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I do have a different opinion to you, and it was formed during the pandemic when there were UBI-like circumstances for me and my friend group. Those who didn't

I do have a different opinion to you, and it was formed during the pandemic when there were UBI-like circumstances for me and my friend group. Those who didn't need to work any more, became rather depressed, quite quickly, compared to those who kept working. And it changed my view on UBI. Maybe in your friend group that was different or your country didn't follow such an approach? What's the difference between working on several games or focusing and finished one to you? Would you work on these things enough to produce finished projects if you had UBI? For more than a while? I think at some life stages, like parenthood or childhood, UBI makes sense. At others, when you are finding yourself - having a responsibility is useful.

scottLobster 2y ago
That's why in the sci-fi, utopian economics of the Star Trek Federation they have a "participation based" UBI, where your ticket to the Federation's generous UBI (made possible by effectively infinite material resources) is contingent upon you doing something productive. You can't just sit on your ass all day and collect it. Now how they measure/judge what's "productive" and the fact that it works at all is what makes it sci-fi, but it highlights that responsibility is critical, even in a utopia.
- fragmede 2y ago
  UBI is a failure of imagination for jobs programs. Don't get me wrong, as a society we should take care of everyone so that no one dies of starvation or freezes to death, but don't just give people handouts, pay people to do stuff. Even something as simple as planting trees.
  - vineyardmike 2y ago
    I think jobs programs are a failure of society to imagine what true abundance looks like, and how abundant our lives are. In the US, we produce and throw away so much food that overconsumption is vastly more deadly than underconsumption. Hell, we even put corn ethanol into our petro products just to keep the farmland in use. We could have “universal basic food stamps” pretty much immediately. Affordably too - society is collectively already paying for a multiple of all consumption needs (just out of pocket instead of via government subsidy). People could work for extra income for their specialty foods.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    Slate Star Codex made an argument against it here https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/Basic-Income-Not-Basic-Jobs-Against-Hijacking-Utopia https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/Basic-Income-Not-Basi... It's been a few years but my recollection is something like: 1. The jobs that are crappy enough for jobs programs are not useful jobs to be done anyway. 2. The overhead involved in having a job (Transportation, childcare, all kinds of second-order negatives on your life) can easily outweigh shitty salaries. Also jobs programs would be worse for people with kids, unless you add more child tax credit to prop up that side of the stool. 3. Having a job takes away free time that otherwise could be used for training or education. Planting trees by hand in the sun is not going to look like anything on anyone's resume. You could put another leg on the stool by having a college grant program or something, but it's another step away from jobs and towards UBI If you're going to pay people to do something pointless, maybe just pay them to exist anyway?
    - fragmede 2y ago
      Why do they have to be crappy? Why wouldn't childcare be a job in the jobs program? Or teaching? or driver? Scott Alexander doesn't think deeply or fully address that in that piece, choosing instead to use a strawman to say it just won't work, but less critically that UBI somehow magically would.
      - sobani 2y ago
        Would you be willing to trust your child to the care of someone who is unwilling or incapable of finding work outside the jobs program? For any useful job you can think of, ask yourself: What's stopping the unemployed from doing that job right now? They could already be making decent money driving or caring, so why aren't they?
        fragmede 2y ago
        I'm less worried about the current unemployed; that's a whole other can of worms. I'm more worried concerned about a supposed AI job-pocalypse where everyone (including me) can't find a job because AI robots can perform the role I currently perform, for cheaper, and tirelessly. For the jobs that immediately come to mind, the reason there's no one working then is because I don't have the money to pay for them. I'd love to have a driver and a carer; There's a number of businesses I want to start but I don't have the money to hire people to do things so they limp along with the time and effort I'm able to give them after my main job.
  - JoshTriplett 2y ago
