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The Spaceballs Argument for Unconditional Basic Income

• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• gavanwilhite 4y ago
  Great framing! Easy visual to remember :-)
• baggy_trough 4y ago
  Food is not just laying around on the ground in most cases. It requires work to create it or render it useful and accessible. I don't think the analogy with stealing the air and selling it back is very good, because creating the air to breathe does not require work.
  • dktoao 4y ago
    > Food is not just laying around on the ground in most cases I can go foraging / hunting right now and find food, not enough to live off, but in a time before land ownership and mass population explosions, there would have been enough... Which... is the entire point of the article. So are you arguing for the premise of the article then?
    • bhhaskin 4y ago
      Unless you have a time machine you can't unwind the clock.
    • kodyo 4y ago
      Foraging and hunting for sustenance is work. Author proposes giving people stuff without work.
    • baggy_trough 4y ago
      The premise of the article would make more sense in a time before the mass population explosions you mention. Of course, those explosions could not have happened without the productivity gains from private property and free markets, along with science and other innovations. In some sense most of our very lives are due to the systems the author believes makes us "a planet full of assholes".
    • grumple 4y ago
      ...foraging and hunting is harder work than anything done by people complaining about not getting money for free from society as though the rest of us owe them our labor.
      • anigbrowl 4y ago
        False premise, assuming that anyone in favor of UBI does or has done zero hard work.
    • Sevii 4y ago
      There isn't enough 'natural' food production to support 7 billion people with foraging and hunting. The premise of the article is bad. You don't have rights that don't make sense in the current era. Today it is impossible for everyone to stay alive without highly technologically complex industries with extremely high capital requirements producing the food we eat. We live in an era where for most people if the government runs out of foreign exchange you end up with a famine.
      • dktoao 4y ago
        You make the exact same argument as the article and then call the premise of the article bad... I'm not sure what to make of that.
    • PathOfEclipse 4y ago
      > but in a time before land ownership and mass population explosions, there would have been enough. That's certainly not true in the sense that modern agriculture allows for population densities that foraging/hunting lifestyles couldn't even dream of supporting. Also, tribes were very territorial about land and fought over it frequently. And people of the time were far more susceptible to changes in the environment: https://qr.ae/pr2Ah3https://qr.ae/pr2Ah3 https://qr.ae/pr2Ah3https://qr.ae/pr2Ah3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQxEuXM_0eY&t=110s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQxEuXM_0eY&t=110s North American tribes were much smaller in number because they could support far less people per square mile. The Cherokee tribe, one of the largest east of the Mississippi, for instance, numbered around 20,000 in 1690, a paltry number compared to the size of the Aztecs or Maya, which numbered in the millions. From the article: The thing is though, this isn't that far from what we actually did here on Earth centuries ago. Land used to exist without a monetary cost to access it. That was the natural way of things prior to the private property system and monetary system. We created poverty as we know it this has to be the most disingenuous take on poverty I've ever heard. Most of human existence has been a struggle just to not die of hunger or exposure to the elements. Poverty in western nations today is worlds apart from that. Also, from the article: We all would have inherited land, or at least free access to it, but in the process of creating civilization as we know it, we became dispossessed of our natural inheritance Our natural inheritance is subsistence living amidst the constant threat of war, conquest, slavery, and the capricious whims of mother nature and lady fortune. Basically, the strongest survive and might makes right.
      • dktoao 4y ago
        I think that by the time we had organized tribes fighting over land we were well into the dominant species / civilization / cooperative resource gathering phase. Thus it isn't really an argument against the main point of the article. So... I'm really confused.
        • rsj_hn 4y ago
          That's a very non-standard view. Animals fighting over territory is quite common even in arbitrarily small groups, so why do you think conventional thinking - that these are hardwired behaviors present in every animal from crabs to primates and so were present in human nature from the beginning -- is so wrong, and your own views that these are only learned behaviors are correct?
  • kodyo 4y ago
    Author appears to be spitballing.
