7 ms·

Because people aren't lab mice. My favourite example are claims wrt. experiments for the Universal basic income. These experiments always pertain to people who

by mbar84 5y ago

Because people aren't lab mice. My favourite example are claims wrt. experiments for the Universal basic income. These experiments always pertain to people who receive more money than previously, but somehow never include a proportional group of people from whom the money is taken away. To do this experiment correctly, you would have to pick a random sample of the population and do the redistribution regardless of what any of the participants want.

nautilius 5y ago
So, if you would want to test if, say, a pair of shoes improves running performance, it's not enough to compare to peers without change, or the situation before the new shoes, but you will reject the study unless you also have a third group where you break people's legs? How would that be necessary?
- mbar84 5y ago
  UBI cannot be implemented unless somebody pays for it. It's necessarily redistributive. All existing experiments only look at one half of the equation. I think it's a fair question to ask what the effect will be on people who on net will pay more than before this system was introduced. Breaking peoples legs is not a prerequisite for others to run faster.
  - MatthewMob 5y ago
    Of course not, there are a plethora of factors that would alter the effectiveness of UBI, looking at it so simply and then rejecting it outright is dishonest. Money would majorly come from those who have the greater means to pay larger amounts into the system, and on the hypothesis that bettering the material conditions of those in the lower and middle class will necessarily lead to increasing productivity and thus (and 'thus' is a large leap) greater general income that can partly be paid back into the system in a cycle.
    - randomsilence 5y ago
      You can use purchasing power parity differences to check it out. Find like-minded first world people to pool a fraction of their income and you can offer UBI to a third world village or town.
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    Isn't the typical first principles argument that lowering taxes for the companies etc. pays for itself because of increased economic activity and thus tax income actually increases. Why could the same not apply for UBI?
tomrod 5y ago
Except UBI is simply a guarantee of a minimum income, not a distribution without other means of income. If UBI is 5k, everyone makes at least 5k. If you make 15k before, now you make 20k (modulo market adjustments).
- drran 5y ago
  Who will pay for this?
  - tomrod 5y ago
    Many, with the benefit of a prosperous economy and stable polity.
    - sbmthakur 5y ago
      Are there any studies out there that link UBI and prosperous economy?
      - tomrod 5y ago
        It's a bit early in the research space, but yes, the partial equilibria studied thus far show overall improvement. A reasonable overview: https://econreview.berkeley.edu/unboxing-universal-basic-income/ https://econreview.berkeley.edu/unboxing-universal-basic-inc...
    - drran 5y ago
      I'm not interested to pay 15k in taxes to receive 5k back as UBI, regardless of economy or stability. How much you plan to pay in taxes to support my UBI?
      - jhgb 5y ago
        > regardless of economy or stability. So you're saying that you're a poor economist, then.
zwaps 5y ago
A representative sample features the same external validity issues you have in many (any) experiments, including in the hard sciences. That's part of science, and it would be unfair to attribute it otherwise. One experiment won't do it. As for your other point, I guess the issue the lack of a hypothesis regarding basic income. You can't test "basic income" as such, and with such unspecific setup you are sure to conflate rather than illuminate mechanisms of relevance. In any case, it depends on your question whether you need to take income away from anyone. Are you going to start by examining distributive effects? Really? No physisict would test their airflow experiment on a flying rocket, while also trying to measure how he exhaust affects the wind in Costa Rica next week and saying 'something' about the future climate. They would start by putting their airflow gizmo into an isolated chamber - which is, afaik, more or less where UBI experiments are.
- mbar84 5y ago
  > Are you going to start by examining distributive effects? Really? Fair point. I guess you could run an experiment where money is simply taken away from people, destroyed and then look at the effect of that in isolation.
  - zwaps 5y ago
    There are experimental Game Theorist experimenting with such schemes, I suspect because they get a great amount of enjoyment from taking things away from people ;-)
    - mbar84 5y ago
      Fascinating. I wonder where he finds his volunteers. :-)
  - jbothma 5y ago
    But... UBI doesn't destroy what might be taken away. That money immediately goes and does work, and eventually it potentially improves the environment of those it was taken from. In the form of fewer social issues. Is the theory anyway.
Someone 5y ago
And lab mice aren’t elementary particles, even though inbreeding can make them extremely similar, DNA-wise. Even if they were, they aren’t humans, so extrapolating to them is an art in itself (physicists rarely do experiments with electrons and draw conclusions about neutrons from them) That it is harder to draw conclusions from experiments in biology than in physics doesn’t imply biology isn’t a science. Economics adds the problem that we (rightfully) don’t want to do realistic controlled experiments (would at times be hard, too. Put a few million people in a country with a given law regime, watch for a couple of decades, draw conclusions. Repeat) but again, to me, that doesn’t imply it isn’t a science. I think it’s more part of the humanities than a science, though.

