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Mark Zuckerberg Calls for a Universal Basic Income
- I_am_neo 9y agoPoverty payments, come and get 'em
- devopsproject 9y agoThere will be a day when "just go flip burgers until something better comes along" will no longer be a valid retort. Jobs are vanishing and no amount of bootstraps will change that.
- mcbruiser3 9y ago> Jobs are vanishing... No, jobs are changing. Adapt or die.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoYou might be surprised at who actually dies, should things get bad enough that people are starving in the streets. The French aristocracy circa 1789 was certainly surprised. Likewise the Russian aristocracy circa 1917.
- mcbruiser3 9y agoright because it's always the case that those who do and have got to their situation unfairly, not due to hard work and intelligence or looking for opportunities, and that's the reason those who don't are poor, and therefore they deserve to die.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoI'm not saying anything about "right" or "fair", or what people "deserve". I'm just pointing out the pragmatic consequences of your attitude.
- mcbruiser3 9y agoyes, the pragmatic consequences of not adapting are being left behind. life is not fair, and it never will be. even if we implemented a UBI, there would be some other "injustice" to complain about or excuse for inequality. there is no end to it. the only fair system is one where you make your own way.
- Turing_Machine 9y ago"yes, the pragmatic consequences of not adapting are being left behind." The pragmatic consequences of ignoring the people who are "left behind" are guillotines and scaffolds. "the only fair system is one where you make your own way." Once again: "fair" doesn't enter into it.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Jobs are vanishing More accurately, the labor most people are suited for is becoming less valuable relative to capital and the labor of a narrowing elite. If one allows arbitrarily low wages, jobs wouldn't disappear, just the pay most people could earn in them would drop in relative (and possibly absolute real) terms.
- grabcocque 9y agoHe's running.
- dougmany 9y agoComing 2020, the great Oprah vs Zuckerberg debates.
- ZanyProgrammer 9y agoI hope not. He has no real bade in either party, and an independent run would inevitably siphon off Democratic votes.
- ruleabidinguser 9y agoHe's not really a likeable person either
- gremlinsinc 9y agoyeah, I'd vote for Elon in a heartbeat though...
- tyingq 9y agoI wonder how much of a deal breaker his lack of charisma is. Certainly people have been elected without it, but it's a nice equalizer if you're short in other areas, like experience.
- SN76477 9y agoI'm not interested in a man that sells personal data as a president.
- arjie 9y agoDoes he sell the data? My impression was that Facebook generally hoards the data and then sells products that use it. The data itself stays inside and then you can use it in very specific ways by using Facebook tools. So you could use Facebook's users' data to target them on Facebook but Mark Zuckerberg isn't giving you the data.
- mcbruiser3 9y agosplitting hairs much?
- arjie 9y agoA fair complaint. Let me attempt to justify the difference: If the data is kept within, then there's a reasonable chance that I'm functionally anonymous to people using Facebook's products. I'm all right if people target ads and stuff. That's cool. It wouldn't bother me. If they give people access to the raw data, FB'd have to anonymize well, or I'd have to trust all their clients to make sure they don't do anything nefarious. Now I don't like this second part. This would bother me. That's why I made the distinction. But I understand if you don't and therefore see it is as nitpicking.
- nandemo 9y agoInteresting. How about a president that orders bombings on a country (or several of them) which hasn't attacked the US? Or a president that orders drone strikes that kill civilians?
- SN76477 9y agoI do not support that either.
- ZanyProgrammer 9y agoIt would be nice to break the link between work and survival. Because there are going to be fewer and fewer jobs in the future (automation, etc).
- ekianjo 9y ago> Because there are going to be fewer and fewer jobs in the future (automation, etc). Folks said the same thing before for every industrial revolution. I'd like to see more facts than religion on this matter.
- VikingCoder 9y agoMoore's Law was not a law, only a good fit of the data for a very long time. The ability of machines to replace people is advancing to points we've never seen before, and I don't think any of us can really predict what will happen.
- notahacker 9y agoThe ability of machines to replace people advanced to points we've never seen before in every other era either. And we got rid of whole other classes of jobs in the West for entirely different reasons like international trade (textile manufacturing) or culture (domestic servitude). What was persistently underestimated was people's willingness and ability to find new things which people wanted to pay for, many of them hitherto impossible without the ability to manufacture stuff at low cost, and many of them in areas which machines are still very bad at. Not being able to predict the future is a very strong argument against redesigning the welfare state to give more people money on the assumption that historic links between economic growth and the labour force are about to disappear.
- VikingCoder 9y agoSound logic. Except you're presuming that Moore's Law will last forever. How will you know when it's about to stop?
