5 ms·

UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. The reason most people are successful is because they risk a lot if they weren’t. Surprise: Stress is a factor of ex

UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. The reason most people are successful is because they risk a lot if they weren’t. Surprise: Stress is a factor of excellence. You say it yourself: If UBI is introduced, then none of the hard jobs gets done.

saagarjha 3y ago
Even within software there are a lot of excellent projects created by financially secure people. Clearly at least some people do enjoy doing hard work without being threatened for their livelihood.
- tayo42 3y ago
  I interpreted hard work to mean dishwashing, landscaping, janitor in an elementary school etc...
dragonwriter 3y ago
> UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. UBI enables meritocracy, it doesn’t kill it.
- tomcam 3y ago
  What if most people paying taxes now opt for UBI instead?
  - e_i_pi_2 3y ago
    The "U" part means everyone would get it, so you don't have to opt for it, and everyone would still pay taxes Another way to think of it is as a negative income tax - as a simple example the equation could be ((income * 0.2) - 20000), so if you make no money you get 20k, if you make 100k you pay no taxes and get nothing, if you make 200k you owe 20. This is using a flat tax rate for simplicity but then everyone get taxes 20% and everyone gets 20k. It's similar to public school - everyone pays for it and everyone gets it, but the purpose is to ensure it's there for people that wouldn't be able to afford it privately.
    - boring_twenties 3y ago
      The question is how many people making 200k will, given the option, take the free 20k and not work, therefore paying no taxes.
      - e_i_pi_2 3y ago
        Agreed - I'm betting that it's a small percentage of people, because anyone making that much is motivated more by the societal recognition than the money - at that point even in the US all your basic needs are met and you're just looking for brownie points, and you'll still be looking for that with an extra 20k. As another way to think about it - do bonuses disincentivize workers? At least personally that just makes me want to do more because it's freeing up a bunch of mental energy I need to spend on finances, and then I can focus on important things aside from basic survival I don't personally know anyone that would opt for 20k/yr over their current salary, but I know several people making over 250k that want to make more to drive their sense of societal value. I don't agree with it, but if you want to maintain the threat of poverty to force labor you can still do that with UBI
        boring_twenties 3y ago
        What societal recognition? Most people I know that much are in big tech, finance and corporate law. None of us pretend to be of any value to society (thankfully -- that would be insufferable!) $20k is not quite enough, but I can tell you that I lived the life of my dreams on $25k a year from 2016-2018. If I could guarantee that lifestyle forever I would take it over my current $300k+ job in a microsecond.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        > $20k is not quite enough, but I can tell you that I lived the life of my dreams on $25k a year from 2016-2018. If I could guarantee that lifestyle forever I would take it over my current $300k+ job in a microsecond. But government policy (even that notionally of a Constitutional character, which most UBI proposals wouldn’t be) isn’t a permanent guarantee (see abortion rights for a recent example), and if that was really true, it doesn’t take long living a $25k lifestyle on a $300k income to be able to save and make yourself a firmer guarantee of a $25k lifestyle forever than government policy would ever do. Approximately no one does it, because as much as people making lots of money might rhetorically appeal to the attractiveness of such an idea, no one actually making that money now feels it enough to act on it. The people who would be content to rely on minimal poverty support are, largely, doing that already, since we have such programs now and they have a much stronger disincentive to additional income than would exist with UBI due to means testing, which takes benefits away rapidly (sometimes more than 1:1) with additional income.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Then prices increase for services that are currently being done because someone was too poor to have access to a better path in life.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > What if most people paying taxes now opt for UBI instead? Most people don’t settle for poverty level income if additional effort provides a better standard of living, and UBI increases the degree to which that is true compared to means-tested aid programs (which is why, under a different name, it was proposed as a right-libertarian alternative to such programs long before becoming popular on the left.)
- aodonnell2536 3y ago
  How so? A big motivating factor to be successful for most people is to set themselves apart financially from the masses. Edit: And of course, what would be the motivating factor for someone to give their best possible work, if the other 12 guys in their position get paid the same for less quality work?
  - TigeriusKirk 3y ago
    Because many of those who excel in terms of merit now are those with the resources to support them while they perfect their craft. Money from something other than their craft is paying the bills while they gain their merit. UBI gives that to everyone, giving everyone a shot at developing their merit.
