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I largely agree with what's being said in this interview, except for a few comments: > "But in countless ways it’s much harder to convince lawmakers and politi
by Suncho 9y ago
I largely agree with what's being said in this interview, except for a few comments:
> "But in countless ways it’s much harder to convince lawmakers and politicians to give every person in the country cash gratis than it is to guide a start-up to a nine-figure valuation."
You don't have to convince lawmakers to do it. It's possible to implement basic income without any direct government support.
> "The question I’m interested in: How do we unlock maximum human potential?"
This is almost the right question, but not exactly. The right question is "how do we unlock the economy's prosperity-maximizing capacity?" It's not about how how we get the most out of humans. It's about how we provide the most for humans.
> "Obviously, there are a lot of people who could do great things that would benefit all of us. Create art, start companies and yet they can’t."
This is true, but human labor is just one of many resources that we're not using to their full potential. By narrowly framing things just in terms of what we can get out of humans, we're limiting the possibilities of basic income.
> "One of the things that people forget is that if the robots really do come, yes, they will eliminate or change a lot of jobs, but the cost of goods and services will just go down and down and down."
Sort of. Monetary policy will prevent deflation. So the price of the things people need to buy will always remain stable. It's just that people might get more stuff for free.
> "What I would propose is a model like a company where you get a share in U.S. Inc. And then, instead of getting a fixed fee, you get a percentage of the GDP every year."
This is a mistake. The economy has the capacity to produce a certain amount of wealth for people. That amount is difficult to calculate ahead of time. Measures like GDP are probably not going to help. But the appropriate amount of basic income is always going to correspond to the amount of spending that the economy can productively respond to.
- Danihan 9y ago> It's possible to implement basic income without any direct government support. How's that? > The right question is "how do we unlock the economy's prosperity-maximizing capacity?" Asked and answered: free-market capitalism. Nothing has resulted in the sort of rapid prosperity we've seen recently with market capitalism spreading globally.
- Suncho 9y ago> How's that? It's what I'm working on right now: http://www.greshm.org http://www.greshm.org > > The right question is "how do we unlock the economy's prosperity-maximizing capacity?" > Asked and answered: free-market capitalism. Nothing has resulted in the sort of rapid prosperity we've seen recently with market capitalism spreading globally. Capitalism can't exist without government and government can't exist without capitalism. They are yin and yang. I agree with you that capitalism is an important piece of the puzzle. By providing people with a basic income, we can make sure capitalism reaches its full potential in supporting social prosperity.
- vonnik 9y ago> Asked and answered: free-market capitalism. Nothing has resulted in the sort of rapid prosperity we've seen recently with market capitalism spreading globally. Kind of. Free-market capitalism has advantages in some situations. But you also have markets that "freely" tend toward monopolies or oligopolies, which end up leaving the majority of consumers in the lurch. Over time, most systems including markets will be gamed so that certain elites reproduce their privilege at the expense of their fellows. This is true of free markets just as it is true of command economies.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago>Asked and answered: free-market capitalism. Nothing has resulted in the sort of rapid prosperity we've seen recently with market capitalism spreading globally. But prosperity for whom, most people aren't satisfied with a system that drastically increases the GDP of their country but where they as an individual don't increase their standard of life at all. As globalization and technological progress increase, prosperity will result but it will become more and more concentrated. When you totally sacrifice 10% of peoples wealth (say Detroit auto workers) to make the other 90% better off and you do it over and over again, you're going to end with an extremely wealthy elite of people who snuck past ever being part of the 10%.
- tom_mellior 9y ago> free-market capitalism Nothing about UBI is opposed to free markets, unless you think paying taxes is not compatible with free-market capitalism.