6 ms·

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 expectatio

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
    > Now we're right back to the exercise where we give everyone in class the average grade and see what happens. This punishes work. Giving everyone an average grade isn't wrong because it hurts the kids who worked harder to learn. Those kids already have their reward. It's wrong because it hurts the kids who need extra help but now won't get it because their understanding is seen as equal to everyone else's and adequate when it isn't. We could eliminate grades entirely and it wouldn't matter at all so long as we ensured everyone actually had a solid grasp of the material. If UBI is well implemented it actually would raise everyone to an acceptable minimum standard of living set by society. That would mean that everyone has shelter, food, clean water, and enough money to comfortably live, improve themselves, and pursue their own passions. It doesn't punish work. There are always rewards for doing work that you find meaningful and so the people who work will still obtain those rewards. > and we have the worse problem of running out of other people's money to pay for UBI. That will never happen. Money is just a proxy. It's not even tied to anything meaningful anymore, it's just a ledger of credits and we all just put our faith in the ability to exchange those credits for actual goods and services. The real fear with UBI is that we will run out of material goods. Right now, we have the resources to meet everyone's basic needs, but that will not always be the case. Clean water, healthy food, and even clean air are becoming harder and harder to obtain. UBI is still a good idea while we can set and provide a decent standard of living, but it can't be sustained forever while the most basic resources we need for survival are being destroyed. Sci-fi gets away with utopian societies because they are post-scarcity, but for us even drinking water is becoming increasingly scarce. UBI could help us to more efficiently manage what resources we have left until we are able to either reach a state of post-scarcity or push the timeline back by exploiting new reserves of resources by doing things expanding to other planets.
    - slowmovintarget 4y ago
      Post-scarcity doesn't exist in the real universe. It will always come down to energy, whether it is bound up into matter or not. Providing actual necessities, instead of money, would be far better. Money is a proxy, and just giving it away makes it worth less... So you get inflation. Meanwhile, the people working are also drowned in the ever rising costs of funding UBI, and the ever rising prices from inflation. The government has financialized everything, and the bottom falls out when growth stops, which it always does, even if temporarily. UBI may be a wealth transfer to the poor, who'd get first crack at the cash (unlike QE), but the overall economy is still devastated either way.
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  > I think we have enough food that nobody in this country has to go hungry I think we have already solved the problem of food distribution in the US - hardly anyone dies of hunger these days. Happy to be corrected on that one, if you have contrary data. I think we have also have cheap abundant housing as long as one doesn't want to live in highly desirable locations like Manhattan. And introducing UBI is not going to solve homelessness problem in Manhattan anyway. So why introduce UBI, then?
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.

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
  > Now we're right back to the exercise where we give everyone in class the average grade and see what happens. This punishes work. Giving everyone an average grade isn't wrong because it hurts the kids who worked harder to learn. Those kids already have their reward. It's wrong because it hurts the kids who need extra help but now won't get it because their understanding is seen as equal to everyone else's and adequate when it isn't. We could eliminate grades entirely and it wouldn't matter at all so long as we ensured everyone actually had a solid grasp of the material. If UBI is well implemented it actually would raise everyone to an acceptable minimum standard of living set by society. That would mean that everyone has shelter, food, clean water, and enough money to comfortably live, improve themselves, and pursue their own passions. It doesn't punish work. There are always rewards for doing work that you find meaningful and so the people who work will still obtain those rewards. > and we have the worse problem of running out of other people's money to pay for UBI. That will never happen. Money is just a proxy. It's not even tied to anything meaningful anymore, it's just a ledger of credits and we all just put our faith in the ability to exchange those credits for actual goods and services. The real fear with UBI is that we will run out of material goods. Right now, we have the resources to meet everyone's basic needs, but that will not always be the case. Clean water, healthy food, and even clean air are becoming harder and harder to obtain. UBI is still a good idea while we can set and provide a decent standard of living, but it can't be sustained forever while the most basic resources we need for survival are being destroyed. Sci-fi gets away with utopian societies because they are post-scarcity, but for us even drinking water is becoming increasingly scarce. UBI could help us to more efficiently manage what resources we have left until we are able to either reach a state of post-scarcity or push the timeline back by exploiting new reserves of resources by doing things expanding to other planets.
  - slowmovintarget 4y ago
    Post-scarcity doesn't exist in the real universe. It will always come down to energy, whether it is bound up into matter or not. Providing actual necessities, instead of money, would be far better. Money is a proxy, and just giving it away makes it worth less... So you get inflation. Meanwhile, the people working are also drowned in the ever rising costs of funding UBI, and the ever rising prices from inflation. The government has financialized everything, and the bottom falls out when growth stops, which it always does, even if temporarily. UBI may be a wealth transfer to the poor, who'd get first crack at the cash (unlike QE), but the overall economy is still devastated either way.
RestlessMind 4y ago
> I think we have enough food that nobody in this country has to go hungry I think we have already solved the problem of food distribution in the US - hardly anyone dies of hunger these days. Happy to be corrected on that one, if you have contrary data. I think we have also have cheap abundant housing as long as one doesn't want to live in highly desirable locations like Manhattan. And introducing UBI is not going to solve homelessness problem in Manhattan anyway. So why introduce UBI, then?

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.