4 ms·

Universal Basic Cop-Out

24 points by feross 5y ago

wtfpost 5y ago
Flashtoo 5y ago
This article is critical of universal basic income as a solution for tech workers who do not get paid for the value they provide. I'm not sure what subgroup of UBI proponents the author is arguing against, because this is the first I've heard of UBI being something that will be necessary to save highly skilled programmers. The context I've mostly heard it in is to protect those whose jobs are being automated away, such as fast food workers, retail workers, truck drivers and increasingly more knowledge based work as technology improves. The author recognizes that software developers are not part of this group (yet) and not really being automated away, but then seems to ignore it for the rest of the post and starts to conflate UBI as a solution for joblessness with open source developers not getting paid. Who is saying open source development needs to be funded by government-organized UBI? If that is a movement I've missed, could someone link me to an example?
- mlyle 5y ago
  The reason I'm for (a small) UBI is because if UBI supplants some welfare programs, welfare gaps / over 100% marginal tax rates will disappear for the poor, and that's a good thing. The fact that it improves safety net for all of us, improves equality, etc, is just the cherry on top. And yah, it's kind of a nice bonus, too, that it may enable people to choose to do uneconomic work for the love of it: whether it's art, woodworking, artisan software, etc. It's a small hedge against automation, but shortening the work week IMO is more powerful for this now. We should do that too.
  - Zanfa 5y ago
    One thing I've never seen explained in a way that makes sense to me is how UBI wouldn't immediately result in inflation that eats through most of the grant for lower income households. A lot of countries already have housing demand outstrip the supply by a significant margin so injecting money into the system on the demand side would result in rents (and house/apartment prices) going up even quicker, with UBI covering less and less of actual costs.
    - mlyle 5y ago
      >One thing I've never seen explained in a way that makes sense to me is how UBI wouldn't immediately result in inflation that eats through most of the grant for lower income households Inflation would certainly eat through some. But a decent system would be close to budget-neutral: eliminating some social programs in favor of consolidated UBI, and requiring a bit more tax receipts on the top end. > already have housing demand outstrip the supply by a significant margin so injecting money into the system on the demand side would result in rents It might do the opposite to some extent on the low end: right now people requiring assistance get money for housing with a lot of strings attached on how it can be spent. If they just get more money, they might choose to rent only a room or stay with a relative: some benefit money that's now spent on housing probably wouldn't be.
      - Zanfa 5y ago
        But the majority of people don’t get any financial assistance for their rent, so I don’t think simplifying social programs would affect their spending behavior.
        mlyle 5y ago
        If your concern is what it will do for housing prices for the most poor-- those are the people receiving section 8 (about 8% of the population). If you're talking about the next slug up in income: they'd have some more money. Assuming 100% of this money is captured by necessities is pessimistic, IMO. And since we'd be getting rid of e.g. EITC, as you get to higher incomes UBI doesn't necessarily inject a ton more cash into the household. UBI is redistributive. It inherently moves money around; purchasing power for some (the poorest) will increase and for others (the richest) will decrease. Yes, shocks to pricing will erode a small part of this effect. One other thing to note: a UBI makes living in lower cost of living areas (with more housing supply) much more attractive, and makes relocation feasible for populations that never had the money to move. $1K/mo from the feds goes much further in Wyoming than San Francisco.
