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I think well before we consider universal basic income, we should consider universal basic services. Many services are already highly regulated and naturally so

I think well before we consider universal basic income, we should consider universal basic services. Many services are already highly regulated and naturally somewhat difficult to exploit. Healthcare is the obvious one. It's not like you can get a surgery and then resell it to exploit the system. (You could, of course, exploit things like pain medication, but overall healthcare is not expoitation-friendly.) Some amount of water, electricity, Internet access, and some amount of food are other good candidates. (Shelter is a much harder problem to solve and one where I think going through money is probably a better approach.) I'd much rather see every person be given a reasonable amount of food, water, electricity, Internet access, and good healtcare. That is almost enough to lift people out of poverty and give them enough safety and security to enable them to live healthy, successful lives. Then maybe see if it makes sense to provide money too. But my hunch is that UBI itself isn't a great solution. You can think of it effectively as a negative tax rate for the poor. The UBI has to be paid for by other taxes, so at some income/wealth level you will be breaking even and above that you will be paying for the UBI for people under. I think that structure is perfectly fine for moral reasons, but looking at it from that perspective, it's not clear to me how simply having a relatively minor negative tax rate will solve the systemic problems faced by the poor. Getting a check for a hundred bucks every month isn't going to fix everything if you break your back and need a million dollars in healthcare. What people need to thrive is security the knowledge that if unfortunate events outside of their control happen, that they will be helped to the degree that society is able. If you know you can be made bankrupt if you get sick, or your access to water can be shut off if someone robs you, then you are "poor" in all of the ways that subjectively matter.

