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> Even basic income is really about putting the managers of such a scheme at the centre of it. You are probably right. But... But if, as a side effect, it mat

> Even basic income is really about putting the managers of such a scheme at the centre of it. You are probably right. But... But if, as a side effect, it materially increases the number of people who are really able to choose what they do with their lives, and gives them more time to do it, it will be progress. It is worth keeping in mind that all funding actions are inefficient in one way or another. Most government actions are no more than 40 percent efficient, and real policymakers are aware of this fact and make decisions in its light. In the private sector, a CFO told me many years ago that no more than one in three investments works out. If half of the money allocated for a universal basic income is wasted on needless "management" makework, provided that there is no actual obstruction or perversion of its universality, such a scheme would be doing well as well as doing good. It would be the most progress seen since the vacuum cleaner, the refrigerator, the washing machine, and the electric stove made choices possible for millions of people.

pdonis 4y ago
> if, as a side effect, it materially increases the number of people who are really able to choose what they do with their lives, and gives them more time to do it, it will be progress. At the expense of what? Somebody has to produce all of the things people need and want. Universal basic income holds out the illusory promise of being able to have things you need and want without paying any cost to have them produced--because you aren't paying any cost (in time and effort) to get the income. That's not progress. Real progress would be improving technology to make the things people need and want cheaper. Imagine if food were as cheap and plentiful as air. Imagine if modern construction methods made it 10 times as easy to build a house as it is now. Imagine if cars could be cranked out on 3D printers. And so on. But that kind of progress never happens from the top down. It always happens from the bottom up. No top-down program, whether it's UBI or anything else, will help with that kind of progress. It takes actual people doing actual work.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > Imagine if food were as cheap and plentiful as air. It was. There was a time you could just walk out and pick it off trees. Food didn't change. We did. Progress is not a scalar. It's a vector. You must always ask: Progress towards what?
  - pdonis 4y ago
    > There was a time you could just walk out and pick it off trees. For some, yes. Others you had to hunt or catch. > Food didn't change. We did. If you mean the human population grew to a point where simple hunting and gathering could not support it, and then food changed after that, that's getting things backwards. Our ancestors invented farming, i.e., a new way of producing food, and then the population grew larger than hunting and gathering could support. So food changed first. Then we changed. > You must always ask: Progress towards what? Yes, agreed. Not everyone would consider our ancestors' invention of farming to be progress, for example.
  - scollet 4y ago
    How about we progress away from blatant human rights violations and genocide, or you probably support that though.
    - nonrandomstring 4y ago
      > How about we progress away from blatant human rights violations and genocide, or you probably support that though. The best interpretation of your comment is that of course I support progress away from blatant human rights violations and genocide. Though I do suggest you take extra care with grammatical use of the comma (,). :)
- shreyshnaccount 4y ago
  I almost totally agree with you, but have a few reservations- 1. We could have cheaper, more abundant food, but a lot of grain is dumped into the ocean to create an artificial scarcity to keep prices high. 2. We have planned obsolescence in electronic devices, to increase profits 3. Closed source technology have made it unreasonably hard for small groups with limited funding to innovate If you want innovation and technology to thrive, you will have to notice that valuing money as highly as it is, is detrimental to progress. And if like you said, UBI reduces the value, that's precisely what can help, right?
  - pdonis 4y ago
