4 ms·

The fundamental problem that I see with UBI is that it basically means that we are just paying people to be passive consumers of resources. It'll always be a h

by throwaway22032 2y ago

The fundamental problem that I see with UBI is that it basically means that we are just paying people to be passive consumers of resources. It'll always be a hard sell as a result. People want their neighbours to pull their weight. Even if it's just sweeping the street, painting their fence, whatever. Paying people to sit about watching TV is never going to work.

olalonde 2y ago
If it's just the bare minimum to survive (e.g. food + roof), there's still quite a lot of self-interested incentive to pull your weight. Of course, some people would be satisfied with the bare minimum but my guess is it wouldn't be a large percentage of the population.
hellojesus 2y ago
Not only do you steal from working people to give to tv watchers, you also structurally shift the market by forcing all jobs to pay more than the baseline minimum wage, which means that all would-be workers that cannot provide more than $x in value to an employer would never be hired. This tends to impact unskilled workers, who tend to need experience to increase the value they can offer employers.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  I think you have it backwards. Let's say somebody is making $1K/month from UBI. They might take a job that pays $1/hour because the difference between $1K/month and $1160/month is very significant. And there'd be no reason to stop jobs from paying $1/hour because everybody already gets UBI.
  - exitb 2y ago
    That's a quite horrible outcome though. It basically means that this persons income is paid by fellow workers who happened to be more fortunate, so that the business owner can have an almost free workforce.
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      > persons income is paid by fellow workers who happened to be more fortunate Yes, this is what happens in all welfare schemes. UBI is no different from any other welfare scheme in this regard.
ryandrake 2y ago
> People want their neighbours to pull their weight. This is not a universally held belief, although I'll admit that (at least currently) a great majority still do think this way. I am hoping we one day evolve past this idea that one's existence must be justified through arbitrary toil. We shouldn't have to invent hole-digging jobs and hole-filling jobs purely so people can "do something" to pull their weight. “We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.” ― Buckminster Fuller
- antisthenes 2y ago
  There's been no shortage of navel-gazing techno-optimists throughout recent history, that's for sure.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    Without navel-gazers, we'd still be farming our feudal lord's land and sending our 4 year old children to work in coal mines. If anything, progress requires navel-gazing, and we need more of it.
- throwaway22032 2y ago
  I think that you're getting stuck on bullshit jobs. There are real things that need to be done. As I mentioned - sweeping the street, pruning the shrubs, painting the fence. Care work. Childcare. Helping people navigate the metro. In my country there are huge shortages of police, military, and so on and so forth. There are many many more examples. The idea of giving someone money to do nothing is absurd in this context. Far better to just fund more paid work.

olalonde 2y ago

If it's just the bare minimum to survive (e.g. food + roof), there's still quite a lot of self-interested incentive to pull your weight. Of course, some people would be satisfied with the bare minimum but my guess is it wouldn't be a large percentage of the population.

hellojesus 2y ago

Not only do you steal from working people to give to tv watchers, you also structurally shift the market by forcing all jobs to pay more than the baseline minimum wage, which means that all would-be workers that cannot provide more than $x in value to an employer would never be hired. This tends to impact unskilled workers, who tend to need experience to increase the value they can offer employers.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
I think you have it backwards. Let's say somebody is making $1K/month from UBI. They might take a job that pays $1/hour because the difference between $1K/month and $1160/month is very significant. And there'd be no reason to stop jobs from paying $1/hour because everybody already gets UBI.
- exitb 2y ago
  That's a quite horrible outcome though. It basically means that this persons income is paid by fellow workers who happened to be more fortunate, so that the business owner can have an almost free workforce.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    > persons income is paid by fellow workers who happened to be more fortunate Yes, this is what happens in all welfare schemes. UBI is no different from any other welfare scheme in this regard.

ryandrake 2y ago

> People want their neighbours to pull their weight. This is not a universally held belief, although I'll admit that (at least currently) a great majority still do think this way. I am hoping we one day evolve past this idea that one's existence must be justified through arbitrary toil. We shouldn't have to invent hole-digging jobs and hole-filling jobs purely so people can "do something" to pull their weight. “We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.” ― Buckminster Fuller

antisthenes 2y ago
There's been no shortage of navel-gazing techno-optimists throughout recent history, that's for sure.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  Without navel-gazers, we'd still be farming our feudal lord's land and sending our 4 year old children to work in coal mines. If anything, progress requires navel-gazing, and we need more of it.
throwaway22032 2y ago
I think that you're getting stuck on bullshit jobs. There are real things that need to be done. As I mentioned - sweeping the street, pruning the shrubs, painting the fence. Care work. Childcare. Helping people navigate the metro. In my country there are huge shortages of police, military, and so on and so forth. There are many many more examples. The idea of giving someone money to do nothing is absurd in this context. Far better to just fund more paid work.