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Guaranteed Minimum Agriculture: Why Basic Jobs Might Fare Better Than UBI
- jacknews 9y agoI prefer "Guaranteed basic equity" - everyone should own shares in the overall economy, particularly wrt. land and other natural resources and monopolies, and which pay a UBI-like dividend. "Fake jobs" have been tried before, and usually end up costing more than the benefit they provide, and are often mandatory and stigmatized, so don't necessarily improve the prospects of participants.
- meri_dian 9y agoI create a company, I issue shares expecting to get paid in return, but now I have to give them out for free. So I will not issue them. I own shares that have already been issued. I've paid a certain price for them. I will not give my shares to someone else for free, and I will not tolerate more shares being issued for frre because that will devalue my own shares. This idea of freely distributed shared equity ownership is a nonstarter since equity is only created when people pay for it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jacknews 9y agoThere are many ways to make this work, eg When you create your company, the govt automatically get 30% share, and 30% of future dilutions, perhaps instead of taxes.
- jacknews 9y agoBut I'm thinking especially about things that that we all should have a natural claim on, like land, minerals, radio spectrum, etc, etc.
- LyndsySimon 9y agoIf not for land ownership, why would anyone improve it? If I take out a mortgage on 40 acres, I might log it to generate revenue, and then plant it in hay grass to make (or help make) the mortgage payments, which in turn lets me build equity that I can leverage to acquire additional capital. That's a lot of work. Why would I ever go log, plant, and harvest public land when I don't substantially benefit from it?
- s73ver_ 9y agoWhy are you assuming you wouldn't benefit?
- jacknews 9y agoThe current situation is that you can own land (and pass it on to countless generations), and even if you do nothing to it, the value of the land may increase due to the rest of the economy, or if the people next to you build skyscrapers, etc. That's doesn't seem fair, or productive, so I think the land itself should be owned collectively to some degree, but you would still own your improvements, and even 'own' the land in the form of a lease or whatever.
- uhhhhhhh 9y agoYou most likely wouldn't log it, you'd sign away rights to a company that wants to log it, and they pay you a percentage of profit, or more likely stumpage fees. This would mean that public land would work the same, companies want to use those resources to turn a profit and the fees would pay out to the public for using public land. The profit one stands to make of improving the land is always going to be the driver to do it in any system. The difference is this is taking "public land" and making it pay out to the "public" directly (supposedly). Unless one veers too far into socialist territory and removes property ownership completely, none of this precludes private property owners from continuing to profit off fees for land use, or even profiting off developing the land they own same as before. If one does take private ownership off the table, you're dealing with a much larger social change and impact than this particular discussion.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- chongli 9y agoThis idea of shared equity ownership is a nonstarter since equity is only created when people pay for it No, this is equity in real things: land, timber, minerals, clean water, road access, electricity etc. Your company wouldn't owe anybody any shares. Your land value taxes, however, would be distributed to everybody equally. As would the proceeds from your utility bills. Ideally, you would pay back exactly your share of the net externalities your company benefits from. That may be very hard to calculate in practice, though.
- adventured 9y agoYou can't distribute most of the recurring revenue systems in question. The roads & infrastructure systems need that revenue to sustain themselves, to operate, upgrade, etc. The land/property taxes are a critical revenue source for most local governments. This all just takes you right back to where we are today: you have to tax the top 1/3 heavily to pay for the money you're taking away from utility companies or infrastructure (and redistributing to everyone). You could allocate shared ownership into currently non-utilized land, mineral rights, spectrum, etc. That also simply takes revenue away from government that would otherwise receive that money, which you then have to tax back away from the population afterward to replace it.
- namlem 9y agoIt would be done through a public investment bank, so you would be paid for the shares. That, or you pay equity in lieu of taxes.
- alphonsegaston 9y agoI agree that worker ownership of the economy in which they labor would lead to better outcomes for all.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- probablybroken 9y agoIs there a massive difference between this and having a large public sector? I guess the guaranteed jobs would need to have low to zero skill requirements..
- debacle 9y agoIsn't this just a variant of the broken window fallacy?
- simonsarris 9y agoIt's a variant of protectionist policy. At least farm subsidies mimicking the European way of doing things are. > like Switzerland, where 55% of farmer income comes from the state
- vidarh 9y agoFarm subsidies often have a national security origin. Norwegian farming subsidies for example to date still is based on a principle of food security that first gained widespread support in Norway as a result of the British naval blockade of Denmark-Norway during the Napoleonic wars that caused occasional famines. The importance of this was driven home again during World War 2. So protectionist, yes, but widespread support has largely boiled down to food security rather than caring particularly much about farmers.
- simonsarris 9y agoYes, I mention this in the article.
- Aaargh20318 9y agoExcept that security is total bullshit the way the economy works today. You don't just need agriculture, you need every other industry that agriculture depends on.