    > pay people to do stuff UBI allows people to choose what stuff they consider productive. UBI means anyone can work on a startup, or try to start a project, or try an artistic endeavor, or do research. UBI means everyone can afford to take some risks and still have a fallback plan.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      UBI means you don't have to be productive or take any risks. Just sit back and collect the dole and drink beer and enjoy the sun. Or fentanyl. I'm not against giving people a chance or taking care of people when they're down. I don't think UBI is the way to accomplish that though, and that a well funded, and properly managed jobs programs would do more to improve society, and is more tractable, than giving everybody a magic money fountain.
      - JoshTriplett 2y ago
        > UBI means you don't have to be productive or take any risks. And that's a great thing. My comment is about what it allows people to do and what they can do, not about forcing them to do anything. If some subset of people choose to relax, temporarily or otherwise, rather than go work a low-paying job, so be it. That's not just an "acceptable negative", that's a positive, that people can do that. UBI shouldn't be set at a level that makes it comfortable to have zero income forever. UBI should be set at a level that makes it reliably survivable to have zero income. There will always be incentives to work, and there will always be people who choose not to, and both of those things are fine. > properly managed jobs programs The difference I was highlighting between UBI and a jobs program is precisely that UBI doesn't require defining what qualifies as a job, and supports trying novel things that don't immediately pay out enough to support you. You don't need make-work jobs, you don't have the problem of people being automated out of a job (so automation is much more often a good thing), you have a massive renaissance in startups and ventures of all sorts, you have lower administrative costs because you don't have means testing or ... All the cases of people suddenly finding themselves with an obsolete skillset? They'd be able to afford to take a year off to reinvent themselves and become more productive again, rather than having to immediately jump on whatever work they can get. > and is more tractable I've seen many cases made that UBI is an easier sell across the political spectrum than jobs programs or welfare programs would be. Lower administrative costs, smaller public sector, net win for the economy, higher likelihood of more people becoming more successful and depending on it less...
  - tacocataco 2y ago
    How about reforming the WPA [1] and build free basic housing. Let the for profit house building corporations handle the luxury stuff. Actually, that's all they are interested in doing anyways. We should stop begging them to build what we need and just do it ourselves. 1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administratio...
- philwelch 2y ago
  Star Trek mostly just kind of handwaves this sort of thing rather than actually explaining how it works, which is probably the right narrative decision because it's usually beside whatever point the story is trying to make.
- HideousKojima 2y ago
  Star Trek handwaves away pretty much all questions about its utopian economics. What's the point in Picard's family owning a vineyard in a world with replicators that can make perfectly aged wine for you in seconds?
  - hindsightbias 2y ago
    So in Star Trek artisinal work/projects would not exist?
  - spockz 2y ago
    I think that almost every episode featuring food from replicators always has someone lamenting that it isn’t the real thing though. So tastes vary. There is tradition. Point enough to have a be vineyard.
  - largbae 2y ago
    Also, what if _everyone_ wants a vineyard in France? Land is still finite, how does one allocate something like that?
    - ungamedplayer 2y ago
      Just replicate more France
      - hnlmorg 2y ago
        I love that answer. It reminds me of how Futurama explained space travel: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/146355/how-do-they-travel-so-fast-in-futurama https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/146355/how-do-they...
- tacocataco 2y ago
  It's not a Universal Basic Income if it's not Universal. It's been a while since I watched the series admittedly. IIRC it's honor, influence, and prestige that motivates the people working for the federation.
ericjmorey 2y ago
Interesting that I observed the opposite. During the pandemic people I know who had to work were sent into extreme psychological dysfunction that they're still dealing with the fallout that followed. Those that didn't need to work flourished.
jchw 2y ago
