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Unchecked, unqualified democracy with poor structure is basically tyranny of the majority. There's a ton of ways the majority can completely abuse the minority,

Unchecked, unqualified democracy with poor structure is basically tyranny of the majority. There's a ton of ways the majority can completely abuse the minority, whether that's genocide or slavery or whatever. The only way to make democracy work is to include checks and balances against tyranny of the majority. The premise that there can be a situation where a small number of people are productive and the rest just get hand-outs is, in principle, a real issue and concern. I don't have any magic solutions that necessarily avoid abuse in that case. However, we can at least be comforted for now by the fact that there's an enormous amount of work remaining for most people to do (and thus an incentive for all of us to support policies in which that work gets done), and it currently remains the case that most value in society is generated by poorer folks being exploited and most wealthy people are capturing far more value than they create. So, your concern, while totally valid in principle, is completely backwards from the current situation (but YES, we don't want to just flip the situation so it's unjust the opposite way!)

moduspol 9y ago
You're mixing up "perceived fairness" and reality. The top 20% of earners pay 84% of income tax [1], yet can cast only 20% of the votes. It is not the case that there's this huge regressive system in place. In fact, the opposite is true. It's very much been trending toward the tyranny of the majority--there just currently aren't a whole lot of other good options for English-speaking wealthy people. That doesn't mean there never will be, or that by letting voters more directly decide how much to take, the circumstances won't become worse much faster. The fact that the wealthy make more than the working class is irrelevant in reality--only in perceived fairness. Nobody will be better off if they leave. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-20-of-earners-pay-84-of-income-tax-1428674384 https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-20-of-earners-pay-84-of-inc...
- quadrangle 9y ago
  > The top 20% of earners pay 84% of income tax [1], yet can cast only 20% of the votes. So you favor explicitly connecting wealth and political power? That's not democracy in any sense. All democracy trends toward tyranny of the majority and thus needs measures to counteract that (such as requiring supermajorities for some things, having constitutions that are hard to change, having power split among branches of gov. and lots more). Fairness? UBI and wealth distribution aren't just about fairness either. They are about maximizing health and happiness overall. Is it fair for me to have to pay for the treatment of homeless drug addicts? What matters is that I want to live in a world where they get treated, not a world where I live with the consequences of having them around on the streets. We need a sustainable and long-term way to deal with social issues like this (and many many other things). Sure, fairness is nice too, but it's more of a factor in sustaining a healthy society than an end in itself. Judging fairness is extremely hard, hugely subjective. We'll never achieve ultimate fairness, life just isn't fair. We can increase it, but it's not the only factor to consider (and it's one of the least objective). Anyway, the top 20% of wealth holders in this society do not create all the value. The distribution of "earnings" is NOT correlated to positive impact on society. A notable portion of that top 20% are people involved in stupid financial scheming like high-speed trading. They only take value from the rest of us and do nothing positive at all. Any discussion about what's "fair" in political power and taxation and wealth has to be based on trying to get at who is actually doing valuable work, not on whoever happens to capture the most wealth. I'm sure you're one of those people who recognizes regulatory-capture and other forms of corruption. Those lobbyists/politicians in a corrupt revolving door Washington system are in that top 20% you're talking about. If you change your whole framing to think about which work is actually good for the world, you can then have a discussion that is valid and talk about the problems with democracy (which are, as I've agreed, real concerns). I hope you can recognize the lack of correlation between wealth-capture and value-creation. Otherwise, you're just falling into the Just World Fallacy.
  - moduspol 9y ago
    > So you favor explicitly connecting wealth and political power? No. I favor policy not straying too far from reality toward ideological platitudes. Respectfully, the rest of your post isn't addressing my arguments. We can discuss all day about what "maximizing health and happiness" means, or how much the wealthy "deserve" for their contributions to society, and what "good in the world" is, but it doesn't matter. None of it matters if top earners and your most productive (even in explicit dollar values) leave, which is exactly what will happen with a UBI greatly exaggerating these issues. The only way I can interpret your post as a rebuttal is if you honestly believe that top earners moving to other countries will not have a catastrophic effect on the nation's economy (and the "health and happiness" of its citizens), but you didn't say that.
    - quadrangle 9y ago
      Thanks for not jumping to assumptions in what I was saying. Nevertheless, it's certainly possible in principle for there to be a situation where the top earners leave and it's better for society. As an absurd proof of concept: if the top holders of dollars are a handful of crooks who literally just extort the money from everyone else, and you get them to leave. In that situation, there's zero concern about them taking the dollars with them. You just continue giving everyone the UBI anyway, regardless of "revenue" and that means the dollar supply increases. This causes inflation, but everyone has more dollars to go along with that. Meanwhile, the crooks aren't getting more dollars, so their buying power is diluted. The entire effect amounts to returning buying-power to the rest of the citizens and reducing it from the crooks. It has no impact in any way on the productivity and real wealth in terms of goods and services — except that when you spread buying power out widely it will tend to support a much healthier economy… (all of this works whether the crooks leave or not, it's just even easier to dilute their buying power and political influence if they leave — except that what happens in most cases like this is the crooks wage real physical war to maintain their wealth and power rather than just sulk and go away). So, the top "earners" moving away means reduced influence from them in all sorts of ways monetarily. But if those people happen to actually be important to the economy rather than mere leeches, then we may see a serious downturn as a result, albeit potentially offset somewhat by the economic benefits of giving more buying power to those who will use it for productive economic ends (fixing their houses, caring for kids, buying new goods) where the wealthiest folks just save it and don't need thousands of pairs of pants etc. In short: it's absurdly simplistic to believe either that UBI necessarily leads to economic boon or catastrophe. It all depends on tons and tons of details which way it goes (of which the productive vs leech status of wealthiest folks is just one of those details).