godzillabrennus 7y ago
Governments that centrally plan all the basic necessities you outline are terrible at all of them. Democide tends to happen as government collects more power in the process. Letting government give a basic income and the private sector filling supply is a much more reasonable solution. Let’s a free market exist to satisfy demand while recognizing the end of jobs is about here.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  If you don’t control things at least a little, things like health care, education and rent will suck up all basic income very quickly. I think a good first step would be universal healthcare, then do something about affordable housing and education.
- cultus 7y ago
  I think it's pretty hard to argue that private companies are good and ethical at operating natural monopolies. History and all evidence is not on your side. I'll list a few examples: the California blackouts after electrical deregulation, the Bolivian water crisis after water supplies were privatized, the abuses of companies like Comcast in the US, etc. Even Adam Smith warned of natural monopolies. Nearly any economist will tell you letting them be private and under-regulated is nuts. The same with healthcare. Why is every other first world country able to get objectively better health outcomes for less money with universal healthcare? How is our system better?
  - LaEc 7y ago
    Are healthcare outcomes worse in the US than other first world countries? Life expectancy is endogenous to variables like diet and exercise. Looking at cancer survival rates, the US is best at some and mediocre at others but other countries are not "objectively better"[0]. Is health expenditure in the US higher than in other countries? Yes, but that is because the US is rich, really rich. If we plot US Real Household Income against healthcare consumption, the US is perfectly inline with global trends[1]. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/articles/concord-2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/articles/concord-2.... [1] https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2018/11/19/why-everything-you-know-about-healthcare-is-wrong-in-one-million-charts-a-response-to-noah-smith/ https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2018/11/19/why-everything...
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      The US is obviously not rich enough to cover all or even most citizens. And a lot of people are not rich enough to avoid bankruptcy because of medical bills.
jakearmitage 7y ago
What about child care? Education? Transportation? Dental care?
- war1025 7y ago
  Elementary school is effectively universal childcare. It's just you have to make it through the first several years first. Realistically that age is set to when children can be reliably self-sufficient enough that they don't require help with feeding / bathroom things.
- derf_ 7y ago
  You can already sort of see what direction this would go in with education. Just look at student loans. They're available to basically anybody, and as a result you see a growing industry of for-profit colleges and continually rising tuition even at established universities, as people figure out how to extract and siphon off the essentially unlimited free money from the government (actual source of money: the students' future selves). This is what I would predict would happen with any UBI, more generally: it would just raise the prices of the things that people have to buy until all the money wound up with those who had the capital and the sophistication to capture it. It's not clear you'd even wind up with more of those things you listed, but it is certain you'd pay more for what you did get.
- munificent 7y ago
  At "basic" levels, yes, to all of those. Here's a way to think of it: A society succeeds to the degree that it harnesses the maximum of each individual's potential. The goal then is for a society to remove impediments that prevent someone from reaching their potential. Imagine a potential Einstein born to unfortunately poor parents. One measure of the how well these services are calibrated is the degree that that Einstein is able to reach their potential despite the misfortune of their parents. Lack of early child care, eduction, transportation and certainly (non-cosmetic) dental care can certainly stifle someone's potential, so those seem like reasonable problems for a just society to aim to address.
bobthepanda 7y ago
The problem with declaring "universal basic X" is that once the "base" level gets set it gets very hard to reduce the baseline. We see this in countries that use fuel subsidies and are now trying to withdraw them because they are too expensive, and same goes for food. For example; universal basic water in Arizona might have the adverse effect of incentivizing greater water consumption. Universal basic fuel can incentivize wasteful fuel usage, and so forth. In countries that provide basic rations, there are absolutely massive problems with people illegally siphoning subsidized food, water, and electricity and reselling in black markets or other countries with unsubsidized goods for profit. (Haven't heard of it for Internet or healthcare, but where there's a will there could be a way.) EDIT: removed healthcare
- jdc 7y ago
  Secondary market reselling as an "absolutely massive [problem]" with universal healthcare? Do you have any credible sources on that?
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    Haven't had the morning coffee yet, was just going down the list and writing it down.
- munificent 7y ago
  > The problem with declaring "universal basic X" is that once the "base" level gets set it gets very hard to reduce the baseline. You say that like it's a bad thing. But the fundamental premise of human progress should be that the baseline for all people gradually goes up over time. If anything, I consider it a feature that it becomes hard to lower a baseline once it's entrenched. That makes it harder for a powerful minority to take over and then deliberately leave the poor behind by taking away services from them. > For example; universal basic water in Arizona might have the adverse effect of incentivizing greater water consumption. This is a great example. I consider "basic" to be an important word in the term. The baseline level should be set such that if everyone consumes the resource at that level, then we are OK with that. A universal basic water that gave everyone in Arizona 1,000 gallons per day would probably be a bad choice. > In countries that provide basic rations, there are absolutely massive problems with people illegally siphoning subsidized food, water, and electricity and reselling in black markets or other countries with unsubsidized goods for profit. I see that as partly a problem of those countries being woefully deficient in some other critical resource. There must be some resource they need more than food that makes it worth giving up the ration on the black market in order to be able to afford it. Like many systems, a system like universal basic services can't work in isolation. It must be designed in the holistic context of its participants. Also, of course, any system like this does need to have enforcement. At scale, some fraction of participants will be bad actors and the system has to be designed with that in mind. (I accept that one of the good things about about UBI versus providing services directly is that money is much more liquid than services, so participants can more easily rebalance as needed to keep the system in harmony.)
hyperpape 7y ago
Healthcare is reasonable, but the right way to provide people food is to give them money. Otherwise, you can't possibly provide a useful service. People choose to spend more or less on food, eat different things, etc. If I want to spend a lot on food, that's my choice, but I should give up something else. Or if I decide to eat rice and lentils multiple times a week, I should be able to save money. Even more important than fairness is just practicality. There's a huge amount of infrastructure dedicated to people going to stores/restaurants to buy food in the manner they see fit.
- r00fus 7y ago
  Why are food stamps (but universal, not means-tested) not a good solution? They allow basics to have controlled pricing, and increased availability, while preventing abuse of the system (ie, alcohol purchases). Having dispensaries (or dispensary-specific items in a general store) where you can use your food stamp money would leverage a working system we have now.
  - hyperpape 7y ago
    Food stamps generally do not allow purchasing hot food or a wide variety of foods that are not considered essential (there is some variation in policies, however). Remove those restrictions, and it would be better. You would still have the problem that it wouldn't actually provide food for everyone or some people would end up losing the money because they're frugal.
    - jazzyk 7y ago
      What about people who are addicted (huge problem in the US)? If we give them money, they will spend it on drugs/alcohol/etc. and will still need to be taken care of. So while food stamps (universal or need based) may not be a perfect solution (selling food stamps for drug money is not unheard of), it is still better, because it makes misappropriating the help provided more difficult.
      - hyperpape 7y ago
SubiculumCode 7y ago