> Those who didn't need to work any more, became rather depressed, quite quickly, compared to those who kept working. I'm going to be completely honest with you, I really think you need to consider other reasons why people might be depressed in the situation that occurred during the pandemic. I don't know anyone who was doing particularly well, including those working (heck, people at my job at the time were struggling pretty badly with mental health to the point where they started reaching out to us.) I'm not even saying this as a person that has a strong opinion on UBI, and I am sure some people sincerely believe not having a job was a major detriment for them. I absolutely think it did help me, but the way I see it, it helped because it was something to cling onto for a bit of normalcy, and of course, a bit of social interaction. Outside of the pandemic, a job is not nearly as critical for those two things. I also do personally think that I still broadly like having a job, and I have had almost no gaps in employment since I started working professionally. That said, if money were no object, I would absolutely take breaks off of professional work for months at a time. For me, I find both professional work and hobby work important in very different ways, and wish I had dedicated time for both. Anecdotally I've definitely known engineers who periodically take months or even a year off of work when they get the opportunity and it seems to be a very healthy thing for them. The existence of UBI would maybe tempt people to rely on it even if it is detrimental to their lives, but I think it's wrong to draw the conclusion that it's bad because jobs can be a source of fulfillment for many. In the future it's very possible we're going to need to approach the problem from another angle anyways, since there's simply no guarantee there will be meaningful work for us all in the future. (I'm not really convinced there won't be, but it feels unreasonable to consider it outside the realm of reasonable possibility.)
- jay_kyburz 2y ago
  There is not doubt in my mind that if we somehow implemented a UBI in a way that would not just result in inflation of rent and everyday goods, the vast majority of people would simply stop working, get bored, depressed, and more likely go looking for mischief before they started working on useful or interesting hobby projects. Whats more, if you drop out of work to live on the UBI, by definition, you are the poorest person in the country, and if that is not a reason to be depressed I don't know what is.
boerseth 2y ago
I doubt it was the UBI-like aspect of the pandemic that caused the depressive states. Isolation, less active lifestyles, locked inside. Imagine UBI, but with the opposite of all of those!
- ungamedplayer 2y ago
  I have seen it. Take a good look at the Australian government funding central Australian communities and the crime and abuse outcomes in that area. It will break your heart.
  - JKCalhoun 2y ago
    The U.S. has Indian reservations. They're not known for being havens for self-actualization.
andai 2y ago
I expect that advances in AI and robotics will make most human labor obsolete (economically unviable) in the next few decades. I expect widespread adoption of UBI as a consequence. I have also considered the fact that most people just sort of "drift" if there isn't an external system forcing them to stay on track. I suspect we're going to see "fake jobs" subsidized by the system for the sake of maintaining widespread sanity. Well fake jobs isn't quite the right name, rather they'd be real jobs but a portion of the UBI budget (or wherever it comes from) would be spent maintaining a human economy for the people (most people?) who apparently require such a system to stay sane. I say fake because they wouldn't be economically viable without the subsidy.
- andai 2y ago
  Of course, work isn't the only way to stay busy or sane. I think we'll also see a lot more hobby groups and general community gatherings.
szundi 2y ago
As others commented there can be a dozen other reason to be depressed under the pandemic other than UBI like revenues. Also UBI does not stop you from doing work. UBI does not want to be a complete replacement of work related revenues, just the basic needs are covered. So if you have a minimum of ambition, you'll go for a job. UBI is just your safety net, so you must not become something that you feel is a slave or stuck in with bad people just to pay rent. Quite different story compared to what you painted here like people just don't work. Also would be interesting to see this unfolding for 10 years. Maybe humans are just lazy but quite the opposite can happen as well and those stories will drag people along. Of course some of us are going to fuck it up that's for sure.
fshbbdssbbgdd 2y ago
Does UBI pay enough to support a ski bum lifestyle? That’s probably what I would do if I had guaranteed income with no job.
nawgz 2y ago
> UBI-like circumstances for me and my friend group > during the pandemic Lol you really think generalizing emotional states from a global lockdown is smart?
itsthecourier 2y ago
Super honest feedback on UBI. I'm glad we saw it develop before us with COVID, there is something there that may work, but simple UBI doesn't work evidently
m3kw9 2y ago
Your friends are not working because of people are so used to the “rails” that a job guides them and spoon feed them what exactly to do and with what consequences, this is why UBI isn’t gonna be what that commenter fantasies about. Most people does not have the will power to force and give themselves consequences and stick to it, because they are their own boss.
tacocataco 2y ago
The minimum wage was meant to be a "universal basic wage", and it has been corroded to uselessness over time. $7.25 an hour What is different in modern times that would prevent the same from happening to UBI?
- opo 2y ago