- edoceo 9y agoGotta make sure folks fired for spending too much work time on your platform still have money to buy the crap advertised on said platform
- jondubois 9y agoHaha, that's extremely cynical but it actually makes sense.
- PKop 9y agoStill don't understand how UBI is not inflationary? No real value is created since its not tied to any productive work. So supply of real good remains static, and in a local market, won't there be sudden increased demand for housing, for example? What will happen to apartment prices?
- nothrabannosir 9y agoIt's redistribution of wealth, not quantitative easing.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoThose are the same things, just different methods and targeting different economic cohorts. QE vastly inflated equity and real estate values, benefiting the wealthiest (at least in the US).
- scarmig 9y agoNo. One changes the money supply, one shifts money from one group to another.
- rukittenme 9y agoThey're not. QE devalues all dollars equally. Wealth redistribution targets high income people to the benefit of low or no income people.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- splintercell 9y agoQE devalues all dollars equally, but then who receives that wealth? Do all people receive that wealthy equally? Do poor receive that wealth? Do rich people receive that wealth? Because that money is eventually spent by the govt, whomsoever receives that wealth gets the redistribution of wealth from everyone to them.
- nebabyte 9y agoFrankly I figured bezos or etc would've been the first tech leader on that train. After all, when you're in the business of (A) optimizing every nook and cranny and (B) selling to the masses new luxury technologies, it's in your interests to see that they have the money to waste on such excesses and/or can afford you optimizing away their sources of income.
- cdubzzz 9y agoSame for a company that makes money from advertisers, though. Facebook needs their audience to be able to afford things (or think they can afford things) their advertisers want to sell.
- mattnewton 9y agoPlenty of money to be made advertising to those people too.
- electrograv 9y agoBut that's exactly the opposite of what universal basic income should be used for (waste on excesses/luxuries before basic needs are met). I grew up in a household with relatively little income, where you barely have enough for food and housing. I cannot imagine being in that situation and spending much on random next day delivery luxuries from Amazon - you literally would starve. The first thing on my mind would be upgrading from beans and rice to other foods, etc... that sort of thing. Buying into luxuries only really occurs when you exceed the ability to provide for basic needs. Basic income if implemented will be tuned to provide basic needs, not luxuries -- the only time I see this changing is in a distant future post-scarcity economy.
- cdubzzz 9y agoAmazon has an interest in that basic needs market as well. See: Prime Pantry.
- mi100hael 9y agoSure, there are extreme levels of poverty where you have to scrounge for spare change just to get one meal per day. Most people would argue that's what existing welfare and unemployment programs should be tuned to better solve. UBI goes further than those programs, but how many times have you driven past a trailer park or dilapidated rural home or inner city building with plywood on the windows and see a new Silverado or CTS parked outside? There are a lot of people for whom living on credit is already the norm. Giving them additional cash per month isn't going to fix the fact that the US as a whole is already conditioned to buy everything with debt.
- joobus 9y agoDivorce work from income and you will also divorce value from the currency.
- epistasis 9y agoUBI does not eliminate work-based income.
- lolsal 9y agoIt does in whatever amount is mailed out to everyone every month in the form of a UBI check. That is literally money earned without work or without creating value.
- nkrisc 9y agoUBI is just a "basic" subsistence income with the intent that everyone can afford to participate in society at the most basic level (not the case today). If you want more you can work for it just like you do today. There will still be plenty of jobs that need doing.
- dyarosla 9y agoI love the idea of a universal basic income. It makes sense from a humanitarian standpoint, an automation taking away jobs standpoint and a minimizing bureaucracy standpoint. But I have to admit, if you look at it from a pure numbers perspective, it does not make sense financially, even with simple back of the envelope calculations. Take the population of a country. Multiply that by, say something as little as $1000 a month, per person. $12,000 per year. Completely discard any systems in the government budget that would no longer be needed due to UBI- You'll STILL come up way, way short. This is true even if you completely zero out all the additional services that would become less needed (ie less money to Medicaid because people would be healthier, etc). And this is for just the $1000 dollars a month variant. Could someone please point me to what kind of tax structure a country would need to have to realistically be able to afford UBI? I would love to see UBI become a reality.
- heydenberk 9y agoZuck himself could furnish about 1% of the annual money: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=mark+zuckerberg%27s+net+worth+%2F+(the+population+of+the+US+*+$12000+per+person) http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=mark+zuckerberg%27s+net...
