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I'm socially conservative, and I agree with parts of your statement, at least regarding myself. "Fairness" will be a sticking point. It's not reasonable that

I'm socially conservative, and I agree with parts of your statement, at least regarding myself. "Fairness" will be a sticking point. It's not reasonable that some people should have to work, so that others may voluntarily sit idle. But my other reasons for opposing universal income are different than what you listed: (1) I suspect universal income makes inaccurate assumptions about human nature. I think that without a need to work, a large fraction of people will choose not to. I doubt universal income could sustain that. (2) Our population keeps on growing, but our planet stays the same size. Unless this changes, we'll see increasing competition for food and living space. The fraction of the economy spent on UBI would continue to increase due to inflation of those costs. If I turn out to be mistaken about (1) and (2), then I'd be more open to UBI.

majewsky 9y ago
> It's not reasonable that some people should have to work, so that others may voluntarily sit idle. But it is, under the right circumstances. If you have a mostly automated society, where only 1% of today's human work is required to design, build and service the robots that do the actual work. Now you could have each person working half an hour per week, but that would mean that you would have to pay to educate every person out there in robot design, construction or maintenance. In this scenario, it's wildly more efficient to just educate 1% of the potential workforce and have them work 40 hours per week (or maybe 2% at 20 hours). You get the same work done, but spend way less on education (and also on auxiliary costs like payroll and shift planning). Note that I'm explicitly only arguing with economic concerns, not social ones. If you define "reasonable" in social rather than economic terms, my argument need not apply. > I think that without a need to work, a large fraction of people will choose not to. Why is it then, that most people who are rich enough to sustain themselves indefinitely without having to work, still choose to work? > The fraction of the economy spent on UBI would continue to increase due to inflation of those costs. That's a problem, but UBI doesn't change it AFAICS. You can just reword this as "The fraction of the economy spent on food and living space would continue to increase due to inflation of these costs", and it would hold true regardless of whether there's UBI or not.
- michaelt 9y ago
  If 99% of people are unemployed, it's not like there will be social sanctions, shame or other negative repercussions for being part of the 99%. Ideas like "the protestant work ethic" and "the nobility of work" will all be consigned to the past, right? What would motivate the 1% to work 40 hours a week when they could spend their time on things they enjoy instead?
  - majewsky 9y ago
    An expensive hobby?
boomboomsubban 9y ago
> It's not reasonable that some people should have to work, so that others may voluntarily sit idle When has this not been true? The only thing that changes are the amount of people that can be idle and that the people able to get education will be more pressed to work. >I suspect universal income makes inaccurate assumptions about human nature. I think that without a need to work, a large fraction of people will choose not to. I doubt universal income could sustain that. What percentage of the labor force do you think are motivated purely by survival now? It's basically the unskilled laborers, anyone else has other motivations. >Our population keeps on growing, but our planet stays the same size. Unless this changes, we'll see increasing competition for food and living space. The fraction of the economy spent on UBI would continue to increase due to inflation of those costs Drove through 500 miles of basically nothing today. We're fine on living space for quite some time, and a combination of better food production and waste limiting would handle food availability for quite some time.

majewsky 9y ago

> It's not reasonable that some people should have to work, so that others may voluntarily sit idle. But it is, under the right circumstances. If you have a mostly automated society, where only 1% of today's human work is required to design, build and service the robots that do the actual work. Now you could have each person working half an hour per week, but that would mean that you would have to pay to educate every person out there in robot design, construction or maintenance. In this scenario, it's wildly more efficient to just educate 1% of the potential workforce and have them work 40 hours per week (or maybe 2% at 20 hours). You get the same work done, but spend way less on education (and also on auxiliary costs like payroll and shift planning). Note that I'm explicitly only arguing with economic concerns, not social ones. If you define "reasonable" in social rather than economic terms, my argument need not apply. > I think that without a need to work, a large fraction of people will choose not to. Why is it then, that most people who are rich enough to sustain themselves indefinitely without having to work, still choose to work? > The fraction of the economy spent on UBI would continue to increase due to inflation of those costs. That's a problem, but UBI doesn't change it AFAICS. You can just reword this as "The fraction of the economy spent on food and living space would continue to increase due to inflation of these costs", and it would hold true regardless of whether there's UBI or not.

michaelt 9y ago
If 99% of people are unemployed, it's not like there will be social sanctions, shame or other negative repercussions for being part of the 99%. Ideas like "the protestant work ethic" and "the nobility of work" will all be consigned to the past, right? What would motivate the 1% to work 40 hours a week when they could spend their time on things they enjoy instead?
- majewsky 9y ago
  An expensive hobby?

boomboomsubban 9y ago

> It's not reasonable that some people should have to work, so that others may voluntarily sit idle When has this not been true? The only thing that changes are the amount of people that can be idle and that the people able to get education will be more pressed to work. >I suspect universal income makes inaccurate assumptions about human nature. I think that without a need to work, a large fraction of people will choose not to. I doubt universal income could sustain that. What percentage of the labor force do you think are motivated purely by survival now? It's basically the unskilled laborers, anyone else has other motivations. >Our population keeps on growing, but our planet stays the same size. Unless this changes, we'll see increasing competition for food and living space. The fraction of the economy spent on UBI would continue to increase due to inflation of those costs Drove through 500 miles of basically nothing today. We're fine on living space for quite some time, and a combination of better food production and waste limiting would handle food availability for quite some time.