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> There are more than enough unemployed people to fill any gaps created. Why would they want to fill gaps when the rent is paid, the fridge is stocked, and the

> There are more than enough unemployed people to fill any gaps created. Why would they want to fill gaps when the rent is paid, the fridge is stocked, and there are so many games to play and movies to watch? I can totally see the "gaps" in fun jobs being filled. But the "gaps" in garbage collection, sewer inspection and other dirty jobs? Let's not kid ourselves and pretend that "if only people wouldn't have to worry about rent, they'd gladly take these jobs".

ntSean 6y ago
Is media the only thing worth consuming? We can participate in the economy by travelling, buying gadgets, cars, experiencing good food, etc. I do not believe that ones existence is fulfilled because they haven't finished their Netflix library. If someone wants money to engage with society in a more meaningful way, there are always jobs to allow them to do so- even if they're dirty.
- luckylion 6y ago
  Yeah, Netflix was just an example. You can replace it with "enjoying nature's beauty", "listening to music" or "thinking about the true nature of existence", it doesn't really matter for the point I was trying to make. You can participate by spending money you were gifted, but you're not contributing. If it was just about participation, let's remove all the clutter, just give everyone a million bucks a month - we can all participate in the economy by spending roughly $30k a day and it'll be an economic wonder. The question is: who will be there to sell us things, to cook food at the fancy restaurant etc, if they also get $30k a day? You'll have to pay them a lot more than today. And that'll just mean that your $30k are worth proportionally less. Money is just a placeholder for value. You need the value being produced to make the money meaningful.
  - regularfry 6y ago
    This is where we run into a philosophical divide. Does a human life have intrinsic worth? That's what we're talking about here. Even without tangling with that question, there's the argument that moving money around is itself a contribution. It's a marginal one, and if that's all you're doing, that means your total contribution is marginal. But that's fine, there's always going to be a spectrum of contributions between those that are paper-thin and the earth-shattering works of great import. Some jobs that look like hard work are a net negative on society. If you get into the game of saying "contributions below this specific level don't count", you end up splitting hairs and, because everyone's values work differently, you can't avoid bringing moral arguments into the frame. Besides, we're not talking about giving everyone $30k a day. That's qualitatively different, not least because it's so far from the basic cost of living that it just doesn't make sense as a comparison. It is far, far better to just say "nobody will be in poverty" and leave it at that than try to attach strings to it.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > This is where we run into a philosophical divide. Does a human life have intrinsic worth? That's what we're talking about here. The more important question is: if so, do all human lives have that worth? That is: to satisfy A's personal hobbies, are we allowed to make B work more than B would personally like? If moving money around is a contribution, let's automate it. We have computers, we can do it at a very high frequency. Even if it's a marginal contribution, we can do it many times per second. If it's indeed a contribution, that should help, shouldn't it? If we need more contribution, we'll just add another node or increase bandwidth, and voila, we'll have even more, which we can use to add even more. Magic! > Besides, we're not talking about giving everyone $30k a day. Right. It will still have the same effect if everyone gets it: to convince them to continue working, you'll have to increase the wages. > It is far, far better to just say "nobody will be in poverty" and leave it at that than try to attach strings to it. That's just another way to say "work is optional, you don't have to contribute anything if you don't want to, but the others have to share with you". You can make that argument, but it's a very different one from the idea of UBI, which somehow magically creates wealth by moving money around and reducing the incentive to contribute to society.
      - regularfry 6y ago