    > 1. We could have cheaper, more abundant food, but a lot of grain is dumped into the ocean to create an artificial scarcity to keep prices high. And governments pay farmers not to grow grain in the first place. These kinds of problems are solved by removing the top-down policies that create them. > 2. We have planned obsolescence in electronic devices, to increase profits To the extent this is a problem (and not just in electronic devices, many products are not built to last any more), it's a problem with corporate governance and is not something that is easily solved. The corporate governance problem is that most stock in publicly traded corporations is no longer owned by individuals, it's owned by mutual funds, since that's where most people's retirement savings are now. So the corporate entities that have to meet long time horizons, which is what enables things like building products to last a long time, rather than focusing on short-term profits, are the mutual funds, not the individual corporations--but the mutual funds don't build anything, they just move money around. The actual corporations that build things have short time horizons because the mutual funds will sell their stock if they don't meet the desired short-term returns. As I said, this problem is not easily solved; certainly UBI does not solve it. Nor will it improve it, since anyone who depends on UBI for their income is not going to be running a corporation anyway. To the extent UBI affects the incentives of the people running corporations at all, it increases their incentive to take short-term profit, since the long-term effect of something like UBI is to make human labor scarcer and more expensive, which means corporations that build things need to either automate or go out of business--so the executives that run them have more incentive to take short-term profits and then exit with their golden parachutes before the long-term problems surface. > 3. Closed source technology have made it unreasonably hard for small groups with limited funding to innovate This is only true to the extent that closed source technology is better and would spark innovation if it were open. I do not see this being the case. > valuing money as highly as it is, is detrimental to progress I'm not sure I agree. I think what is detrimental to progress is focusing on short term gain rather than long term stability, particularly of the social institutions that are required for progress to occur in the first place. I don't see "valuing money" in and of itself as much of an effect. Many people who "value money" are willing to work for years on startups in order to get rich, producing much innovation and progress.
- petra 4y ago
  //Real progress would be improving technology to make the things people need and want cheaper I agree about the goal. But technology isn't what makes housing near reasonable places to live(employment, good community, etc) expensive. So given socialized medicine, good public transportation and affordable housing takes us quite close to basic income - when a single adult needed to needed to work less than full time to provide for a family. That is possible in some places in Europe. And those are centrally managed things. So it's a combination of bottoms-up and top-down.
  - pdonis 4y ago
    > technology isn't what makes housing near reasonable places to live(employment, good community, etc) expensive. In a free market, housing prices are determined by supply and demand. Since location is a key factor in housing, supply is usually restricted at some point, which drives up prices in places that are in high demand. (Technology that enables remote work can help with this, though, by reducing the need for high demand in particular locations.) However, housing in current developed societies is not a free market. There are many top-down restrictions that artificially restrict supply, and there are government policies like printing money for mortgages that artificially inflate demand. This drives up the price of housing everywhere, but it's at its worst in areas that are already in high demand. So the best way to improve housing prices, across the board but especially in high demand areas, would be to remove the artificial effects on supply and demand and let the free market work. Which is bottom-up, not top-down. Top-down is hurting, not helping. > given socialized medicine, good public transportation and affordable housing Which either don't exist, or only exist because people are willing to pay for them anyway and don't feel gouged by the taxes required--which means that in those societies, those things would exist even in a free market, because people would pay for them anyway. So even where top-down supposedly works, it only works because it's not needed--it's "imposing" things that people would freely choose anyway. That's not an argument for top-down; it's an argument against it.
scollet 4y ago
Don't be one of them.

