8 ms·

UBI. Then we can be gleeful about more automation.

asdfman123 7y ago
People need to feel useful to others. Right now, in the US, we fulfill that need through work. Work is an integral part of our culture. If you make a whole swath of the population feel redundant, especially practical, no-nonsense people who are used to having work define who they are, they are not going to adjust well. They are quite different than college-educated hippies who would rather get more education and go surfing for a few years while they write bad poetry. I mean imagine living in a rural, middle-of-nowhere US town where everyone pretty much lives on $800/mo from the government. What would you do out there? Would you care about high school if it's totally okay to not do anything? Maybe you'd go off to college, but then come back when it gets hard because it's totally okay if you never amount to anything. I would probably just spend my life on the internet and playing games while feeling guilty. Others would escape through drugs. It is possible to change our culture and attitudes to work, but that's a really big change.
- androidrebel 7y ago
  UBI encourages parasitic drag on the economy.
  - jodrellblank 7y ago
    UBI encourages the disinterested to leave the workforce, instead of taking a job they hate because they must have a job, and doing as little as possible, resisting change, lowering coworker's morale, and being a drag. It frees companies to only hire people who are interested in what the company is doing and enthusiastic about it. It frees people to do constructive, contributing things they might want to do, but which wouldn't pay enough, or which they wouldn't be able to do full time but can do part time.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    No, UBI discourages “parasitic drag” on the aggregate economy compared to conventional means-tested welfare, while more effectively addressing the distributional issues which create the problems means-tested welfare is instituted to address.
- zwkrt 7y ago
  I think that you would find that people reorganize their value structures pretty quickly when not forced to work. Think of anyone you know who is retired. In the current scheme we think of people as 'earning' their retirement, but whether or not it is earned or given, every retired person has to figure out how to fill their day. Most I know do this by being more active in their community and spending lots of time with friends and family.
- logicprog 7y ago
  I one hundred percent agree with you on what the results would be-- without there being repercussions for not persevering with anything, and with all bad choices safely having the corners rounded off by UBI, most people won't do anything much. And as much as they feel like they don't want to do work now, this lack of any motivation from outside themselves will have a deleterious effect on people. I mean, picture what the average person does with their free time! Watch TV, scroll Twitter, stuff like that. And they're constantly complaining about how much they regret not using their time wisely and blaming Netflix for eating their time, etc. Now imagine if no one had to do anything, if you totally failed at something or just didn't bother to do anything, the government would prop you up. Imagine the social issues that would bring. Imagine the difficulty. Where I disagree with you, however, is the assumption that finding life meaning and purpose and a sense of usefulness and competency and enjoyment out of work is a thing limited to specifically today's culture, a thing that we can just change. For one, most people don't have the introspection and willpower to self-actualize and create their own meaning in life. This is a huge reason we have depression and nihilism and existential dispair. Two, we have stories from history and interactions from other cultures that show that finding meaning in work holds true for them as well.
  - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
    The problem with not using free time wisely is that there is usually supply and fragmentation issues -- not enough free time (or at least feels like it) and chunks that feel small enough that you have trouble fitting anything significant in before you have to drop everything and go make another buck. So the time is spent on useless things that are easy to pick up. For example, unless currently possessed by a Strange Mood (in Dwarf Fortress artifact making sense), it takes me 4 free days to even start (or resume) something productive more complex than general housework stuff. That excludes most of weekends out, since they are too short. People who would have trouble finding valuable (to them) things to do under UBI regime, have even more trouble now, unless they lucked out and consider the job they must do now to be more valuable than the money it brings. And not a soul sucking waste of time that doesn't leave enough time and energy to even realize something fulfilling can be done.
    - 7y ago
- wjmao88 7y ago
  > practical, no-nonsense people who are used to having work define who they are These people can still let work define themselves, with less competition and more responsibilities which would make them more happy. > Would you care about high school if it's totally okay to not do anything? Maybe you'd go off to college, but then come back when it gets hard because it's totally okay if you never amount to anything. I think this is totally okay. Every time there is a topic on college there is the debate of whether college should be job training or overall growth of individuals. This solves that problem altogether and all the way to high schools. Also, when those people enjoyed enough of their free time and want to go back and learn, they will be able to do so without pressure. We cram 12-16 years of school on kids because most of them can't afford to not to. We already see middle class and wealthy children taking gap years to explore life, this just let everyone do that. > I would probably just spend my life on the internet and playing games while feeling guilty. Do you spend all your time on the internet and play games after work? If you don't, why would you when you don't have to work? > Others would escape through drugs. I'd say more people escape through drugs due to pressure in life than the lack of pressure.
