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>If we create a UBI then people will have the time to be better educated, to be healthier, to raise healthier, happier, and more productive families. We're almo

>If we create a UBI then people will have the time to be better educated, to be healthier, to raise healthier, happier, and more productive families. We're almost there, automation will strongly facilitate this. Compulsory redistribution programs like UBI pervert incentives, leading to less individual responsibility over time. They're clumsy cookie cutter solutions, which with a stroke a pen, impose the same formula to tens/hundreds of millions of people. On one end, the people lose out, and on the other, they win out in the short term. The only determinant of which side a person is on is the amount of currency that they report to the government that they received for that year. This is an overly simplistic formula that not only adversely affects incentives, but also becomes increasingly better gamed over time, leading to competitive energies being diverted to economically wasteful activities like tax avoidance (which is an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars per year now). These kinds of programs do not take into account the unique circumstances found in the vast population they affect. In other words, they ignore the vast majority of the knowledge of society, which is in the form of localized knowledge diffused across millions of people. So in place of spontaneously formed economic relationships based on the rich localized knowledge of millions of individuals, they create simplistic economic relationships based on categories created by legislators. They are pure economic destruction. And we have evidence of this from the last 40 years. UBI is just the doubling down of an economic model that has been failing for over 40 years. Social welfare increased 4.8 percent per year on average, between 1972 and 2011 [1]. This represents a massive shift to the social democratic economic model. And it's not just the US. Almost all advanced economies underwent this transition over the last 40 years, and it has been associated with stagnating wage growth and less economic dynamism. The key to accelerating gains in quality of life is not more centralization and dependence on government. It is to remove all artificial barriers to access to capital. As it is, only large financial institutions can access global capital markets directly. Regulatory agencies have created very onerous compliance requirements that one has to meet to engage in a wide array of financial transactions. This in turn means that in practice, the majority of the population must pay economic rent to very rich and powerful groups to participate in all aspects of the economy. Distributed blockchain technology promises to democratize access to global capital markets, so that small businesses and ordinary individuals can trade equity for capital directly with each other, with no 'tax' being paid to rent-seeking institutions and professionals, playing the role of middle-man thanks to special government-granted privileges. To further elaborate: I believe everyone should be part of the ownership class. The average person should own microshares in thousands of companies big and small, and be assessing enterprises everyday to determine which ones to purchase a tiny amount of shares in, with zero friction and next-to-zero fixed costs that would otherwise make small purchases uneconomical (if each trade has a $10 trading fee like it does now, you can't economically buy $1 worth of shares, so that's why trading fees have to approach zero to make this kind of dynamic economy possible). These shares in turn would earn people passive income, so that they don't have to work all the time. If distributed blockchains and cryptocurrency become the main economic institutions in the world, I believe this vision will become possible, and we will experience a renaissance in economic and technological progress like never before seen. [1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-is-driving-growth-in-government-spending/amp/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-is-driving-growth-...