by mbar84 5y ago

nautilius 5y ago

So, if you would want to test if, say, a pair of shoes improves running performance, it's not enough to compare to peers without change, or the situation before the new shoes, but you will reject the study unless you also have a third group where you break people's legs? How would that be necessary?

mbar84 5y ago
UBI cannot be implemented unless somebody pays for it. It's necessarily redistributive. All existing experiments only look at one half of the equation. I think it's a fair question to ask what the effect will be on people who on net will pay more than before this system was introduced. Breaking peoples legs is not a prerequisite for others to run faster.
- MatthewMob 5y ago
  Of course not, there are a plethora of factors that would alter the effectiveness of UBI, looking at it so simply and then rejecting it outright is dishonest. Money would majorly come from those who have the greater means to pay larger amounts into the system, and on the hypothesis that bettering the material conditions of those in the lower and middle class will necessarily lead to increasing productivity and thus (and 'thus' is a large leap) greater general income that can partly be paid back into the system in a cycle.
  - randomsilence 5y ago
    You can use purchasing power parity differences to check it out. Find like-minded first world people to pool a fraction of their income and you can offer UBI to a third world village or town.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  Isn't the typical first principles argument that lowering taxes for the companies etc. pays for itself because of increased economic activity and thus tax income actually increases. Why could the same not apply for UBI?

tomrod 5y ago

Except UBI is simply a guarantee of a minimum income, not a distribution without other means of income. If UBI is 5k, everyone makes at least 5k. If you make 15k before, now you make 20k (modulo market adjustments).

drran 5y ago
Who will pay for this?
- tomrod 5y ago
  Many, with the benefit of a prosperous economy and stable polity.
  - sbmthakur 5y ago
    Are there any studies out there that link UBI and prosperous economy?
    - tomrod 5y ago
      It's a bit early in the research space, but yes, the partial equilibria studied thus far show overall improvement. A reasonable overview: https://econreview.berkeley.edu/unboxing-universal-basic-income/ https://econreview.berkeley.edu/unboxing-universal-basic-inc...
  - drran 5y ago
    I'm not interested to pay 15k in taxes to receive 5k back as UBI, regardless of economy or stability. How much you plan to pay in taxes to support my UBI?
    - jhgb 5y ago
      > regardless of economy or stability. So you're saying that you're a poor economist, then.

zwaps 5y ago

A representative sample features the same external validity issues you have in many (any) experiments, including in the hard sciences. That's part of science, and it would be unfair to attribute it otherwise. One experiment won't do it. As for your other point, I guess the issue the lack of a hypothesis regarding basic income. You can't test "basic income" as such, and with such unspecific setup you are sure to conflate rather than illuminate mechanisms of relevance. In any case, it depends on your question whether you need to take income away from anyone. Are you going to start by examining distributive effects? Really? No physisict would test their airflow experiment on a flying rocket, while also trying to measure how he exhaust affects the wind in Costa Rica next week and saying 'something' about the future climate. They would start by putting their airflow gizmo into an isolated chamber - which is, afaik, more or less where UBI experiments are.

mbar84 5y ago
> Are you going to start by examining distributive effects? Really? Fair point. I guess you could run an experiment where money is simply taken away from people, destroyed and then look at the effect of that in isolation.
- zwaps 5y ago
  There are experimental Game Theorist experimenting with such schemes, I suspect because they get a great amount of enjoyment from taking things away from people ;-)
  - mbar84 5y ago
    Fascinating. I wonder where he finds his volunteers. :-)
- jbothma 5y ago
  But... UBI doesn't destroy what might be taken away. That money immediately goes and does work, and eventually it potentially improves the environment of those it was taken from. In the form of fewer social issues. Is the theory anyway.

Someone 5y ago

And lab mice aren’t elementary particles, even though inbreeding can make them extremely similar, DNA-wise. Even if they were, they aren’t humans, so extrapolating to them is an art in itself (physicists rarely do experiments with electrons and draw conclusions about neutrons from them) That it is harder to draw conclusions from experiments in biology than in physics doesn’t imply biology isn’t a science. Economics adds the problem that we (rightfully) don’t want to do realistic controlled experiments (would at times be hard, too. Put a few million people in a country with a given law regime, watch for a couple of decades, draw conclusions. Repeat) but again, to me, that doesn’t imply it isn’t a science. I think it’s more part of the humanities than a science, though.