I generally think that people are pretty good at spending money on necessities, which may not be the necessities that others have or want. Universal basic services will likely mismatch resources with demand or need, and will thus be inefficient. A basic income is flexible and lets individuals choose where to use that resource. As a rapper once alluded, foodstamps don't buy diapers.
- munificent 7y ago
  > I generally think that people are pretty good at spending money on necessities There is actually a wealth of data that shows that poverty changes how brains functions and interferes with long term planning. > As a rapper once alluded, foodstamps don't buy diapers. True, but that's probably mostly a consequence of the fact that food stamps were created by the Department of Agriculture partially to address food production surpluses.
  - SubiculumCode 7y ago
    There is also a wealth of data showing government inefficiencies and poor effectiveness with blanket purchase policies. I still contend that the poorer will make better choices than a top-down provisioning system.
Retric 7y ago
The point of UBI is to reduce overhead. America’s subsidies for ‘low cost’ housing in cities is far more expensive than cheap housing elsewhere. Someone just given money is going to try and maximize it’s use, where people running programs have their own incentives.
umvi 7y ago
> What people need to thrive is security the knowledge that if unfortunate events outside of their control happen, that they will be helped to the degree that society is able I don't know if I believe this. It's unpopular, but I think being completely secure may have some negatives. For example, drawing upon my own life experiences, I found it hard to find motivation to be productive when I was completely secure in all my needs. I ended up playing a lot of video games and watching a lot of anime. However, once I lost my training slot in the Air Force and it looked like my cushy military job was no longer guaranteed, it lit a fire under my butt and I was highly motivated to start sharpening my computer industry skills, doing side projects, etc. in case it didn't work out and I had to find a "real job" (and it didn't work out). We didn't need perfect social security to thrive historically. I don't see evidence of people in EU countries with tons of social services thriving. Historically, all we needed to thrive was the promise that hard work, creativity, or both, would be proportionally rewarded. Somewhere along the way we've lost this (or at least part of it). We should work to bring that back, and provide enough social services to help people become self-reliant (if they aren't already).
- vsareto 7y ago
  >it lit a fire under my butt and I was highly motivated to start sharpening my computer industry skills, doing side projects, etc. in case it didn't work out and I had to find a "real job" (and it didn't work out). I don't know if that will fit a lot of people's idea of thriving (it's highly personal). That's really survival skills so you don't end up homeless. Some really do thrive on chaos, uncertainty, and not being comfortable though. It becomes a real challenge for them and they feel good when they overcome the adversity. Others don't need that, they can improve themselves for the sake of improving. Chaos and uncertainty keep them from focusing on improving. People who can sit quietly and do math or programming or whatever and just learn.
  - umvi 7y ago
    > Others don't need that, they can improve themselves for the sake of improving. Chaos and uncertainty keep them from focusing on improving. So the question is, what % of people are like that, and what percentage are like me (complete security I didn't really have to work for robbed my motivation). If only a small % of people become more productive in free complete security, and the majority become less productive under free complete security... is free complete security still worth it?
dctoedt 7y ago
Cheap or free money tends to get captured by for-profit service providers, who raise their prices accordingly. Example: The upward spiral of for-profit college tuition cost is widely thought to have been driven in large part by the availability of federally-guaranteed student loans and Pell grants. [0] [0] https://www.npr.org/2018/12/13/672952507/does-more-federal-aid-raise-tuition-costs-not-for-most-students-research-says https://www.npr.org/2018/12/13/672952507/does-more-federal-a...
- akvadrako 7y ago
  Federal guaranteed student loans have nothing to do with UBI. It's hard to argue that college fees would have gone up so much if the government just gave a fixed $10000/year loan to every student-age citizen and let them spend it on whatever they want. In an important way they are opposite: UBI incentivizes price discovery; government backed college loans decentivize it.
  - dctoedt 7y ago
    > Federal guaranteed student loans have nothing to do with UBI. If you say so. > It's hard to argue that college fees would have gone up so much if the government just gave a fixed $10000/year loan to every student-age citizen and let them spend it on whatever they want. Really? I find it very easy to imagine, since IIRC student loans can be spent not only on tuition but on living expenses — and it seems to be possible to spend it on anything you want, even though you're not supposed to do that. [1] But I'm out of touch in that area, so my experience could be out of date. The NPR piece that I cited above discussed research indicating that for-profit college tuition costs were strongly influenced by the availability of guaranteed student loans. > UBI incentivizes price discovery I suppose that's possible. But analogously, the availability of employer-provided health insurance seems to disincentivize price discovery. [1] https://studentloanhero.com/featured/what-can-i-spend-student-loans-on/ https://studentloanhero.com/featured/what-can-i-spend-studen...
    - akvadrako 7y ago
      > the availability of employer-provided health insurance seems to disincentivize price discovery. That I certainly agree with.
LaEc 7y ago
Elimination of the price mechanism eliminates a key way to sort out who truly needs healthcare (or whatever service). Consider a safe elective knee surgery. If you knew it was paid for by the government, you would just sign yourself up for the surgery for even the slightest ache. If there was a copay, you might reconsider unless your pain was actually painful enough to warrant it. Ask any Brit about NHS waiting times and they would understand. Is access to healthcare important? Yes, but universal healthcare eliminates market forces which makes things efficient. A better way would be a mixture of health saving accounts (and redistributive transfers to such accounts) and subsidizing hospitals (to reflect the fact that healthcare is typically underconsumed). Further, the government lacks the necessary profit incentive to keep costs low or maintain high standards. Bureaucrats on fixed salaries have no incentive to try harder.
- NhanH 7y ago
  What does it means for healthcare to be underconsumed?
- cbhl 7y ago
  The problem with price as a mechanism to determine who truly needs a resource is that it excludes people who don't have money. For example, children who would greatly benefit from early therapeutic and/or psychiatric care.
  - LaEc 7y ago
    That's where the health savings accounts (HSA) and subsidization comes in. We want people to be able to afford healthcare but not abuse it. So what should we do? First, require each person to set aside part of their income to a HSA. Second, top up the values of those HSA's through government transfers for the poor and lower income. Third, mandate that HSA's can only be used for real healthcare (and not alternative medicine). This way, individuals can afford healthcare but will still take responsibility to not deplete their accounts unnecessarily. Fourth, (and in response to the NhanN's question) subsidize healthcare providers because healthcare tends to be underconsumed. Why is healthcare underconsumed? When we think about the importance of our own health, we only think of ourselves or our families. But we are valuable to our employer, to our friends. To correct for these positive externalities, some subsidization is essential to bring down those costs. You are right in that my post didn't address the issues of childcare, let alone genetic diseases, long term conditions etc. where the price mechanism doesn't really make sense or fails. Any healthcare policy will have nuances that I cannot capture in a comment. But for the majority of healthcare consumption, we should really be trying to be as efficient as we can be precisely because of how costly it can be. Throwing away the price mechanism just because it fails for the edge cases is not ideal.
basch 7y ago
What about a natural resources tax into a sovereign fund, combined with a savings/investment account. It can achieve roughly the same thing, without nationalizing every industry. Closer to UBI and food stamps than free services. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23010921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23010921
op03 7y ago
Makes sense. I am not too hopeful that UBI will work. Mega corps are deeply programmed to extract as much as possible from the weakest in society. Each Corp will start saying things like if we can just get 10 bucks out of that UBI bank account for 50 million people a quarter...and if 50 manage to pull it off we end up back in 2008. Its the same way they sold "low cost housing for all".