  - 8note 3y ago
    The ubi is a minimum for everyone, rather than a maximum. The merit comes from people being able to take risks that otherwise only the wealthy could do
    - lotsoweiners 3y ago
      If you thought the rent is too damn high now, imagine what it’ll look like after everyone is getting free money.
  - npteljes 3y ago
    1. "How so?" UBI doesn't mean you can't earn more, this is not communism. 2. "what would be the motivating factor" They don't, UBI is not communism. And what you say is already true at many places, and the world is still turning. The motivating factor, with UBI, is the same without it: to achieve more. UBI would just let you not fall into homelessness and / or under the poverty threshold.
    - nradov 3y ago
      How much would taxes have to increase in order to provide a UBI that would keep everyone above the poverty threshold? Have you actually done the math on this?
tonyedgecombe 3y ago
>UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. Meritocracy is already dead (if it existed in the first place).
WalterBright 3y ago
I understood well in college that without the pressure of exams and the threat of flunking out, I'd not have learned nearly as much. As for a career, other people finding your work so valuable that they're willing to pay you $$$$ for it is the ultimate compliment.
e_i_pi_2 3y ago
> UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. The reason most people are successful is because they risk a lot if they weren’t This seems kinda backwards - UBI gives people the ability to take more risks. Success is mostly determined by how many bets you're able to make, and UBI lets people place more bets. There's plenty of people that would want to start a business but don't have parents able to loan or gift them the money. You'd be opening up more possibilities for people, and people naturally want to do useful things. I'm not sure what hard jobs you're imagining but anything valued by society will still get done because people want to see themselves as valuable. I think the confusion here is because you have a false premise that there is a meritocracy now - UBI is something that could help us get towards a meritocracy. Right now it doesn't matter how good you would be at something if you can't afford to do it
zerodensity 3y ago
I don't really care for this argument. We are currently not living in a meritocracy. In a true meritocracy everyone must have the same starting point and rise up within the ranks based on their merits from there. In our society we do not all start at the same place. There are people born into wealth and people born into poverty. So some people have to struggle harder to get to the same place as others where born into. Essentially an anti-meritocracy system. If anything UBIs will help make the system more meritocratic since the ones the bottom no longer need to climb the first hill.
- inameritocracy 3y ago
  [dead]
npteljes 3y ago
There is no meritocracy to begin with. What's there to kill is the desperation of people for their next meal.
stinkytaco 3y ago
> Stress is a factor of excellence. So is having a rich family. The article provides a long list of examples of great artists who's success is largely enabled by already being wealthy, not necessarily being the best. Even just being lucky enough to already be established puts you far ahead of people trying to break in. I can walk out the door and likely find a job in my industry because I have lots of experience to point to and references who will vouch for me. I think I'm good at my job, but I was also in the right place at the right time to get it and now I'm a safe bet for someone who needs my skills, even if I'm not the best bet. Someone who's trying to break in that's ten times more talented than me might never catch that break. I know for a fact that I've hired lesser candidates because I needed someone who was a known quantity more than I needed someone who was possibly great. Meritocracy is pretty far down the list as a factor of success in my experience.
- yetanother12345 3y ago
  > I needed someone who was a known quantity more than I needed someone who was possibly great. There's also an economic side to this: Higher skill most often has higher costs, so it would not be rational to overshoot in a business setting. In an Art setting higher skill very rarely commands a higher price. At least for the Visual Arts (painting, sculpture, etc) producer skill is hardly the most requested property. IOW it's mostly a matter of provenience and history of the artwork in question, not much the skill required to produce it. Also, for Music, Visual Arts, Performative Arts (excluding Sports!) personal preferences seem to dictate a substantially larger proportion of the price level than performer competence.
tomrod 3y ago
Sounds like a market failure for hard jobs to get done at poor wages. What you really meant to say, economically speaking, is that harder jobs will cost more. Good. The current UBI is $0. Let's just increase that a bit.
barbazoo 3y ago
> You say it yourself: If UBI is introduced, then none of the hard jobs gets done. Unless the work is paid highly enough for people to take the job, no? What prevents a company from raising wages?
JSavageOne 3y ago
> UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. How does UBI kill meritocracy? > none of the hard jobs gets done. Hard jobs that society doesn't value won't get done by humans, but hard jobs that society does value will certainly get done. UBI does not remove free markets, and if anything increases the reward of working hard if large swaths of the labor force do decide to drop out.