- gaius 9y agoWhat happens if you don’t show up to your UBJ? Do you starve... or do you get... UBI anyway? The point of the U in UBI is that you can discard the expensive bureaucracy. The article proposes keeping it as well as UBJs! Literally missing the entire point. But providing lots more jobs for bureaucrats to administer both...
- simonsarris 9y agoYou starve. If you're totally incapable of work, the US has a program for that today, its called SSI, Supplemental Security Income. Not to be confused with Social Security or SSDI, this program is paid for with income taxes, not social security taxes. There are ~5 million people in the US on SSI.
- phaemon 9y agoYou're going to let little kids starve because their parents refuse to do your shitty government assigned job for the rest of their lives? Are you looking forward to your mandatory assigned job? Or are you imagining that it's just for other people?
- simonsarris 9y agoWhere did you get mandatory? Imagine a future that includes the options today + a few additional options for employment. That is all I'm describing. Very few people starve in the US: https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/937204945379454978 https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/937204945379454978
- geezerjay 9y ago> Where did you get mandatory? You were the one coming up with government-mandated jobs for people who are deemed unable to work. If you frame your policy as government jobs for those who have no alternative, what else would you call it?
- DanAndersen 9y ago
- bryanlarsen 9y agoYou're essentially paying people to dig holes and fill them back in again. Modern agriculture is a highly skilled job done with millions of dollars of capital equipment. Unskilled laborers are more hindrance than help, and will be sent off to the "back 40" to indulge in mindless busywork. And you expect people to get "Social responsibility, sense of purpose, community, meaningful ways to spend their time" from that? Meaningless jobs invariably turn into that special sort of hell you get when your ability to do politics and to step on the guys below you are much more important than any actual skill or ability.
- codingdave 9y agoModern agriculture is more varied than that. There are large scale farms with minimal unskilled work, yes. But there also is plenty of harvesting work still done by unskilled migrant workers, especially in Florida and the Southwestern USA.
- bryanlarsen 9y agoIn my opinion, people will get more "Social responsibility, sense of purpose, community, meaningful ways to spend their time" playing Call of Duty all day under some sort of BI program than they would from a UBJ job.
- maemilius 9y agoMan, you'd think - with all that extra time on their hands - they could pick a good game to play. :P
- Covzire 9y agoThat seems a bit ridiculous. Being paid UBJ to clean highways, with incentives to be on time and not miss days would vastly improve one's health and build effective job and time management skills, something that playing video games all day wouldn't.
- geezerjay 9y agoWho the hell wants to clean highways for a living? Isn't it used as a punishment for some offenses?
- debacle 9y agoHaving the UBI conversation in the context of the US is frivolous. The US has no populist or labor presence. We'd need 5-10 years of building that presence before we could even begin to talk UBI, and even then there'd be a lot of obstruction.
- alphonsegaston 9y agoI think the idea behind contemporary UBI discussions is to prevent exactly that kind of populism from congealing. The plan has to be something like introduce UBI as a short term panacea while the wealthy further consolidate their power. Once the stranglehold is in place, take it apart in all the same ways Americans have destroyed their safety nets in the past (means testing, welfare to work, etc). Exactly what they did with healthcare “reform”/Obamacare.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Having the UBI conversation in the context of the US is frivolous. The US has no populist or labor presence. We'd need 5-10 years of building that presence before we could even begin to talk UBI, and even then there'd be a lot of obstruction. (1) You are strategically wrong, in that having policy goals (e.g., UBI) and talking about them front and center has always been instrumental in building labor/populist movements. (2) You are factually wrong about the current context, in that the US has substantially and political relevant populist factions (both the energization of the one on the right and the alienation of the one on the left were key factors in the 2016 election.)
- s73ver_ 9y agoThere may be populist factions on both sides, but the one on the left is not very powerful, and the one on the right gave rise to Trumpism, which very clearly would not be in favor of this at all.
- codingdave 9y agoIf anyone isn't familiar with the WPA (mentioned in the article), it is worth reading about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration
- alphonsegaston 9y agoHow is this different from advocating for feudalism? The wealthy get to continue with unchecked power and advantage, while the poor are now serfs?
- simonsarris 9y agoThis is identical to a person's "present day" options plus one additional option: New jobs supported by the state. How is adding one more option feudalism?
- alphonsegaston 9y agoBecause the modern American economy with its tenuousness and inequality is already pretty close to feudalism? Without structurally changing anything, you’re just compounding this problem. You can get yourself thrown in prison and have guaranteed housing, healthcare, and a job. That option doesn’t make the dynamics of power in the system any less feudal.
- dfabulich 9y agoIf somebody's going to do anything like this, I'd think it should be "guaranteed minimum education." As long as you're in school and getting good grades, you get a basic living stipend.