  • AgentOrange1234 4y ago
    Agree on food, but the analogy seems particularly apt for the environmental destruction wrought by coal, oil, plastic, etc.
• andorov 4y ago
  > Land used to exist without a monetary cost to access it. That was the natural way of things prior to the private property system and monetary system. All land / resources were staked out by small tribes of humans who might kill you for using it?
  • dktoao 4y ago
    Yes, that is the process of "civilization" that he is talking about in the article. I'm starting to think that some of these comments are generated by someone typing "Give me a really generic conservative argument against UBI" into ChatGPT.
    • kodyo 4y ago
      The arguments for it aren't impressive either.
      • dktoao 4y ago
        What arguments for it? I scanned this entire thread and I don't see a single one.
        • kodyo 4y ago
          [flagged]
          • dktoao 4y ago
            Ok, I'm almost convinced now that I am arguing with a ChatGPT bot. An actual human would know that given the context of the conversation this is a non-sense answer. No shit I can scour the internet for bad takes on any subject, wow, what a revelation!
    • andorov 4y ago
      I'm not presenting an argument against UBI - I am pointing out that his argument is flawed. Small tribes of humans defending hunting/foraging grounds is a state of pre-civilization. Life required work then too, and things were worse. His premise is that things used to be better and we've made it worse. Hard disagree.
• googlryas 4y ago
  Land existed without monetary cost but had even worse costs associated with it - you had to defend it from other humans who would roll in and kill you for it. Or, you couldn't do anything to access certain land, because the people who controlled it thought you said shibboleth the wrong way and would kill you if you tried to use that land.
  • senark8 4y ago
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• Manuel_D 4y ago
  > Land used to exist without a monetary cost to access it. That was the natural way of things prior to the private property system and monetary system. Yeah, the "natural way" of things was that you and your tribe fought off and killed competing tribes trying to access your resources. This isn't particularly desirable, which is why monopolization of violence by larger entities was established.
  • Dylan16807 4y ago
    > which is why monopolization of violence by larger entities was established What are you even arguing against? The post isn't anti-government, and it's not advocating we go back to those times.
    • Manuel_D 4y ago
      But it's grounded in an incorrect belief that humanity existed in some kind of idyllic prehistoric state before civilization where nobody had to work. And we can return to this state of life. Most contemporary evidence on hunter gatherer societies indicates the opposite: it was highly violent with intense competition between groups.
      • Dylan16807 4y ago
        > But it's grounded in an incorrect belief that humanity existed in some kind of idyllic prehistoric state before civilization where nobody had to work. And we can return to this state of life. No, that's an enormous strawman. It's saying one particular thing was better.
      • senark8 4y ago
        [dead]
  • scrollbar 4y ago
    There's a huge diversity of social arrangements throughout history. Some of them communal and sharing, some warlike and taking; forced labor and not; monetary systems and not; etc. The quote you reply to is overly nostalgic and too simplistic to reflect realities of history, same with your comment.
• ovi256 4y ago
  "Life requires work. You can't just expect to live without work, and it's wrong for someone to live off the work of others. So UBI has no moral justification." How about: "You're gonna want something that other people make or do or do to you. If they're not your parents or lovers or partners, you better have something to give in exchange for that thing you want. Otherwise, why would they give it to you ? Making something others want is work."
  • dontknowwhyihn 4y ago
    I agree completely. Also, the following statement is based on a false premise: “ Let's just recognize that Earth actually does belong to all of us, everyone in the present and future, and that those who own pieces of it, and who create things out of it, owe compensation to the rest of us for removing our access to what would otherwise have been common property.” This implies that creation itself is some kind of theft. The actual theft is taking something from a creative, productive person and giving it to an idle one.
    • Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
      Speaking of this, why aren't taxes on dividends higher than taxes on income from a job?
      • Sevii 4y ago
        The people with dividends were able to lobby to have their taxes lowered.
      • nradov 4y ago
        We want to encourage people with capital to invest it in productive new ventures instead of just hoarding it. This increases economic growth and generally benefits society. Thus we incentivize those investments through the income tax code. At least that's the economic theory. If we were to raise taxes on dividends, no one can really predict how much that would reduce the long-term economic growth rate.