  Is there an actual reference to the idea that the minimum wage was meant to be a "universal basic wage"? Is this in the original congressional debates, the legislation, comments by Roosevelt? (Searching for references to the phrase, I couldn't find anything from the timeframe of when the legislation was enacted.) >and it has been corroded to uselessness over time. The federal minimum wage has basically kept up with inflation since the 1930s. In the states where costs are higher, they generally have higher rates.
treflop 2y ago
During the pandemic, my roommate and I built so much shit. We built a full wooden camper setup with electrical and plumbing. We sketched and crafted new furniture for our apartment. We designed and built our own hydroponics system. And we skated a lot and hiked where we could. We did also play a lot of video games.
zackmorris 2y ago
I'm replying to you since you got the most upvotes :-) I take issue with your main point: that not having to work and receiving financial aid cause depression. Did anyone receiving the $1400 pandemic check from the government feel down about it? The notion is frankly preposterous. From this, we can infer that reducing one's labor burden also doesn't cause depression. So depression might come from elsewhere: maybe boredom, existential angst, who knows. But it's not pertinent to the debate around UBI. Now, we can talk about the financial toll of paying taxes for UBI, or the risk of inflation (there is none - that comes from increasing the money supply not incomes - although political machinations tend to preserve wealth at the top), or the collapse of various service industries that profit from underemployment. But those are probably best analyzed in simulation, since like with ventures and startups, there is no way to predict the benefits to society if 1% succeed even if 99% fail or are idle. My personal take is that sentiment for UBI will fall along political lines. We can use other spectrums for reference: * female vs male * positive reinforcement vs tough love * liberal vs conservative Since HN is mostly composed of tech workers, I'd predict a male-dominated slant with a preference for tough love and conservative values. It would have an inherent bias towards work over caregiving. So the majority of HN might disfavor UBI, regardless of any actual merits it provides. - I decided to get an estimate of UBI support on HN based on the sentiments of the replies here: https://deepai.org/chat https://deepai.org/chat please analyze the text from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41638103 (the text follows the news.ycombinator.com forum comment structure). divide the text into a list of replies. note that any line starting with ">" is a comment from a parent reply. determine the sentiment of each reply as to whether it favors UBI or disfavors UBI. count the replies favoring UBI, the replies disfavoring UBI, and the replies that are neutral/defensive/etc about UBI. * Favors UBI: 12 replies * Disfavors UBI: 26 replies * Neutral/Defensive: 12 replies Unfortunately, it started saying "I currently cannot access external websites, including the one you provided" so I had to stop at that preliminary estimate. I also tried changing the first line of the prompt and with manually pasting the page between "<< ... >>": please analyze the text between "<<" and ">>" that I've pasted after this prompt (the text was obtained from a news.ycombinator.com forum and follows the same comment structure). That returned similar results. https://chatgpt.com/ https://chatgpt.com/ has an arbitary length limit that can't separate prompt from context data, which makes it generally useless for this type of work. https://iask.ai https://iask.ai has similar limitations which negate its usefulness also. But going by the first estimate, it looks like about 1/4 of HN users favor UBI, 1/2 disfavor UBI, and 1/4 are neutral. It would be interesting to see this analysis on a larger sample size. - With 50% of HN seemingly disfavoring UBI, since we're essentially thought leaders in tech, it's highly unlikely that society as a whole will vote to adopt UBI. I think that's ..sad, for lack of a better word. We're basically saying that even though we know automation better than anyone, we don't believe that it can lead to a decrease in labor, or that its proceeds should be used to benefit everyone. I think that's an abdication of our role in working to make the world a better place, and why we got started in tech in the first place. So without a viable plan of action for getting to UBI, it's probably time to form an independent organization outside of public government and private industry. One that's opt-in, with a commitment to contribute a portion of one's future profits to an even payout of UBI, without means testing. After a lifetime of struggle with countless losses and no big win, despite hard work on a level that most people probably wouldn't believe, I would opt-in in a heartbeat. And I'm going to make it my life's work to focus on manifesting self-actualization for everyone, starting with bringing about UBI. That's how strongly I believe in its potential to change the world for the better, for us and for future generations.