- areyousure 9y agoOnce and not even a full percent ...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jjaredsimpson 9y agoHow you come up with way short? 326e6*12000/18e12 = .21 Which is inline with the size of https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S With the limited reading I've done on UBI, it seems like a land value tax could be a good candidate system. We should tax things we want to remove like pollution and congestion, not income and investment.
- deleted 9y ago
- f4rker 9y agoCool idea , let's share his wealth first then see what he feels about it.
- xd 9y agoBasic requirement for UBI would be for Facebook to pay their fair share of tax first, surely.
- alphonsegaston 9y agoIt would be great if these tech scions spent as much time defending our existing social insurance programs (e.g. food stamps) as they did with these utopian fantasies. UBI will never become a reality in a cultural context that constantly paints any kind of floor on poverty as parasitism and moral failure, which is where we are right now in the US.
- sharemywin 9y agoThey should focus on Universal health first. Or at least a public option with premium caps based on income.
- theseatoms 9y agoIs UBI just re-branded welfare reform?
- maxerickson 9y agoIf it checks the boxes in the name, not really. Replacing welfare would still be welfare reform, but it wouldn't really resemble means tested welfare as we have it.
- devopsproject 9y agoThey are solving two different problems. Arguments to its effectiveness aside, the current welfare systems seem to have the primary goal of providing for citizens until they can reenter the workforce. UBI seems to have the primary goal of making sure people can maintain basic living standards when the jobs vanish. There will be a day when "just go flip burgers until something better comes along" will no longer be a valid retort.
- deevolution 9y agoIs a ubi sustainable?
- criddell 9y agoThat's the core question. It's probably better than pushing everybody into the federal disability program.
- mcbruiser3 9y agoNo, it's a redistribution of wealth and will lead to a massive dichotomy just like any third world country.
- criddell 9y agoWhy do you think that? I'd hope that it would lead to outcomes similar to those achieved by some Scandanavian countries with their big social welfare programs.
- chromaton 9y agoGross world product is about $16,000 per capita. So that's about how much your income would be if it was all evenly distributed. That's actually enough to boost you over the poverty line in the US. But people in the US also receive other benefits from the government. However, given 50 years of modest 2% economic growth, you'd be up to a respectable $43,000 per person.
- jondubois 9y agoI don't think it would make sense to have a single equal UBI for the whole world - Not initially at least. To a poor person in Africa, 16K per year would be like winning the lottery - This is not the case for someone living in a developed country. We should take into account that poverty is relative. UBI is not about making everyone equal (not yet at least), initially it's about giving everyone the freedom to do what they really want.
- paddy88 9y agoI am not fan of Zuck. Have never used FB. But I think it was a good speech. He doesn't have to do this. He can be like Larry Page and disconnect from the world and no one is going bother him. But he seems to have some ideas that I am not going to discount. The point about helping others find purpose and the role of community resonates deeply with me. I wouldn't be where I am without it. Most of our successful open source work happens exactly this way. Allowing people to discover purpose and feel part of a community. You will constantly hear these words from people at Mozilla or Wikipedia or Khan Academy to pick just places where corporate robots aren't driving the usage of words. With religious institutions in the west loosing their influence, with capitalism, consumerism, individualism having a cost and being antithetical to solving global problems...talking about helping others find purpose and creating a sense of community feels at least better than anything else I usually here from politicians.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eip 9y agoThe problem with stabilizing the economic system is that there is too much demand on account of (1) too much greed and (2) too much population. This creates excessive economic inductance which can only be balanced with economic capacitance (true resources or value - e.g., in goods or services). The social welfare program is nothing more than an open-ended credit balance system which creates a false capital industry to give nonproductive people a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. This can be useful, however, because the recipients become state property in return for the "gift," a standing army for the elite. For he who pays the piper picks the tune. Those who get hooked on the economic drug, must go to the elite for a fix. In this, the method of introducing large amounts of stabilizing capacitance is by borrowing on the future "credit" of the world. This is a fourth law of motion - onset, and consists of performing an action and leaving the system before the reflected reaction returns to the point of action - a delayed reaction. The means of surviving the reaction is by changing the system before the reaction can return. By this means, politicians become more popular in their own time and the public pays later. In fact, the measure of such a politician is the delay time. The same thing is achieved by a government by printing money beyond the limit of the gross national product, and economic process called inflation. This puts a large quantity of money into the hands of the public and maintains a balance against their greed, creates a false self-confidence in them and, for awhile, stays the wolf from the door. They must eventually resort to war to balance the account, because war ultimately is merely the act of destroying the creditor, and the politicians are the publicly hired hit men that justify the act to keep the responsibility and blood off the public conscience. (See section on consent factors and social-economic structuring.) If the people really cared about their fellow man, they would control their appetites (greed, procreation, etc.) so that they would not have to operate on a credit or welfare social system which steals from the worker to satisfy the bum. Since most of the general public will not exercise restraint, there are only two alternatives to reduce the economic inductance of the system. 