godzillabrennus 7y ago

Governments that centrally plan all the basic necessities you outline are terrible at all of them. Democide tends to happen as government collects more power in the process. Letting government give a basic income and the private sector filling supply is a much more reasonable solution. Let’s a free market exist to satisfy demand while recognizing the end of jobs is about here.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
If you don’t control things at least a little, things like health care, education and rent will suck up all basic income very quickly. I think a good first step would be universal healthcare, then do something about affordable housing and education.
cultus 7y ago
I think it's pretty hard to argue that private companies are good and ethical at operating natural monopolies. History and all evidence is not on your side. I'll list a few examples: the California blackouts after electrical deregulation, the Bolivian water crisis after water supplies were privatized, the abuses of companies like Comcast in the US, etc. Even Adam Smith warned of natural monopolies. Nearly any economist will tell you letting them be private and under-regulated is nuts. The same with healthcare. Why is every other first world country able to get objectively better health outcomes for less money with universal healthcare? How is our system better?
- LaEc 7y ago
  Are healthcare outcomes worse in the US than other first world countries? Life expectancy is endogenous to variables like diet and exercise. Looking at cancer survival rates, the US is best at some and mediocre at others but other countries are not "objectively better"[0]. Is health expenditure in the US higher than in other countries? Yes, but that is because the US is rich, really rich. If we plot US Real Household Income against healthcare consumption, the US is perfectly inline with global trends[1]. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/articles/concord-2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/articles/concord-2.... [1] https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2018/11/19/why-everything-you-know-about-healthcare-is-wrong-in-one-million-charts-a-response-to-noah-smith/ https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2018/11/19/why-everything...
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    The US is obviously not rich enough to cover all or even most citizens. And a lot of people are not rich enough to avoid bankruptcy because of medical bills.