        > The more important question is: if so, do all human lives have that worth? That is: to satisfy A's personal hobbies, are we allowed to make B work more than B would personally like? That's precisely the question, yes. Although there is the question of whether B would actually be affected. There's an underlying assumption to this statement that UBI would be an appreciable net cost, rather than being offset by savings in other parts of the economy. Bear in mind that there is already a rather dramatic range of income tax levels across the developed world; there's nothing inevitable about the current level of "paying for other people's hobbies" that we currently engage in. > If moving money around is a contribution, let's automate it. I'd hope it was transparent that the moving around of money that an individual engages in by buying food and services in their local economy (or online, it doesn't really matter) has qualities that aren't preserved by this system. > Right. It will still have the same effect if everyone gets it: to convince them to continue working, you'll have to increase the wages. So jobs that fall below a very basic income level cease to be relevant. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But also, the difference between your $30k example and the sorts of realistic proposals you see is proportion, and that matters. If I was being paid ${UBI} by my employer yesterday, and today I'm being paid ${UBI} by the state, my employer now has to add to that, not replace it. It might take another $30k a day for me to appreciate the difference from an employer if that's my current rate, but at the other end of the scale people are actually considering, if I can get an extra $10 a day on top of UBI, that might be enough. Think of it from the other side, too: today, I've got a salary cost of $X for my employee. Tomorrow, the state pays them $X. I can add $10 to that and their take-home goes up, while my costs drop by $X-$10. > That's just another way to say "work is optional, you don't have to contribute anything if you don't want to, but the others have to share with you". You can make that argument, but it's a very different one from the idea of UBI, which somehow magically creates wealth by moving money around and reducing the incentive to contribute to society. Only for an arbitrarily narrow definition of "contribute". There is nothing magical about removing the economy-level costs of individual poverty, and work would only be "optional" if you were content with a very basic level of existence.
PudgePacket 6y ago
UBI is not luxury though. You'd still be incentived to do these jobs because they pay. Contrary to popular belief fear of death by being poor is not the only thing that motivates people.
- donw 6y ago
  > Contrary to popular belief fear of death by being poor is not the only thing that motivates people. That's not very charitable. I rather doubt that anybody here considers "Dickensian Nightmare" as a desirable world-state. Maybe the best way to showcase the concern is to talk about some relatives of mine, who work just enough to pursue their two great life passions: (a) smoking weed; and (b) playing video games. Now, either of these things is fine! Both of them together are fine are fine! And should you have the means, I have no problem if this is the sum total of your existence. But I have zero interest in funding those life-choices via taxes. With no-strings-attached UBI, that's exactly what we are talking about. Moreover, there is a massive danger in decoupling "value contributed to the tribe" (work) from "value received from the tribe" (income). What I think would make sense is to require that people receiving UBI still need to do some kind of work. It can be painting, or cleaning parks, or making horrible music, or greeting people at Wal-Mart, but you are required to spend at least four full-time days per week (32 hours) contributing to society. I am unsure how to appropriately enforce this. On the one hand, you want to prevent bad actors; on the other hand, it would be stupid for the cost of enforcement to significantly exceed the cost of those bad actors -- like when the state of Florida blew through an extra $2 million to save $80k of welfare fraud.
  - regularfry 6y ago
    I strongly suspect this is one of those situations where the costs of enforcement would dwarf the benefits. For the number of people involved, it's literally not worth bothering.
    - donw 6y ago
