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Analyses like this just make me think Basic Income will radically shake up civilization more than most people realize. In particular, it will help divorce this

Analyses like this just make me think Basic Income will radically shake up civilization more than most people realize. In particular, it will help divorce this ubiquitous cultural association between time and money. This reason alone may explain some of the hostility toward implementing even a rudimentary form of UBI. Some of the most rewarding human experiences have zero financial value and subsequently are dismissed or ignored as "irrelevant" by a significant amount of people. It would be fantastic if we evaluated the worth of an activity on its beauty, meaning, or another hundred adjectives other than how much money we're losing by doing it. There is also a pretty robust history of academic literature arguing that culture, art, religion, and pretty much everything else arises from leisure time. Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Pieper is a good read on this.

valvar 6y ago
>it will help divorce this ubiquitous cultural association between time and money I think this is naïve at best, and horribly misguided at worst. Time is money is not just a saying. The fundamental currency, the one thing that ever person needs and wants, is time. That's why it's so tightly coupled with other valuable things such as money. Time and money are essentially the same thing, though of course time is less fungible. And different people with different circumstances are able to expedite their actions with varying efficiency. Time is a more fundamental economic concept than money. UBI is essentially just socialist redistribution policy in a different guise, and all it will do is obscure (but of course not erase) existing incentive structures.
- keiferski 6y ago
  I don’t think you’ve quite understood my comment. I am saying that if a significant portion of the population becomes able to survive without needing a job, the overall culture will shift and things that aren’t immediately lucrative will become more popular. Many of these things are fundamentally important but are brushed aside because they fulfill no role in an economically-oriented society.
  - drevil-v2 6y ago
    Someone has to produce the goods that we all need. If "a significant portion of the population" is off doing leisure activities how would we survive? What about game theory in that situation, tit-for-tat prisoners dilemma? Why should I produce when almost all of it will get taken as tax to support the folks not working? Am I not better off sucking the UBI tit?
    - keiferski 6y ago
      The whole concept of UBI presupposes that most jobs are fundamentally unnecessary / will be automated away by robots. Your concerns are covered in pretty much every article on the topic and I can’t really address them all in a HN comment.
      - drevil-v2 6y ago
        Ok well that is science fiction at the moment. The way you are talking about it and sections of the internet talk about it, like it just around the corner. Alright fine, in the world where we have infinite energy and resources yeah sure everyone can go off and do whatever the hell they want.
        forgotmypw17 6y ago
        But it,s true, most jobs involve wasting our resources on pointless shit we don,t need.
        drevil-v2 6y ago
        Why do you get to decide what’s on the approved list of the things that we need? I ate 2 extra toast with dark chocolate peanut butter today. Certainly didn’t need it but eh it’s the holidays. Where does that fall on your morality chart? Is it the re-education gulag for me?
        6y ago
- toiletfuneral 6y ago
  By ‘existing incentive structures’ you mean like ‘fear of not being to have a home’ or ‘access to necessary medical attention’ which I think are barbaric conditions just to make people do meaningless shit for capital like process insurance forms. But yeah keep spreading the fear of socialism, HN loves boomer red scare comments.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Time and money are hardly the same thing. One can easily be stripped away from you in any number of schemes, the other is always with you for as long as you live.
  - _4570 6y ago
    You might want to ask someone imprisoned for a long time about that.
- rubidium 6y ago
  I disagree with the UBI suggestion in the grandparent (and so would pieper if he heard it :)... but your post also has a fatal flaw. “ The fundamental currency, the one thing that ever person needs and wants, is time.” This is not true of those unfraid of death and at peace with their life choices. Some people reach this at age 18, others 85, and others never. Being at the bedside of someone who is dying and at peace with it helps one realize time is not the most important thing.
rtx 6y ago
What this doesn't account for is drive. People who enjoy a slow pace will do so. People who are successful now will still be successful then. This is just American exceptionalism thinking it will be different. We already have many countries with social policies better than UBI.
- keiferski 6y ago
  I didn't have ambition vs. slow paced in mind, more like lucrative vs. meaningful. As an example: mastering any activity takes years of dedicated practice. Programming, writing, making origami, cooking, you name it. Very rarely does this training align precisely with making a lot, or even any, money. The mastery might itself then lead to actual financial gains, but our current system doesn't optimize for this at all.
robocat 6y ago
I know a sample of people on “basic income”: they are on unemployment benefits (or similar.) I am unsure I see any correlation with higher output of culture, art, religion etcetera from those on benefits, even though they may have under-the-table income for necessary tools and consumables. They often do spend more time on family and friends though.
- keiferski 6y ago
  The effects of society-wide basic income will be significantly different than just a small subsection of unemployed people. Especially when it comes to social acceptability.
  - robocat 6y ago
