4 ms·

Ask HN: UBI is immoral utopia – prove me wrong

5 points by aristofun 3y ago

1. Money is an equivalent of value that people trade with each other. 2. Value is something to be produced by people, i.e. something that requires work to be done (even if by pumping oil, or setting up AI systems, or protecting oil from neighbouring tribe...) 3. Why those who do the work would just pay for free loaders? Why is it considered to be moral at all? And why being a free loader (assuming you are capable of doing work) is not immoral from any position? On the most general common sense level, regardless of your political views or economical system...

eimrine 3y ago
You do see that pumping oil is not just a somebody's work and nothing more.
- aristofun 3y ago
  wdym
  - thelastparadise 3y ago
    > wdym I find the lack of quality in today's discussion astonishing.
    - aristofun 3y ago
      do you have anything to say on the topic?
smoldesu 3y ago
On some level, the United States already distributes a form of basic income via welfare. A lot of people already apply for it, but very few of those are freeloaders per-se; they're using a government service to supplant homelessness or destitution. Whether you consider it an abusive system or not, it exists; the logical leap of expanding it into UBI is not very large. Now, I don't personally think UBI is a good idea, but I do think valuing people based on the whims of a free market is a terrible idea. Something better has to be proposed, or else the income gap will increase and the populist sentiment will further side with UBI. Your move, Voltaire.
- aristofun 3y ago
  > Something better has to be proposed Absolutely! This is why I question these things. And it strikes me that seemingly some of ideas don't pass the lowest common sense bar...
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    It totally makes sense to me; nothing about it seems "immoral" like you've posed. Our country produces revenue far in excess of meaningful compensation for executives, business owners and shareholders. The only logical, nay moral way for the nation to survive is by imposing a more progressive tax structure to support a growing class of impoverished citizens. That's what postcapitalist economics looks like, sorry to disappoint. UBI is a logical way to redistribute that excess, but it would require a frank reimagining of certain internal markets. It will also inevitably piss off the people who would stand to gain from exploiting those gaps, but that's just tough luck for them. If someone can sort that out reasonably, I'd support it too.
    - aristofun 3y ago
      Wait wait wait... Don't go into fancy words and some details yet please. Just explain to me — how is it moral for someone who does the work to give away part of their produced value to free loaders in exchange... for nothing? I don't mean supporting people who are unable to work permanently or temporarily (like kids) and all the obvious people who has little choice over their abilities. I emphasize people who can, but don't want to work and to produce any value, not even fart a melody (artists are not free loaders). How is it moral to give them value that you was working for?
      - smoldesu 3y ago
        The state provides order. They police things and maintain the economy under terms we consumers call "good". That costs money, so we pay for it via taxation - logical and moral. On top of that, a portion of your taxation goes beyond maintaining the state, and towards funding welfare. This is perhaps more controversial, but has little impact on the rich while providing substantial safety nets for the poor. This is where we are today; it's largely not considered immoral, except by people who disagree with the popular, democratic opinion. Beyond that, UBI exists. That would be a lot of new things, and very scary. However, it's not that big of a mental leap to make; progressive taxes on business and individual wealth could be redistributed to those who need it more. If it's considered freeloading to allow citizens live above the poverty line, why let individuals and corporations extract infinite wealth? From a top-down perspective, citizens are being harmed by the businesses. We can either limit their profitability by setting the prices manually (aka Literal Communism), or we could redistribute that wealth in a way that encourages successful businesses to stay innovative. That all makes sense to me; if drafted well, I think it could be both moral and logical. > How is it moral to give them value that you was working for? I take it you live in Timbuktu, or are awaiting a particularly nasty IRS call. Unless you don't pay taxes, your money already goes towards everything you've mentioned.
allears 3y ago
When you talk about "moral" you're implying a personal system of beliefs. Putting your ideas of right and wrong aside for a moment, do you think your life would be improved if there was less crime, fewer homeless, safer neighborhoods, etc? The idea of supporting poor people by those of us with a little more money is not only advocated by most major religions, it's actually an effective strategy for improving the general quality of life. If there are fewer desperate people in the world, who knows in what ways things might improve?
- aristofun 3y ago
  > your life would be improved if there was less crime, fewer homeless, safer neighborhoods, etc Where is the evidence for that? US to my knowledge is the world leader in both state and private donations and various support programs value (per capita). At the same time crime rates look much worse than in many other poorer countries. I cannot imagine how can one even measure any meaningful correlation and isolate signal from the noise of thousands of other factors entangled in any society. As far as I know major religions advocate for donations as being essentially a voluntary act. Which is important, because it makes me (as a moral agent) free to choose who and how I prefer to support based on my own perceptions of better good and prefer people really in need to lazy bums gaming the system.
  - allears 3y ago
    The US is well known for having the worst social safety net of any advanced country. Where are your statistics showing that the US is a leader in supporting the poor? If we took better care of those less fortunate, it seems obvious to me that they would commit fewer crimes, require less resources of policing and punishment, and people would be less afraid to walk the streets. True, there is a lot of poverty and crime in the US now. Do you think more police, more prisons is the best solution? And anyway, if you don't want to help other people, I question your sense of "morals." It seems to me that helping to care for your fellow man is one of the basic tenets of morality.
    - aristofun 3y ago
rini17 3y ago
Debt existed before money (based on plenty of anthropology research among other) and money was actually invented to more easily manage and satisfy it. Not to measure "value", that was a retroactive definition added much later. Now, lacking any possibility to discharge debt was considered immoral in many religious and philosophical texts since antiquity. Similar arguments and reasons should apply to (im)morality of "undeserved" income.
- aristofun 3y ago
  Okay, let's use money just as a generic synonim for value, in a sense that UBI is about giving people some minimal amount of "value" to be able to exchange for other "values" (buy food, clothing etc.) produced by someone else. With all that — how can it be moral to be obliged to pay for freeloaders (those who choose to not work)?
  - rini17 3y ago
    We are already placing all kinds of obligations on owners of money, or owners of anything else. Are all these automatically immoral? And how do you judge anyone's reasons for not working? I prefer not to do it. And yet another question - why do you want value more than wealth? Value is implied to be zero-sum game. But wealth actually grows when money circulates and when all people have their basic needs met. I'd prefer the latter.
    - aristofun 3y ago
      You didn't answer a simple question — is it immoral or not to be a free loader (i.e. decide to not produce any "wealth")? Why do you think so? I'm not judging, just want to hear your reasoning. > We are already placing all kinds of obligations on owners of money, or owners of anything else. Are all these automatically immoral? Absolutely not. Taxes in general are definitely moral. As long as people agreed on them (by any democratic process for example) and not forced (for example by being slaves and giving away their produced value).
      - 3y ago
jfengel 3y ago
Proving your argument faulty is trivial, in that it's just a bare assertion that free loading is wrong. That's not an argument at all; it's just a statement. There are plenty of positions from which it is immoral to allow a human being to starve in a world with so much food. That, too, is a bare assertion, but you've given no reason to think it's any worse than yours. Any time you find yourself appealing to "common sense", that's a red flag that you're really just asserting your opinions as facts. You'll never be able to prove an "ought" from an "is" -- and you should be skeptical of any moral argument that claims to ground itself in absolutes. You can, however, make your moral assumptions as clear as possible, and then you can investigate why others make different moral assumptions. Your moral assumptions seem to start with absolutist understandings of property. Those are difficult to justify in a world with a finite commons (all of your wealth involves some contribution from things you did not create), and where you cannot live without help from other people. That does not disprove your moral assertions, simply because they are moral assertions and cannot be proven or disproven. But I can say that your argument is faulty in that you take the assertion as if it were ground truth, and that you don't seem to have examined your assertion very closely.

