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> But when you recognize that income is the fuel that makes work possible, it’s easier to see that basic income will enable far more work for multiple reasons.

by mabbo 4y ago

> But when you recognize that income is the fuel that makes work possible, it’s easier to see that basic income will enable far more work for multiple reasons. For one, having basic income means that people can choose unpaid or paid work. It also means that people are more able to choose self-employment. I think there is a cognitive bias in play here that the author has not realized: a bias towards believing people will think and act like they will. I like to use the analogy of a moving walkway or escalator. Some people get on it and use it as an opportunity to go faster- I walk and it moves, so together I move really fast and get where I'm going sooner. Other people step onto it and stop. Usually it's moving even slower than they would be walking otherwise, but their goal isn't to get places faster, it's to do the least amount of work possible. Those two extreme attitudes can apply to how people react to something like UBI. Some people will use it to accomplish more. Others will use it to put in less effort. And most people will be somewhere in the spectrum between those two. I still think UBI is a good idea. I just also accept that it probably won't increase overall productivity in our society.

silicon2401 4y ago
It's basically the reason idealism/utopianism is never practical. Having an ideal and working towards it is a great way to make progress, but setting expectations based on ideals is a recipe for disaster
- pooper 4y ago
  > It's basically the reason idealism/utopianism is never practical. It is interesting how people can follow the same path and reach different conclusions. To me, UBI makes sense BECAUSE of decreased production. I do not want people who do not want to work a particular job to have to work at that job. I think we have enough food that nobody in this country has to go hungry, even if they choose to not work. Having these people at work does not help productivity (even though it might help production) where I define productivity as production per worker. In fact, I'd say if you reduce the worker base by a lot and only decrease production by a little, you have raised productivity.
  - slowmovintarget 4y ago
    Now we're right back to the exercise where we give everyone in class the average grade and see what happens. This punishes work. Worse, economically speaking, UBI would get swallowed by the inflation it causes, and we have the worse problem of running out of other people's money to pay for UBI.
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      I was going to respond with the standard argument that UBI doesn't necessarily increase inflation. A sane UBI plan is revenue neutral -- you increase taxes so that the average taxpayer has taxes increase by exactly the UBI amount. Since the median taxpayer makes less money than the average taxpayer, the majority of taxpayers benefit, yet the UBI does not increase the money supply. But the author advocates for printing money, so it's not a sane UBI plan.
    - pooper 4y ago
      > This punishes work. No, it does not. I wouldn't call it a punishment. It forces people to rethink their priorities. Something about extrinsic motivation vs intrinsic motivation. What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning and do something? I think UBI will open up a lot of vacancies and will do wonders in improving quality of life for workers who do want to do the job. Sure, the economy might contract a little but I don't think ordinary people like me need to worry about that.
      - kcplate 4y ago
        > Sure, the economy might contract a little but I don't think ordinary people like me need to worry about that Sure it would be just those “un-ordinary” people who have to to deal with the resulting stagflation and don’t really have the elite income generating job skills to be able to afford how much it costs to feed their family. But I am sure they will continue to provide the manual labor needed to run our society…or they can just learn to code.
    - manicdee 4y ago
      UBI doesn’t stop people making more money. What it will do is help people be more mobile so they can find a job they like. The downside is people won’t spend 12 hours a day as an Amazon slave unless there is a financial reward commensurate to the employers demands. Some people will participate simply because it is the only paying work available, some will participate because they need structure to their time. Earning a wage is not comparable to earning a B in school. That B doesn’t put apples or oranges on the tables, earning a wage gives you both.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > but setting expectations based on ideals is a recipe for disaster What's the alternative? Isn't that all anyone has ever done? The only difference seems to be what those ideals being used to set expectations are.
netsharc 4y ago
I'm not an expert but I think some people believe (me included) that even if people become lazy because they have UBI, it's not a big deal, because the money the're "earning" will flow into the economy anyway (because they'll be buying food, Xbox games, etc...). The utopian idea is that they'll be inspired to do work to earn beyond UBI because of motivation (maybe it's because they want to help people, maybe it's to buy a fancy car).
- manicdee 4y ago
  There’s also the simple need to do something to have something to do.
- syrrim 4y ago
  >because the money the're "earning" will flow into the economy anyway (because they'll be buying food, Xbox games, etc...) This betrays a lack of understanding of how the economy works. Goods come from people producing them. If less people are working, fewer goods are being produced, and thus there are fewer goods to go around. This leads to either inflation, or UBI payouts dropping. As a simplified model, we can treat the purchase of consumable goods as using up a finite resource, which ultimately relates to human labour. The amount of effort put into creating xbox games is determined by the profitability of selling them, which is determined by the number of people who buy them. At the time when you buy the game, this labour has already been expended, but in the long term your action will cause more investment to be made into the development of video games. This investment will redirect effort - of programmers, designers, marketers, etc - from developing other products, towards making video games. You get less (or poorer quality) of the other thing, because you redirected effort into video games. >The utopian idea is that they'll be inspired to do work to earn beyond UBI because of motivation (maybe it's because they want to help people, maybe it's to buy a fancy car). Of course, some people will choose to do this. The difficulty comes is how this plays out on a generational level. Western countries broadly have below replacement levels of fertility. Individuals who don't work will have lots of time to raise children, and many of them will be motivated to do so. Their children would be liable to adopt their lifestyle. Thus, the number of people who are not working will grow at an exponential rate.
autoexec 4y ago
> I just also accept that it probably won't increase overall productivity in our society. I suspect it will, but only because our current system demands a lot of very unproductive workers. There will no longer be people sitting at desks watching the clock and putting in as little effort as possible until 5pm. There are plenty of people on the moving walkway right now just coasting. With UBI people will choose their work. They'll be doing what they are passionate about it and will be free to move on to something else if they aren't. Cutting all that dead weight, should help productivity considerably.