- Gene_Parmesan 7y ago
  > Maybe you'd go off to college, but then come back when it gets hard because it's totally okay if you never amount to anything. I would say, it's totally okay for any person, in rural US or urban, to not go to college if they don't need it. I am a huge proponent of higher ed, including making it freely available to all, but this idea that you have to go to college to "amount to something" is damaging. Additionally, your use of "amount to something" is showing your own bias towards feeling that white-collar work defines success in life. Not everyone feels like this -- as you've noted, but it's not limited to "college-educated hippies." I know many, many people who work solely to put food on the table and find their fulfillment elsewhere. This could be via volunteering, art (not only hippie art), mentoring others, or pursuing dream jobs in their free time. Imagine if the safety net of UBI existed -- how many more people would feel confident taking the risk to open the restaurant they've always dreamed of opening, or art gallery, or other cottage-industry? Furthermore, It's not about preventing people from working if they want to. It's about ending minimum-wage slavery -- making sure people don't need to work two or three minimum wage jobs just so their children have food to eat and a roof over their heads. > I would probably just spend my life on the internet and playing games while feeling guilty. You say this, but I kind of doubt it. That guilt would spur you to do something of value. > Others would escape through drugs. There is currently an epidemic of drug use in the US due to all the people trying to escape from the misery of their $7.25/hour existences.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Depooty 7y ago
  Most jobs in the near term that will be automated are going to be low paying clerical (secretaries/data entry)/predictable physical jobs (think fast food prep). A lot of these people have to work multiple minimum wage jobs to support their families. You're delusional if you think all those people working at McDonald's get a sense of pride and worth every time they fill a container with fries. I disagree with your assumption about education. A lot of people take pride in their knowledge. Most great scientists throughout history were basically trust fund babies. That's how they could afford to not work in a field and instead get educated and study science. I want us to look at this the way we look at the invention of agriculture and not some dystopia where everyone is living in a slum. Agriculture freed up a lot of people from worrying about finding food. Do you think they were against growing grain and lost their sense of purpose because they didn't have to spend days running down deer? I seriously doubt it. This then led to people specializing in other fields. We see people becoming masons and building grand structures. Moving from militias to standing armies. Studying the stars leading to the ability to navigate the oceans. I think it's going to free up a lot of people who would have other wise been minimum wage indentured servants to have the ability to study and become great scientists or writers or doctors or whatever. Who knows how many great minds were wasted toiling away as a serf to some lord.
- glglwty 7y ago
  You can play world of warcraft to feel useful to others. Or mine cryptocurrency. Both are well-designed proof-of-work systems.
gridlockd 7y ago
A UBI in the salary range of an Amazon warehouse worker would be on the order of 1/3rd GDP.
- mrybczyn 7y ago
  30K / year * 100 million people = 3 trillion. 1/6th GDP. Lots of money.
  - deathanatos 7y ago
    (Presuming the USA) We have 327M people, approximately 250M of which are adults. So, you're off by half, and the OP's statement of 1/3 seems closer…
  - psandersen 7y ago
    It is a huge amount of money. Though the real question is the feedback loops UBI creates IMHO... The money will be injected straight back in the economy as people are still living paycheck to paycheck at that wage, so given studies show every $1 given to people on lower income results in around $1.2 in GDP* you'd expect overall GDP to grow provided its the UBI level and tax system is properly balanced. Clever use of UBI also allows redoing many labour laws & protections because having UBI to fall back on will substantially improve the bargaining power of workers so they won't need the same protections. * Sorry don't have a reference, seen this discussed a few places as common knowledge.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  That's much higher than I expect, citation? I was told there would be math.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Did you make any attempt to solve it yourself? Googling: Amazon warehouse worker $14/hour. 2080 hours per year = $29K. US Adult population 252 million. Multiply: 7.4 Trillion. US GDP (2017) 19.4 Trillion. Taking only US citizen adults, the figure is still >90% of the above.
oytis 7y ago
UBI is a social security measure, not a way of maintaining a fair society. If one's job is automated, they get pushed to the lowest class of the society. UBI just guarantees that their life will be a bit less miserable.
UnFleshedOne 7y ago
I agree with UBI is principle, but implementation is where the dragons are. For one, doing UBI in a single country will cause whole number of problems. Do you keep borders relatively open and recall Europe's migrant crisis as a cute little inconvenience, or do you close them shut deal with political consequences of that -- generally people who are for closing borders are also against taking personal hits to prop up others. (and dealing with that involves doubling down on nationalism and other ugly notions). With a planetary government and mostly automated industrial base (that likely needs more power over individual countries than US federal government has over individual US states), it will probably work. Good luck getting there. Or with most of the countries (by population) implementing comparable UBI regimes mostly at the same time. So we'll have to wait for at least China and India to catch up.

