
mastazi 10y ago
You are assuming that a person working is always better than a person not working, but if some of the nascent technologies become mainstream (AI, robotics), it might be that the aggregate offer of jobs dries out. In those conditions, what justifies incentives to jobs that no one needs? Wouldn't it be possible that such a scheme becomes more expensive than a UBI scheme? Another solution would be to heavily regulate AI, robotics etc. in a way that human jobs are still needed, but that would mean paying a very high price in terms of international competitiveness.
scarmig 10y ago
Most readers here have significant flexibility in our work schedules and choice of jobs. But right now, I take on an extra responsibilities and an extra 10 hours a week over the regular 40 hours in the hopes of getting a promotion and a ~15% raise. This flies flatly in the face of a sublinear utility to income relationship. And I choose this even though I could easily move to a less intense or part-time job. What's your theory to explain these choices? They're not crazy, and if anything are more typical than atypical. Some personal hypotheses, all of which except the last would counteract a UBI work disincentive: 1) In terms of labor choices, you've got to view utility primarily as a function of status, not income. Status is a positional good and, within a given profession, is highly correlated with income. So although I'm chasing a relatively small bump in salary, it will give outsize gains in utility. 2) Putting extra work in now is best viewed as investing in your own human capital, as a promotion isn't a permanent gold star for delivering on a project but instead supposed to recognize an increase in your human capital. That kind of increase in human capital provides lifelong excess monetary returns that exceed the decreasing marginal utility of money. 3) The increasing concentration of wealth accruing to the most productive workers means that income is in some kind of power law relationship with work effort. 4) The extra utility of a promotion is coming primarily from non-monetary effects, such as more autonomy in work and ability to work on more interesting problems. 5) Some combination of 1-4 exist and are valid, but they only have a significant effect on work effort toward the higher end of the income spectrum. A cashier boy doesn't gain any real status with a fifty cent raise, and the most-skilled and hardest working barista is not bringing home millions of dollars. Their work-for-utility functions are dominated by the effect of beer money, and the tenth beer is never as good as the first. If 5) is true, a UBI would, of course, result in a significant increase in voluntary unemployment. I'm not sure it's even really a bad thing, though it'd be good to have a sense of how large the effect is and where it kicks in, which would have to be an empirical question. I wonder if there'd be a significant gender split in how a UBI acts as a [dis]incentive to work.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  This flies flatly in the face of a sublinear utility to income relationship. It does no such thing. Will you put in an extra 20 hours for a 30% raise? How about 30 hours for a 45% raise? Sublinear utility merely means that there is some point at which you'll stop. I wonder if there'd be a significant gender split in how a UBI acts as a [dis]incentive to work. In the Mincome experiment, which resulted in a 10% decrease in work effort, the effect was higher among women than men. However given that the original data/study is unavailable (merely news reports about it), it's impossible to know if that effect was significant. (Back in the day they weren't as good at multiple comparisons corrections as they are now.)

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

What happens when technology progresses to the point where they can't be productive at all? Where it simply costs money to give them a job. Are you okay with paying people to dig holes and fill them back up again?

yummyfajitas 10y ago
I'll worry about that when it happens. We're not even close yet. https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_our_jobs.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_ou... Similarly, the average American fat person shouldn't eat 6 cheeseburgers on the theory that starvation is coming.
- chongli 10y ago
  So you want to turn all those unemployed dudes who eat cheeseburgers and play video games all day into your domestic servants, but pay them the same amount of money they're receiving as part of their benefits right now? Do you have any idea how angry they'd be if that happened? It would make la Terreur look like an episode of Teletubbies.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    I'm glad we've gone from moral imperative to recognition that these folks are merely extortionists. But on practical grounds I disagree with la terreur - call of duty is not really a substitute for military training. Senseless violence of the sort you almost seem to be advocating (am I misreading?) could be easily suppressed by a modern police force.
    - Turing_Machine 10y ago
      "Senseless violence of the sort you almost seem to be advocating (am I misreading?) could be easily suppressed by a modern police force." What makes you think the police are going to be on your side in such a situation?
      - yummyfajitas 10y ago
        It's true that of late, the police do seem to look the other way when anti-intellectual thugs assault political dissidents (e.g. Murray, Milo). They do obey the orders of the ruling class. But why would the cops side with a bunch of layabout gamers seeking only to pillage and plunder?
astrange 10y ago
> What happens when technology progresses to the point where they can't be productive at all? If nobody can ever improve on anything, either everything is free or we're all dead, and in neither case do you need a job in the first place. Just having a lot of manufacturing robots does not mean there is nothing to do!
- chongli 10y ago
  do you need a job in the first place The real reason people need jobs, as evident by the number of able-bodied people who don't work at all, is for acquiring status. UBI (nor any other welfare measure) will not solve this problem.
  - astrange 10y ago
    Although it would if we lived in a Cory Doctorow novel. http://craphound.com/down/download/ http://craphound.com/down/download/