        5y ago
  - sterlind 5y ago
    exactly. I'm for UBI because disability benefits are pathetic - years of jumping through hoops, getting denied the first time no matter what your disability is - for $700 a month. and if you make more, or live with anyone who makes more, it gets taken away. we have to divorce our spouses to stay on that measly amount. and nobody in power really cares about us, so there's no will to change it - broke disabled people don't donate a lot of money to campaigns. assuming UBI pays minimum-flipping-wage it'd be multiple times SSI/SSDI.
lmm 5y ago
Software is already eating the bottom end of IT jobs. Making basic websites is not the reliable career it once was; cloud is eating a lot of internal IT and dedicated sysadmin or DBA positions. High average salaries is not evidence that the industry is not being automated; it might even be the opposite - when you replace 5 on-prem sysadmins with one cloud SRE, average salary goes up even as the number of jobs goes down. And speaking as a well-paid, high-level developer: it would be better both for me and for society if I could get paid at all while writing an open-source library once instead of getting paid by five different companies to write the same library five times for each of them in turn. I limit how much work I do for free, which means I haven't made many open-source contributions lately. I'd love to have a path to cover my living expenses while doing more open-source work. Currently I jump through the hoops needed to get paid, so it's not like I'm demanding others step in to save me. But looking for ways things could be better is not a cop-out.
DarylZero 5y ago
> Rather than facing fair pay as a practical and ethical problem the industry needs to solve for itself, a hypothetical universal basic income transforms our drama into one instance of a generalized, society-wide problem that government must solve across the board. > This sounds kind of ridiculous, for anyone familiar with government, taxation, or political change. Maybe UBI does sound ridiculous, but it sounds to me about 0.1% as ridiculous as "industry [solving the problem] for itself". The problem here is very analogous to "basic research." Industry simply won't ever fund it because it's not profitable to individual firms. Government can _sometimes_ fund it though. Classic government function: funding public goods. Government's track record is vastly better than industry here. The snark about "anyone familiar with government" is pointed backwards.
errcorrectcode 5y ago
This article is "let them eat cake" meets "never give anything away for free" ridiculous. The point of open source is to be cool and that's all. UBI is still crumbs for the misery of the legitimized and normalized theft to varying degrees perpetrated by billionaires who de facto own the government and buy laws that benefit them (kleptocracy / plutocracy). Jobs are going away because of automation, and the only fair way to replaced destroyed lives where labor has become oversupplied and well-paid opportunities dwindling is to tax the crap out of the destroyers of industries. The shrieks from the "innovation" and "progress" crowd will fall on deaf ears that have just been severed by guillotines to the shouts of glee they can't hear from the dystopian future starving masses living under bridges by the hundreds to thousands.
- Icko 5y ago
  ... destroyers of industries ... if you don't want your industry to be destroyed, innovate it yourself. Otherwise, you lose the right to moan when someone else does.

