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It's interesting that you basically just made Andrew Yang's argument for Universal Basic Income -- that we need to redistribute the wealth of automation to all

• narrator 4y ago
  The problem with UBI is Jevons paradox[1]. Just to illustrate what the problem is using an extreme example: Oh good, we made it so anyone can turn the whole of the earth's crust into paperclips with a push of a button in a fully automated way that doesn't require any human labor and the energy to do it is completely sustainable. Hmm... Maybe that wasn't such a good idea. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  • jedberg 4y ago
    Economists are still divided on the subject. So far localized experiments in UBI have not caused localized inflation, but it's hard to tell since it's small scale. I'm not so sure it would actually happen though. We already give support to a lot of poor people through various programs like EBT and Medicaid. This just converts that help to cash, which gives people more freedom on what they want to spend on.
    • JackFr 4y ago
      The problem with UBI experiments is that it hasn’t been U. If it’s localized and small scale it’s obviously not Universal, which makes it hard to draw conclusions.
      • yellowapple 4y ago
        It's also rarely B, either; I don't know of very many (if any) such experiments where the income was sufficient to live on.
  • jefftk 4y ago
    I'm not understanding your objection. Would you be able to fill in some of the steps between "UBI" and "the entire earth's crust has been turned into paper clips"?
    • hnuser123456 4y ago
      I'm guessing that they're imagining we'll give the productivity AI too much leeway, because it prints money so nobody has to work, until it goes unchecked and eventually starts making decisions contrary to typical human interests, because we based its reward function on profit instead of understanding what people really need/want to be happy.
    • narrator 4y ago
      Let's say that we have completely automated fishing boats. They can trap every fish in the sea. We give everyone UBI. They all decide to eat fish. No humans have to work or do anything to completely remove all fish from the sea. Is this a good idea? In previous eras we were constrained by the need for human labor to do all these things, but now AI does it, so we can have as much of it as we want until the natural resources run out. This creates problems with sustainability however, so how is that controlled?
      • jefftk 4y ago
        This is a problem we already have to deal with: people got rich enough that they could afford to pay people to overfish the oceans, and we responded by limiting how much people are allowed to fish. That is, I don't think UBI adds a new problem beyond "how do we make sure that humanity properly accounts for externalities" and "how do we make sure that AI does what we want it to do".
        • narrator 4y ago
          I was using fish to make an obvious example. The answer is regulation, but there are so many things like fish in the world. Do we have to have a regulation for every single one? It seems like it will end with whack-a-mole micromanagement of everything. It almost seems like we'll get communism eventually out of it. Except there is no all labor is of equal value, because there's no labor. I wish there was some alternative.
• Dalewyn 4y ago
  I'm going to be level with you: I don't want to pay for someone's food and board so they can draw lines on paper (which won't sell) all day. Likewise, I don't expect anyone to pay for my food and board so I can do fuck all either. If you want a living, earn it. If you want wealth, earn it. Might not happen with your favorite school of craft, but the vast majority of people don't/can't make money doing something they are passionate about.
  • jedberg 4y ago
    It's called a basic income because it's subsistence living. Most people won't just live off it and do nothing. And those that would, well, they aren't really going to do much anyway if you force them to work, other than the bare minimum of the most menial labor. So far every experiment in UBI has shown that almost everyone getting it does something useful with the money and doesn't just sit on it. And frankly, I have no problem with paying someone to sit on their ass drawing lines, if it means they aren't starving and homeless.
    • agileAlligator 4y ago
      > And frankly, I have no problem with paying someone to sit on their ass drawing lines, if it means they aren't starving and homeless. Why don't you? I am sure that you can support at least one such person with your income
      • jedberg 4y ago
        I do actually. I support a couple of people with enough income to keep them from being starving and homeless. One I'm not even related to.