      Maybe? If we're talking about national-level UBI, that's a lot of people involved, and a lot of money for the taking by those who are high in enterprise but rather deficient in moral fiber. There are likely a lot of options on the enforcement front, and that smart enforcement with appropriate penalties would keep bad behavior to a minimum. The goal of enforcement is not to stop every bad actor -- just to make the risk and hassle high enough to deter a significant portion of them. Consider how Taiwan cheaply enforces sales tax: when you get a receipt for anything, it has a lottery code on it. Winners turn their receipts in for prizes, and the government then goes and checks those specific transactions for tax compliance. Penalties for tax violations are severe, and compliance is high, at minimal cost to the state. Truly random checks (low probability of being caught) with severe penalties (massive pain if you are caught), and maybe even a reward for compliance, seems to be the way to go in this case.
friendlybus 6y ago
Garbage collectors I've met are happy people and they get paid well for the job.
triceratops 6y ago
Wages for these jobs would rise until they were filled. Or they'd be cheaper to automate away. I'm all for people doing dirty jobs to be paid more. They're doing essential, undesirable work.
- adrianN 6y ago
  As was mentioned at the start of this thread, there would be the danger that UBI is inflated away to meaninglessness if all current minimum wage jobs started paying sufficiently more to attract people. How could we prevent that without ubiquitous automation being available yet?
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > there would be the danger that UBI is inflated away to meaninglessness If that's true, doesn't it also mean UBI won't cost anything? (I realize that's some pretty twisted logic) Either the amount paid by UBI is meaningful, which means it'll make a difference to people's lives. Or it's so small as to be meaningless. Which means it won't cost that much per-capita to implement. (It's late, I haven't thought this through, feel free to downvote if this is completely bonkers :-P)
- luckylion 6y ago
  > Wages for these jobs would rise until they were filled. Which would in turn make garbage collection more expensive. Now everyone has to pay more for it, including UBI recipients. Now UBI won't be enough to live, thus UBI has to be raised, making garbage collection at the then current rate less interesting. Back to square one, repeat.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > Now everyone has to pay more for it, including UBI recipients. Now UBI won't be enough to live The second sentence doesn't necessarily follow from the first one. 1. It's hard to tell how much costs would actually rise by. 2. UBI doesn't have to be enough to live on by itself. It just has to be universal and unconditional.
taneq 6y ago
Because "stopping wanting more things once they have the basics" is totally a common human thing that humans do.
- luckylion 6y ago
  How many people will work a second job to make extra money when they can live comfortably off their main job? The relative value of "more" sinks once you have enough.
  - taneq 6y ago
    UBI isn't going to be a fat allowance to fund a comfortable life of leisure. It's going to cover subsistence level costs only. Many, many people work second jobs in order to be more comfortable. I don't think it's far-fetched to expect that most people would work a first job.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      That likely depends on the individual proponent of UBI. From what I hear in Germany, it's supposed to be higher than our current from of welfare, which puts it somewhere at ~1000 Euros a months at minimum, so you can cover an average sized apartment, subsidized health insurance, utilities etc. I know people who live -in their eyes- comfortably off of that. They see no reason to change anything, as enough is provided to eat, sleep, smoke, get drunk, have a TV and an xbox, a computer and internet and use public transportation to meet with friends. Sure, you can't easily travel, and you're not going to buy a house any time soon (but if you own one already, you can keep it; if you're still paying the mortgage, the state will cover it for you within reasonable limits), but it's a comfortable life if you don't have a lot of ambition or can make some money on the side.
  - treis 6y ago
    Lots of people do that. Or more commonly they pick up extra shifts/OT at their main job. People will still work if they have their essentials covered to buy a new car/go on vacation/ etc.