- nradov 9y agoIt doesn't have to be agriculture. I support having the government act as an employer of last resort for people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits and can't find a job. But doing productive agricultural work requires specific skills, there is no shortage of agricultural workers in most areas, and there are few farms where most unemployed people actually live. Instead of agriculture we can create part-time minimum wage jobs doing other productive things like cleaning up litter and graffiti, trail maintenance, coaching youth activities, etc. This will help to maintain basic employment skills until they can find something better, and give them a stake in the community.
- notahacker 9y agoThere might be a point to "basic jobs" involving people signing on for community service type things which are (i) usually chronically underfunded or entirely voluntary and (ii) often in areas where automation can't eliminate the need for humans even if it does in other areas. Agriculture, which hasn't really required large numbers of workers in the West for over a century now, is a strange choice of "basic job" when you've got millions of old people suffering from lack of human contact, museums, arts centres and libraries on the verge of closure and no shortage of proper registered charities that could use some sort of volunteered time. Latter sectors probably also involve more in the way of personal development and satisfaction as unskilled, untrained casual work for subsistence income goes.
- quantumofmalice 9y agoDistributism, protectionism on the local level to ensure widely distributed ownership of capital by labor, advocates for this sort of thinking across the entire economy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism It's also worth noting that there is a narrative (as with most historical narratives, difficult to prove or disprove) that the national socialists created an economic miracle in Germany by guaranteeing pay for any and all labor.
- LyndsySimon 9y agoI imagine this is probably much like what the initial propaganda for the Khmer Rouge must have sounded like. "Let's just send all these people to work on farms!" - TFA literally says that this would be an attempt to solve a lack of "Social responsibility, sense of purpose, community, meaningful ways to spend their time"
- quadcore 9y agoPaying people to create value You dont just make people create value. Creating value is the hard part - and the problem is, it becomes harder for humans than for machines.
- kvnnews 9y agoGovernment should have less power, not more. This is a terrible idea, just like UBI always was.
- tlb 9y agoThis article seems to assume a particular archetype of unemployed person, a sort of romanticized peasant who's good at working with dirt but unsuited to industry. Most writings about UBI seem to fall into similar traps, where they pick some particular type of people (struggling musicians, say) and design a perfect system for them. But there are lots of different types of people. The system has to work for all of them. That's why you need large-scale studies, to figure out whom a given system works for and whom it doesn't. Nobody can do this in a thought experiment, because nobody can conjure up every type of person and predict how they will interact with the system.
- simonsarris 9y agoThis is a good criticism, but this is also why I started with "piloting" and the ability to try something else if it doesn't work as big plusses over UBI. It's true some people are unsuited to industry, and some people are unsuited to child care or elder care. These still are not getting done nearly at the levels we'd like, though.
- yarrel 9y agoWorkfare and "bullshit jobs" are not solutions.
- jerkstate 9y agoMy city is full of trash and graffiti and blight. I think urban renewal is another huge opportunity for basic jobs.
- jpao79 9y agoWas actually watching this last night on Deep Winter Greenhouses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRJUUPEKtsI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRJUUPEKtsI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ6s0mwm2ec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ6s0mwm2ec Some interesting findings. What happens if its just a matter of putting the technology together to make local produce actually cost competitive for the consumer, profitable for the producer and more sustainable and secure for society. The key is to focus on high value winter crops for high end restaurants (micro greens, asian greens, arugula, beets etc.). Some more links: https://www.extension.umn.edu/rsdp/statewide/deep-winter-greenhouse/ https://www.extension.umn.edu/rsdp/statewide/deep-winter-gre... https://www.extension.umn.edu/community/research/reports/docs/Deep-Winter-greenhouse-enterprise-analysis.pdf https://www.extension.umn.edu/community/research/reports/doc...
- blueyes 9y agoUBJ requires a huge bureaucracy that UBI does not. The real basic jobs will be the people administering the program, rather than the poor who were initially targeted.
- firmgently 9y agoThe thing about these ideas is they seem to presuppose starting from a blank canvas as opposed to starting from the current system of corrupt governments and corporate influence. Any implementations of Basic Jobs/Basic Income would be as rotten as the foundations they're built on, it's not going to go all rainbows and pixie-dust all of a sudden. Lobbying, self-interest, need of a hierarchy to rise up in and look down from... Apologies for my cynicism. Workfare in the UK hasn't been very fluffy. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jul/06/workfare-scheme-must-end https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jul/06/workfare-sch... http://www.boycottworkfare.org http://www.boycottworkfare.org "Workfare provides free labour for businesses and charities, enforced by benefit sanctions." http://www.solfed.org.uk/catalyst/the-great-workfare-scandal http://www.solfed.org.uk/catalyst/the-great-workfare-scandal "What boss would want to employ a worker they have to pay, when the government will give them someone off the dole to do it for free? The aim of workfare is simply to drive down wages.”
- reaperducer 9y agoChina tried something similar in the 1950's. It sent all the people it considered surplus out to farm. But they didn't know how to farm. Guess what happened. It's the reason parents until recently would tell their fussy kids, "Eat your food, there are children starving in China."