jakearmitage 7y ago

What about child care? Education? Transportation? Dental care?

war1025 7y ago
Elementary school is effectively universal childcare. It's just you have to make it through the first several years first. Realistically that age is set to when children can be reliably self-sufficient enough that they don't require help with feeding / bathroom things.
derf_ 7y ago
You can already sort of see what direction this would go in with education. Just look at student loans. They're available to basically anybody, and as a result you see a growing industry of for-profit colleges and continually rising tuition even at established universities, as people figure out how to extract and siphon off the essentially unlimited free money from the government (actual source of money: the students' future selves). This is what I would predict would happen with any UBI, more generally: it would just raise the prices of the things that people have to buy until all the money wound up with those who had the capital and the sophistication to capture it. It's not clear you'd even wind up with more of those things you listed, but it is certain you'd pay more for what you did get.
munificent 7y ago
At "basic" levels, yes, to all of those. Here's a way to think of it: A society succeeds to the degree that it harnesses the maximum of each individual's potential. The goal then is for a society to remove impediments that prevent someone from reaching their potential. Imagine a potential Einstein born to unfortunately poor parents. One measure of the how well these services are calibrated is the degree that that Einstein is able to reach their potential despite the misfortune of their parents. Lack of early child care, eduction, transportation and certainly (non-cosmetic) dental care can certainly stifle someone's potential, so those seem like reasonable problems for a just society to aim to address.

bobthepanda 7y ago

The problem with declaring "universal basic X" is that once the "base" level gets set it gets very hard to reduce the baseline. We see this in countries that use fuel subsidies and are now trying to withdraw them because they are too expensive, and same goes for food. For example; universal basic water in Arizona might have the adverse effect of incentivizing greater water consumption. Universal basic fuel can incentivize wasteful fuel usage, and so forth. In countries that provide basic rations, there are absolutely massive problems with people illegally siphoning subsidized food, water, and electricity and reselling in black markets or other countries with unsubsidized goods for profit. (Haven't heard of it for Internet or healthcare, but where there's a will there could be a way.) EDIT: removed healthcare

jdc 7y ago
Secondary market reselling as an "absolutely massive [problem]" with universal healthcare? Do you have any credible sources on that?
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  Haven't had the morning coffee yet, was just going down the list and writing it down.
munificent 7y ago
> The problem with declaring "universal basic X" is that once the "base" level gets set it gets very hard to reduce the baseline. You say that like it's a bad thing. But the fundamental premise of human progress should be that the baseline for all people gradually goes up over time. If anything, I consider it a feature that it becomes hard to lower a baseline once it's entrenched. That makes it harder for a powerful minority to take over and then deliberately leave the poor behind by taking away services from them. > For example; universal basic water in Arizona might have the adverse effect of incentivizing greater water consumption. This is a great example. I consider "basic" to be an important word in the term. The baseline level should be set such that if everyone consumes the resource at that level, then we are OK with that. A universal basic water that gave everyone in Arizona 1,000 gallons per day would probably be a bad choice. > In countries that provide basic rations, there are absolutely massive problems with people illegally siphoning subsidized food, water, and electricity and reselling in black markets or other countries with unsubsidized goods for profit. I see that as partly a problem of those countries being woefully deficient in some other critical resource. There must be some resource they need more than food that makes it worth giving up the ration on the black market in order to be able to afford it. Like many systems, a system like universal basic services can't work in isolation. It must be designed in the holistic context of its participants. Also, of course, any system like this does need to have enforcement. At scale, some fraction of participants will be bad actors and the system has to be designed with that in mind. (I accept that one of the good things about about UBI versus providing services directly is that money is much more liquid than services, so participants can more easily rebalance as needed to keep the system in harmony.)

hyperpape 7y ago

Healthcare is reasonable, but the right way to provide people food is to give them money. Otherwise, you can't possibly provide a useful service. People choose to spend more or less on food, eat different things, etc. If I want to spend a lot on food, that's my choice, but I should give up something else. Or if I decide to eat rice and lentils multiple times a week, I should be able to save money. Even more important than fairness is just practicality. There's a huge amount of infrastructure dedicated to people going to stores/restaurants to buy food in the manner they see fit.