ntSean 6y ago

Is media the only thing worth consuming? We can participate in the economy by travelling, buying gadgets, cars, experiencing good food, etc. I do not believe that ones existence is fulfilled because they haven't finished their Netflix library. If someone wants money to engage with society in a more meaningful way, there are always jobs to allow them to do so- even if they're dirty.

luckylion 6y ago
Yeah, Netflix was just an example. You can replace it with "enjoying nature's beauty", "listening to music" or "thinking about the true nature of existence", it doesn't really matter for the point I was trying to make. You can participate by spending money you were gifted, but you're not contributing. If it was just about participation, let's remove all the clutter, just give everyone a million bucks a month - we can all participate in the economy by spending roughly $30k a day and it'll be an economic wonder. The question is: who will be there to sell us things, to cook food at the fancy restaurant etc, if they also get $30k a day? You'll have to pay them a lot more than today. And that'll just mean that your $30k are worth proportionally less. Money is just a placeholder for value. You need the value being produced to make the money meaningful.
- regularfry 6y ago
  This is where we run into a philosophical divide. Does a human life have intrinsic worth? That's what we're talking about here. Even without tangling with that question, there's the argument that moving money around is itself a contribution. It's a marginal one, and if that's all you're doing, that means your total contribution is marginal. But that's fine, there's always going to be a spectrum of contributions between those that are paper-thin and the earth-shattering works of great import. Some jobs that look like hard work are a net negative on society. If you get into the game of saying "contributions below this specific level don't count", you end up splitting hairs and, because everyone's values work differently, you can't avoid bringing moral arguments into the frame. Besides, we're not talking about giving everyone $30k a day. That's qualitatively different, not least because it's so far from the basic cost of living that it just doesn't make sense as a comparison. It is far, far better to just say "nobody will be in poverty" and leave it at that than try to attach strings to it.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > This is where we run into a philosophical divide. Does a human life have intrinsic worth? That's what we're talking about here. The more important question is: if so, do all human lives have that worth? That is: to satisfy A's personal hobbies, are we allowed to make B work more than B would personally like? If moving money around is a contribution, let's automate it. We have computers, we can do it at a very high frequency. Even if it's a marginal contribution, we can do it many times per second. If it's indeed a contribution, that should help, shouldn't it? If we need more contribution, we'll just add another node or increase bandwidth, and voila, we'll have even more, which we can use to add even more. Magic! > Besides, we're not talking about giving everyone $30k a day. Right. It will still have the same effect if everyone gets it: to convince them to continue working, you'll have to increase the wages. > It is far, far better to just say "nobody will be in poverty" and leave it at that than try to attach strings to it. That's just another way to say "work is optional, you don't have to contribute anything if you don't want to, but the others have to share with you". You can make that argument, but it's a very different one from the idea of UBI, which somehow magically creates wealth by moving money around and reducing the incentive to contribute to society.
    - regularfry 6y ago
      > The more important question is: if so, do all human lives have that worth? That is: to satisfy A's personal hobbies, are we allowed to make B work more than B would personally like? That's precisely the question, yes. Although there is the question of whether B would actually be affected. There's an underlying assumption to this statement that UBI would be an appreciable net cost, rather than being offset by savings in other parts of the economy. Bear in mind that there is already a rather dramatic range of income tax levels across the developed world; there's nothing inevitable about the current level of "paying for other people's hobbies" that we currently engage in. > If moving money around is a contribution, let's automate it. I'd hope it was transparent that the moving around of money that an individual engages in by buying food and services in their local economy (or online, it doesn't really matter) has qualities that aren't preserved by this system. > Right. It will still have the same effect if everyone gets it: to convince them to continue working, you'll have to increase the wages. So jobs that fall below a very basic income level cease to be relevant. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But also, the difference between your $30k example and the sorts of realistic proposals you see is proportion, and that matters. If I was being paid ${UBI} by my employer yesterday, and today I'm being paid ${UBI} by the state, my employer now has to add to that, not replace it. It might take another $30k a day for me to appreciate the difference from an employer if that's my current rate, but at the other end of the scale people are actually considering, if I can get an extra $10 a day on top of UBI, that might be enough. Think of it from the other side, too: today, I've got a salary cost of $X for my employee. Tomorrow, the state pays them $X. I can add $10 to that and their take-home goes up, while my costs drop by $X-$10. > That's just another way to say "work is optional, you don't have to contribute anything if you don't want to, but the others have to share with you". You can make that argument, but it's a very different one from the idea of UBI, which somehow magically creates wealth by moving money around and reducing the incentive to contribute to society. Only for an arbitrarily narrow definition of "contribute". There is nothing magical about removing the economy-level costs of individual poverty, and work would only be "optional" if you were content with a very basic level of existence.

PudgePacket 6y ago

UBI is not luxury though. You'd still be incentived to do these jobs because they pay. Contrary to popular belief fear of death by being poor is not the only thing that motivates people.