• kodyo 4y ago
  Author's assumption is that private property created poverty, and that hunter/gatherer societies were somehow more ideal than agrarian ones, which is nonsensical. Poverty is the default state. It's there by default. Do nothing, have nothing. Do nothing as a hunter/gather, you're poor relative to your peers and you die. Whatever cult UBI arises from is attempting to ameliorate the default by giving people something for nothing. Fine. That's honest.
  • Dylan16807 4y ago
    The default state is that there is land you can use to get your own food. So people claiming all the land in the world is a problem. UBI in this form is not "something for nothing". It's trading control of land for a share of that land's bounty.
    • kriskrunch 4y ago
      It's not just trading control. You need to consider that hunters still needed to go out and hunt. Gatherers needed to gather. They built their own shelter, made their clothes, etc. Curious, what is the minimum requirement for UBI? A pulse?
      • Dylan16807 4y ago
        I think I was unclear. When I said "UBI in this form" I was talking about what the article advocates for modern times. People get to use land for their own purposes, but they have to pay the population.
        • kodyo 4y ago
          The sinister euphemism of claiming that productive people have to "pay the population" manifests itself in weird ways, and it's not at all clear what you mean by that.
          • Dylan16807 4y ago
• Nifty3929 4y ago
  "We created poverty as we know it." - No, poverty was not created and needs no explanation. Poverty is a default state. What humans created (to varying degrees, of course) is PROSPERITY, which is a surprising and remarkable achievement, and seems unique to humans.
  • geph2021 4y ago
    Or put another way, Prosperity and wealth are Abundance or surplus (more than what you need). Humans only create abundance through hard work and creativity. That was surely true before civilization, private property, etc... I'm open to new/creative ideas for how to build a society that guarantees everyone a "fair" shot at acquiring more abundance for themselves, if that's what they want. I'm sure there are better arguments for UBI, and it's unfortunate this terribly flawed one is getting so much attention.
  • anigbrowl 4y ago
    Scarcity =/= poverty. Also, if this is as obvious as you consider it to be, you wouldn't need to capitalize it.
• anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  To preface: UBI will not truly solve a problem until limitations are put on the extraction of economic rent. If everyone gets UBI then everyone will be expected to have UBI, so landlords (the original rent seekers when ignoring taxation) know that they can extract the UBI plus whatever they charged before. House sellers know that they can factor in the UBI into their selling price. Yeah, maybe some economic competition will limit how much of the UBI any given rentier or seller tries to extract, but you could easily end up in a situation where a person's multiple rentiers try extracting more than the UBI from them, putting them right back into the situation a UBI is supposed to prevent - not enough money to live on. If UBI is going to exist without solving the problem of rent seeking it might be better to do it as multiple scrips or coupons, each good for only a particular thing (e.g. rent, food stamps, etcetera). This adds a layer of bureaucracy, but at least a person would be guaranteed a minimum amount of funds for each life necessity, instead of having it all taken by one thing. And I know that this analysis of mine is missing quite a bit. E.g. Good Luck with implementing a UBI over the long-term, and for everyone. ------------- >"The thing is though, this isn't that far from what we actually did here on Earth centuries ago. Land used to exist without a monetary cost to access it. That was the natural way of things prior to the private property system and monetary system. We created poverty as we know it." Taxation and indenturing existed before money. Taxes have previously included a certain amount of raw goods or labor. Even in non-agricultural tribal systems I assume people would be expected to contribute to the common weal as best they could. >"It is a position not to be controverted, that the earth, in its natural uncultivated state, was, and ever would have continued to be, the COMMON PROPERTY OF THE HUMAN RACE. In that state every man would have been born to property." I agree. But anyone who takes a look at squirrels or birds know that they fight over territory. Humans simply "civilized" the fight by attaching it to documents and currency. >"If it's wrong to choke or starve someone to death unless they do what you want, then it's wrong to withhold air or food from someone unless they do what you want." This is universally wrong. However taxes, and any other cost to living, is not forcing someone to do what you want. It's forcing someone to do something, anything which generates a cash income. It's an incentive to labor of some sort, though unfortunately, in our current system, it's also an incentive to become a rentier. The rentier is the problem, not the incentive to work. Though yes, no one should starve or be homeless, even if they can't labor. >"Let's just recognize that Earth actually does belong to all of us, everyone in the present and future, and that those who own pieces of it, and who create things out of it, owe compensation to the rest of us for removing our access to what would otherwise have been common property." I agree with the sentiment stated by Thomas Paine and this article. I just don't know that a universal UBI will be the way to do it. At least not without solving the rentier problem.