scottLobster 2y ago

That's why in the sci-fi, utopian economics of the Star Trek Federation they have a "participation based" UBI, where your ticket to the Federation's generous UBI (made possible by effectively infinite material resources) is contingent upon you doing something productive. You can't just sit on your ass all day and collect it. Now how they measure/judge what's "productive" and the fact that it works at all is what makes it sci-fi, but it highlights that responsibility is critical, even in a utopia.

fragmede 2y ago
UBI is a failure of imagination for jobs programs. Don't get me wrong, as a society we should take care of everyone so that no one dies of starvation or freezes to death, but don't just give people handouts, pay people to do stuff. Even something as simple as planting trees.
- vineyardmike 2y ago
  I think jobs programs are a failure of society to imagine what true abundance looks like, and how abundant our lives are. In the US, we produce and throw away so much food that overconsumption is vastly more deadly than underconsumption. Hell, we even put corn ethanol into our petro products just to keep the farmland in use. We could have “universal basic food stamps” pretty much immediately. Affordably too - society is collectively already paying for a multiple of all consumption needs (just out of pocket instead of via government subsidy). People could work for extra income for their specialty foods.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  Slate Star Codex made an argument against it here https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/Basic-Income-Not-Basic-Jobs-Against-Hijacking-Utopia https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/Basic-Income-Not-Basi... It's been a few years but my recollection is something like: 1. The jobs that are crappy enough for jobs programs are not useful jobs to be done anyway. 2. The overhead involved in having a job (Transportation, childcare, all kinds of second-order negatives on your life) can easily outweigh shitty salaries. Also jobs programs would be worse for people with kids, unless you add more child tax credit to prop up that side of the stool. 3. Having a job takes away free time that otherwise could be used for training or education. Planting trees by hand in the sun is not going to look like anything on anyone's resume. You could put another leg on the stool by having a college grant program or something, but it's another step away from jobs and towards UBI If you're going to pay people to do something pointless, maybe just pay them to exist anyway?
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Why do they have to be crappy? Why wouldn't childcare be a job in the jobs program? Or teaching? or driver? Scott Alexander doesn't think deeply or fully address that in that piece, choosing instead to use a strawman to say it just won't work, but less critically that UBI somehow magically would.
    - sobani 2y ago
      Would you be willing to trust your child to the care of someone who is unwilling or incapable of finding work outside the jobs program? For any useful job you can think of, ask yourself: What's stopping the unemployed from doing that job right now? They could already be making decent money driving or caring, so why aren't they?
      - fragmede 2y ago
        I'm less worried about the current unemployed; that's a whole other can of worms. I'm more worried concerned about a supposed AI job-pocalypse where everyone (including me) can't find a job because AI robots can perform the role I currently perform, for cheaper, and tirelessly. For the jobs that immediately come to mind, the reason there's no one working then is because I don't have the money to pay for them. I'd love to have a driver and a carer; There's a number of businesses I want to start but I don't have the money to hire people to do things so they limp along with the time and effort I'm able to give them after my main job.
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
  > pay people to do stuff UBI allows people to choose what stuff they consider productive. UBI means anyone can work on a startup, or try to start a project, or try an artistic endeavor, or do research. UBI means everyone can afford to take some risks and still have a fallback plan.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    UBI means you don't have to be productive or take any risks. Just sit back and collect the dole and drink beer and enjoy the sun. Or fentanyl. I'm not against giving people a chance or taking care of people when they're down. I don't think UBI is the way to accomplish that though, and that a well funded, and properly managed jobs programs would do more to improve society, and is more tractable, than giving everybody a magic money fountain.
    - JoshTriplett 2y ago
      > UBI means you don't have to be productive or take any risks. And that's a great thing. My comment is about what it allows people to do and what they can do, not about forcing them to do anything. If some subset of people choose to relax, temporarily or otherwise, rather than go work a low-paying job, so be it. That's not just an "acceptable negative", that's a positive, that people can do that. UBI shouldn't be set at a level that makes it comfortable to have zero income forever. UBI should be set at a level that makes it reliably survivable to have zero income. There will always be incentives to work, and there will always be people who choose not to, and both of those things are fine. > properly managed jobs programs The difference I was highlighting between UBI and a jobs program is precisely that UBI doesn't require defining what qualifies as a job, and supports trying novel things that don't immediately pay out enough to support you. You don't need make-work jobs, you don't have the problem of people being automated out of a job (so automation is much more often a good thing), you have a massive renaissance in startups and ventures of all sorts, you have lower administrative costs because you don't have means testing or ... All the cases of people suddenly finding themselves with an obsolete skillset? They'd be able to afford to take a year off to reinvent themselves and become more productive again, rather than having to immediately jump on whatever work they can get. > and is more tractable I've seen many cases made that UBI is an easier sell across the political spectrum than jobs programs or welfare programs would be. Lower administrative costs, smaller public sector, net win for the economy, higher likelihood of more people becoming more successful and depending on it less...
- tacocataco 2y ago
  How about reforming the WPA [1] and build free basic housing. Let the for profit house building corporations handle the luxury stuff. Actually, that's all they are interested in doing anyways. We should stop begging them to build what we need and just do it ourselves. 1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administratio...
philwelch 2y ago
Star Trek mostly just kind of handwaves this sort of thing rather than actually explaining how it works, which is probably the right narrative decision because it's usually beside whatever point the story is trying to make.
HideousKojima 2y ago
Star Trek handwaves away pretty much all questions about its utopian economics. What's the point in Picard's family owning a vineyard in a world with replicators that can make perfectly aged wine for you in seconds?
- hindsightbias 2y ago
  So in Star Trek artisinal work/projects would not exist?
- spockz 2y ago
  I think that almost every episode featuring food from replicators always has someone lamenting that it isn’t the real thing though. So tastes vary. There is tradition. Point enough to have a be vineyard.
- largbae 2y ago
  Also, what if _everyone_ wants a vineyard in France? Land is still finite, how does one allocate something like that?
  - ungamedplayer 2y ago
    Just replicate more France
    - hnlmorg 2y ago
      I love that answer. It reminds me of how Futurama explained space travel: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/146355/how-do-they-travel-so-fast-in-futurama https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/146355/how-do-they...
tacocataco 2y ago
It's not a Universal Basic Income if it's not Universal. It's been a while since I watched the series admittedly. IIRC it's honor, influence, and prestige that motivates the people working for the federation.

