3 ms·

Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? Every one advocating for UBI could go to a poor neighbourhood / country, pick a poor

by a008t 8y ago

Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? Every one advocating for UBI could go to a poor neighbourhood / country, pick a poor person (or several), and start transferring them a portion of their income every month...

danans 8y ago
> Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? That's what YC is doing: https://basicincome.ycr.org/ https://basicincome.ycr.org/ They have 100s of millions to experiment with ... the average person does not. > Every one advocating for UBI could ... Advocacy (and voting) are the most power tools for shaping the future direction of society. It's very effective as a way of bringing change, and we have many examples in recent history of this being true. If it weren't, you wouldn't see huge amounts of money being given to Super PACs to advocate for political positions. > start transferring them a portion of their income every month... This is a rehash of the very tired, and baseless, cliche against higher taxes that says that those who support higher taxes should write a check to the IRS. It's a fallacious argument, because redistribution only has societal impact when operating on a society-wide scale. The most significant example of this, the Great Society (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society) wasn't built on voluntary contributions to the government. Individuals of normal means making marginal contributions does little to move the needle on the relevant societal problems in any significant way, whether those problems are infrastructure, poverty, health care, education, etc. These things, if they are done at all, have to be done at a societal scale, and that means via government methods of finance.

3 ms·

Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? Every one advocating for UBI could go to a poor neighbourhood / country, pick a poor

by a008t 8y ago

danans 8y ago
> Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? That's what YC is doing: https://basicincome.ycr.org/ https://basicincome.ycr.org/ They have 100s of millions to experiment with ... the average person does not. > Every one advocating for UBI could ... Advocacy (and voting) are the most power tools for shaping the future direction of society. It's very effective as a way of bringing change, and we have many examples in recent history of this being true. If it weren't, you wouldn't see huge amounts of money being given to Super PACs to advocate for political positions. > start transferring them a portion of their income every month... This is a rehash of the very tired, and baseless, cliche against higher taxes that says that those who support higher taxes should write a check to the IRS. It's a fallacious argument, because redistribution only has societal impact when operating on a society-wide scale. The most significant example of this, the Great Society (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society) wasn't built on voluntary contributions to the government. Individuals of normal means making marginal contributions does little to move the needle on the relevant societal problems in any significant way, whether those problems are infrastructure, poverty, health care, education, etc. These things, if they are done at all, have to be done at a societal scale, and that means via government methods of finance.