• recuter 4y ago
  "God willing, we'll all meet again in Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money."
• bmmayer1 4y ago
  > Land used to exist without a monetary cost to access it. That was the natural way of things prior to the private property system and monetary system. We created poverty as we know it. This is silly. First of all, only wealth can be created or destroyed, not poverty, which is the absence of wealth. My ape ancestor swinging from a tree without easy access to food, clothing, shelter or medicine is poorer than I am, full stop. Second of all, there has never been a paradise where resources are communally owned without clear limitations on the use and distribution of those resources, usually at the behest of corrupt, tyrannical or murderous leaders. Third of all, the existence of a monetary cost or private property is moot when it comes to defining ownership. An eagle doesn't use money or property laws to own his nest, but it's not like any other eagle can use it without cost.
  • thegrimmest 4y ago
    Not to mention that access to land was fiercely defended by highly territorial tribes that fought wars of conquest and destruction against each other. This is not dissimilar to the behaviour of apes and large carnivores today. Edit: To elaborate, "civilization" the way I see it has simply put the guardrails of due process around these things. We're still nakedly competing with each other, and in-groups are often bent on the destruction of out-groups. We just have laws and courts to make sure things don't get too far out of hand. It's peaceful coexistence not mass cooperation.
  • goodpoint 4y ago
    > only wealth can be created or destroyed, not poverty, which is the absence of wealth This is plain false. Your ape ancestor was born with free access to trees, fruits etc. Take away that and you created poverty. > there has never been a paradise where resources are communally owned Wrong again. The ape is a good example.
    • bhhaskin 4y ago
      Apes are highly territorial and aggressive.
      • 4y ago
• Sevii 4y ago
  For a counterexample imagine you are born on a space station where it costs $1,000,000 per year to provide air for you. Should you have to a work a job to breath air? The problem of universal basic income strategies is that they only work when the earth is far below its human population carrying capacity for the current technology level. If we were at carrying capacity the idea would be ludicrous because you not working would result in one of us starving to death. Pre-civilization there was a very strict limit on human populations based on the natural resources they could extract via labor. Anybody who didn't work starved in short order. Universal basic income is basically inventing a new right to tax other people for your sustenance (much like feudal aristocrats) in times when we have food surpluses.
  • Dylan16807 4y ago
    > If we were at carrying capacity the idea would be ludicrous because you not working would result in one of us starving to death. That doesn't make sense to me. You seem to think that if we hit carrying capacity, that means everyone is working full time to sustain that? Why? Let's say all the farms in the world could sustain 100 billion people. Can't we run those farms with only 1 billion people? Why would non-workers cause starvation?
    • HideousKojima 4y ago
      >Let's say all the farms in the world could sustain 100 billion people. Can't we run those farms with only 1 billion people? Why would non-workers cause starvation? Why should the non-workers steal the surplus value created by those who work via taxation? Or is it only theft when filthy business owners do it via contractual agreements to trade labor for wages?
      • Dylan16807 4y ago
        Why are you replying to me? That has nothing to do with what I was saying. But I don't think either one of those is theft. I don't think the article was calling anything like that that theft either. It was complaining about how land ownership works.