24 points by feross 5y ago

This article is critical of universal basic income as a solution for tech workers who do not get paid for the value they provide. I'm not sure what subgroup of UBI proponents the author is arguing against, because this is the first I've heard of UBI being something that will be necessary to save highly skilled programmers. The context I've mostly heard it in is to protect those whose jobs are being automated away, such as fast food workers, retail workers, truck drivers and increasingly more knowledge based work as technology improves. The author recognizes that software developers are not part of this group (yet) and not really being automated away, but then seems to ignore it for the rest of the post and starts to conflate UBI as a solution for joblessness with open source developers not getting paid. Who is saying open source development needs to be funded by government-organized UBI? If that is a movement I've missed, could someone link me to an example?

mlyle 5y ago
The reason I'm for (a small) UBI is because if UBI supplants some welfare programs, welfare gaps / over 100% marginal tax rates will disappear for the poor, and that's a good thing. The fact that it improves safety net for all of us, improves equality, etc, is just the cherry on top. And yah, it's kind of a nice bonus, too, that it may enable people to choose to do uneconomic work for the love of it: whether it's art, woodworking, artisan software, etc. It's a small hedge against automation, but shortening the work week IMO is more powerful for this now. We should do that too.
- Zanfa 5y ago
  One thing I've never seen explained in a way that makes sense to me is how UBI wouldn't immediately result in inflation that eats through most of the grant for lower income households. A lot of countries already have housing demand outstrip the supply by a significant margin so injecting money into the system on the demand side would result in rents (and house/apartment prices) going up even quicker, with UBI covering less and less of actual costs.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    >One thing I've never seen explained in a way that makes sense to me is how UBI wouldn't immediately result in inflation that eats through most of the grant for lower income households Inflation would certainly eat through some. But a decent system would be close to budget-neutral: eliminating some social programs in favor of consolidated UBI, and requiring a bit more tax receipts on the top end. > already have housing demand outstrip the supply by a significant margin so injecting money into the system on the demand side would result in rents It might do the opposite to some extent on the low end: right now people requiring assistance get money for housing with a lot of strings attached on how it can be spent. If they just get more money, they might choose to rent only a room or stay with a relative: some benefit money that's now spent on housing probably wouldn't be.
    - Zanfa 5y ago
      But the majority of people don’t get any financial assistance for their rent, so I don’t think simplifying social programs would affect their spending behavior.
      - mlyle 5y ago
        If your concern is what it will do for housing prices for the most poor-- those are the people receiving section 8 (about 8% of the population). If you're talking about the next slug up in income: they'd have some more money. Assuming 100% of this money is captured by necessities is pessimistic, IMO. And since we'd be getting rid of e.g. EITC, as you get to higher incomes UBI doesn't necessarily inject a ton more cash into the household. UBI is redistributive. It inherently moves money around; purchasing power for some (the poorest) will increase and for others (the richest) will decrease. Yes, shocks to pricing will erode a small part of this effect. One other thing to note: a UBI makes living in lower cost of living areas (with more housing supply) much more attractive, and makes relocation feasible for populations that never had the money to move. $1K/mo from the feds goes much further in Wyoming than San Francisco.
        5y ago
- sterlind 5y ago
  exactly. I'm for UBI because disability benefits are pathetic - years of jumping through hoops, getting denied the first time no matter what your disability is - for $700 a month. and if you make more, or live with anyone who makes more, it gets taken away. we have to divorce our spouses to stay on that measly amount. and nobody in power really cares about us, so there's no will to change it - broke disabled people don't donate a lot of money to campaigns. assuming UBI pays minimum-flipping-wage it'd be multiple times SSI/SSDI.

lmm 5y ago

Software is already eating the bottom end of IT jobs. Making basic websites is not the reliable career it once was; cloud is eating a lot of internal IT and dedicated sysadmin or DBA positions. High average salaries is not evidence that the industry is not being automated; it might even be the opposite - when you replace 5 on-prem sysadmins with one cloud SRE, average salary goes up even as the number of jobs goes down. And speaking as a well-paid, high-level developer: it would be better both for me and for society if I could get paid at all while writing an open-source library once instead of getting paid by five different companies to write the same library five times for each of them in turn. I limit how much work I do for free, which means I haven't made many open-source contributions lately. I'd love to have a path to cover my living expenses while doing more open-source work. Currently I jump through the hoops needed to get paid, so it's not like I'm demanding others step in to save me. But looking for ways things could be better is not a cop-out.

DarylZero 5y ago

> Rather than facing fair pay as a practical and ethical problem the industry needs to solve for itself, a hypothetical universal basic income transforms our drama into one instance of a generalized, society-wide problem that government must solve across the board. > This sounds kind of ridiculous, for anyone familiar with government, taxation, or political change. Maybe UBI does sound ridiculous, but it sounds to me about 0.1% as ridiculous as "industry [solving the problem] for itself". The problem here is very analogous to "basic research." Industry simply won't ever fund it because it's not profitable to individual firms. Government can _sometimes_ fund it though. Classic government function: funding public goods. Government's track record is vastly better than industry here. The snark about "anyone familiar with government" is pointed backwards.

errcorrectcode 5y ago

This article is "let them eat cake" meets "never give anything away for free" ridiculous. The point of open source is to be cool and that's all. UBI is still crumbs for the misery of the legitimized and normalized theft to varying degrees perpetrated by billionaires who de facto own the government and buy laws that benefit them (kleptocracy / plutocracy). Jobs are going away because of automation, and the only fair way to replaced destroyed lives where labor has become oversupplied and well-paid opportunities dwindling is to tax the crap out of the destroyers of industries. The shrieks from the "innovation" and "progress" crowd will fall on deaf ears that have just been severed by guillotines to the shouts of glee they can't hear from the dystopian future starving masses living under bridges by the hundreds to thousands.

Icko 5y ago
... destroyers of industries ... if you don't want your industry to be destroyed, innovate it yourself. Otherwise, you lose the right to moan when someone else does.