4 ms·

I love the idea of never having to work another day in my life, but, lets be honest here, UBI is never going to happen. At most it will be "if you are having n

I love the idea of never having to work another day in my life, but, lets be honest here, UBI is never going to happen. At most it will be "if you are having no kids, here is some money until you die." Even that will be a stretch because money just does not grow on trees.

hgs3 4y ago
> I love the idea of never having to work another day in my life, but, lets be honest here, UBI is never going to happen. The system will collapse on itself if most are jobless. You can't sell products if no one can afford them. My biggest grip with UBI is it just redefines zero. The better solution would be to do away with capital entirely, have people democratically vote on what services they want, and then conscript if there aren't enough volunteers/robots/AI to provide those services. There seems to be this tendency to forget that labor is what matters, not capital. Capital is a means of exploiting labor, but if labor can be automated or democratically voted for than no one is exploited.
- JanSt 4y ago
  Money is accrued labor. May it be in the form of money, machines or software. Money is the way to efficiently distribute it. Every purchase you make is a vote for a service or product. It's the most efficient form of democracy. It just sucks because it's scarce and not distributed fairly.
  - hgs3 4y ago
    The value of labor is subjective. Some of the most important service people, like educators, are some of the lowest paid and their accrued labor is worth less once inflation hits. Capital, in general, creates perverse incentives, e.g. mainstream news is divisive and negative because that style of reporting maximizes profits. With money as the goal, it's no wonder many young people would rather become social media influencers than educators. That said, UBI is a more realistic outcome despite not fixing any of these problems.
carapace 4y ago
First of all, money does in fact grow on trees. Second: UBI is a response to economic conditions, not a driver. Once the machines can economically/productively outperform most of us, UBI is an alternative to just letting us starve in the street, or riot, or whatever. The robots provide an economic cornucopia exactly by putting people out of work. Supply becomes effectively infinite but demand/purchasing power falls to zero (because everybody is out of work) so rescue the economy (and civilization) you just give people money.
- est31 4y ago
  Yeah, trees are custom designed biorobots that make apples, cherries, etc that are way bigger than their wild counterparts. Yes, there is a lot of human work involved in nourishing the trees, keeping pests at bay, harvesting, distribution, etc. But in the past 200 years, the farming industry has seen one of the biggest transformations in how many workers are required, as in 200 years ago high percentages of the working population were employed in the farming sector and now only very small percentages are. The remaining farmers still need things like fertilizer, people who service machines, etc, and they still have to put in work themselves. In fact farmers are some of the hardest working people I know. But the trend is still true, there are less and less farmers who generate more and more output. You definitely need some way to distribute those resources to farmers (and other industries) in a good fashion, and in history the market economy approach with pricing autonomy has proven to be the best way. So money will likely not go away in itself, but economy will be more about resources in the future than about work. That being said, the economies of even the rich nations are still highly dependent on human output so it's still way too early to discuss about UBI, but if we should find ourselves in a situation where we have literally no use for the work output of large percentages of populations, then we really need to think about some way to distribute resources to them so that they don't starve/riot. If you say that only millionaires should be able to live without working, then you should look at what makes that millionaire a millionaire: their 20 rental properties? worthless if nobody can afford them. Their 5 square kilometer fully automated farm? worthless if nobody can afford the food. Their 100 million investment into a big company? likely that company is also out of business if nobody buys from that company. Sure maybe yacht builders will continue to have a great time, but that's a fraction of the economy. A lot of current millionaires would be rendered quite poor in a non-UBI future, as a lot of wealth is generated from serving existing customers.

hgs3 4y ago

> I love the idea of never having to work another day in my life, but, lets be honest here, UBI is never going to happen. The system will collapse on itself if most are jobless. You can't sell products if no one can afford them. My biggest grip with UBI is it just redefines zero. The better solution would be to do away with capital entirely, have people democratically vote on what services they want, and then conscript if there aren't enough volunteers/robots/AI to provide those services. There seems to be this tendency to forget that labor is what matters, not capital. Capital is a means of exploiting labor, but if labor can be automated or democratically voted for than no one is exploited.

JanSt 4y ago
Money is accrued labor. May it be in the form of money, machines or software. Money is the way to efficiently distribute it. Every purchase you make is a vote for a service or product. It's the most efficient form of democracy. It just sucks because it's scarce and not distributed fairly.
- hgs3 4y ago
  The value of labor is subjective. Some of the most important service people, like educators, are some of the lowest paid and their accrued labor is worth less once inflation hits. Capital, in general, creates perverse incentives, e.g. mainstream news is divisive and negative because that style of reporting maximizes profits. With money as the goal, it's no wonder many young people would rather become social media influencers than educators. That said, UBI is a more realistic outcome despite not fixing any of these problems.

carapace 4y ago

First of all, money does in fact grow on trees. Second: UBI is a response to economic conditions, not a driver. Once the machines can economically/productively outperform most of us, UBI is an alternative to just letting us starve in the street, or riot, or whatever. The robots provide an economic cornucopia exactly by putting people out of work. Supply becomes effectively infinite but demand/purchasing power falls to zero (because everybody is out of work) so rescue the economy (and civilization) you just give people money.

est31 4y ago
Yeah, trees are custom designed biorobots that make apples, cherries, etc that are way bigger than their wild counterparts. Yes, there is a lot of human work involved in nourishing the trees, keeping pests at bay, harvesting, distribution, etc. But in the past 200 years, the farming industry has seen one of the biggest transformations in how many workers are required, as in 200 years ago high percentages of the working population were employed in the farming sector and now only very small percentages are. The remaining farmers still need things like fertilizer, people who service machines, etc, and they still have to put in work themselves. In fact farmers are some of the hardest working people I know. But the trend is still true, there are less and less farmers who generate more and more output. You definitely need some way to distribute those resources to farmers (and other industries) in a good fashion, and in history the market economy approach with pricing autonomy has proven to be the best way. So money will likely not go away in itself, but economy will be more about resources in the future than about work. That being said, the economies of even the rich nations are still highly dependent on human output so it's still way too early to discuss about UBI, but if we should find ourselves in a situation where we have literally no use for the work output of large percentages of populations, then we really need to think about some way to distribute resources to them so that they don't starve/riot. If you say that only millionaires should be able to live without working, then you should look at what makes that millionaire a millionaire: their 20 rental properties? worthless if nobody can afford them. Their 5 square kilometer fully automated farm? worthless if nobody can afford the food. Their 100 million investment into a big company? likely that company is also out of business if nobody buys from that company. Sure maybe yacht builders will continue to have a great time, but that's a fraction of the economy. A lot of current millionaires would be rendered quite poor in a non-UBI future, as a lot of wealth is generated from serving existing customers.