• gigel82 4y ago
  Even in a post scarcity society where we fully automated food production (as well as the production / continuous repair of all machines and systems that produce and distribute food -up the chain) this is not tenable. What would motivate someone from going to medical school and busting their ass to help and care for lazy bums mooching off the free stuff from the government? They'd just want to stay in their free housing, enjoying the free food and entertainment too... This utopia won't be possible until we produce self-sustainable machines that can execute all jobs that humans can today.
  • mmmeff 4y ago
    Meanwhile, there's a post on the front-page that talks about a huge shortage of electricians while the entirety of our society is hopelessly addicted to electrically-powered services.
  • cjwebb 4y ago
    What would motivate people? I think healthcare, as in your example, would actually see an influx of people motivated to help others. Not everyone is lazy and would do nothing. Plenty of people work in healthcare today for less money than they would get paid in other industries primarily because they value helping others.
  • AussieWog93 4y ago
    >What would motivate someone from going to medical school and busting their ass to help and care for lazy bums mooching off the free stuff from the government? They'd just want to stay in their free housing, enjoying the free food and entertainment too... In all seriousness, it's possible right now in most developed countries to live off of welfare long-term, without working a day in your life. And yet, most people don't want to do it. You're looked down upon, poor and the lack of a regular occupation basically breeds mental health issues. I think a lot of people really overestimate the economic motivators, while down-playing the social/internal ones.
  • Dylan16807 4y ago
    > What would motivate someone from going to medical school and busting their ass to help and care for lazy bums mooching off the free stuff from the government? They'd just want to stay in their free housing, enjoying the free food and entertainment too... What motivates them today, when they could get a fast food job? UBI isn't supposed to be cushy (with current technology), it's supposed to be minimal food and shelter.
• recursive4 4y ago
  The author would enjoy Atlas Shrugged lest he move intellectually closer to his purported libertarians.
• mrtweetyhack 4y ago
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• deleted 4y ago
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• Aunche 4y ago
  UBI in theory means that everyone in the world should receive a modest income (in the order of $2/day). This is something that I would support. UBI proposals in practice means that an exclusive in-group gets gets the wages the comfortable middle class wages for free and outsource all their work to an out-group that doesn't qualify for UBI. Working conditions for the out-group are slow to improve because they have very little political power. Meanwhile, the in-group stagnates and becomes completely dependent foreign work paid for by free money. This is exactly is what happens in the Gulf oil nations.
  • yadoomerta 4y ago
    What do you expect someone living in America to do with $2 a day ?? UBI doen't have to be global, though ideally it would be, it can have a huge good for people working in exploitive jobs or doing make-work, freeing them to contribute and volunteer as they see fit. But only if it's enough to actually live on
  • neon_electro 4y ago
    U in UBI is Universal. Everyone gets it, those that make money pay extra in taxes such that it nets out to $0 beyond a certain income level. Is that difficult to conceptualize?
• Tade0 4y ago
  > Imagine it were actually possible for one person to own a machine that sucked up all the oxygen in our atmosphere, and that the air we need to breathe to live was then sold to us in cans of Perri-Air like in Spaceballs. I don't have to imagine anything because I live in area engulfed by smog every winter. I literally have to pay to breathe fresh air (from a filter). What's worse the ones responsible for this just want to not have to suffer the cold. It sucks, it truly does. > but it's a common occurrence to tell people going hungry that they should just get a job to buy food. Unrelated: how often do people actually go hungry in the US? I thought homelessness is a much more immediate problem when you're out of money.
• tshaddox 4y ago
  Yep, this is a pretty glaring flaw of any ideology that tries to reduce ethics to property. Any such ideology is using a sleight of hand by pretending as if property is a simpler or more fundamental notion than ethics. Any time you hear an argument like "you should be able to do whatever you want as long as you're not aggressing against another person or their property" you should ask them whether they think all possible distributions of property are equally ethical.