    Sure. But social acceptability should have little multiplier effect on the other benefits you listed e.g. artistic output (unemployed/beneficiary artists are already socially acceptable, in my circles at least).
    - keiferski 6y ago
      Right, but the point is that this will change the whole system. How many talented artists decided to become stockbrokers instead, simply because they wanted financial stability? Or how many parents encourage their children to follow something "practical" and not what they are truly passionate about? Or academics that love their subject, but don't want to bother with the hassle of adjunct positions and constant relocation. Etc. A basic income would dramatically affect these sort of situations, IMO.
      - SubuSS 6y ago
        If we are going by numbers, how many talented artists are indeed there? Of this how many are talented enough to be both artists and stock brokers AND are overwhelmed by stock broking so much that they give up on their Picasso like talents? 0.0001% of the general pop? May be if we count every one with massive world class but oppressed talents, will they account for 0.1% of the world pop? As much as it would liberate the stuck artists et al from the above 0.1%, my theory is that it would only allow the rest 99.9% to focus their time into consumption of various things rather than production of invaluable goods. Now we could move the goal post and say, ‘hey, they were born as human and by that they have won the lottery! Why shouldn’t everyone be eligible for the basics?’ - but that’s a different argument than saying this will liberate the arts. I don’t buy that line of argument.
nicbou 6y ago
I sincerely doubt that basic income will make us all Victorian-era gentleman scientists and patrons of the arts. I agree with the premise that culture comes from leisure, but realistically, if you give everyone a fixed amount of money, won't the cost of things just rise accordingly? Instead of giving people free money, wouldn't it make more sense to heavily subsidise the basics? Is there any indication that UBI would work better than guaranteeing affordable food, housing and healthcare?
- tt433 6y ago
  Not who you are replying to that's a bit of a strawman: he never said anything about Victorian era gentlemen. The book he mentioned doesn't either, at least in the first few pages. Why do you start talking about that? Usually when other people mis-state what I say, I get pretty angry.
  - glenstein 6y ago
    More than a bit, it's massive strawman that wastes everyone's time, no pun intended. To the extent that people have tried to develop a Theory Of Comment Sections and why they are so frequently, unfortunately bad, most of it centers around the frequency of uncharitable bad faith engagement with things that could be interpreted more reasonably. Nobody addresses themselves to the most reasonable interpretation of the thing they respond to, and that's the primary mechanism that pushes the quality of comment sections down. And I think we've got another datapoint in support of that here.
  - DougN7 6y ago
    I think he meant that we’ll not see a huge amount of increased art and beauty. Instead, and I think, we’ll see more consuming of entertainment (video games and youtube).
  - nicbou 6y ago
    It was tongue-in-cheek way to say "make art and pursue other hobbies".
- taneq 6y ago
okthenletssee 6y ago
What rewarding experience has zero financial value? I think you are very wrong about money.
- aynyc 6y ago
  For me, things such as raising my kids, cooking, fishing, climbing, skiing, reading, drawing terribly, and coding, etc give me rewarding experience and zero financial value. I’m not gifted in any of them, so won’t make money off them other than coding.
  - okthenletssee 6y ago
    So spending time with your kids would not be worth any money to you? You are very wrong and misguided about economics. You have worked to earn money, so that you can give your family a home and be able to spend time with them. It is absolutely untrue that it has no financial value to you.
  - okthenletssee 6y ago
    Even simpler example: you don't get paid for eating food. Does that imply food has no value?
    - aynyc 6y ago
      That’s a bad argument because you need to eat to survive, unless you don’t value human lives. So, yes, eating food has value.
      - okthenletssee 6y ago
        The point is that just because you don't get paid for doing it, it doesn't mean that an activity has no value. Your entire way of thinking about economics is wrong.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
paulpauper 6y ago
>Some of the most rewarding human experiences have zero financial value and subsequently are dismissed or ignored as "irrelevant" by a significant amount of people. It would be fantastic if we evaluated the worth of an activity on its beauty, meaning, or another hundred adjectives other than how much money we're losing by doing it. If you like birdwatching , awesome, but where ppl object is having to pay for your hobby
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
  Let’s make a deal then. You pay for my birdwatching and I yield my claim to the commons for your private use. You may pollute my air, claim my land, hog my radio spectrum and utilize whatever else of our commons we have fair and equal right to, as long as you pay me for the privilege to call it yours.
cryptica 6y ago
>> Some of the most rewarding human experiences have zero financial value The most rewarding human experiences I've felt in my life so far have had financial value attached... In fact, they usually involve me receiving some kind of money. Receiving money is the most valuable human experience, especially if I get it for free (the less work I do, the better). Brings tears of joy to my eyes. The worst human experiences are related to spending money. Especially on overpriced depreciating assets and consumables. The worst is giving money to other people for free. Nothing makes me feel emptier. Also, when central banks print units of my hard-earned currency and give it for free to other people (without my consent), that infuriates me. For me, it's the human experiential equivalent of getting raped on a daily basis and everyone else cheering on the perpetrator.
tmaly 6y ago
Given the current modern monetary theory, how does UBI overcome issue of inflation?

