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Step 1: Distribute 2 L of clean, potable drinking water to every person, every day, at no additional cost to them. Step 2: Distribute 2200 kcal of nutritionall

Step 1: Distribute 2 L of clean, potable drinking water to every person, every day, at no additional cost to them. Step 2: Distribute 2200 kcal of nutritionally adequate food to every person, every day, at no additional cost to them. Step 3: Allocate 20 m^3 of private, secure shelter to every person, with right-of-occupation intervals lasting no less than 4 years, at no additional cost to them. Step 4: Allocate ~350 L/day for treated water and sewer lines--sufficient for cooking, cleaning, hygiene, and sanitation--to every person, at no additional cost to them. Step 5: Distribute 800 W of electrical power to every person, at no additional cost to them. Step 6: Allocate 50 Mb/s data network bandwidth to every person, at no additional cost to them. Step 7: Build sufficient additional public infrastructure for transportation, healthcare, business, and recreation, such that a reasonable amount of use of those commons is available to every person at no additional cost. Step 8: Distribute a quantity of spendable currency to every person, with no requirements for eligibility or restrictions on its use. Starting at step 8 is, in my opinion, a recipe for inflation and rent-seeking. UBI is, in essence, an attempt to create a mixed economic system that is communist at the bottom end and capitalist at the top end. If you do not establish the minimum quality-of-life boundary by producing or taxing-in-kind the required goods and services as an inherently governmental (+ non-profit NGO) function, the rent-seekers in the upper class can and will capture some of the benefit intended for the lower class, and possibly enough of it that the lower class can no longer solely subsist upon it. If the subsistence-level of existence is guaranteed, there is no longer any leverage provided to a person with more resources by virtue of the poorer person needing to accept a bad deal in order to live, while the richer person can walk away from the table without meaningful consequence. Workers cannot be as easily exploited if everyone can afford to quit their jobs. Renters can always fall back to their sleeping cubicle.

shkkmo 9y ago
We do not know which of 1-7 are needed by which people, so giving them to everyone is wasteful. In addition, providing those basic necessities for free destroys the paid market for those goods and harms economic growth. > UBI is, in essence, an attempt to create a mixed economic system that is communist at the bottom end and capitalist at the top end. I think you do not know what "communism" means. There is nothing in UBI about public ownership of the means of production. > If the subsistence-level of existence is guaranteed, there is no longer any leverage provided to a person with more resources by virtue of the poorer person needing to accept a bad deal in order to live, while the richer person can walk away from the table without meaningful consequence. Workers cannot be as easily exploited if everyone can afford to quit their jobs. This is exactly why UBI is a good thing. Workers are freed to find the most effective use of their skills (rather than relying on capitalists to do it for them) which will hopefully lead to higher economic efficiency.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Destroying the paid market for a minimum standard of existence is the whole rassafrassin' point! The idea that you have to pay something if you want to continue living is the root cause of trade relationships that are fundamentally skewed against the already-disadvantaged party. You give everyone the bare minimum for free, and charge for anything on top of that. It's the freemium model applied to national economies, and the market for smartphone apps suggests that it would work fine. People complaining about pay-to-win are preferable to those complaining about pay-to-not-die. It doesn't have to be communism where the government owns a government corn field and government trucks and government dispensaries, so that it can distribute corn to the residents. It could also be acceptance of those specific foundation goods and services in lieu of cash taxes, where your cash dividend from shares in AgriCorp is not taxed, because the company already paid that tax in the form of truckloads of UBI corn. And your dividend from TransporTech is not taxed, because the company already paid that tax by moving that UBI corn from the grain elevator to the distribution points. And your dividend from Grocerino is not taxed, because the company already paid that tax by giving up shelf space and administering the food part of the ration card system. Or maybe your salary from nonprofit FoodServ Inc is not taxed, because that company moves that UBI corn into the food deserts where the for-profit grocery stores either do not have a presence or choose to not pay their taxes in-kind.
  - shkkmo 9y ago
    > Destroying the paid market for a minimum standard of existence is the whole rassafrassin' point! Except those paid markets are critical for finding and creating the efficiencies that allow us to raise everyone's standard of living. We need to balance the trade relationships, but we need to do it with without destroying these markets. Indeed, balancing the trade relationship means increasing the number of choices available to the already-disadvantaged parties, which will increase the average total benefit of each trade and increase the efficiency of the overall market. > It's the freemium model applied to national economies, and the market for smartphone apps suggests that it would work fine. The freemium model works because there is COMPETITION among app creators to provide the correct combination of things for free that incentivized people to play so they will want to pay for more. Relying on a bureaucracy to figure what what the "bare minimum" should be is ineffective and inefficient. There is no one set of "bare minimum" needed by everybody and trying to create a bureaucratic system to calculate the needs of the individual is enormously hard and prone to corruptions and abuse. Some people grow much of their own food and don't need assistance with that. Some people are perfectly happy living on rice and beans but want to buy lots of books. Some people have high metabolisms or expensive dietary restrictions. Some people want to live out of a van and don't need subsidized housing. Some people need to live in big cities with high property values for work. The people who have the best information as to what their "bare minimum" is are... themselves. "Taxes in-kind" are still not communism (and they sound enormously difficult to implement, there are important reasons we use currency rather than barter). Not really sure what the point of that digression was.