pdonis 4y ago

> if, as a side effect, it materially increases the number of people who are really able to choose what they do with their lives, and gives them more time to do it, it will be progress. At the expense of what? Somebody has to produce all of the things people need and want. Universal basic income holds out the illusory promise of being able to have things you need and want without paying any cost to have them produced--because you aren't paying any cost (in time and effort) to get the income. That's not progress. Real progress would be improving technology to make the things people need and want cheaper. Imagine if food were as cheap and plentiful as air. Imagine if modern construction methods made it 10 times as easy to build a house as it is now. Imagine if cars could be cranked out on 3D printers. And so on. But that kind of progress never happens from the top down. It always happens from the bottom up. No top-down program, whether it's UBI or anything else, will help with that kind of progress. It takes actual people doing actual work.

nonrandomstring 4y ago
> Imagine if food were as cheap and plentiful as air. It was. There was a time you could just walk out and pick it off trees. Food didn't change. We did. Progress is not a scalar. It's a vector. You must always ask: Progress towards what?
- pdonis 4y ago
  > There was a time you could just walk out and pick it off trees. For some, yes. Others you had to hunt or catch. > Food didn't change. We did. If you mean the human population grew to a point where simple hunting and gathering could not support it, and then food changed after that, that's getting things backwards. Our ancestors invented farming, i.e., a new way of producing food, and then the population grew larger than hunting and gathering could support. So food changed first. Then we changed. > You must always ask: Progress towards what? Yes, agreed. Not everyone would consider our ancestors' invention of farming to be progress, for example.
- scollet 4y ago
  How about we progress away from blatant human rights violations and genocide, or you probably support that though.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    > How about we progress away from blatant human rights violations and genocide, or you probably support that though. The best interpretation of your comment is that of course I support progress away from blatant human rights violations and genocide. Though I do suggest you take extra care with grammatical use of the comma (,). :)
shreyshnaccount 4y ago
I almost totally agree with you, but have a few reservations- 1. We could have cheaper, more abundant food, but a lot of grain is dumped into the ocean to create an artificial scarcity to keep prices high. 2. We have planned obsolescence in electronic devices, to increase profits 3. Closed source technology have made it unreasonably hard for small groups with limited funding to innovate If you want innovation and technology to thrive, you will have to notice that valuing money as highly as it is, is detrimental to progress. And if like you said, UBI reduces the value, that's precisely what can help, right?
- pdonis 4y ago
  > 1. We could have cheaper, more abundant food, but a lot of grain is dumped into the ocean to create an artificial scarcity to keep prices high. And governments pay farmers not to grow grain in the first place. These kinds of problems are solved by removing the top-down policies that create them. > 2. We have planned obsolescence in electronic devices, to increase profits To the extent this is a problem (and not just in electronic devices, many products are not built to last any more), it's a problem with corporate governance and is not something that is easily solved. The corporate governance problem is that most stock in publicly traded corporations is no longer owned by individuals, it's owned by mutual funds, since that's where most people's retirement savings are now. So the corporate entities that have to meet long time horizons, which is what enables things like building products to last a long time, rather than focusing on short-term profits, are the mutual funds, not the individual corporations--but the mutual funds don't build anything, they just move money around. The actual corporations that build things have short time horizons because the mutual funds will sell their stock if they don't meet the desired short-term returns. As I said, this problem is not easily solved; certainly UBI does not solve it. Nor will it improve it, since anyone who depends on UBI for their income is not going to be running a corporation anyway. To the extent UBI affects the incentives of the people running corporations at all, it increases their incentive to take short-term profit, since the long-term effect of something like UBI is to make human labor scarcer and more expensive, which means corporations that build things need to either automate or go out of business--so the executives that run them have more incentive to take short-term profits and then exit with their golden parachutes before the long-term problems surface. > 3. Closed source technology have made it unreasonably hard for small groups with limited funding to innovate This is only true to the extent that closed source technology is better and would spark innovation if it were open. I do not see this being the case. > valuing money as highly as it is, is detrimental to progress I'm not sure I agree. I think what is detrimental to progress is focusing on short term gain rather than long term stability, particularly of the social institutions that are required for progress to occur in the first place. I don't see "valuing money" in and of itself as much of an effect. Many people who "value money" are willing to work for years on startups in order to get rich, producing much innovation and progress.
petra 4y ago
//Real progress would be improving technology to make the things people need and want cheaper I agree about the goal. But technology isn't what makes housing near reasonable places to live(employment, good community, etc) expensive. So given socialized medicine, good public transportation and affordable housing takes us quite close to basic income - when a single adult needed to needed to work less than full time to provide for a family. That is possible in some places in Europe. And those are centrally managed things. So it's a combination of bottoms-up and top-down.
- pdonis 4y ago
  > technology isn't what makes housing near reasonable places to live(employment, good community, etc) expensive. In a free market, housing prices are determined by supply and demand. Since location is a key factor in housing, supply is usually restricted at some point, which drives up prices in places that are in high demand. (Technology that enables remote work can help with this, though, by reducing the need for high demand in particular locations.) However, housing in current developed societies is not a free market. There are many top-down restrictions that artificially restrict supply, and there are government policies like printing money for mortgages that artificially inflate demand. This drives up the price of housing everywhere, but it's at its worst in areas that are already in high demand. So the best way to improve housing prices, across the board but especially in high demand areas, would be to remove the artificial effects on supply and demand and let the free market work. Which is bottom-up, not top-down. Top-down is hurting, not helping. > given socialized medicine, good public transportation and affordable housing Which either don't exist, or only exist because people are willing to pay for them anyway and don't feel gouged by the taxes required--which means that in those societies, those things would exist even in a free market, because people would pay for them anyway. So even where top-down supposedly works, it only works because it's not needed--it's "imposing" things that people would freely choose anyway. That's not an argument for top-down; it's an argument against it.

scollet 4y ago

Don't be one of them.