People need to feel useful to others. Right now, in the US, we fulfill that need through work. Work is an integral part of our culture. If you make a whole swath of the population feel redundant, especially practical, no-nonsense people who are used to having work define who they are, they are not going to adjust well. They are quite different than college-educated hippies who would rather get more education and go surfing for a few years while they write bad poetry. I mean imagine living in a rural, middle-of-nowhere US town where everyone pretty much lives on $800/mo from the government. What would you do out there? Would you care about high school if it's totally okay to not do anything? Maybe you'd go off to college, but then come back when it gets hard because it's totally okay if you never amount to anything. I would probably just spend my life on the internet and playing games while feeling guilty. Others would escape through drugs. It is possible to change our culture and attitudes to work, but that's a really big change.

androidrebel 7y ago
UBI encourages parasitic drag on the economy.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  UBI encourages the disinterested to leave the workforce, instead of taking a job they hate because they must have a job, and doing as little as possible, resisting change, lowering coworker's morale, and being a drag. It frees companies to only hire people who are interested in what the company is doing and enthusiastic about it. It frees people to do constructive, contributing things they might want to do, but which wouldn't pay enough, or which they wouldn't be able to do full time but can do part time.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  No, UBI discourages “parasitic drag” on the aggregate economy compared to conventional means-tested welfare, while more effectively addressing the distributional issues which create the problems means-tested welfare is instituted to address.
zwkrt 7y ago
I think that you would find that people reorganize their value structures pretty quickly when not forced to work. Think of anyone you know who is retired. In the current scheme we think of people as 'earning' their retirement, but whether or not it is earned or given, every retired person has to figure out how to fill their day. Most I know do this by being more active in their community and spending lots of time with friends and family.
logicprog 7y ago
I one hundred percent agree with you on what the results would be-- without there being repercussions for not persevering with anything, and with all bad choices safely having the corners rounded off by UBI, most people won't do anything much. And as much as they feel like they don't want to do work now, this lack of any motivation from outside themselves will have a deleterious effect on people. I mean, picture what the average person does with their free time! Watch TV, scroll Twitter, stuff like that. And they're constantly complaining about how much they regret not using their time wisely and blaming Netflix for eating their time, etc. Now imagine if no one had to do anything, if you totally failed at something or just didn't bother to do anything, the government would prop you up. Imagine the social issues that would bring. Imagine the difficulty. Where I disagree with you, however, is the assumption that finding life meaning and purpose and a sense of usefulness and competency and enjoyment out of work is a thing limited to specifically today's culture, a thing that we can just change. For one, most people don't have the introspection and willpower to self-actualize and create their own meaning in life. This is a huge reason we have depression and nihilism and existential dispair. Two, we have stories from history and interactions from other cultures that show that finding meaning in work holds true for them as well.
- UnFleshedOne 7y ago
  The problem with not using free time wisely is that there is usually supply and fragmentation issues -- not enough free time (or at least feels like it) and chunks that feel small enough that you have trouble fitting anything significant in before you have to drop everything and go make another buck. So the time is spent on useless things that are easy to pick up. For example, unless currently possessed by a Strange Mood (in Dwarf Fortress artifact making sense), it takes me 4 free days to even start (or resume) something productive more complex than general housework stuff. That excludes most of weekends out, since they are too short. People who would have trouble finding valuable (to them) things to do under UBI regime, have even more trouble now, unless they lucked out and consider the job they must do now to be more valuable than the money it brings. And not a soul sucking waste of time that doesn't leave enough time and energy to even realize something fulfilling can be done.
  - 7y ago
wjmao88 7y ago
> practical, no-nonsense people who are used to having work define who they are These people can still let work define themselves, with less competition and more responsibilities which would make them more happy. > Would you care about high school if it's totally okay to not do anything? Maybe you'd go off to college, but then come back when it gets hard because it's totally okay if you never amount to anything. I think this is totally okay. Every time there is a topic on college there is the debate of whether college should be job training or overall growth of individuals. This solves that problem altogether and all the way to high schools. Also, when those people enjoyed enough of their free time and want to go back and learn, they will be able to do so without pressure. We cram 12-16 years of school on kids because most of them can't afford to not to. We already see middle class and wealthy children taking gap years to explore life, this just let everyone do that. > I would probably just spend my life on the internet and playing games while feeling guilty. Do you spend all your time on the internet and play games after work? If you don't, why would you when you don't have to work? > Others would escape through drugs. I'd say more people escape through drugs due to pressure in life than the lack of pressure.
Gene_Parmesan 7y ago
> Maybe you'd go off to college, but then come back when it gets hard because it's totally okay if you never amount to anything. I would say, it's totally okay for any person, in rural US or urban, to not go to college if they don't need it. I am a huge proponent of higher ed, including making it freely available to all, but this idea that you have to go to college to "amount to something" is damaging. Additionally, your use of "amount to something" is showing your own bias towards feeling that white-collar work defines success in life. Not everyone feels like this -- as you've noted, but it's not limited to "college-educated hippies." I know many, many people who work solely to put food on the table and find their fulfillment elsewhere. This could be via volunteering, art (not only hippie art), mentoring others, or pursuing dream jobs in their free time. Imagine if the safety net of UBI existed -- how many more people would feel confident taking the risk to open the restaurant they've always dreamed of opening, or art gallery, or other cottage-industry? Furthermore, It's not about preventing people from working if they want to. It's about ending minimum-wage slavery -- making sure people don't need to work two or three minimum wage jobs just so their children have food to eat and a roof over their heads. > I would probably just spend my life on the internet and playing games while feeling guilty. You say this, but I kind of doubt it. That guilt would spur you to do something of value. > Others would escape through drugs. There is currently an epidemic of drug use in the US due to all the people trying to escape from the misery of their $7.25/hour existences.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Depooty 7y ago
Most jobs in the near term that will be automated are going to be low paying clerical (secretaries/data entry)/predictable physical jobs (think fast food prep). A lot of these people have to work multiple minimum wage jobs to support their families. You're delusional if you think all those people working at McDonald's get a sense of pride and worth every time they fill a container with fries. I disagree with your assumption about education. A lot of people take pride in their knowledge. Most great scientists throughout history were basically trust fund babies. That's how they could afford to not work in a field and instead get educated and study science. I want us to look at this the way we look at the invention of agriculture and not some dystopia where everyone is living in a slum. Agriculture freed up a lot of people from worrying about finding food. Do you think they were against growing grain and lost their sense of purpose because they didn't have to spend days running down deer? I seriously doubt it. This then led to people specializing in other fields. We see people becoming masons and building grand structures. Moving from militias to standing armies. Studying the stars leading to the ability to navigate the oceans. I think it's going to free up a lot of people who would have other wise been minimum wage indentured servants to have the ability to study and become great scientists or writers or doctors or whatever. Who knows how many great minds were wasted toiling away as a serf to some lord.
glglwty 7y ago
You can play world of warcraft to feel useful to others. Or mine cryptocurrency. Both are well-designed proof-of-work systems.