• jl6 4y ago
  Such arguments remind me of this[0] classic note from Douglas Adams. “These politicians, eh? They’re so stupid! Why don’t they just make essential goods free? After all, we were better off as hunter gatherers! Also Spaceballs lol amirite?” I say this as someone who supports some aspects of land reform and UBI. These sophomoric snipes at “conservatives” are just echo-chamber noise. [0] https://gist.github.com/freakboy3742/c699f293c9b5e77ef289 https://gist.github.com/freakboy3742/c699f293c9b5e77ef289
• mabbo 4y ago
  I think the most important point that the author makes is not whether property and the earth are common goods or not, it's simply that there's enough food for everyone. There's enough food to keep everyone well fed. There's enough homes to keep everyone housed and safe. There's enough health care resources to keep most people reasonably healthy. But we choose that some should starve, some should be homeless, and some should die prematurely because it allows some others to live a slightly more decadent lifestyle. Some, an obscenely lavish lifestyle. And yes, it is a choice we make as a society. I'm not advocated for communism. We don't need a Gini Coefficient of 1. But maybe we could take some steps in the direction of sharing a bit more rather than continuing to rush in the other direction, and claiming that it's the fault of the poor that they aren't wealthy. UBI isn't impossible or unreasonable. It just would mean that some folks- and probably a lot of the people on HN given software developer compensation lately- would need to do with a slightly less decadent lifestyle.
• DoreenMichele 4y ago
  I'm against UBI, though I'm for easier access to food stamps in the US for anyone who wants them. Since the end of WW2, we've torn down at least a million SROs* in the US and not really replaced them with anything comparable. In their absdnce, people have turned to living in RVs, the Tiny House movement has been born and there are too many chronic homeless, many of whom eventually end up in California which seems to take the heat for the failed policies of an entire nation. The Tiny House movement began as an idea for how to live with less and when it ran up against the fact that it's not legal to build a house that small, rather than fight city hall, they slapped wheels on them as a hack to get around the rules. The reality is that the US has made it illegal to build a lot of the housing that we once had in abundance and which worked well: small residential spaces in walkable, mixed use neighborhoods where life without car ownership was quite feasible and even the norm. Cars have only been in vogue for around a hundred years. In that short time, we've whored out our urban planning processes to the worship of the car and we tell anyone for whom that doesn't work for any reason to quit their bitching and stop bothering people. If you can't drive for any reason, you are a second class citizen and how dare you get all uppity and act like you should have some reasonable quality of life without needing to either be able to drive or so rich you can hire a chauffeur to do it for you. UBI won't fix our problems anymore than student loans fixed our problems. Student loans didn't level the playing field for the less privileged. It made them slaves to paying their debts, often while unable to get the kind of good job their degree supposedly guaranteed them. Throwing money at this problem won't fix it. UBI won't buy poor people a basic, decent life. The kinds of goods and services needed to provide such largely do not exist in much of America and it's a fevered pitch uphill battle to try to establish any of them in far too many cases. * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy
  • yadoomerta 4y ago
    Why would UBI be like a loan, when there is no expectation that it will be paid back? I support it instead of food stamps because it's simpler to understand and more general, but otherwise does the same thing without onerous reporting and beurocracy
    • 4y ago
• locallost 4y ago
  People are generally stuck in a shell they call reality, which are actually just stories they tell themselves to make some sense and rules people made up in the past that they grew up with. If UBI goes against some view you understand as reality, then of course you'll say "how dare they think of that". There is talk of property in the other comments here, and a funny thought here: not so long ago, it was entirely normal to own property in the form of other people. Now it's completely not normal because you can't actually own a human being as the reality is that we want all people to be created equal. But at the time, it was normal and if you would question that a slave owner would probably say "how dare you, I paid for these slaves, I own them". But then we reached a higher level as a civilization. As far as UBI is concerned, I'm just sceptical that it will transform the system. More likely it will be just absorbed by the system, e.g. my rent will just get more expensive and I will not actually be able to work less. Not saying I think it can never work, but I am not sure.
  • yadoomerta 4y ago
    ^ Might be the only good skeptical of UBI take in the whole thread. I share your worries, it does seem like it will have to be in some way tied to cost-of-living. Done right, where you can actually have the honest threat of being able to quit your job without worries, I think it would give a lot of leverage to workers.
