7 ms·

If we had a universal income, and people would be free to sell or not sell their labor, we could talk about a meaningful equilibrium based on individuals prefer

If we had a universal income, and people would be free to sell or not sell their labor, we could talk about a meaningful equilibrium based on individuals preferences and choice. In that situation I doubt we would see many people taking on these jobs (including the parentheticals you mention) with these conditions.

darkerside 8y ago
I posit that, in that case, a new "normal" baseline would be established by social consensus (perhaps, owning a home, smart phone, access to media, high quality medical care, and organic food) that is above what is afforded by the UBI. Falling below that threshold would then be deemed just as unacceptable as the poverty line today. And people won't solve it by taking on these undesirable jobs, they'll rail against an unfair system instead, just like we do today when things are already better than they've ever been. Such is human nature. Always has been, always will be. We just do the best we can to balance between indulging it with socialism, and leveraging it with capitalism.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  If we imagine that "life goodness" can be measured by a single real number, and we model it with a normal distribution with a mean somewhere on the positive axis, then one way to say what you describe is that we create a threshold somewhere along the left-hand tail of that distribution, and we declare anything below the threshold as morally unacceptable, in need of social constraints that prevent the permissibility of outcomes falling further to the left than our threshold. As technology enables expansion of the right-side tail for the relatively most wealthy, it seems like a reasonable utilitarian goal to say that we should adjust the left-side threshold more and more to the right, in a "optimize the well-being of the least well off" sense. So I'd view this ever rightward moving threshold as a very good thing that represents exactly what we want in terms of progress. If we ever got to a point where we said, welp "poor people" are now above the magic threshold (e.g. because the people on the left tail of the distribution mostly have hot showers, cell phones, and Netflix), so what more do they want? ... why are they complaining? ... this would be incredibly frightening. Essentially the wealthy would be deciding at which threshold upward human progress gets to stop, in favor of creating skewness in the distribution that concentrates more wealth into the right-side tail, as long as that left-side threshold stays above the "hot showers, cell phones, and Netflix" line.
  - turc1656 8y ago
    "Essentially the wealthy would be deciding at which threshold upward human progress gets to stop..." No, that's not what that would mean. It means the producers of society get to determine at what point they wish to stop providing government mandated subsidies through either taxation or deficit spending to the non-producers or those who produce far less value. There should be absolutely nothing wrong with people deciding that they do not wish to handover any more of their wealth. If your opinion is that the "system" is the culprit and these people are being squashed by bad laws, policies, etc., the proper recourse is not to legally rob others to help those people - the solution is to fix the bad laws and policies that may benefit the rich unfairly. Underlying your claim appears to be some baseline assumption that the poor have some sort of legitimate claim on the productivity of other citizens. I strongly disagree with this assumption. I personally do not believe that anyone has a right to the fruits of my labor. The government, however, says otherwise and demands that I fork over non-trivial amounts of money to other people - individuals, to be clear, not public goods. I'm fine with the idea of taxation to provide for public goods like roads, military, etc. The modern poor in developed nations (and especially the US) have a standard of living that exceeds what the average family experienced in most of the 20th century. This concept of poor is obviously relative and it is the Keeping Up With The Jones' mentality that drives this nonsense of ever-increasing handouts. There was a great video I saw once by a guy who used to be homeless and on welfare. He said that when he was on welfare he was never grateful for anything he received because he was just mad others had more. He gave the analogy of imagining that your boss came over and said you did such a fantastic job you are getting 100k for a bonus. You're ecstatic and grateful. Then you find out that everyone else in your office got 200k bonuses. You immediately turn to anger and resentment, despite the fact that you are now 100k wealthier. Helping thy neighbor is great. But legally mandating it is a terrible idea and has been terrible in practice.
    - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      I think you're misusing the word "producers" when you mean "people who disingenuously accumulated wealth on the backs of the labor product of others they exploited."
- kazagistar 8y ago
  Are you saying that "food, heat, and a roof over your head" is an arbitrary social construct?
  - darkerside 8y ago
    A cave with a fire and a dead pig satisfy that. I'm pretty sure that's not what you're really advocating for a baseline lifestyle.
- Certhas 8y ago
  I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by "won't solve it by taking on jobs just as today". Today people take on these jobs, and in most countries that I know of, the social welfare net is contingent on actively looking for work. Today your (legal) options are: Try to work or die. Do you think you can get a fair price if the other side knows you have to sell with a gun to your head? I suspect most people would work for reasons you mentioned, but I also suspect that the price for undesirable unskilled labor would be much much much higher than it is today. Which would incentivize automating this type of labor first. As it should be.