r00fus 7y ago
Why are food stamps (but universal, not means-tested) not a good solution? They allow basics to have controlled pricing, and increased availability, while preventing abuse of the system (ie, alcohol purchases). Having dispensaries (or dispensary-specific items in a general store) where you can use your food stamp money would leverage a working system we have now.
- hyperpape 7y ago
  Food stamps generally do not allow purchasing hot food or a wide variety of foods that are not considered essential (there is some variation in policies, however). Remove those restrictions, and it would be better. You would still have the problem that it wouldn't actually provide food for everyone or some people would end up losing the money because they're frugal.
  - jazzyk 7y ago
    What about people who are addicted (huge problem in the US)? If we give them money, they will spend it on drugs/alcohol/etc. and will still need to be taken care of. So while food stamps (universal or need based) may not be a perfect solution (selling food stamps for drug money is not unheard of), it is still better, because it makes misappropriating the help provided more difficult.
    - hyperpape 7y ago

SubiculumCode 7y ago

I generally think that people are pretty good at spending money on necessities, which may not be the necessities that others have or want. Universal basic services will likely mismatch resources with demand or need, and will thus be inefficient. A basic income is flexible and lets individuals choose where to use that resource. As a rapper once alluded, foodstamps don't buy diapers.

munificent 7y ago
> I generally think that people are pretty good at spending money on necessities There is actually a wealth of data that shows that poverty changes how brains functions and interferes with long term planning. > As a rapper once alluded, foodstamps don't buy diapers. True, but that's probably mostly a consequence of the fact that food stamps were created by the Department of Agriculture partially to address food production surpluses.
- SubiculumCode 7y ago
  There is also a wealth of data showing government inefficiencies and poor effectiveness with blanket purchase policies. I still contend that the poorer will make better choices than a top-down provisioning system.

Retric 7y ago

The point of UBI is to reduce overhead. America’s subsidies for ‘low cost’ housing in cities is far more expensive than cheap housing elsewhere. Someone just given money is going to try and maximize it’s use, where people running programs have their own incentives.

umvi 7y ago

> What people need to thrive is security the knowledge that if unfortunate events outside of their control happen, that they will be helped to the degree that society is able I don't know if I believe this. It's unpopular, but I think being completely secure may have some negatives. For example, drawing upon my own life experiences, I found it hard to find motivation to be productive when I was completely secure in all my needs. I ended up playing a lot of video games and watching a lot of anime. However, once I lost my training slot in the Air Force and it looked like my cushy military job was no longer guaranteed, it lit a fire under my butt and I was highly motivated to start sharpening my computer industry skills, doing side projects, etc. in case it didn't work out and I had to find a "real job" (and it didn't work out). We didn't need perfect social security to thrive historically. I don't see evidence of people in EU countries with tons of social services thriving. Historically, all we needed to thrive was the promise that hard work, creativity, or both, would be proportionally rewarded. Somewhere along the way we've lost this (or at least part of it). We should work to bring that back, and provide enough social services to help people become self-reliant (if they aren't already).

vsareto 7y ago
>it lit a fire under my butt and I was highly motivated to start sharpening my computer industry skills, doing side projects, etc. in case it didn't work out and I had to find a "real job" (and it didn't work out). I don't know if that will fit a lot of people's idea of thriving (it's highly personal). That's really survival skills so you don't end up homeless. Some really do thrive on chaos, uncertainty, and not being comfortable though. It becomes a real challenge for them and they feel good when they overcome the adversity. Others don't need that, they can improve themselves for the sake of improving. Chaos and uncertainty keep them from focusing on improving. People who can sit quietly and do math or programming or whatever and just learn.
- umvi 7y ago
  > Others don't need that, they can improve themselves for the sake of improving. Chaos and uncertainty keep them from focusing on improving. So the question is, what % of people are like that, and what percentage are like me (complete security I didn't really have to work for robbed my motivation). If only a small % of people become more productive in free complete security, and the majority become less productive under free complete security... is free complete security still worth it?

