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"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."

• 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.
      • Dylan16807 4y ago
        Wanting to encourage investment is more of an explanation for why the tax rate is lower than 100%. It's not an explanation for why it's lower than income tax.
        • robotresearcher 4y ago
          Normal interest on savings accounts and short term investment gains are taxed as income. Long term investment income is taxed less than that, biasing in favor of investment.
          • Dylan16807 4y ago
            Savings accounts have poor returns and don't need the help. Is short-term investment that much less useful than long-term? Especially when the stock market is so big and smooths out short-term investments so much? We're effectively paying a lot of money for that bias, and I'm not convinced that's better than a tiny bias or no bias.
            • robotresearcher 4y ago
              Savings accounts have poor returns, so investments don't need the help, right? I could certainly be persuaded by that and maybe about short vs long term investment. Do we have data from other markets to compare? Above I'm just explaining the reasoning behind the status quo. Reaction to that seems negative. I can't tell if I'm wrong about the reasoning, or people are signaling that the reasoning is wrong.
        • nradov 4y ago
          The level of capital investment people are willing to make is proportional to the expected return, net of taxes. So, you are essentially arguing about the shape of the curve. Would society be better off if dividends were taxed at 10% or 20% or 80%? The reality is that no one really knows because it's impossible to conduct controlled experiments and the system is too complex to model accurately. We're left to make policy choices based on intuition, ideology, and low-quality macroeconomic "science". Anyone who claims that a certain large-scale change in the tax code would definitely produce positive results is simply ignorant or arguing in bad faith; the reality is that we lack the ability to accurately predict second-order effects. For example, consider the 10% federal luxury tax imposed in 1991 to reduce the budget deficit. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it devastated several domestic manufacturing industries and destroyed many jobs. Whoops.
    • robotresearcher 4y ago
      Assuming this is not a rhetorical question, the answer is: Buying stock is investing cash into a business. The investment has more risk of going down in value compared to cash in the bank. Government created a tax advantage to partially offset the risk, and thus encourage investment. This tends to move capital to places it can be used for creating new things, instead of sitting in a vault.
  • anigbrowl 4y ago
    This implies that creation itself is some kind of theft No it doesn't. Helping yourself to resources and then asserting property rights thereon to prevent others from doing the same is a kind of theft.
    • kodyo 4y ago
      Private property is a civilized abstraction that alleviates the requirement to kill people who enter land you've claimed for your own, for as long as you can defend it. It's how national borders work.
      • anigbrowl 4y ago
        A made-up requirement, in which the centralization of abundance is justified on the basis of scarcity. Even in the feudal period, aristocracy came with obligations, like common access to land for purposes of passage or forage. Basically, this is just an excuse for people to claim more than they are able to use in the present, by asserting the necessity of them being able to do so in the future. It's how national borders work. A distinct negative, as far as I am concerned. Passports only became a thing around World War 1. Artificial restrictions on movement by labor is a massive economic distortion that essentially treats labor as a captive resource by mutual agreement between states. Would-be economic migrants whose goal is to work are equated with marauding armies.
        • kodyo 4y ago
          That's also the time progressivism was peaking, and nation-states started creating centralized government welfare systems and engaging in Marxist revolutions. Get rid of welfare states, and you can get rid of borders. But you can't maintain a welfare state with generous welfare subsidies and have open borders.
          • anigbrowl 4y ago
            This is wildly ahistorical, overtly fallacious, and thus a waste of my time. Bye.
  • analognoise 4y ago
    "The actual theft is taking something from a creative, productive person and giving it to an idle one." "Productive" - we have people making livings selling farts in jars, but we value a stay at home parent at $0. Clearly we're abusing the word "productive".