1. Let the populace bludgeon each other to death in war, which will only result in a total destruction of the living earth. 2. Take control of the world by the use of economic "silent weapons" in a form of "quiet warfare" and reduce the economic inductance of the world to a safe level by a process of benevolent slavery and genocide. The latter option has been taken as the obviously better option. At this point it should be crystal clear to the reader why absolute secrecy about the silent weapons is necessary. The general public refuses to improve its own mentality and its faith in its fellow man. It has become a herd of proliferating barbarians, and, so to speak, a blight upon the face of the earth. They do not care enough about economic science to learn why they have not been able to avoid war despite religious morality, and their religious or self-gratifying refusal to deal with earthly problems renders the solution of the earthly problem unreachable to them. It is left to those few who are truly willing to think and survive as the fittest to survive, to solve the problem for themselves as the few who really care. Otherwise, exposure of the silent weapon would destroy our only hope of preserving the seed of the future true humanity. --Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars
- danans 9y agoNot to imply that UBI doesn't have its implementation issues, or that the country is culturally prepared to support it, but Kudos to Mark Z for using his platform to move the discussion out of the narrow spaces of tech and economics communities and into the general conversation. The spirit of his statements is in direct opposition to the spirit of the recently released white house budget proposal. Hopefully the timing triggers a transformative debate.
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- AnimalMuppet 9y agoSomething nobody has mentioned so far: Immigration control. If you have UBI, you probably have to either restrict it to citizens, or control immigration.
- mcbruiser3 9y agoI don't think you understand.. some folks in the gov't want to have as much of the population dependent on the gov't as possible. The more people dependent on the gov't the better.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoThat doesn't change the issue I was mentioning, which is sustainability. And creating a bunch of dependents, then going bankrupt and having to cut off the dependents, won't work out well politically in the long run...
- mcbruiser3 9y agoOf course it's not sustainable, that's obvious. But that never stopped idiot politicians who just want votes from the plebes... just look at obamacare.
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- pg_bot 9y agoThe premise on which the Universal Basic Income is being sold is that in the future there will be fewer jobs due to automation and therefore we will need to increase the welfare state to compensate. In my opinion that premise is incredibly pessimistic; I don't believe we will ever run out of productive uses for labor. In either case implementing a Universal Basic Income on a national level seems like a logistical and fiscal nightmare. In a world where more countries are attractive places to live, will the rich want to stay in the USA if you can live a better life elsewhere?
- whataretensors 9y agoI like Zuckerberg because he understands technology, but I'm worried about UBI. UBI is based on the assumption that everyone will take basic income money and use it responsibly. But we know that's not true for a large part of the population. Gambling and drugs exist, for example. That's not to mention other short term rewards that hurt people in the long term. UBI in its most corrupt form turns into communism. And we know from the 20th century that communism is corruptible almost by default. We've paid for this knowledge with 100s of millions of humans dieing in multiple countries. I think of capitalism as a type of learning system that depends on a individual reward signal. Government can also be thought of as a learning system. In a corrupt system capitalism stops learning and even regresses. People stop participating. In a corrupt government, the government mandates based on really bad abstractions. So the question becomes "how do we prevent, measure, and fix corruption" than which system we should live by. Having said that, I'll end up voting for anyone who understands technology. I think it will disrupt employment for essentially everyone, given enough time.
- Turing_Machine 9y ago"UBI is based on the assumption that everyone will take basic income money and use it responsibly." I don't think UBI advocates are assuming anything of the sort. Of course some people are going to spend it on booze and drugs. How is that different from the system we have now, where some people spend their welfare money on...booze and drugs?
- dragonwriter 9y ago> UBI is based on the assumption that everyone will take basic income money and use it responsibly. No, it's not; neither the libertarian nor the progressive arguments for UBI assume that. > UBI in its most corrupt form turns into communism Wait, what? Perhaps some form of communism, by the broadest definition, could be linked to UBI, but even then you'd be equivocating at best when you say: > And we know from the 20th century that communism is corruptible almost by default. We've paid for this knowledge with 100s of millions of humans dieing in multiple countries. Since in that bit you are clearly narrowly referring to what has been learned specifically about Leninist vanguardism in the 20th Century (which, actually, plenty of people—including many other communists—observed about its structure and departures from Marxism even before practical experience underlined the problems.) > I think of capitalism as a type of learning system that depends on a individual reward signal. Capitalism is an politico-economic system in which, by way of a particular model of property rights, society is ordered to favor the interests of a particular class, the owners of capital ("capitalists"). Hence the name given to that system by its critics when it was the dominant world system. Now, arguably, the politico-economic systems of modern representative democracies with mixed economies combine a base drawn from 19th Century capitalism and its basic model of property rights with various redistributive and power-limiting mechanisms to implement a "learning system" of the type you describe, but UBI is essentially a retuning and streamlining of some of the redistributive mechanisms in modern mixed economies, not a fundamental change.
