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It's more than that. Money's value depends on everyone's collective attachment to it. The winners of a game remain so, only as long as a significant number of p

It's more than that. Money's value depends on everyone's collective attachment to it. The winners of a game remain so, only as long as a significant number of people are playing. Ditto with USD, ditto with BTC. UBI is one way to keep people playing; but I'm extremely wary of this idea. UBI without some sort of communal/anarchist/kibbutz-ian distributed structure binds society in yet another way. 'You're free as long as you do what I want', is not something we as a society should want, yet it is almost universally true. The US wants nations to be 'free' so that they do what it wants; it's only natural that this extends all the way down to the individual.

kazagistar 9y ago
We already have conditional UBI for certain classes of people and situations. UBI is an incremental step of progress, and holding it up based on worries about not being perfectly utopic seems counterproductive.
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  The heads of almost every major industrial giant are sounding the alarm about the coming need for UBI. If they are right, and we come to a point where only a relatively small number of us are doing most of the productive work, and the rest are just collecting checks, the remaining producers are going to have a tremendous amount of leverage. So much leverage that I doubt there is a political arrangement capable of containing it long-term. More than a mere imperfection...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Kurtz79 9y ago
I like the idea of UBI in theory, but I cannot imagine it won't have any impact on the cost of living. At the very least, it would force companies contracting minimum/low wage workers to raise wages substantially (because why work on a shitty job if I can have the same money for free ?), which in turn would mean a substantial increase in prices, which in turn would make UBI money not enough to survive for most people relying exclusively on it, and we are back at square one. UBI seems to me the classic "easy solution for a complex problem", that in practice would create even more problems than the actual system.
- rjsw 9y ago
  Or we find out whether those minimum wage jobs really need to be done.
- bo1024 9y ago
  Maybe, maybe not. For companies that are making lots of profits, they wouldn't necessarily need to raise prices just because they raise wages. It's just that more of their revenue would be going back to the workers than where it's currently going (e.g. cash, shareholders, CEOs).
- ForHackernews 9y ago
  > raise wages substantially > which in turn would mean a substantial increase in prices, Higher wages only result in higher prices in non-competitive industries that rely on human labour. I think what would actually happen in competitive markets is they'd be constrained in their ability to raise prices and instead shift even more rapidly toward automation and capital investment to cut wage costs. The optimistic scenario would be lots of crappy jobs automated out of existence, and people with more free time on their hands.

kazagistar 9y ago

We already have conditional UBI for certain classes of people and situations. UBI is an incremental step of progress, and holding it up based on worries about not being perfectly utopic seems counterproductive.

jstewartmobile 9y ago
The heads of almost every major industrial giant are sounding the alarm about the coming need for UBI. If they are right, and we come to a point where only a relatively small number of us are doing most of the productive work, and the rest are just collecting checks, the remaining producers are going to have a tremendous amount of leverage. So much leverage that I doubt there is a political arrangement capable of containing it long-term. More than a mere imperfection...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Kurtz79 9y ago

I like the idea of UBI in theory, but I cannot imagine it won't have any impact on the cost of living. At the very least, it would force companies contracting minimum/low wage workers to raise wages substantially (because why work on a shitty job if I can have the same money for free ?), which in turn would mean a substantial increase in prices, which in turn would make UBI money not enough to survive for most people relying exclusively on it, and we are back at square one. UBI seems to me the classic "easy solution for a complex problem", that in practice would create even more problems than the actual system.

rjsw 9y ago
Or we find out whether those minimum wage jobs really need to be done.
bo1024 9y ago
Maybe, maybe not. For companies that are making lots of profits, they wouldn't necessarily need to raise prices just because they raise wages. It's just that more of their revenue would be going back to the workers than where it's currently going (e.g. cash, shareholders, CEOs).
ForHackernews 9y ago
> raise wages substantially > which in turn would mean a substantial increase in prices, Higher wages only result in higher prices in non-competitive industries that rely on human labour. I think what would actually happen in competitive markets is they'd be constrained in their ability to raise prices and instead shift even more rapidly toward automation and capital investment to cut wage costs. The optimistic scenario would be lots of crappy jobs automated out of existence, and people with more free time on their hands.