by mabbo 4y ago

silicon2401 4y ago

It's basically the reason idealism/utopianism is never practical. Having an ideal and working towards it is a great way to make progress, but setting expectations based on ideals is a recipe for disaster

pooper 4y ago
> It's basically the reason idealism/utopianism is never practical. It is interesting how people can follow the same path and reach different conclusions. To me, UBI makes sense BECAUSE of decreased production. I do not want people who do not want to work a particular job to have to work at that job. I think we have enough food that nobody in this country has to go hungry, even if they choose to not work. Having these people at work does not help productivity (even though it might help production) where I define productivity as production per worker. In fact, I'd say if you reduce the worker base by a lot and only decrease production by a little, you have raised productivity.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  Now we're right back to the exercise where we give everyone in class the average grade and see what happens. This punishes work. Worse, economically speaking, UBI would get swallowed by the inflation it causes, and we have the worse problem of running out of other people's money to pay for UBI.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    I was going to respond with the standard argument that UBI doesn't necessarily increase inflation. A sane UBI plan is revenue neutral -- you increase taxes so that the average taxpayer has taxes increase by exactly the UBI amount. Since the median taxpayer makes less money than the average taxpayer, the majority of taxpayers benefit, yet the UBI does not increase the money supply. But the author advocates for printing money, so it's not a sane UBI plan.
  - pooper 4y ago
    > This punishes work. No, it does not. I wouldn't call it a punishment. It forces people to rethink their priorities. Something about extrinsic motivation vs intrinsic motivation. What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning and do something? I think UBI will open up a lot of vacancies and will do wonders in improving quality of life for workers who do want to do the job. Sure, the economy might contract a little but I don't think ordinary people like me need to worry about that.
    - kcplate 4y ago
      > Sure, the economy might contract a little but I don't think ordinary people like me need to worry about that Sure it would be just those “un-ordinary” people who have to to deal with the resulting stagflation and don’t really have the elite income generating job skills to be able to afford how much it costs to feed their family. But I am sure they will continue to provide the manual labor needed to run our society…or they can just learn to code.
  - manicdee 4y ago
    UBI doesn’t stop people making more money. What it will do is help people be more mobile so they can find a job they like. The downside is people won’t spend 12 hours a day as an Amazon slave unless there is a financial reward commensurate to the employers demands. Some people will participate simply because it is the only paying work available, some will participate because they need structure to their time. Earning a wage is not comparable to earning a B in school. That B doesn’t put apples or oranges on the tables, earning a wage gives you both.
autoexec 4y ago
> but setting expectations based on ideals is a recipe for disaster What's the alternative? Isn't that all anyone has ever done? The only difference seems to be what those ideals being used to set expectations are.

netsharc 4y ago

I'm not an expert but I think some people believe (me included) that even if people become lazy because they have UBI, it's not a big deal, because the money the're "earning" will flow into the economy anyway (because they'll be buying food, Xbox games, etc...). The utopian idea is that they'll be inspired to do work to earn beyond UBI because of motivation (maybe it's because they want to help people, maybe it's to buy a fancy car).

manicdee 4y ago
There’s also the simple need to do something to have something to do.
syrrim 4y ago
>because the money the're "earning" will flow into the economy anyway (because they'll be buying food, Xbox games, etc...) This betrays a lack of understanding of how the economy works. Goods come from people producing them. If less people are working, fewer goods are being produced, and thus there are fewer goods to go around. This leads to either inflation, or UBI payouts dropping. As a simplified model, we can treat the purchase of consumable goods as using up a finite resource, which ultimately relates to human labour. The amount of effort put into creating xbox games is determined by the profitability of selling them, which is determined by the number of people who buy them. At the time when you buy the game, this labour has already been expended, but in the long term your action will cause more investment to be made into the development of video games. This investment will redirect effort - of programmers, designers, marketers, etc - from developing other products, towards making video games. You get less (or poorer quality) of the other thing, because you redirected effort into video games. >The utopian idea is that they'll be inspired to do work to earn beyond UBI because of motivation (maybe it's because they want to help people, maybe it's to buy a fancy car). Of course, some people will choose to do this. The difficulty comes is how this plays out on a generational level. Western countries broadly have below replacement levels of fertility. Individuals who don't work will have lots of time to raise children, and many of them will be motivated to do so. Their children would be liable to adopt their lifestyle. Thus, the number of people who are not working will grow at an exponential rate.

autoexec 4y ago

> I just also accept that it probably won't increase overall productivity in our society. I suspect it will, but only because our current system demands a lot of very unproductive workers. There will no longer be people sitting at desks watching the clock and putting in as little effort as possible until 5pm. There are plenty of people on the moving walkway right now just coasting. With UBI people will choose their work. They'll be doing what they are passionate about it and will be free to move on to something else if they aren't. Cutting all that dead weight, should help productivity considerably.