5 points by aristofun 3y ago

eimrine 3y ago

You do see that pumping oil is not just a somebody's work and nothing more.

aristofun 3y ago
wdym
- thelastparadise 3y ago
  > wdym I find the lack of quality in today's discussion astonishing.
  - aristofun 3y ago
    do you have anything to say on the topic?

smoldesu 3y ago

On some level, the United States already distributes a form of basic income via welfare. A lot of people already apply for it, but very few of those are freeloaders per-se; they're using a government service to supplant homelessness or destitution. Whether you consider it an abusive system or not, it exists; the logical leap of expanding it into UBI is not very large. Now, I don't personally think UBI is a good idea, but I do think valuing people based on the whims of a free market is a terrible idea. Something better has to be proposed, or else the income gap will increase and the populist sentiment will further side with UBI. Your move, Voltaire.

aristofun 3y ago
> Something better has to be proposed Absolutely! This is why I question these things. And it strikes me that seemingly some of ideas don't pass the lowest common sense bar...
- smoldesu 3y ago
  It totally makes sense to me; nothing about it seems "immoral" like you've posed. Our country produces revenue far in excess of meaningful compensation for executives, business owners and shareholders. The only logical, nay moral way for the nation to survive is by imposing a more progressive tax structure to support a growing class of impoverished citizens. That's what postcapitalist economics looks like, sorry to disappoint. UBI is a logical way to redistribute that excess, but it would require a frank reimagining of certain internal markets. It will also inevitably piss off the people who would stand to gain from exploiting those gaps, but that's just tough luck for them. If someone can sort that out reasonably, I'd support it too.
  - aristofun 3y ago
    Wait wait wait... Don't go into fancy words and some details yet please. Just explain to me — how is it moral for someone who does the work to give away part of their produced value to free loaders in exchange... for nothing? I don't mean supporting people who are unable to work permanently or temporarily (like kids) and all the obvious people who has little choice over their abilities. I emphasize people who can, but don't want to work and to produce any value, not even fart a melody (artists are not free loaders). How is it moral to give them value that you was working for?
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      The state provides order. They police things and maintain the economy under terms we consumers call "good". That costs money, so we pay for it via taxation - logical and moral. On top of that, a portion of your taxation goes beyond maintaining the state, and towards funding welfare. This is perhaps more controversial, but has little impact on the rich while providing substantial safety nets for the poor. This is where we are today; it's largely not considered immoral, except by people who disagree with the popular, democratic opinion. Beyond that, UBI exists. That would be a lot of new things, and very scary. However, it's not that big of a mental leap to make; progressive taxes on business and individual wealth could be redistributed to those who need it more. If it's considered freeloading to allow citizens live above the poverty line, why let individuals and corporations extract infinite wealth? From a top-down perspective, citizens are being harmed by the businesses. We can either limit their profitability by setting the prices manually (aka Literal Communism), or we could redistribute that wealth in a way that encourages successful businesses to stay innovative. That all makes sense to me; if drafted well, I think it could be both moral and logical. > How is it moral to give them value that you was working for? I take it you live in Timbuktu, or are awaiting a particularly nasty IRS call. Unless you don't pay taxes, your money already goes towards everything you've mentioned.