ericjmorey 2y ago

Interesting that I observed the opposite. During the pandemic people I know who had to work were sent into extreme psychological dysfunction that they're still dealing with the fallout that followed. Those that didn't need to work flourished.

jchw 2y ago

> Those who didn't need to work any more, became rather depressed, quite quickly, compared to those who kept working. I'm going to be completely honest with you, I really think you need to consider other reasons why people might be depressed in the situation that occurred during the pandemic. I don't know anyone who was doing particularly well, including those working (heck, people at my job at the time were struggling pretty badly with mental health to the point where they started reaching out to us.) I'm not even saying this as a person that has a strong opinion on UBI, and I am sure some people sincerely believe not having a job was a major detriment for them. I absolutely think it did help me, but the way I see it, it helped because it was something to cling onto for a bit of normalcy, and of course, a bit of social interaction. Outside of the pandemic, a job is not nearly as critical for those two things. I also do personally think that I still broadly like having a job, and I have had almost no gaps in employment since I started working professionally. That said, if money were no object, I would absolutely take breaks off of professional work for months at a time. For me, I find both professional work and hobby work important in very different ways, and wish I had dedicated time for both. Anecdotally I've definitely known engineers who periodically take months or even a year off of work when they get the opportunity and it seems to be a very healthy thing for them. The existence of UBI would maybe tempt people to rely on it even if it is detrimental to their lives, but I think it's wrong to draw the conclusion that it's bad because jobs can be a source of fulfillment for many. In the future it's very possible we're going to need to approach the problem from another angle anyways, since there's simply no guarantee there will be meaningful work for us all in the future. (I'm not really convinced there won't be, but it feels unreasonable to consider it outside the realm of reasonable possibility.)