shkkmo 9y ago

We do not know which of 1-7 are needed by which people, so giving them to everyone is wasteful. In addition, providing those basic necessities for free destroys the paid market for those goods and harms economic growth. > UBI is, in essence, an attempt to create a mixed economic system that is communist at the bottom end and capitalist at the top end. I think you do not know what "communism" means. There is nothing in UBI about public ownership of the means of production. > If the subsistence-level of existence is guaranteed, there is no longer any leverage provided to a person with more resources by virtue of the poorer person needing to accept a bad deal in order to live, while the richer person can walk away from the table without meaningful consequence. Workers cannot be as easily exploited if everyone can afford to quit their jobs. This is exactly why UBI is a good thing. Workers are freed to find the most effective use of their skills (rather than relying on capitalists to do it for them) which will hopefully lead to higher economic efficiency.

logfromblammo 9y ago
Destroying the paid market for a minimum standard of existence is the whole rassafrassin' point! The idea that you have to pay something if you want to continue living is the root cause of trade relationships that are fundamentally skewed against the already-disadvantaged party. You give everyone the bare minimum for free, and charge for anything on top of that. It's the freemium model applied to national economies, and the market for smartphone apps suggests that it would work fine. People complaining about pay-to-win are preferable to those complaining about pay-to-not-die. It doesn't have to be communism where the government owns a government corn field and government trucks and government dispensaries, so that it can distribute corn to the residents. It could also be acceptance of those specific foundation goods and services in lieu of cash taxes, where your cash dividend from shares in AgriCorp is not taxed, because the company already paid that tax in the form of truckloads of UBI corn. And your dividend from TransporTech is not taxed, because the company already paid that tax by moving that UBI corn from the grain elevator to the distribution points. And your dividend from Grocerino is not taxed, because the company already paid that tax by giving up shelf space and administering the food part of the ration card system. Or maybe your salary from nonprofit FoodServ Inc is not taxed, because that company moves that UBI corn into the food deserts where the for-profit grocery stores either do not have a presence or choose to not pay their taxes in-kind.
- shkkmo 9y ago
  > Destroying the paid market for a minimum standard of existence is the whole rassafrassin' point! Except those paid markets are critical for finding and creating the efficiencies that allow us to raise everyone's standard of living. We need to balance the trade relationships, but we need to do it with without destroying these markets. Indeed, balancing the trade relationship means increasing the number of choices available to the already-disadvantaged parties, which will increase the average total benefit of each trade and increase the efficiency of the overall market. > It's the freemium model applied to national economies, and the market for smartphone apps suggests that it would work fine. The freemium model works because there is COMPETITION among app creators to provide the correct combination of things for free that incentivized people to play so they will want to pay for more. Relying on a bureaucracy to figure what what the "bare minimum" should be is ineffective and inefficient. There is no one set of "bare minimum" needed by everybody and trying to create a bureaucratic system to calculate the needs of the individual is enormously hard and prone to corruptions and abuse. Some people grow much of their own food and don't need assistance with that. Some people are perfectly happy living on rice and beans but want to buy lots of books. Some people have high metabolisms or expensive dietary restrictions. Some people want to live out of a van and don't need subsidized housing. Some people need to live in big cities with high property values for work. The people who have the best information as to what their "bare minimum" is are... themselves. "Taxes in-kind" are still not communism (and they sound enormously difficult to implement, there are important reasons we use currency rather than barter). Not really sure what the point of that digression was.