4 ms·

> I'm leaning more towards socialized housing, food, health care, and public transporation now, at least for the basics. What's the difference between that and

> I'm leaning more towards socialized housing, food, health care, and public transporation now, at least for the basics. What's the difference between that and UBI? The state giving the people a magical ticket to redeem for food and shelter or simply giving them food and shelter is the same thing at the end of the day. Both are equally prone to be inflationary as they require workers to provide the food and shelter without receiving anything real in return. In both cases you need to seize real value from the wealthy population if you want to avoid the inflationary effects. It's the same thing, just different accounting.

pcthrowaway 3y ago
In theory, the government is only bearing the cost for people who want to depend on socialized meals, which is different from giving everyone $500/month. With UBI, people are also putting that money back in the private sectors. With socialized meal programs, the government lean on the wealthy to ensure everyone has access to food, and uses that to employ people in the public sector. > Both are equally prone to be inflationary as they require workers to provide the food and shelter without receiving anything real in return. I'm not sure I follow why this would be inflationary, but it's also not what I was suggesting. Even if this does lead to more inflation though, it ensures the government is responsible for securing food and housing for everyone, rather than something like UBI which might result in people who can't find work not actually being able to afford the essentials.
reissbaker 3y ago
In practice I think giving a stipend to buy shelter is less useful than providing shelter directly in our current political system where large amounts of local regulatory control have been captured by existing landowners — so more money in doesn't mean more production of housing. For example, it's illegal to build significant new housing in most of San Francisco, and NYC zoning and planning restrictions mean that the city has built less housing in the past decade than it built during the Great Depression, despite vastly more money being spent. There's also the tough tradeoff that money is useful for more than just food and shelter, and so there's high incentive for unscrupulous people to try to get you to transfer it to them instead of covering your basic needs: for example, by spending millions on advertising campaigns to get you to stretch yourself to buy things you don't need; or just regular, transparently illegal things like extortion, selling addictive drugs, etc. It's not that people are dumb, it's that other people have incentive to try to get you to do things that are bad for you but good for them, if you have money. If you have shelter that can't be transferred, there's just a lot less incentive to try to abuse you. Not that money is bad, just if we're trying to run an efficient program that covers basic needs (but not much else), directly providing the things we want to provide is IMO likely to be more efficient than cash transfers and unaccountably hoping that the cash is spent on what the package is aiming to provide.
VirusNewbie 3y ago
If I'm a landlord and everyone gets an extra 2k a month guess how much i'm going to increase my rent next month?
SanderNL 3y ago
I have the real unpopular opinion that some psychological pressure is necessary for human societies to operate somewhat optimally. Straight up giving people money is different from living "on stamps". I know it's fashionable these days to call this "shaming" and I guess it is. My question is, is that a bad thing? If I wasn't shamed/bullied/pestered into being a proper citizen I don't think I'd become one. Maybe I'm just an inferior breed or something, but my guess is this is true for a lot of folks.
- psiops 3y ago
  Children need to be socialized, and it's fairly unpleasant for them. This would still be needed regardless of how we distribute money. You're not being "a proper citizen" to receive your paycheck, you're being one because you've been brainwashed from an early age to think that you should be.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

pcthrowaway 3y ago

In theory, the government is only bearing the cost for people who want to depend on socialized meals, which is different from giving everyone $500/month. With UBI, people are also putting that money back in the private sectors. With socialized meal programs, the government lean on the wealthy to ensure everyone has access to food, and uses that to employ people in the public sector. > Both are equally prone to be inflationary as they require workers to provide the food and shelter without receiving anything real in return. I'm not sure I follow why this would be inflationary, but it's also not what I was suggesting. Even if this does lead to more inflation though, it ensures the government is responsible for securing food and housing for everyone, rather than something like UBI which might result in people who can't find work not actually being able to afford the essentials.

reissbaker 3y ago

In practice I think giving a stipend to buy shelter is less useful than providing shelter directly in our current political system where large amounts of local regulatory control have been captured by existing landowners — so more money in doesn't mean more production of housing. For example, it's illegal to build significant new housing in most of San Francisco, and NYC zoning and planning restrictions mean that the city has built less housing in the past decade than it built during the Great Depression, despite vastly more money being spent. There's also the tough tradeoff that money is useful for more than just food and shelter, and so there's high incentive for unscrupulous people to try to get you to transfer it to them instead of covering your basic needs: for example, by spending millions on advertising campaigns to get you to stretch yourself to buy things you don't need; or just regular, transparently illegal things like extortion, selling addictive drugs, etc. It's not that people are dumb, it's that other people have incentive to try to get you to do things that are bad for you but good for them, if you have money. If you have shelter that can't be transferred, there's just a lot less incentive to try to abuse you. Not that money is bad, just if we're trying to run an efficient program that covers basic needs (but not much else), directly providing the things we want to provide is IMO likely to be more efficient than cash transfers and unaccountably hoping that the cash is spent on what the package is aiming to provide.

VirusNewbie 3y ago

If I'm a landlord and everyone gets an extra 2k a month guess how much i'm going to increase my rent next month?

SanderNL 3y ago

I have the real unpopular opinion that some psychological pressure is necessary for human societies to operate somewhat optimally. Straight up giving people money is different from living "on stamps". I know it's fashionable these days to call this "shaming" and I guess it is. My question is, is that a bad thing? If I wasn't shamed/bullied/pestered into being a proper citizen I don't think I'd become one. Maybe I'm just an inferior breed or something, but my guess is this is true for a lot of folks.

psiops 3y ago
Children need to be socialized, and it's fairly unpleasant for them. This would still be needed regardless of how we distribute money. You're not being "a proper citizen" to receive your paycheck, you're being one because you've been brainwashed from an early age to think that you should be.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]