donw 6y ago
> Contrary to popular belief fear of death by being poor is not the only thing that motivates people. That's not very charitable. I rather doubt that anybody here considers "Dickensian Nightmare" as a desirable world-state. Maybe the best way to showcase the concern is to talk about some relatives of mine, who work just enough to pursue their two great life passions: (a) smoking weed; and (b) playing video games. Now, either of these things is fine! Both of them together are fine are fine! And should you have the means, I have no problem if this is the sum total of your existence. But I have zero interest in funding those life-choices via taxes. With no-strings-attached UBI, that's exactly what we are talking about. Moreover, there is a massive danger in decoupling "value contributed to the tribe" (work) from "value received from the tribe" (income). What I think would make sense is to require that people receiving UBI still need to do some kind of work. It can be painting, or cleaning parks, or making horrible music, or greeting people at Wal-Mart, but you are required to spend at least four full-time days per week (32 hours) contributing to society. I am unsure how to appropriately enforce this. On the one hand, you want to prevent bad actors; on the other hand, it would be stupid for the cost of enforcement to significantly exceed the cost of those bad actors -- like when the state of Florida blew through an extra $2 million to save $80k of welfare fraud.
- regularfry 6y ago
  I strongly suspect this is one of those situations where the costs of enforcement would dwarf the benefits. For the number of people involved, it's literally not worth bothering.
  - donw 6y ago
    Maybe? If we're talking about national-level UBI, that's a lot of people involved, and a lot of money for the taking by those who are high in enterprise but rather deficient in moral fiber. There are likely a lot of options on the enforcement front, and that smart enforcement with appropriate penalties would keep bad behavior to a minimum. The goal of enforcement is not to stop every bad actor -- just to make the risk and hassle high enough to deter a significant portion of them. Consider how Taiwan cheaply enforces sales tax: when you get a receipt for anything, it has a lottery code on it. Winners turn their receipts in for prizes, and the government then goes and checks those specific transactions for tax compliance. Penalties for tax violations are severe, and compliance is high, at minimal cost to the state. Truly random checks (low probability of being caught) with severe penalties (massive pain if you are caught), and maybe even a reward for compliance, seems to be the way to go in this case.

friendlybus 6y ago

Garbage collectors I've met are happy people and they get paid well for the job.

triceratops 6y ago

Wages for these jobs would rise until they were filled. Or they'd be cheaper to automate away. I'm all for people doing dirty jobs to be paid more. They're doing essential, undesirable work.

adrianN 6y ago
As was mentioned at the start of this thread, there would be the danger that UBI is inflated away to meaninglessness if all current minimum wage jobs started paying sufficiently more to attract people. How could we prevent that without ubiquitous automation being available yet?
- triceratops 6y ago
  > there would be the danger that UBI is inflated away to meaninglessness If that's true, doesn't it also mean UBI won't cost anything? (I realize that's some pretty twisted logic) Either the amount paid by UBI is meaningful, which means it'll make a difference to people's lives. Or it's so small as to be meaningless. Which means it won't cost that much per-capita to implement. (It's late, I haven't thought this through, feel free to downvote if this is completely bonkers :-P)
luckylion 6y ago
> Wages for these jobs would rise until they were filled. Which would in turn make garbage collection more expensive. Now everyone has to pay more for it, including UBI recipients. Now UBI won't be enough to live, thus UBI has to be raised, making garbage collection at the then current rate less interesting. Back to square one, repeat.
- triceratops 6y ago
  > Now everyone has to pay more for it, including UBI recipients. Now UBI won't be enough to live The second sentence doesn't necessarily follow from the first one. 1. It's hard to tell how much costs would actually rise by. 2. UBI doesn't have to be enough to live on by itself. It just has to be universal and unconditional.

taneq 6y ago

Because "stopping wanting more things once they have the basics" is totally a common human thing that humans do.

luckylion 6y ago
How many people will work a second job to make extra money when they can live comfortably off their main job? The relative value of "more" sinks once you have enough.
- taneq 6y ago
  UBI isn't going to be a fat allowance to fund a comfortable life of leisure. It's going to cover subsistence level costs only. Many, many people work second jobs in order to be more comfortable. I don't think it's far-fetched to expect that most people would work a first job.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    That likely depends on the individual proponent of UBI. From what I hear in Germany, it's supposed to be higher than our current from of welfare, which puts it somewhere at ~1000 Euros a months at minimum, so you can cover an average sized apartment, subsidized health insurance, utilities etc. I know people who live -in their eyes- comfortably off of that. They see no reason to change anything, as enough is provided to eat, sleep, smoke, get drunk, have a TV and an xbox, a computer and internet and use public transportation to meet with friends. Sure, you can't easily travel, and you're not going to buy a house any time soon (but if you own one already, you can keep it; if you're still paying the mortgage, the state will cover it for you within reasonable limits), but it's a comfortable life if you don't have a lot of ambition or can make some money on the side.
- treis 6y ago
  Lots of people do that. Or more commonly they pick up extra shifts/OT at their main job. People will still work if they have their essentials covered to buy a new car/go on vacation/ etc.