jay_kyburz 2y ago
There is not doubt in my mind that if we somehow implemented a UBI in a way that would not just result in inflation of rent and everyday goods, the vast majority of people would simply stop working, get bored, depressed, and more likely go looking for mischief before they started working on useful or interesting hobby projects. Whats more, if you drop out of work to live on the UBI, by definition, you are the poorest person in the country, and if that is not a reason to be depressed I don't know what is.

boerseth 2y ago

I doubt it was the UBI-like aspect of the pandemic that caused the depressive states. Isolation, less active lifestyles, locked inside. Imagine UBI, but with the opposite of all of those!

ungamedplayer 2y ago
I have seen it. Take a good look at the Australian government funding central Australian communities and the crime and abuse outcomes in that area. It will break your heart.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  The U.S. has Indian reservations. They're not known for being havens for self-actualization.

andai 2y ago

I expect that advances in AI and robotics will make most human labor obsolete (economically unviable) in the next few decades. I expect widespread adoption of UBI as a consequence. I have also considered the fact that most people just sort of "drift" if there isn't an external system forcing them to stay on track. I suspect we're going to see "fake jobs" subsidized by the system for the sake of maintaining widespread sanity. Well fake jobs isn't quite the right name, rather they'd be real jobs but a portion of the UBI budget (or wherever it comes from) would be spent maintaining a human economy for the people (most people?) who apparently require such a system to stay sane. I say fake because they wouldn't be economically viable without the subsidy.

andai 2y ago
Of course, work isn't the only way to stay busy or sane. I think we'll also see a lot more hobby groups and general community gatherings.

szundi 2y ago

As others commented there can be a dozen other reason to be depressed under the pandemic other than UBI like revenues. Also UBI does not stop you from doing work. UBI does not want to be a complete replacement of work related revenues, just the basic needs are covered. So if you have a minimum of ambition, you'll go for a job. UBI is just your safety net, so you must not become something that you feel is a slave or stuck in with bad people just to pay rent. Quite different story compared to what you painted here like people just don't work. Also would be interesting to see this unfolding for 10 years. Maybe humans are just lazy but quite the opposite can happen as well and those stories will drag people along. Of course some of us are going to fuck it up that's for sure.

fshbbdssbbgdd 2y ago

Does UBI pay enough to support a ski bum lifestyle? That’s probably what I would do if I had guaranteed income with no job.

nawgz 2y ago

> UBI-like circumstances for me and my friend group > during the pandemic Lol you really think generalizing emotional states from a global lockdown is smart?

itsthecourier 2y ago

Super honest feedback on UBI. I'm glad we saw it develop before us with COVID, there is something there that may work, but simple UBI doesn't work evidently

m3kw9 2y ago

Your friends are not working because of people are so used to the “rails” that a job guides them and spoon feed them what exactly to do and with what consequences, this is why UBI isn’t gonna be what that commenter fantasies about. Most people does not have the will power to force and give themselves consequences and stick to it, because they are their own boss.

tacocataco 2y ago

The minimum wage was meant to be a "universal basic wage", and it has been corroded to uselessness over time. $7.25 an hour What is different in modern times that would prevent the same from happening to UBI?