allears 3y ago

When you talk about "moral" you're implying a personal system of beliefs. Putting your ideas of right and wrong aside for a moment, do you think your life would be improved if there was less crime, fewer homeless, safer neighborhoods, etc? The idea of supporting poor people by those of us with a little more money is not only advocated by most major religions, it's actually an effective strategy for improving the general quality of life. If there are fewer desperate people in the world, who knows in what ways things might improve?

aristofun 3y ago
> your life would be improved if there was less crime, fewer homeless, safer neighborhoods, etc Where is the evidence for that? US to my knowledge is the world leader in both state and private donations and various support programs value (per capita). At the same time crime rates look much worse than in many other poorer countries. I cannot imagine how can one even measure any meaningful correlation and isolate signal from the noise of thousands of other factors entangled in any society. As far as I know major religions advocate for donations as being essentially a voluntary act. Which is important, because it makes me (as a moral agent) free to choose who and how I prefer to support based on my own perceptions of better good and prefer people really in need to lazy bums gaming the system.
- allears 3y ago
  The US is well known for having the worst social safety net of any advanced country. Where are your statistics showing that the US is a leader in supporting the poor? If we took better care of those less fortunate, it seems obvious to me that they would commit fewer crimes, require less resources of policing and punishment, and people would be less afraid to walk the streets. True, there is a lot of poverty and crime in the US now. Do you think more police, more prisons is the best solution? And anyway, if you don't want to help other people, I question your sense of "morals." It seems to me that helping to care for your fellow man is one of the basic tenets of morality.
  - aristofun 3y ago

rini17 3y ago

Debt existed before money (based on plenty of anthropology research among other) and money was actually invented to more easily manage and satisfy it. Not to measure "value", that was a retroactive definition added much later. Now, lacking any possibility to discharge debt was considered immoral in many religious and philosophical texts since antiquity. Similar arguments and reasons should apply to (im)morality of "undeserved" income.

aristofun 3y ago
Okay, let's use money just as a generic synonim for value, in a sense that UBI is about giving people some minimal amount of "value" to be able to exchange for other "values" (buy food, clothing etc.) produced by someone else. With all that — how can it be moral to be obliged to pay for freeloaders (those who choose to not work)?
- rini17 3y ago
  We are already placing all kinds of obligations on owners of money, or owners of anything else. Are all these automatically immoral? And how do you judge anyone's reasons for not working? I prefer not to do it. And yet another question - why do you want value more than wealth? Value is implied to be zero-sum game. But wealth actually grows when money circulates and when all people have their basic needs met. I'd prefer the latter.
  - aristofun 3y ago
    You didn't answer a simple question — is it immoral or not to be a free loader (i.e. decide to not produce any "wealth")? Why do you think so? I'm not judging, just want to hear your reasoning. > We are already placing all kinds of obligations on owners of money, or owners of anything else. Are all these automatically immoral? Absolutely not. Taxes in general are definitely moral. As long as people agreed on them (by any democratic process for example) and not forced (for example by being slaves and giving away their produced value).
    - 3y ago

jfengel 3y ago

Proving your argument faulty is trivial, in that it's just a bare assertion that free loading is wrong. That's not an argument at all; it's just a statement. There are plenty of positions from which it is immoral to allow a human being to starve in a world with so much food. That, too, is a bare assertion, but you've given no reason to think it's any worse than yours. Any time you find yourself appealing to "common sense", that's a red flag that you're really just asserting your opinions as facts. You'll never be able to prove an "ought" from an "is" -- and you should be skeptical of any moral argument that claims to ground itself in absolutes. You can, however, make your moral assumptions as clear as possible, and then you can investigate why others make different moral assumptions. Your moral assumptions seem to start with absolutist understandings of property. Those are difficult to justify in a world with a finite commons (all of your wealth involves some contribution from things you did not create), and where you cannot live without help from other people. That does not disprove your moral assertions, simply because they are moral assertions and cannot be proven or disproven. But I can say that your argument is faulty in that you take the assertion as if it were ground truth, and that you don't seem to have examined your assertion very closely.