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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 continu

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.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  If you don't produce it directly or demand it as taxes, you can't guarantee that it gets produced at all. And you need to guarantee that, if you're going to go around giving it away for free. You don't need a bureaucracy to figure anything out. I have already done it. Everyone gets 2 L of bottled drinking water, 2200 kcal of food, a lockable room about 8'x10'x8.5', tap water, electricity, and Internet. The utility numbers mostly came from current usage statistics, the room size is based on solitary-confinement prison cells and self-storage units, and food and water based on the generally recognized dietary subsistence level of 2000 kcal/day and 1 mL/kcal rule of thumb for drinking water. An easy way to do it is to rely on the Geneva Conventions. If you cannot supply conditions sufficient for humane treatment of refugees and prisoners of war to your own citizens and residents, your numbers are wrong. If you don't like the food you get with your ration, sell it. I'm sure there will be a service around to collect your unwanted UBI tangible goods and resell them to someone else in exchange for a cut of the proceeds, so you can get more, different, or better of something else that you do want. If you're a petite lady, you could likely trade in your 2200 kcal of basic UBI food for enough cash to buy 1800 kcal of better food. If you don't use all your free electricity, you could use it to mine bitcoins or purify copper electrode or recharge batteries. If you don't use your tap water, you could do someone else's laundry for money. But I picked the numbers to be in the "this kinda sucks" territory for a typical American. You'll probably always want more than you get, and for that, you still need to access the paid trade markets. And if for some reason you don't already want more than you get, that's what advertising is for. The same calculation problem exists with the cash-only vision of UBI. Someone has to decide how much is enough. But then that number constantly changes as prices adjust to what people actually buy with their "enough". The point of the tax thing is that the US has long been conditioned to be averse to communism in any recognizable form, and a less sizeable fraction is also averse to fascism. The fact remains that whatever you want to give away for free has to be produced first, and you can't guarantee that a for-profit business would make enough as long as it is possible to earn higher profit by producing less. If the government needs 750 Tcal of food to meet its UBI requirements, it can do one of 3 things: own farming capacity sufficient to produce it, order existing agribusiness to produce at least that amount and surrender it, or tax/print whatever it takes to buy that much on the open market. If communism is unacceptable, you have to do one of the other things, and the latter has the potential to destabilize your entire monetary system.

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.

logfromblammo 9y ago
If you don't produce it directly or demand it as taxes, you can't guarantee that it gets produced at all. And you need to guarantee that, if you're going to go around giving it away for free. You don't need a bureaucracy to figure anything out. I have already done it. Everyone gets 2 L of bottled drinking water, 2200 kcal of food, a lockable room about 8'x10'x8.5', tap water, electricity, and Internet. The utility numbers mostly came from current usage statistics, the room size is based on solitary-confinement prison cells and self-storage units, and food and water based on the generally recognized dietary subsistence level of 2000 kcal/day and 1 mL/kcal rule of thumb for drinking water. An easy way to do it is to rely on the Geneva Conventions. If you cannot supply conditions sufficient for humane treatment of refugees and prisoners of war to your own citizens and residents, your numbers are wrong. If you don't like the food you get with your ration, sell it. I'm sure there will be a service around to collect your unwanted UBI tangible goods and resell them to someone else in exchange for a cut of the proceeds, so you can get more, different, or better of something else that you do want. If you're a petite lady, you could likely trade in your 2200 kcal of basic UBI food for enough cash to buy 1800 kcal of better food. If you don't use all your free electricity, you could use it to mine bitcoins or purify copper electrode or recharge batteries. If you don't use your tap water, you could do someone else's laundry for money. But I picked the numbers to be in the "this kinda sucks" territory for a typical American. You'll probably always want more than you get, and for that, you still need to access the paid trade markets. And if for some reason you don't already want more than you get, that's what advertising is for. The same calculation problem exists with the cash-only vision of UBI. Someone has to decide how much is enough. But then that number constantly changes as prices adjust to what people actually buy with their "enough". The point of the tax thing is that the US has long been conditioned to be averse to communism in any recognizable form, and a less sizeable fraction is also averse to fascism. The fact remains that whatever you want to give away for free has to be produced first, and you can't guarantee that a for-profit business would make enough as long as it is possible to earn higher profit by producing less. If the government needs 750 Tcal of food to meet its UBI requirements, it can do one of 3 things: own farming capacity sufficient to produce it, order existing agribusiness to produce at least that amount and surrender it, or tax/print whatever it takes to buy that much on the open market. If communism is unacceptable, you have to do one of the other things, and the latter has the potential to destabilize your entire monetary system.