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My preference is for UBI to succeed so that I could spend 8 -10 hours a day pursuing personal projects and research instead spending 8-10 hours a day doing what

My preference is for UBI to succeed so that I could spend 8 -10 hours a day pursuing personal projects and research instead spending 8-10 hours a day doing what someone else tells me to do in order to eat. I am skeptical that UBI will work because paying people for nothing seems like it may be counterproductive by creating rampant inflation or by acting as a disincentive for most. The rampant inflation argument, which most economists would use to argue against UBI, is interesting because most countries seem to be suffering from deflation. If deflation is a problem, then inflation created by UBI could be beneficial to an economy. But getting a government to start up a new UBI program to combat deflation does not seem like an efficient path for creating a solution because governments are slow, rarely do things correctly, and magnify their mistakes by taking years to correct initial imperfections. Rather, focusing the brains, money, and technology of Silicon Valley on proving the idea with a cryptocurrency based UBI seems like a much more efficient approach to either 1) create a solution (the preferred option) or 2) settle the debate so that we can move on.

SubiculumCode 9y ago
To my mind (and I am no economist) inflation is the only constraint on a fiat currency's ability to create monetary tokens from nothing. We are indeed fighting deflation, almost globally. I suspect that the reason for this is that most economies are operating under the idea that the limits of productive capacity are not far off from what is being produced now, that is that they assume scarcity is a real threat. Historically, every time we have seen hyperinflation, there have been disruptions to production (e.g. war), or an economy that is built around one product (e.g. oil). In today's global economic system, local disruption (say a hurricane) is easily routed around by other suppliers in different locations. I think that our productive capacity before affecting inflation, and I'm just guessing here, is much much higher than we suppose. If so, I suspect printing money won't cause inflation because there is excess production capacity, and global competition would limit artificial price increases. Because I believe this, I support much higher deficits, and thus am a hybrid Republican/Democrat: I want low taxes, and high government spending. However, aside from infrastructure, I'd want the government spending to be a bottom up type of spending like UBI, because it would give people seed money to start businesses, and more money to spend at other's businesses.

SubiculumCode 9y ago

To my mind (and I am no economist) inflation is the only constraint on a fiat currency's ability to create monetary tokens from nothing. We are indeed fighting deflation, almost globally. I suspect that the reason for this is that most economies are operating under the idea that the limits of productive capacity are not far off from what is being produced now, that is that they assume scarcity is a real threat. Historically, every time we have seen hyperinflation, there have been disruptions to production (e.g. war), or an economy that is built around one product (e.g. oil). In today's global economic system, local disruption (say a hurricane) is easily routed around by other suppliers in different locations. I think that our productive capacity before affecting inflation, and I'm just guessing here, is much much higher than we suppose. If so, I suspect printing money won't cause inflation because there is excess production capacity, and global competition would limit artificial price increases. Because I believe this, I support much higher deficits, and thus am a hybrid Republican/Democrat: I want low taxes, and high government spending. However, aside from infrastructure, I'd want the government spending to be a bottom up type of spending like UBI, because it would give people seed money to start businesses, and more money to spend at other's businesses.