darkerside 8y ago

I posit that, in that case, a new "normal" baseline would be established by social consensus (perhaps, owning a home, smart phone, access to media, high quality medical care, and organic food) that is above what is afforded by the UBI. Falling below that threshold would then be deemed just as unacceptable as the poverty line today. And people won't solve it by taking on these undesirable jobs, they'll rail against an unfair system instead, just like we do today when things are already better than they've ever been. Such is human nature. Always has been, always will be. We just do the best we can to balance between indulging it with socialism, and leveraging it with capitalism.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
If we imagine that "life goodness" can be measured by a single real number, and we model it with a normal distribution with a mean somewhere on the positive axis, then one way to say what you describe is that we create a threshold somewhere along the left-hand tail of that distribution, and we declare anything below the threshold as morally unacceptable, in need of social constraints that prevent the permissibility of outcomes falling further to the left than our threshold. As technology enables expansion of the right-side tail for the relatively most wealthy, it seems like a reasonable utilitarian goal to say that we should adjust the left-side threshold more and more to the right, in a "optimize the well-being of the least well off" sense. So I'd view this ever rightward moving threshold as a very good thing that represents exactly what we want in terms of progress. If we ever got to a point where we said, welp "poor people" are now above the magic threshold (e.g. because the people on the left tail of the distribution mostly have hot showers, cell phones, and Netflix), so what more do they want? ... why are they complaining? ... this would be incredibly frightening. Essentially the wealthy would be deciding at which threshold upward human progress gets to stop, in favor of creating skewness in the distribution that concentrates more wealth into the right-side tail, as long as that left-side threshold stays above the "hot showers, cell phones, and Netflix" line.
- turc1656 8y ago
  "Essentially the wealthy would be deciding at which threshold upward human progress gets to stop..." No, that's not what that would mean. It means the producers of society get to determine at what point they wish to stop providing government mandated subsidies through either taxation or deficit spending to the non-producers or those who produce far less value. There should be absolutely nothing wrong with people deciding that they do not wish to handover any more of their wealth. If your opinion is that the "system" is the culprit and these people are being squashed by bad laws, policies, etc., the proper recourse is not to legally rob others to help those people - the solution is to fix the bad laws and policies that may benefit the rich unfairly. Underlying your claim appears to be some baseline assumption that the poor have some sort of legitimate claim on the productivity of other citizens. I strongly disagree with this assumption. I personally do not believe that anyone has a right to the fruits of my labor. The government, however, says otherwise and demands that I fork over non-trivial amounts of money to other people - individuals, to be clear, not public goods. I'm fine with the idea of taxation to provide for public goods like roads, military, etc. The modern poor in developed nations (and especially the US) have a standard of living that exceeds what the average family experienced in most of the 20th century. This concept of poor is obviously relative and it is the Keeping Up With The Jones' mentality that drives this nonsense of ever-increasing handouts. There was a great video I saw once by a guy who used to be homeless and on welfare. He said that when he was on welfare he was never grateful for anything he received because he was just mad others had more. He gave the analogy of imagining that your boss came over and said you did such a fantastic job you are getting 100k for a bonus. You're ecstatic and grateful. Then you find out that everyone else in your office got 200k bonuses. You immediately turn to anger and resentment, despite the fact that you are now 100k wealthier. Helping thy neighbor is great. But legally mandating it is a terrible idea and has been terrible in practice.
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    I think you're misusing the word "producers" when you mean "people who disingenuously accumulated wealth on the backs of the labor product of others they exploited."
kazagistar 8y ago
Are you saying that "food, heat, and a roof over your head" is an arbitrary social construct?
- darkerside 8y ago
  A cave with a fire and a dead pig satisfy that. I'm pretty sure that's not what you're really advocating for a baseline lifestyle.
Certhas 8y ago
I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by "won't solve it by taking on jobs just as today". Today people take on these jobs, and in most countries that I know of, the social welfare net is contingent on actively looking for work. Today your (legal) options are: Try to work or die. Do you think you can get a fair price if the other side knows you have to sell with a gun to your head? I suspect most people would work for reasons you mentioned, but I also suspect that the price for undesirable unskilled labor would be much much much higher than it is today. Which would incentivize automating this type of labor first. As it should be.