  • qqqwerty 4y ago
    There is value creation, and then there is rent seeking. The OP is proposing that the philosophical justifications of a UBI are based on the ever increasing amounts of rent seeking behavior that underpins our economy. One example, intellectual property constraints are perpetually expanding due to an increasing number of patents, copyrights and trademarks. If you are a creative person, you are legally required to navigate this intellectual property minefield in order to make a living. Why shouldn't you get some sort of token compensation for the loss of creative rights? Another example, I like to fish. But I am required by government regulation to pay for a permit and to limit my fishing activity to comply with regulations. The regulations are burdensome enough where it would be prohibitive to sustain my family solely on my fishing labor. This was not the case about a hundred years ago (roughly). One could sustain a family through fishing alone. I could try and go the commercial route, but that requires an investment of upwards of $100k and that industry is notoriously hostile to new entrants and extremely volatile (read up on snow crabs for example). So for all intents and purposes, this natural resource is no longer available to me to use as a primary source of sustenance. Why shouldn't I expect some sort of compensation for that? And of course the big one, land rights. We give landowners perpetual rights to use a piece a land as long as they pay their taxes and comply with local zoning regulations. That land is not theirs. It existed long before they were born, and will continue to exist long after they are gone. But while they "own" that land, I am forbidden from using it. And there are fewer and fewer places in the world where land is free/cheap, and also somewhat economically useful. At some point in the future (if not already) we should expect that type of land to disappear entirely as capitalism continues gobble up all available opportunities. UBI feels like a natural way to compensate individuals for the loss of rights to this land. Historically, citizens of modern well functioning democracies have considered the right to vote as sufficient "compensation" for the loss of certain natural rights. The right to vote is certainly a powerful and necessary right. But I think UBI is a more natural compensation for the increasing economic constraints that modern society imposes on its citizens. Fishing regulations help prevent fish stocks from collapsing, intellectual property rights allow creators to profit from their work, etc..., but these restrictions also narrow the legal space in which current and future citizens can make a living. Do we really need more and more people releasing shit coins and NFTs in order to squeak out a living? Do we really need more people optimizing facebook ad conversions? Maybe we just acknowledge that the vast majority of work being done in modern societies is not essential, and forcing more people to compete in that landscape is not making the world a better place. A small UBI isn't going to dramatically change peoples motivations. Freeloaders already find ways to skate by, UBI might make it a little easier. But maybe it is better if the freeloaders just take their UBI and chill rather than try their hand at another scammy NFT project. Even with UBI, the vast majority of people will continue to work as UBI would be too small to provide a comfortable middle class lifestyle. Maybe a few people might downshift a little bit and use UBI as an opportunity to focus on things that they consider important, i.e. family, hobbies, volunteer work, etc.. But is that really so bad?
• sebzim4500 4y ago
  I agree that implementing UBI right now is silly, but I do think there is a problem that must be solved. Eventually there simply won't be enough work to do for 100% of the population to do something useful (even for the incredibly generous definition of useful used today where finding new ways to show people adverts is the best compensated career available to most people). Should half the population starve in such a society?
  • Sevii 4y ago
    It's not going to be half of the population. We are approaching a world where 1% can contribute useful work and the other 99% cannot contribute anything beyond entertainment. Then the question is why should the 1% accept a governance structure where they get only 1% of the power for 100% of the work?
    • yadoomerta 4y ago
      Which 1% of the population are you counting as doing useful work? From how I see it - those doing useful work right now are compensated far far less than those doing well paid but useless work
      • em-bee 4y ago
        indeed, there is a lot of useful work that people could do that is currently not paid well. for example education, science, healthcare.... imagine what we can achieve, when all those who are not needed to sustain our life study science and research or medicine. parents need not work but can focus their entire energy on raising their children. or a different model, if 1% need to work 40 years to sustain us, then 10% can do the same while working only 4 years, or everyone only works one year. (ok, it doesn't scale like that because it takes more time to get experience for certain tasks, but even then, with such an abundance of available labor, every worker can spend half of their work time to teach others about their work) all it takes is an understanding that the best thing to do with those not needed for work is to educate them to do something else that is useful for us.
• dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
  So we should let those who can't work die?
  • Sakos 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • kodyo 4y ago
      There are plenty of Marxist-Leninists here.
    • goodpoint 4y ago
      Spot on. I would expect people here claiming that we should start paying rent for the air we breathe.
  • credit_guy 4y ago
    The U in UBI stands for "Universal". The vast majority of the people can work. Just like we don't let people who come to the Emergency Room die because they can't pay, we, as a society, can take care of the few people who, for reasons like mental health, or physical ailment, can't work.
  • kodyo 4y ago
    Is that what happens now?
    • happytoexplain 4y ago
      They often suffer, of course. They sometimes die, more directly or less directly due to the suffering. Not all of them of course - we have social systems. But those are far from a silver bullet.
  • bhhaskin 4y ago
    There is a difference between those that can't work and those that choose not to work.