valvar 6y ago

>it will help divorce this ubiquitous cultural association between time and money I think this is naïve at best, and horribly misguided at worst. Time is money is not just a saying. The fundamental currency, the one thing that ever person needs and wants, is time. That's why it's so tightly coupled with other valuable things such as money. Time and money are essentially the same thing, though of course time is less fungible. And different people with different circumstances are able to expedite their actions with varying efficiency. Time is a more fundamental economic concept than money. UBI is essentially just socialist redistribution policy in a different guise, and all it will do is obscure (but of course not erase) existing incentive structures.

keiferski 6y ago
I don’t think you’ve quite understood my comment. I am saying that if a significant portion of the population becomes able to survive without needing a job, the overall culture will shift and things that aren’t immediately lucrative will become more popular. Many of these things are fundamentally important but are brushed aside because they fulfill no role in an economically-oriented society.
- drevil-v2 6y ago
  Someone has to produce the goods that we all need. If "a significant portion of the population" is off doing leisure activities how would we survive? What about game theory in that situation, tit-for-tat prisoners dilemma? Why should I produce when almost all of it will get taken as tax to support the folks not working? Am I not better off sucking the UBI tit?
  - keiferski 6y ago
    The whole concept of UBI presupposes that most jobs are fundamentally unnecessary / will be automated away by robots. Your concerns are covered in pretty much every article on the topic and I can’t really address them all in a HN comment.
    - drevil-v2 6y ago
      Ok well that is science fiction at the moment. The way you are talking about it and sections of the internet talk about it, like it just around the corner. Alright fine, in the world where we have infinite energy and resources yeah sure everyone can go off and do whatever the hell they want.
      - forgotmypw17 6y ago
        But it,s true, most jobs involve wasting our resources on pointless shit we don,t need.
        drevil-v2 6y ago
        Why do you get to decide what’s on the approved list of the things that we need? I ate 2 extra toast with dark chocolate peanut butter today. Certainly didn’t need it but eh it’s the holidays. Where does that fall on your morality chart? Is it the re-education gulag for me?
        6y ago
toiletfuneral 6y ago
By ‘existing incentive structures’ you mean like ‘fear of not being to have a home’ or ‘access to necessary medical attention’ which I think are barbaric conditions just to make people do meaningless shit for capital like process insurance forms. But yeah keep spreading the fear of socialism, HN loves boomer red scare comments.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
Time and money are hardly the same thing. One can easily be stripped away from you in any number of schemes, the other is always with you for as long as you live.
- _4570 6y ago
  You might want to ask someone imprisoned for a long time about that.
rubidium 6y ago
I disagree with the UBI suggestion in the grandparent (and so would pieper if he heard it :)... but your post also has a fatal flaw. “ The fundamental currency, the one thing that ever person needs and wants, is time.” This is not true of those unfraid of death and at peace with their life choices. Some people reach this at age 18, others 85, and others never. Being at the bedside of someone who is dying and at peace with it helps one realize time is not the most important thing.

rtx 6y ago

What this doesn't account for is drive. People who enjoy a slow pace will do so. People who are successful now will still be successful then. This is just American exceptionalism thinking it will be different. We already have many countries with social policies better than UBI.

keiferski 6y ago
I didn't have ambition vs. slow paced in mind, more like lucrative vs. meaningful. As an example: mastering any activity takes years of dedicated practice. Programming, writing, making origami, cooking, you name it. Very rarely does this training align precisely with making a lot, or even any, money. The mastery might itself then lead to actual financial gains, but our current system doesn't optimize for this at all.

robocat 6y ago

I know a sample of people on “basic income”: they are on unemployment benefits (or similar.) I am unsure I see any correlation with higher output of culture, art, religion etcetera from those on benefits, even though they may have under-the-table income for necessary tools and consumables. They often do spend more time on family and friends though.