- mcbruiser3 9y agoUBI is supposed to be some kind of safety net, is that right? Isn't that what savings are for? i.e. you're supposed to have 3 months emergency savings, which falls under the personal responsibility category. If you remove personal responsibility, what happens? Any any rate, I don't think the numbers will ever pencil out, end of story. It's a non starter. And of course Zuck advocates a UBI, so more people stay at home surfing FB!
- Balgair 9y agoThough interesting, there remains a large sticking point that is more of a 'second order' effect not often thought of: the effects on marriage and child birth: https://www.nber.org/papers/w23408?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ntw https://www.nber.org/papers/w23408?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medi... "There has been a well-documented retreat from marriage among less educated individuals in the U.S. and non-marital childbearing has become the norm among young mothers and mothers with low levels of education. One hypothesis is that the declining economic position of men in these populations is at least partially responsible for these trends. That leads to the reverse hypothesis that an increase in potential earnings of less-educated men would correspondingly lead to an increase in marriage and a reduction in non-marital births." Based on this (single) study, it is reasonable to hypothesize that UBI would have an adverse effect on marriage rates and would increase the number of bastard children. The societal norms that we have about manhood, family, and marriage are somewhat based on economic models and radically changing those models may introduce severe disruptions in our social norms and family structures. EDIT: Forgot to mention, the 'economic status' that men in these regions have is a relative measure. Meaning that the researchers found that the men were being judged based on their status relative to other men in the area to determine if they were marriageable. UBI, by definition, would level out the playing field. If the means then that all men would become more attractive for marriage or all of them would become unattractive is an open question that needs to be studied more before UBI would be implemented.
- kapauldo 9y agowhy do we ascribe undeserved expertise like this?
- kapauldo 9y agowhy do we ascribe undeserved expertise like this?
- aplomb 9y agoI'd be willing to pay for UBI if the people receiving perform work for it at market rates (not artificial minimum wages). Otherwise it's armed robbery.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mcbruiser3 9y ago“We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure everyone has a cushion to try new ideas,” rubbish. trust me, not everyone is an unrecognized genius.
- trevex 9y agoThere was a very interesting article in the german business-magazine "brand eins" [1]. The article is not yet available for free (always released for free a few weeks after the magazine). But the gist was that UBI is only possible with a substantial tax reform. In the article an example of 1000€ per month is presented and a universal "commerce" tax of 50% used (no other taxes just taxing money going out of businesses, e.g. earnings, salaries). Several examples are presented: Low income of 24000€, 12000€ - 12000€ = 0€ in taxes. Higher income of 100000€, 50000€ - 12000€ = 38000€ in taxes. It concludes that basic income in Germany is therefore great for everyone with salaries below 240000€ compared to the current taxation system. Calculations for the amount of money necessary were also included, but I am unable to recall them from memory. Looking up the article online revealed a report by the interviewee from the magazine article [2], which states that a UBI of 800€ per month (including major reforms) would cost around 454.10 billion €, which would be about 2/3 of Germany's current tax income. [1] "Wie überlebt der Sozialstaat die Digitalisierung?" https://www.brandeins.de/archiv/2017/fortschritt/ https://www.brandeins.de/archiv/2017/fortschritt/ [2] http://www.hwwi.org/fileadmin/hwwi/Leistungen/Gutachten/Grundeinkommen-Studie.pdf http://www.hwwi.org/fileadmin/hwwi/Leistungen/Gutachten/Grun...
- Overtonwindow 9y agoPerhaps if Mark was willing to put up the billions in his fortune we could do a lot. If anyone knows him perhaps they could politely ask that he send out a universal check to everyone in America, and let's see how it goes.
- gremlinsinc 9y agowell, now I might be convinced to vote for him -- might.. Not a huge Zuck fan, I think he means well. But I AM a big advocate for UBI, and think we definitely need leaders who support it in all areas of government. Though I think Zuck would have a better chance at President if he ran and won Governor of California first and worked up the ladder.