  • 4y ago
• thwayunion 4y ago
  > "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." This also has the benefit being true. The first version is jut false. Life doesn't require work. Life requires resources or the money to buy them. A lot of people are born with those resources or the money to buy them, and therefore don't need to work. IMO, expecting something for nothing is somewhat immoral (except in cases where you don't have anything to give for reasons such as disability, age, and so on), but spending productive years clipping coupons or collecting dividends without contributing to society is pretty close to the root of all evil.
  • PathOfEclipse 4y ago
    > This also has the benefit being true. The first version is jut false. Life doesn't require work. Life requires resources or the money to buy them. A lot of people are born with those resources or the money to buy them, and therefore don't need to work. You didn't actually disprove that life requires work. Quite the opposite. You instead seem to be saying that society is structured in such a way that some people can live off the fruits of the labor of others. No one has access to any resources without someone having done work to create/acquire those resources. > IMO, expecting something for nothing is somewhat immoral I can definitely agree on this, though. I am generally against the notion of "positive rights". I have yet to see a good argument for why any should exist universally. I do believe in what I think is a related concept of responsibilities. Parents, for instance, are responsible for the well-being of their own children. We can argue that society is responsible for its own poor and needy as well, but that is not the same as saying those people have a particular right to anything or that society can best fulfill its responsibilities through government programs like wealth redistribution or UBI.
    • analognoise 4y ago
      "We can argue that society is responsible for its own poor and needy as well, but that is not the same as saying those people have a particular right to anything" That's exactly what it means, though...
• trgn 4y ago
  That's not responding at all to the argument in the article. The argument is that civilization and property rights robbed individuals of a natural inheritance; a claim to richness of the natural world, an ability to sustain oneself without entering a patronage relationship. It does not engage with whether anybody needs to make any effort for survival. The authors argue that UBI is a way to compensate for this loss of rights.
  • SideQuark 4y ago
    >property rights robbed individuals of a natural inheritance There was no such magical right. You have more right to land than animals, or worms, or the soil itself? When someone uses the words 'natural' or 'fair' or 'just' it is to invoke some emotional response, but generally has zero solid justification free from contradiction and conflicts. Mankind made up the concept of 'natural rights' which feels good, but does not scale to populations of billions, limited actual resources, etc. Me being born does not give me rights to anything other than that which society has agreed to. If society has agreed that I work to provide my own way, so be it - it's the price I pay for the benefits of society. You were born with zero, you actually have zero. Claiming rights to 'natural things' (which, by the same argument, actually were someone else's before you laid claim to them) is simply asking for the value of others to be handed to you for free.
    • nradov 4y ago
      This is essentially the difference between negative and positive rights. We can reasonably claim that everyone has certain natural rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of association. But merely existing doesn't give anyone the natural right to free housing, food, or healthcare.
      • yunwal 4y ago
        If you exist and are able-bodied, you could build yourself a shelter and gather/kill your own food. The reason you can’t do that now is because of property rights.
• beefield 4y ago
  > you better have something to give in exchange for that thing you want. Peace. That's what poor people stop giving once they feel too poor compared to non-poor. No, this is not a value statement, but an objective observation about human nature. I do not expect anyone to like it (I do not like it), but not accepting it as a fact is... delusional might be a proper word? After you accept that it is good for you to keep poor not too poor, you likely start wondering how to be efficient about keeping the poor not too poor, and afger that you end up somewhere very close to UBI.
  • yunwal 4y ago
    Thank you, someone had to mention it. Violence is part of natural law. The natural state of the world says you can’t hoard more resources than you can protect. Without a government monopoly on violence, billionaires get killed and their riches get plundered.
    • senark8 4y ago
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• senark8 4y ago
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• readthenotes1 4y ago
  The argument kind of falls flat when we can't get Americans to go work on a farm to raise food for any thing. We have no reason to believe that poor urban people would/could flock to the Free land in the countryside and successfully start some sort of farming Utopia.
• tshaddox 4y ago
  > you better have something to give in exchange for that thing you want. Indeed. But I think the point of the article is that in addition to that, the actions of people have removed some of the options you would have otherwise had to acquire things. Or even more specifically, some valuable things have (for all practical purposes) a finite supply, and the amount of those things that gets distributed to you is not entirely (and in some cases not at all) dependent on your actions.
• deleted 4y ago
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