    • granshaw 4y ago
      It would be an absolute game changer imo. So much of the ills on a individual, family, and society level can be traced back to all adults needing to spend the majority of their life working jobs they most often don’t like, and then not having any time or energy for anything else.
• irq-1 4y ago
  Noam Chomsky makes related argument: Magna Carta Messed Up the World, Here’s How to Fix It https://chomsky.info/20150323/ https://chomsky.info/20150323/
• Overtonwindow 4y ago
  Universal basic income only works for a very short period of time. As we saw with the push to raise the minimum wage, once inflation rose, it wiped out any gains by the rise in minimum wage. If the government starts giving everyone a guaranteed basic income, the market, and the economy will respond in kind. Prices will go up. More cash is available in the system. Therefore, the end result will be very little gained but a tremendous amount of money wasted
• EricE 4y ago
  Good grief. It boggles my mind that anyone can still bang the UBI drum after what we are still going through with free COVID bucks.
• alphazard 4y ago
  This piece is an embodiment of a peace-time mindset. All this rationalizing and scheming about how we should divide up resources, and whether a given scheme is moral/fair, whatever that means. None of that scheming makes any sense until violence has been factored out of the negotiation by a government. None of it is applicable to dealing with a foreign power. Until you have secured X (the atmosphere in this example) you aren't in a position to talk about how to divide up X. The problem for the citizens of Druidia isn't that they haven't discovered Marxism or UBI. It's that they can't protect their atmosphere from a giant vacuum cleaner.
• kriskrunch 4y ago
  Many states in the US already pay residents more than they can earn at a job. https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Paying-Americans-Not-to-Work.pdf https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/... "In 14 states, a family of four with two unemployed workers can receive unemployment insurance benefits and ACA subsidies equivalent to a job that pays $80,000 a year in wages and health benefits – or more. In another 10 states, a family can receive the equivalent of a $70,000-a-year job. For these families, work may literally not pay."
• adolph 4y ago
  Payment for use of the shared gasses known as the atmosphere may be an important improvement and makes sense as an extension of carbon taxes paid by automakers and other industries. This tax is invisibly passed on to consumers although perhaps intended to encourage improved fuel economy. Consider all classes atmospheric takings (either by consumption of elements like oxygen or dispersal of particulates or other gases), why not make everyone pay to the value found in atmospheric use? An example of this is already found in Colorado, where cans of supplemental oxygen can be found in gas stations and grocery stores.
  • sparrish 4y ago
    Those cans of oxygen are for those visiting our fair state from lower elevations so they can more quickly get over altitude sickness. Locals don't use them on a daily basis unless they have some health condition.
• calculatte 4y ago
  I've seen this argument before. Back then we called it the Strawman Argument. Not much has changed.
• black_13 4y ago
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• Kon5ole 4y ago
  The argument fails since the prosperity we want to share via UBI is in fact not like the air sucked up like in spaceballs. it is instead the result of generations of hard focused work, which has not been replicated under any system except the one where ownership is essential.
• jkmcf 4y ago
  Unconditional seems extreme to me. If you get money/free stuff from the gov't, perhaps the gov't should require something in return, though not a job in the strict sense. I.e., it wouldn't require 40h per week. Perhaps it's 1 day per week, 1-2h per day, or something even more flexible, but it's not so much that it would prevent you from improving your situation by other means. Even if it's "picking up trash around your neighborhood", you'd be helping make things better.
• incomingpain 4y ago
  "What if someone owned all the air." Never in our history has anyone ever cornered and monopolized an industry worldwide. Even bringing it down to country level, the exceptions, government formed monopolies. Of which in the last 40 years or so has been incrementally reducing. Nobody is talking about going back to public workers for roads. How about we break every single government monopoly? Problem solved. What if someone owned all the air. You pay their toll until you build a biosphere and seal in your atmosphere with loads of plants. Then you stop paying and stop receiving their bottles of air. You start producing your own air and compete against the giant space robot.