        • agileAlligator 4y ago
          Good on you! Please don't expect everyone else to have the same generosity
• spywaregorilla 4y ago
  UBI is impossible to work for two reasons: 1) We need people to do low level jobs. So if UBI exists, wages will need to rise until people are willing to do them. This will happen along with price raises until an equilibrium is found where poor people need to work in order to survive. No need for narratives about landlords raising rent, though it is possible. The poor people aren't in an overall worse position here though, because although they're still earning just enough to live, a portion of that minimum is now guaranteed. However: 2) By raising your domestic (or local) wages/prices, you've just given yourself an absolute disadvantage against every other economic entity in the world. Anything that is outsourceable is now more appealing to outsource than before. This removes jobs and puts downwards pressure on wages. If everyone just "lives off UBI while learning" society won't function because the jobs they do are important.
  • thedorkknight 4y ago
    You're missing the point. At SOME point, even YOU won't be able to find a job, due to robotics and automation, compounded by extremely high unemployment making even basic jobs like plumbing impossible to get. If that happens, we either just let everyone starve until the population drops to equilibrium, or restructure society to support people when there's no jobs for 99% of us.
    • spywaregorilla 4y ago
      That's great, but we're nowhere near that point. That is basically a post scarcity society.
      • dmitriid 4y ago
        For all intents and prepared we already live in a post-scarcity society. We're just too shitty to make an effort to distribute the wealth, the food, the products etc.
        • dmitriid 4y ago
          s/prepared/purposes Curse autocomplete/swipe keyboards
• akomtu 4y ago
  How will you live off UBI if all the people who are supposed to make your living possible also live off UBI?
  • jedberg 4y ago
    The assumption is that most basic needs will be provided by automation, not humans, hence the need for a UBI. Also, immigrants, since they don't get UBI (but hopefully get a lot of protection so as not to become a slave class).
    • kortilla 4y ago
      That’s a pretty stupid assumption given how many of the jobs that support basic human needs are labor intensive (home construction, farming, medical attention, infrastructure construction for energy and water, etc, etc). We aren’t even close to automating basic needs. We can certainly automate the manufacturing of some complex individual items though. Seems like a pretty fundamentally flawed assumption of UBI.
  • yellowapple 4y ago
    People will still want extra spending money on top of what UBI provides - hence, there will still be a labor supply to meet that demand.
    • akomtu 4y ago
      Laziness is stronger than greed. Indian tribes in America already live off UBI, and how does it work for them?
      • yellowapple 4y ago
        If Native Americans in any significant number are receiving UBI already, then that's news to me. They're disproportionately in poverty - and thus disproportionately eligible for various strings-attached welfare programs like food stamps - and tribal members / reservation residents receive some additional pittances of federal funding as a sort of "sorry we stole your lands and attempted to genocide y'all, now shut up about it and take this spare change we're throwing at you", but that's about it. The only thing even vaguely resembling tribal UBI of which I'm aware is annuities from casinos, and last I checked those don't come anywhere close to even meeting the poverty line, let alone sufficient for anyone to live off them - i.e. they don't satisfy the "basic" in "universal basic income". UBI is the solution, not the problem - and on the topic of Native Americans, funding it can and should start by taxing the unimproved value of the very lands we conquered from them.
• kortilla 4y ago
  > that we need to redistribute the wealth of automation to all of society. Cool, now that we all have $250/mo[1] for the rest of our lives, our problem is solved. 1. This is to a rough approximation what we can maybe sustain in the US now.
• eloff 4y ago
  I don't think UBI can work. I love the idea of it, but as soon as you have a democracy and state provided income, it's too easy to vote yourself a raise. Look at countries like Argentina, Spain, Greece, Venezuela, where there are or were a huge percentage of people on the dole. Their economies collapsed. You can't keep squeezing a small upper middle class to pay for everyone. We're pretty much at the limit there as it is in many countries. I think UBI is fundamentally at odds with human nature in a way that would prevent it from being successful at scale.