saagarjha 3y ago

Even within software there are a lot of excellent projects created by financially secure people. Clearly at least some people do enjoy doing hard work without being threatened for their livelihood.

tayo42 3y ago
I interpreted hard work to mean dishwashing, landscaping, janitor in an elementary school etc...

dragonwriter 3y ago

> UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. UBI enables meritocracy, it doesn’t kill it.

tomcam 3y ago
What if most people paying taxes now opt for UBI instead?
- e_i_pi_2 3y ago
  The "U" part means everyone would get it, so you don't have to opt for it, and everyone would still pay taxes Another way to think of it is as a negative income tax - as a simple example the equation could be ((income * 0.2) - 20000), so if you make no money you get 20k, if you make 100k you pay no taxes and get nothing, if you make 200k you owe 20. This is using a flat tax rate for simplicity but then everyone get taxes 20% and everyone gets 20k. It's similar to public school - everyone pays for it and everyone gets it, but the purpose is to ensure it's there for people that wouldn't be able to afford it privately.
  - boring_twenties 3y ago
    The question is how many people making 200k will, given the option, take the free 20k and not work, therefore paying no taxes.
    - e_i_pi_2 3y ago
      Agreed - I'm betting that it's a small percentage of people, because anyone making that much is motivated more by the societal recognition than the money - at that point even in the US all your basic needs are met and you're just looking for brownie points, and you'll still be looking for that with an extra 20k. As another way to think about it - do bonuses disincentivize workers? At least personally that just makes me want to do more because it's freeing up a bunch of mental energy I need to spend on finances, and then I can focus on important things aside from basic survival I don't personally know anyone that would opt for 20k/yr over their current salary, but I know several people making over 250k that want to make more to drive their sense of societal value. I don't agree with it, but if you want to maintain the threat of poverty to force labor you can still do that with UBI
      - boring_twenties 3y ago
        What societal recognition? Most people I know that much are in big tech, finance and corporate law. None of us pretend to be of any value to society (thankfully -- that would be insufferable!) $20k is not quite enough, but I can tell you that I lived the life of my dreams on $25k a year from 2016-2018. If I could guarantee that lifestyle forever I would take it over my current $300k+ job in a microsecond.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        > $20k is not quite enough, but I can tell you that I lived the life of my dreams on $25k a year from 2016-2018. If I could guarantee that lifestyle forever I would take it over my current $300k+ job in a microsecond. But government policy (even that notionally of a Constitutional character, which most UBI proposals wouldn’t be) isn’t a permanent guarantee (see abortion rights for a recent example), and if that was really true, it doesn’t take long living a $25k lifestyle on a $300k income to be able to save and make yourself a firmer guarantee of a $25k lifestyle forever than government policy would ever do. Approximately no one does it, because as much as people making lots of money might rhetorically appeal to the attractiveness of such an idea, no one actually making that money now feels it enough to act on it. The people who would be content to rely on minimal poverty support are, largely, doing that already, since we have such programs now and they have a much stronger disincentive to additional income than would exist with UBI due to means testing, which takes benefits away rapidly (sometimes more than 1:1) with additional income.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Then prices increase for services that are currently being done because someone was too poor to have access to a better path in life.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > What if most people paying taxes now opt for UBI instead? Most people don’t settle for poverty level income if additional effort provides a better standard of living, and UBI increases the degree to which that is true compared to means-tested aid programs (which is why, under a different name, it was proposed as a right-libertarian alternative to such programs long before becoming popular on the left.)
aodonnell2536 3y ago
How so? A big motivating factor to be successful for most people is to set themselves apart financially from the masses. Edit: And of course, what would be the motivating factor for someone to give their best possible work, if the other 12 guys in their position get paid the same for less quality work?
- TigeriusKirk 3y ago
  Because many of those who excel in terms of merit now are those with the resources to support them while they perfect their craft. Money from something other than their craft is paying the bills while they gain their merit. UBI gives that to everyone, giving everyone a shot at developing their merit.
- 8note 3y ago
  The ubi is a minimum for everyone, rather than a maximum. The merit comes from people being able to take risks that otherwise only the wealthy could do
  - lotsoweiners 3y ago
    If you thought the rent is too damn high now, imagine what it’ll look like after everyone is getting free money.
- npteljes 3y ago
  1. "How so?" UBI doesn't mean you can't earn more, this is not communism. 2. "what would be the motivating factor" They don't, UBI is not communism. And what you say is already true at many places, and the world is still turning. The motivating factor, with UBI, is the same without it: to achieve more. UBI would just let you not fall into homelessness and / or under the poverty threshold.
  - nradov 3y ago
    How much would taxes have to increase in order to provide a UBI that would keep everyone above the poverty threshold? Have you actually done the math on this?