keiferski 6y ago
The effects of society-wide basic income will be significantly different than just a small subsection of unemployed people. Especially when it comes to social acceptability.
- robocat 6y ago
  Sure. But social acceptability should have little multiplier effect on the other benefits you listed e.g. artistic output (unemployed/beneficiary artists are already socially acceptable, in my circles at least).
  - keiferski 6y ago
    Right, but the point is that this will change the whole system. How many talented artists decided to become stockbrokers instead, simply because they wanted financial stability? Or how many parents encourage their children to follow something "practical" and not what they are truly passionate about? Or academics that love their subject, but don't want to bother with the hassle of adjunct positions and constant relocation. Etc. A basic income would dramatically affect these sort of situations, IMO.
    - SubuSS 6y ago
      If we are going by numbers, how many talented artists are indeed there? Of this how many are talented enough to be both artists and stock brokers AND are overwhelmed by stock broking so much that they give up on their Picasso like talents? 0.0001% of the general pop? May be if we count every one with massive world class but oppressed talents, will they account for 0.1% of the world pop? As much as it would liberate the stuck artists et al from the above 0.1%, my theory is that it would only allow the rest 99.9% to focus their time into consumption of various things rather than production of invaluable goods. Now we could move the goal post and say, ‘hey, they were born as human and by that they have won the lottery! Why shouldn’t everyone be eligible for the basics?’ - but that’s a different argument than saying this will liberate the arts. I don’t buy that line of argument.

nicbou 6y ago

I sincerely doubt that basic income will make us all Victorian-era gentleman scientists and patrons of the arts. I agree with the premise that culture comes from leisure, but realistically, if you give everyone a fixed amount of money, won't the cost of things just rise accordingly? Instead of giving people free money, wouldn't it make more sense to heavily subsidise the basics? Is there any indication that UBI would work better than guaranteeing affordable food, housing and healthcare?

tt433 6y ago
Not who you are replying to that's a bit of a strawman: he never said anything about Victorian era gentlemen. The book he mentioned doesn't either, at least in the first few pages. Why do you start talking about that? Usually when other people mis-state what I say, I get pretty angry.
- glenstein 6y ago
  More than a bit, it's massive strawman that wastes everyone's time, no pun intended. To the extent that people have tried to develop a Theory Of Comment Sections and why they are so frequently, unfortunately bad, most of it centers around the frequency of uncharitable bad faith engagement with things that could be interpreted more reasonably. Nobody addresses themselves to the most reasonable interpretation of the thing they respond to, and that's the primary mechanism that pushes the quality of comment sections down. And I think we've got another datapoint in support of that here.
- DougN7 6y ago
  I think he meant that we’ll not see a huge amount of increased art and beauty. Instead, and I think, we’ll see more consuming of entertainment (video games and youtube).
- nicbou 6y ago
  It was tongue-in-cheek way to say "make art and pursue other hobbies".
taneq 6y ago

okthenletssee 6y ago

What rewarding experience has zero financial value? I think you are very wrong about money.

aynyc 6y ago
For me, things such as raising my kids, cooking, fishing, climbing, skiing, reading, drawing terribly, and coding, etc give me rewarding experience and zero financial value. I’m not gifted in any of them, so won’t make money off them other than coding.
- okthenletssee 6y ago
  So spending time with your kids would not be worth any money to you? You are very wrong and misguided about economics. You have worked to earn money, so that you can give your family a home and be able to spend time with them. It is absolutely untrue that it has no financial value to you.
- okthenletssee 6y ago
  Even simpler example: you don't get paid for eating food. Does that imply food has no value?
  - aynyc 6y ago
    That’s a bad argument because you need to eat to survive, unless you don’t value human lives. So, yes, eating food has value.
    - okthenletssee 6y ago
      The point is that just because you don't get paid for doing it, it doesn't mean that an activity has no value. Your entire way of thinking about economics is wrong.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

paulpauper 6y ago

>Some of the most rewarding human experiences have zero financial value and subsequently are dismissed or ignored as "irrelevant" by a significant amount of people. It would be fantastic if we evaluated the worth of an activity on its beauty, meaning, or another hundred adjectives other than how much money we're losing by doing it. If you like birdwatching , awesome, but where ppl object is having to pay for your hobby

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
Let’s make a deal then. You pay for my birdwatching and I yield my claim to the commons for your private use. You may pollute my air, claim my land, hog my radio spectrum and utilize whatever else of our commons we have fair and equal right to, as long as you pay me for the privilege to call it yours.

cryptica 6y ago

>> Some of the most rewarding human experiences have zero financial value The most rewarding human experiences I've felt in my life so far have had financial value attached... In fact, they usually involve me receiving some kind of money. Receiving money is the most valuable human experience, especially if I get it for free (the less work I do, the better). Brings tears of joy to my eyes. The worst human experiences are related to spending money. Especially on overpriced depreciating assets and consumables. The worst is giving money to other people for free. Nothing makes me feel emptier. Also, when central banks print units of my hard-earned currency and give it for free to other people (without my consent), that infuriates me. For me, it's the human experiential equivalent of getting raped on a daily basis and everyone else cheering on the perpetrator.

tmaly 6y ago

Given the current modern monetary theory, how does UBI overcome issue of inflation?