dctoedt 7y ago

Cheap or free money tends to get captured by for-profit service providers, who raise their prices accordingly. Example: The upward spiral of for-profit college tuition cost is widely thought to have been driven in large part by the availability of federally-guaranteed student loans and Pell grants. [0] [0] https://www.npr.org/2018/12/13/672952507/does-more-federal-aid-raise-tuition-costs-not-for-most-students-research-says https://www.npr.org/2018/12/13/672952507/does-more-federal-a...

akvadrako 7y ago
Federal guaranteed student loans have nothing to do with UBI. It's hard to argue that college fees would have gone up so much if the government just gave a fixed $10000/year loan to every student-age citizen and let them spend it on whatever they want. In an important way they are opposite: UBI incentivizes price discovery; government backed college loans decentivize it.
- dctoedt 7y ago
  > Federal guaranteed student loans have nothing to do with UBI. If you say so. > It's hard to argue that college fees would have gone up so much if the government just gave a fixed $10000/year loan to every student-age citizen and let them spend it on whatever they want. Really? I find it very easy to imagine, since IIRC student loans can be spent not only on tuition but on living expenses — and it seems to be possible to spend it on anything you want, even though you're not supposed to do that. [1] But I'm out of touch in that area, so my experience could be out of date. The NPR piece that I cited above discussed research indicating that for-profit college tuition costs were strongly influenced by the availability of guaranteed student loans. > UBI incentivizes price discovery I suppose that's possible. But analogously, the availability of employer-provided health insurance seems to disincentivize price discovery. [1] https://studentloanhero.com/featured/what-can-i-spend-student-loans-on/ https://studentloanhero.com/featured/what-can-i-spend-studen...
  - akvadrako 7y ago
    > the availability of employer-provided health insurance seems to disincentivize price discovery. That I certainly agree with.

LaEc 7y ago

Elimination of the price mechanism eliminates a key way to sort out who truly needs healthcare (or whatever service). Consider a safe elective knee surgery. If you knew it was paid for by the government, you would just sign yourself up for the surgery for even the slightest ache. If there was a copay, you might reconsider unless your pain was actually painful enough to warrant it. Ask any Brit about NHS waiting times and they would understand. Is access to healthcare important? Yes, but universal healthcare eliminates market forces which makes things efficient. A better way would be a mixture of health saving accounts (and redistributive transfers to such accounts) and subsidizing hospitals (to reflect the fact that healthcare is typically underconsumed). Further, the government lacks the necessary profit incentive to keep costs low or maintain high standards. Bureaucrats on fixed salaries have no incentive to try harder.

NhanH 7y ago
What does it means for healthcare to be underconsumed?
cbhl 7y ago
The problem with price as a mechanism to determine who truly needs a resource is that it excludes people who don't have money. For example, children who would greatly benefit from early therapeutic and/or psychiatric care.
- LaEc 7y ago
  That's where the health savings accounts (HSA) and subsidization comes in. We want people to be able to afford healthcare but not abuse it. So what should we do? First, require each person to set aside part of their income to a HSA. Second, top up the values of those HSA's through government transfers for the poor and lower income. Third, mandate that HSA's can only be used for real healthcare (and not alternative medicine). This way, individuals can afford healthcare but will still take responsibility to not deplete their accounts unnecessarily. Fourth, (and in response to the NhanN's question) subsidize healthcare providers because healthcare tends to be underconsumed. Why is healthcare underconsumed? When we think about the importance of our own health, we only think of ourselves or our families. But we are valuable to our employer, to our friends. To correct for these positive externalities, some subsidization is essential to bring down those costs. You are right in that my post didn't address the issues of childcare, let alone genetic diseases, long term conditions etc. where the price mechanism doesn't really make sense or fails. Any healthcare policy will have nuances that I cannot capture in a comment. But for the majority of healthcare consumption, we should really be trying to be as efficient as we can be precisely because of how costly it can be. Throwing away the price mechanism just because it fails for the edge cases is not ideal.

basch 7y ago

What about a natural resources tax into a sovereign fund, combined with a savings/investment account. It can achieve roughly the same thing, without nationalizing every industry. Closer to UBI and food stamps than free services. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23010921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23010921

op03 7y ago

Makes sense. I am not too hopeful that UBI will work. Mega corps are deeply programmed to extract as much as possible from the weakest in society. Each Corp will start saying things like if we can just get 10 bucks out of that UBI bank account for 50 million people a quarter...and if 50 manage to pull it off we end up back in 2008. Its the same way they sold "low cost housing for all".