tonyedgecombe 3y ago

>UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. Meritocracy is already dead (if it existed in the first place).

WalterBright 3y ago

I understood well in college that without the pressure of exams and the threat of flunking out, I'd not have learned nearly as much. As for a career, other people finding your work so valuable that they're willing to pay you $$$$ for it is the ultimate compliment.

e_i_pi_2 3y ago

> UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. The reason most people are successful is because they risk a lot if they weren’t This seems kinda backwards - UBI gives people the ability to take more risks. Success is mostly determined by how many bets you're able to make, and UBI lets people place more bets. There's plenty of people that would want to start a business but don't have parents able to loan or gift them the money. You'd be opening up more possibilities for people, and people naturally want to do useful things. I'm not sure what hard jobs you're imagining but anything valued by society will still get done because people want to see themselves as valuable. I think the confusion here is because you have a false premise that there is a meritocracy now - UBI is something that could help us get towards a meritocracy. Right now it doesn't matter how good you would be at something if you can't afford to do it

zerodensity 3y ago

I don't really care for this argument. We are currently not living in a meritocracy. In a true meritocracy everyone must have the same starting point and rise up within the ranks based on their merits from there. In our society we do not all start at the same place. There are people born into wealth and people born into poverty. So some people have to struggle harder to get to the same place as others where born into. Essentially an anti-meritocracy system. If anything UBIs will help make the system more meritocratic since the ones the bottom no longer need to climb the first hill.

inameritocracy 3y ago
[dead]

npteljes 3y ago

There is no meritocracy to begin with. What's there to kill is the desperation of people for their next meal.

stinkytaco 3y ago

> Stress is a factor of excellence. So is having a rich family. The article provides a long list of examples of great artists who's success is largely enabled by already being wealthy, not necessarily being the best. Even just being lucky enough to already be established puts you far ahead of people trying to break in. I can walk out the door and likely find a job in my industry because I have lots of experience to point to and references who will vouch for me. I think I'm good at my job, but I was also in the right place at the right time to get it and now I'm a safe bet for someone who needs my skills, even if I'm not the best bet. Someone who's trying to break in that's ten times more talented than me might never catch that break. I know for a fact that I've hired lesser candidates because I needed someone who was a known quantity more than I needed someone who was possibly great. Meritocracy is pretty far down the list as a factor of success in my experience.

yetanother12345 3y ago
> I needed someone who was a known quantity more than I needed someone who was possibly great. There's also an economic side to this: Higher skill most often has higher costs, so it would not be rational to overshoot in a business setting. In an Art setting higher skill very rarely commands a higher price. At least for the Visual Arts (painting, sculpture, etc) producer skill is hardly the most requested property. IOW it's mostly a matter of provenience and history of the artwork in question, not much the skill required to produce it. Also, for Music, Visual Arts, Performative Arts (excluding Sports!) personal preferences seem to dictate a substantially larger proportion of the price level than performer competence.

tomrod 3y ago

Sounds like a market failure for hard jobs to get done at poor wages. What you really meant to say, economically speaking, is that harder jobs will cost more. Good. The current UBI is $0. Let's just increase that a bit.

barbazoo 3y ago

> You say it yourself: If UBI is introduced, then none of the hard jobs gets done. Unless the work is paid highly enough for people to take the job, no? What prevents a company from raising wages?

JSavageOne 3y ago

> UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. How does UBI kill meritocracy? > none of the hard jobs gets done. Hard jobs that society doesn't value won't get done by humans, but hard jobs that society does value will certainly get done. UBI does not remove free markets, and if anything increases the reward of working hard if large swaths of the labor force do decide to drop out.