TimPC 9y ago
Strongly disagree. This feels like the academic style analysis that assumes computing costs are free. $10 trading costs suck. But so does the time energy and effort spent on researching stocks. Owning tiny micro shares isn’t worth the research costs.
- deleted 9y ago
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- Jabanga 9y ago
  Individuals have private knowledge about their local environment that can inform purchases of these micro shares. Combined with automated analysis tools, it can allow quick effective decision-making on small purchases to build one's personal portfolio.
LoonyBalloony 9y ago
> I believe everyone should be part of the ownership class. No classes for me no thank you. But hey, maybe different personality types need to have different ways of life. Perhaps you would thrive in a class based society, where as others would thrive in something else.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
> Compulsory redistribution programs like UBI pervert incentives, leading to less individual responsibility over time. OK yes, but you can't think about incentives like that. It's not just a matter of GOOD INCENTIVE/BAD INCENTIVE, because the incentives all influence each other. You can't just make a giant list of GOOD INCENTIVEs and then do them all. In fact, you really can't play very many incentives all at once together, because the more incentive schemes you have the more likely you are to create strange situations that exploit unanticipated interactions between what really are GOOD INCENTIVEs when considered independently. So, your lionizing of THE SPECTRE OF UTTER POVERTY as an incentive for people taking responsibility for something in their life... I agree with you. That spectre does in fact incent quite a lot of people to take responsibility. But the problem is, if you accept THE SPECTRE OF UTTER POVERTY into your incentive package, then you also incent INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY, where children are born into homes of people who, despite all those helpful incentives, just sucked at not being poor. And the problem is INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY is actually a horrible, horrible incentive when it comes to taking responsibility. Because those kids have very little resources and crime, even though it really pays off like a piddly little amount of money compared to a good job, if kids have like no resources even crime starts to make financial sense. So you created this world where you have this super strong YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE, THERE IS NO NANNY STATE culture, then what really makes sense for that kid to do is say you know what, I am going to take matters into my own hands. I am responsible for my destiny. I am going to drive these kids over to this house and get a lot of money. And that's what you incented. You incented people taking responsibility for taking care of their own. Personally, I'd rather incent that kid to sit in an apartment and play Xbox after school until he's 18. And incent his mom to hang out and smoke as much weed as she wants and use food stamps to buy Frosted Flakes and stay the fuck out of trouble until he does turn 18. As far as I know that kid could be fucking Elon Musk. For what? 12k218 = $432,000 of tax revenue? You're saying his moral compass will be so eroded by the presence of his free apartment and lack of consequences for his slacker-ass mom that he will be unable to take responsibility for himself? I doubt it. He'll have plenty of other role models in his life besides his mom. Like Elon Musk and Prince or whoever.

TimPC 9y ago

Strongly disagree. This feels like the academic style analysis that assumes computing costs are free. $10 trading costs suck. But so does the time energy and effort spent on researching stocks. Owning tiny micro shares isn’t worth the research costs.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Jabanga 9y ago
Individuals have private knowledge about their local environment that can inform purchases of these micro shares. Combined with automated analysis tools, it can allow quick effective decision-making on small purchases to build one's personal portfolio.

LoonyBalloony 9y ago

> I believe everyone should be part of the ownership class. No classes for me no thank you. But hey, maybe different personality types need to have different ways of life. Perhaps you would thrive in a class based society, where as others would thrive in something else.

erikpukinskis 9y ago

> Compulsory redistribution programs like UBI pervert incentives, leading to less individual responsibility over time. OK yes, but you can't think about incentives like that. It's not just a matter of GOOD INCENTIVE/BAD INCENTIVE, because the incentives all influence each other. You can't just make a giant list of GOOD INCENTIVEs and then do them all. In fact, you really can't play very many incentives all at once together, because the more incentive schemes you have the more likely you are to create strange situations that exploit unanticipated interactions between what really are GOOD INCENTIVEs when considered independently. So, your lionizing of THE SPECTRE OF UTTER POVERTY as an incentive for people taking responsibility for something in their life... I agree with you. That spectre does in fact incent quite a lot of people to take responsibility. But the problem is, if you accept THE SPECTRE OF UTTER POVERTY into your incentive package, then you also incent INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY, where children are born into homes of people who, despite all those helpful incentives, just sucked at not being poor. And the problem is INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY is actually a horrible, horrible incentive when it comes to taking responsibility. Because those kids have very little resources and crime, even though it really pays off like a piddly little amount of money compared to a good job, if kids have like no resources even crime starts to make financial sense. So you created this world where you have this super strong YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE, THERE IS NO NANNY STATE culture, then what really makes sense for that kid to do is say you know what, I am going to take matters into my own hands. I am responsible for my destiny. I am going to drive these kids over to this house and get a lot of money. And that's what you incented. You incented people taking responsibility for taking care of their own. Personally, I'd rather incent that kid to sit in an apartment and play Xbox after school until he's 18. And incent his mom to hang out and smoke as much weed as she wants and use food stamps to buy Frosted Flakes and stay the fuck out of trouble until he does turn 18. As far as I know that kid could be fucking Elon Musk. For what? 12k218 = $432,000 of tax revenue? You're saying his moral compass will be so eroded by the presence of his free apartment and lack of consequences for his slacker-ass mom that he will be unable to take responsibility for himself? I doubt it. He'll have plenty of other role models in his life besides his mom. Like Elon Musk and Prince or whoever.