AnthonyMouse 10y ago

If all you want is to live in a low rent area and play video games then you can already do it with existing government assistance. The change is that you don't lose the assistance by getting a job. Work incentives for low-utility jobs are highly inefficient when people choose the makework jobs over real jobs, and work incentives for arbitrary real jobs are just a UBI with unnecessary paperwork, since you can just "work" for your friends and vice versa to do things you were going to do anyway.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
The IRS is reasonably good at cracking down on the fraud you suggest. Existing welfare/disability fraud/etc does allow one to exploit the taxpayer as you suggest, but it requires active work to do so. That too is a disincentive, and to an extent a social stigma. UBI has no such mitigating factors.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > The IRS is reasonably good at cracking down on the fraud you suggest. The problem is it isn't fraud. These are all real jobs: Cook, landscaper, courier, housekeeper, driver, repair tech, janitor, etc. They aren't any less a "job" when you're doing them for your roommate, but they're also the list of things that are already on the chore wheel. Nobody bothers to tell the government about them right now or do the accounting in dollars because there is currently no financial advantage in that. If you change that all it does is cause the same amount of real work to have more deadweight paperwork around it. > Existing welfare/disability fraud/etc does allow one to exploit the taxpayer as you suggest, but it requires active work to do so. It requires the same amount of active work regardless of whether or not you're "exploiting the taxpayer". Creating a bunch of paperwork for everyone is not an advantage. > That too is a disincentive, and to an extent a social stigma. The thing with a social stigma is playing video games all day, which hasn't changed. Eliminating the social stigma of low income people using government programs for low income people is an advantage. There are poor kids suffering in America because their parents are too proud to apply for programs they qualify for, or don't understand that they qualify for them. What's the point in having assistance programs if the only people you expect to use them are the most unabashed moochers because you shame honest people into not applying even though they qualify?

robertcorey 10y ago

Video games provide value to the Capitalist class by sedating a historically violent demographic (Unemployed Young Men), more soma anyone?

mastazi 10y ago

You are assuming that a person working is always better than a person not working, but if some of the nascent technologies become mainstream (AI, robotics), it might be that the aggregate offer of jobs dries out. In those conditions, what justifies incentives to jobs that no one needs? Wouldn't it be possible that such a scheme becomes more expensive than a UBI scheme? Another solution would be to heavily regulate AI, robotics etc. in a way that human jobs are still needed, but that would mean paying a very high price in terms of international competitiveness.

scarmig 10y ago

Most readers here have significant flexibility in our work schedules and choice of jobs. But right now, I take on an extra responsibilities and an extra 10 hours a week over the regular 40 hours in the hopes of getting a promotion and a ~15% raise. This flies flatly in the face of a sublinear utility to income relationship. And I choose this even though I could easily move to a less intense or part-time job. What's your theory to explain these choices? They're not crazy, and if anything are more typical than atypical. Some personal hypotheses, all of which except the last would counteract a UBI work disincentive: 1) In terms of labor choices, you've got to view utility primarily as a function of status, not income. Status is a positional good and, within a given profession, is highly correlated with income. So although I'm chasing a relatively small bump in salary, it will give outsize gains in utility. 2) Putting extra work in now is best viewed as investing in your own human capital, as a promotion isn't a permanent gold star for delivering on a project but instead supposed to recognize an increase in your human capital. That kind of increase in human capital provides lifelong excess monetary returns that exceed the decreasing marginal utility of money. 3) The increasing concentration of wealth accruing to the most productive workers means that income is in some kind of power law relationship with work effort. 4) The extra utility of a promotion is coming primarily from non-monetary effects, such as more autonomy in work and ability to work on more interesting problems. 5) Some combination of 1-4 exist and are valid, but they only have a significant effect on work effort toward the higher end of the income spectrum. A cashier boy doesn't gain any real status with a fifty cent raise, and the most-skilled and hardest working barista is not bringing home millions of dollars. Their work-for-utility functions are dominated by the effect of beer money, and the tenth beer is never as good as the first. If 5) is true, a UBI would, of course, result in a significant increase in voluntary unemployment. I'm not sure it's even really a bad thing, though it'd be good to have a sense of how large the effect is and where it kicks in, which would have to be an empirical question. I wonder if there'd be a significant gender split in how a UBI acts as a [dis]incentive to work.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
This flies flatly in the face of a sublinear utility to income relationship. It does no such thing. Will you put in an extra 20 hours for a 30% raise? How about 30 hours for a 45% raise? Sublinear utility merely means that there is some point at which you'll stop. I wonder if there'd be a significant gender split in how a UBI acts as a [dis]incentive to work. In the Mincome experiment, which resulted in a 10% decrease in work effort, the effect was higher among women than men. However given that the original data/study is unavailable (merely news reports about it), it's impossible to know if that effect was significant. (Back in the day they weren't as good at multiple comparisons corrections as they are now.)