opo 2y ago
Is there an actual reference to the idea that the minimum wage was meant to be a "universal basic wage"? Is this in the original congressional debates, the legislation, comments by Roosevelt? (Searching for references to the phrase, I couldn't find anything from the timeframe of when the legislation was enacted.) >and it has been corroded to uselessness over time. The federal minimum wage has basically kept up with inflation since the 1930s. In the states where costs are higher, they generally have higher rates.

treflop 2y ago

During the pandemic, my roommate and I built so much shit. We built a full wooden camper setup with electrical and plumbing. We sketched and crafted new furniture for our apartment. We designed and built our own hydroponics system. And we skated a lot and hiked where we could. We did also play a lot of video games.

zackmorris 2y ago

I'm replying to you since you got the most upvotes :-) I take issue with your main point: that not having to work and receiving financial aid cause depression. Did anyone receiving the $1400 pandemic check from the government feel down about it? The notion is frankly preposterous. From this, we can infer that reducing one's labor burden also doesn't cause depression. So depression might come from elsewhere: maybe boredom, existential angst, who knows. But it's not pertinent to the debate around UBI. Now, we can talk about the financial toll of paying taxes for UBI, or the risk of inflation (there is none - that comes from increasing the money supply not incomes - although political machinations tend to preserve wealth at the top), or the collapse of various service industries that profit from underemployment. But those are probably best analyzed in simulation, since like with ventures and startups, there is no way to predict the benefits to society if 1% succeed even if 99% fail or are idle. My personal take is that sentiment for UBI will fall along political lines. We can use other spectrums for reference: * female vs male * positive reinforcement vs tough love * liberal vs conservative Since HN is mostly composed of tech workers, I'd predict a male-dominated slant with a preference for tough love and conservative values. It would have an inherent bias towards work over caregiving. So the majority of HN might disfavor UBI, regardless of any actual merits it provides. - I decided to get an estimate of UBI support on HN based on the sentiments of the replies here: https://deepai.org/chat https://deepai.org/chat please analyze the text from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41638103 (the text follows the news.ycombinator.com forum comment structure). divide the text into a list of replies. note that any line starting with ">" is a comment from a parent reply. determine the sentiment of each reply as to whether it favors UBI or disfavors UBI. count the replies favoring UBI, the replies disfavoring UBI, and the replies that are neutral/defensive/etc about UBI. * Favors UBI: 12 replies * Disfavors UBI: 26 replies * Neutral/Defensive: 12 replies Unfortunately, it started saying "I currently cannot access external websites, including the one you provided" so I had to stop at that preliminary estimate. I also tried changing the first line of the prompt and with manually pasting the page between "<< ... >>": please analyze the text between "<<" and ">>" that I've pasted after this prompt (the text was obtained from a news.ycombinator.com forum and follows the same comment structure). That returned similar results. https://chatgpt.com/ https://chatgpt.com/ has an arbitary length limit that can't separate prompt from context data, which makes it generally useless for this type of work. https://iask.ai https://iask.ai has similar limitations which negate its usefulness also. But going by the first estimate, it looks like about 1/4 of HN users favor UBI, 1/2 disfavor UBI, and 1/4 are neutral. It would be interesting to see this analysis on a larger sample size. - With 50% of HN seemingly disfavoring UBI, since we're essentially thought leaders in tech, it's highly unlikely that society as a whole will vote to adopt UBI. I think that's ..sad, for lack of a better word. We're basically saying that even though we know automation better than anyone, we don't believe that it can lead to a decrease in labor, or that its proceeds should be used to benefit everyone. I think that's an abdication of our role in working to make the world a better place, and why we got started in tech in the first place. So without a viable plan of action for getting to UBI, it's probably time to form an independent organization outside of public government and private industry. One that's opt-in, with a commitment to contribute a portion of one's future profits to an even payout of UBI, without means testing. After a lifetime of struggle with countless losses and no big win, despite hard work on a level that most people probably wouldn't believe, I would opt-in in a heartbeat. And I'm going to make it my life's work to focus on manifesting self-actualization for everyone, starting with bringing about UBI. That's how strongly I believe in its potential to change the world for the better, for us and for future generations.