gridlockd 7y ago

A UBI in the salary range of an Amazon warehouse worker would be on the order of 1/3rd GDP.

mrybczyn 7y ago
30K / year * 100 million people = 3 trillion. 1/6th GDP. Lots of money.
- deathanatos 7y ago
  (Presuming the USA) We have 327M people, approximately 250M of which are adults. So, you're off by half, and the OP's statement of 1/3 seems closer…
- psandersen 7y ago
  It is a huge amount of money. Though the real question is the feedback loops UBI creates IMHO... The money will be injected straight back in the economy as people are still living paycheck to paycheck at that wage, so given studies show every $1 given to people on lower income results in around $1.2 in GDP* you'd expect overall GDP to grow provided its the UBI level and tax system is properly balanced. Clever use of UBI also allows redoing many labour laws & protections because having UBI to fall back on will substantially improve the bargaining power of workers so they won't need the same protections. * Sorry don't have a reference, seen this discussed a few places as common knowledge.
NotSammyHagar 7y ago
That's much higher than I expect, citation? I was told there would be math.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Did you make any attempt to solve it yourself? Googling: Amazon warehouse worker $14/hour. 2080 hours per year = $29K. US Adult population 252 million. Multiply: 7.4 Trillion. US GDP (2017) 19.4 Trillion. Taking only US citizen adults, the figure is still >90% of the above.

oytis 7y ago

UBI is a social security measure, not a way of maintaining a fair society. If one's job is automated, they get pushed to the lowest class of the society. UBI just guarantees that their life will be a bit less miserable.

UnFleshedOne 7y ago

I agree with UBI is principle, but implementation is where the dragons are. For one, doing UBI in a single country will cause whole number of problems. Do you keep borders relatively open and recall Europe's migrant crisis as a cute little inconvenience, or do you close them shut deal with political consequences of that -- generally people who are for closing borders are also against taking personal hits to prop up others. (and dealing with that involves doubling down on nationalism and other ugly notions). With a planetary government and mostly automated industrial base (that likely needs more power over individual countries than US federal government has over individual US states), it will probably work. Good luck getting there. Or with most of the countries (by population) implementing comparable UBI regimes mostly at the same time. So we'll have to wait for at least China and India to catch up.