moduspol 9y ago

You're mixing up "perceived fairness" and reality. The top 20% of earners pay 84% of income tax [1], yet can cast only 20% of the votes. It is not the case that there's this huge regressive system in place. In fact, the opposite is true. It's very much been trending toward the tyranny of the majority--there just currently aren't a whole lot of other good options for English-speaking wealthy people. That doesn't mean there never will be, or that by letting voters more directly decide how much to take, the circumstances won't become worse much faster. The fact that the wealthy make more than the working class is irrelevant in reality--only in perceived fairness. Nobody will be better off if they leave. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-20-of-earners-pay-84-of-income-tax-1428674384 https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-20-of-earners-pay-84-of-inc...

quadrangle 9y ago
> The top 20% of earners pay 84% of income tax [1], yet can cast only 20% of the votes. So you favor explicitly connecting wealth and political power? That's not democracy in any sense. All democracy trends toward tyranny of the majority and thus needs measures to counteract that (such as requiring supermajorities for some things, having constitutions that are hard to change, having power split among branches of gov. and lots more). Fairness? UBI and wealth distribution aren't just about fairness either. They are about maximizing health and happiness overall. Is it fair for me to have to pay for the treatment of homeless drug addicts? What matters is that I want to live in a world where they get treated, not a world where I live with the consequences of having them around on the streets. We need a sustainable and long-term way to deal with social issues like this (and many many other things). Sure, fairness is nice too, but it's more of a factor in sustaining a healthy society than an end in itself. Judging fairness is extremely hard, hugely subjective. We'll never achieve ultimate fairness, life just isn't fair. We can increase it, but it's not the only factor to consider (and it's one of the least objective). Anyway, the top 20% of wealth holders in this society do not create all the value. The distribution of "earnings" is NOT correlated to positive impact on society. A notable portion of that top 20% are people involved in stupid financial scheming like high-speed trading. They only take value from the rest of us and do nothing positive at all. Any discussion about what's "fair" in political power and taxation and wealth has to be based on trying to get at who is actually doing valuable work, not on whoever happens to capture the most wealth. I'm sure you're one of those people who recognizes regulatory-capture and other forms of corruption. Those lobbyists/politicians in a corrupt revolving door Washington system are in that top 20% you're talking about. If you change your whole framing to think about which work is actually good for the world, you can then have a discussion that is valid and talk about the problems with democracy (which are, as I've agreed, real concerns). I hope you can recognize the lack of correlation between wealth-capture and value-creation. Otherwise, you're just falling into the Just World Fallacy.
- moduspol 9y ago
  > So you favor explicitly connecting wealth and political power? No. I favor policy not straying too far from reality toward ideological platitudes. Respectfully, the rest of your post isn't addressing my arguments. We can discuss all day about what "maximizing health and happiness" means, or how much the wealthy "deserve" for their contributions to society, and what "good in the world" is, but it doesn't matter. None of it matters if top earners and your most productive (even in explicit dollar values) leave, which is exactly what will happen with a UBI greatly exaggerating these issues. The only way I can interpret your post as a rebuttal is if you honestly believe that top earners moving to other countries will not have a catastrophic effect on the nation's economy (and the "health and happiness" of its citizens), but you didn't say that.
  - quadrangle 9y ago
    Thanks for not jumping to assumptions in what I was saying. Nevertheless, it's certainly possible in principle for there to be a situation where the top earners leave and it's better for society. As an absurd proof of concept: if the top holders of dollars are a handful of crooks who literally just extort the money from everyone else, and you get them to leave. In that situation, there's zero concern about them taking the dollars with them. You just continue giving everyone the UBI anyway, regardless of "revenue" and that means the dollar supply increases. This causes inflation, but everyone has more dollars to go along with that. Meanwhile, the crooks aren't getting more dollars, so their buying power is diluted. The entire effect amounts to returning buying-power to the rest of the citizens and reducing it from the crooks. It has no impact in any way on the productivity and real wealth in terms of goods and services — except that when you spread buying power out widely it will tend to support a much healthier economy… (all of this works whether the crooks leave or not, it's just even easier to dilute their buying power and political influence if they leave — except that what happens in most cases like this is the crooks wage real physical war to maintain their wealth and power rather than just sulk and go away). So, the top "earners" moving away means reduced influence from them in all sorts of ways monetarily. But if those people happen to actually be important to the economy rather than mere leeches, then we may see a serious downturn as a result, albeit potentially offset somewhat by the economic benefits of giving more buying power to those who will use it for productive economic ends (fixing their houses, caring for kids, buying new goods) where the wealthiest folks just save it and don't need thousands of pairs of pants etc. In short: it's absurdly simplistic to believe either that UBI necessarily leads to economic boon or catastrophe. It all depends on tons and tons of details which way it goes (of which the productive vs leech status of wealthiest folks is just one of those details).