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Why do you need a critical mass? Everybody with an income can try it at any given moment: Find one or more persons who _you_ want to support and support them w

Why do you need a critical mass? Everybody with an income can try it at any given moment: Find one or more persons who _you_ want to support and support them with a basic income. If UBI works, they will also start supporting other people. Sooner or later, you have an economy of people who support each other with UBI. Chances are that you are unlucky and your choice of seeding persons wasn't good. But for science, that doesn't matter. If others copy that approach, sooner or later, a working economy will emerge - if UBI works. There is no need to establish UBI in an area even though it helps. Thanks to the internet, the economic connections can all be organized online. *edit: marked the _you_

sokoloff 6y ago
UBI is no good if it's not durable and reliable to the recipient. If you imagine that UBI would allow people to live with a lower level of stress around starvation, you have to imagine that they would want to rely on that income a decade from now. Saying "find a rich benefactor to decide to give money away" doesn't reasonably test anything meaningful about UBI. I can tell you that people will generally be happier if you give them money one time. Don't need much experimentation to validate that hypothesis...
- toohotatopic 6y ago
  I haven't said 'find a rich benefactor', but 'be the benefactor'. There is no need to be rich. Spouses stay at home and are not worried if their partner has a regular job. It doesn't have to work for everybody. For starters, find somebody who can handle the risk of you losing your job. Of course people are happier if they get rich. But that's not what UBI is about. The question is: do people need a monetary buffer to get on in life and become more profitable so that society benefits as a whole? If that theory is true, then supporting one or two persons will lead to them making more money and being able to support one or two persons in return by themselves. That's a system that can grow, if UBI works. So, whoever believes in UBI: start supporting one person, and see what will happen.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Anyone who is contemplating durably changing their life predicated on the receipt of basic income is in the situation of “find a benefactor”.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      Sure, but by flipping the direction, you can just pick an arbitrary person, set up a trust fund that only disburses a certain amount and set this person up for life. If you have 10 people, each contribute $100k, that's a $1 million fund. Fund a person in Nebraska for life with the fund for $36k a year with an annual rate of return of 4% (fairly conservative). That person is guaranteed the durable benefactor and you can see if their behaviour changes and if they are enhanced through this.
  - hobs 6y ago
    You mean like children? Children need you to support them for years as a buffer before they can get on with life. Society benefits as a whole when we foster the development of proper adults. If the development to making them a net contributor is not done yet, why would we stop?
    - mydongle 6y ago
      Hey, that's angle I've never thought about before. We support children for years and all we expect them to do is go to school. While a lot of kids could decide to just not work and be taken care of by their family, the vast majority want to work anyway, if only for the fact they want to move out and build their own family. This may be the key. UBI + Making people go through further education so that they can have the foundation of knowledge and skills to be able to work. Right now, we have a lot of people who go through years of school and in the end it amounts to nothing because no one will give them a real job unless they had the money and a stable environment that allowed them to go to fancy universities instead of being forced to work to provide for themselves. This is a 3 angle attack. UBI + education/training + lowering the barrier for people being able to get a job. With UBI, you will have substantially less people desperate to get any job, so the supply of workers is no longer so high that companies can afford to be picky, because people will be able to tell those companies to go fuck themselves.
daenz 6y ago
I've proposed this very idea to UBI supporters on many occasions, and they always seem to dodge and say it will only work if everyone does it through the government. It's apparently an all-or-nothing situation where the outcome of failure is catastrophic economic collapse. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

sokoloff 6y ago

UBI is no good if it's not durable and reliable to the recipient. If you imagine that UBI would allow people to live with a lower level of stress around starvation, you have to imagine that they would want to rely on that income a decade from now. Saying "find a rich benefactor to decide to give money away" doesn't reasonably test anything meaningful about UBI. I can tell you that people will generally be happier if you give them money one time. Don't need much experimentation to validate that hypothesis...

toohotatopic 6y ago
I haven't said 'find a rich benefactor', but 'be the benefactor'. There is no need to be rich. Spouses stay at home and are not worried if their partner has a regular job. It doesn't have to work for everybody. For starters, find somebody who can handle the risk of you losing your job. Of course people are happier if they get rich. But that's not what UBI is about. The question is: do people need a monetary buffer to get on in life and become more profitable so that society benefits as a whole? If that theory is true, then supporting one or two persons will lead to them making more money and being able to support one or two persons in return by themselves. That's a system that can grow, if UBI works. So, whoever believes in UBI: start supporting one person, and see what will happen.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Anyone who is contemplating durably changing their life predicated on the receipt of basic income is in the situation of “find a benefactor”.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Sure, but by flipping the direction, you can just pick an arbitrary person, set up a trust fund that only disburses a certain amount and set this person up for life. If you have 10 people, each contribute $100k, that's a $1 million fund. Fund a person in Nebraska for life with the fund for $36k a year with an annual rate of return of 4% (fairly conservative). That person is guaranteed the durable benefactor and you can see if their behaviour changes and if they are enhanced through this.
- hobs 6y ago
  You mean like children? Children need you to support them for years as a buffer before they can get on with life. Society benefits as a whole when we foster the development of proper adults. If the development to making them a net contributor is not done yet, why would we stop?
  - mydongle 6y ago
    Hey, that's angle I've never thought about before. We support children for years and all we expect them to do is go to school. While a lot of kids could decide to just not work and be taken care of by their family, the vast majority want to work anyway, if only for the fact they want to move out and build their own family. This may be the key. UBI + Making people go through further education so that they can have the foundation of knowledge and skills to be able to work. Right now, we have a lot of people who go through years of school and in the end it amounts to nothing because no one will give them a real job unless they had the money and a stable environment that allowed them to go to fancy universities instead of being forced to work to provide for themselves. This is a 3 angle attack. UBI + education/training + lowering the barrier for people being able to get a job. With UBI, you will have substantially less people desperate to get any job, so the supply of workers is no longer so high that companies can afford to be picky, because people will be able to tell those companies to go fuck themselves.

daenz 6y ago

I've proposed this very idea to UBI supporters on many occasions, and they always seem to dodge and say it will only work if everyone does it through the government. It's apparently an all-or-nothing situation where the outcome of failure is catastrophic economic collapse. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.