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1. there are limits to natural resources. 2. UBI is basically keeping humans as pets. 3. what value do billionaires bring to the table if their insight and wi

1. there are limits to natural resources. 2. UBI is basically keeping humans as pets. 3. what value do billionaires bring to the table if their insight and wisdom can be replicated by a machine.

ohplz 2y ago
[dead]
RealityVoid 2y ago
> 2. UBI is basically keeping humans as pets. That's one way of looking at it. Another is that humans will find other ways of exploring and spending time that doesn't necessitate productivity. I would love to be FIRE, for example. A lot of people will love it. Some won't, and they will work. I think UBI is not there yet, but a hallmark of this is the rise of influencers and time burned on media and Netflix. This tells me that leisure time is rising and we have the economic capability of sustaining non-productive activities. But we're not there _yet_. I don't fear the inevitability of UBI in my lifetime for example. But I'm confident we'll be able to devise a useful system when we get there. In the end, we didn't have capitalism untill we thought up this system. There is surely another kind of system we could have converged to, I seriously doubt it's some magical rule of nature. But we did not, we wound up here. We'll end up in another place at some point.
- kcb 2y ago
  I don't think anyone would choose to work in any way like today, especially if work is focused on generating wealth with a large portion of it being redistributed. Work would have to change to something more like volunteerism.
  - RealityVoid 2y ago
    Well, many people would choose to work for the extra income that would bring them. Or some other status symbol that working could bring, welfare won't bring you that Rolex! Or some cultural shift that makes certain work "cool" (1). Or just fostering a sense of community and mission for doing certain work. People do many many many things motivated by other things than money. I agree that it's only a subset of the population, but if you decrease the work input needs to less than that percent of the population, that's doable. Still, as I said, we're not there yet and I believe we won't be there yet for a long long time. 1. Sometimes I wonder if the state shouldn't hire one of those fancy firms to push cultural outlooks about stuff to change. They have campaigns, but they mostly suck. If you put money on the table and say "hey, marketing company, by each 1% you improve this behavior you get x million dollars" I'm sure that would help motivation.
- razakel 2y ago
  >Another is that humans will find other ways of exploring and spending time that doesn't necessitate productivity. Take just about any British musician from the past 50 years - the ones who weren't middle or upper class almost all say that being on welfare (the dole) was what gave them the time and freedom to be creatives. UB40, for example, are literally named for the application form.
  - themaninthedark 2y ago
    I think that there are definitely people who have been on welfare and used it to better themselves and there are people who thrive in the face of adversity, overcoming the worst situations. I also think that there are a large number of people who ended up lost without direction or purpose. People are weird and different.
    - RealityVoid 2y ago
      Fully agree. But I do believe that cultural norms and societal expectations and what people push you to do with your life play a big role, so these are all levers to be pulled if you want to make a more self-driven population.
    - netsharc 2y ago
      > I also think that there are a large number of people who ended up lost without direction or purpose. People on welfare? I can imagine a lot of these people "accept" that the goal is to get themselves out of welfare, ASAP (especially if there's a deadline), but they can't see a way to that goal - e.g. applying for jobs but getting rejected left and right, and feeling dejected. With utopian UBI, one would be free to do what they want.. even if it's just jagging off the whole day.
      - themaninthedark 2y ago
        No, there a lot of people who have no idea what to do when they have free time. There are lots of older people who go back to work, not because they need the money but because the need the structure. In fact, there is an increased risk of death due to retirement. >Available evidence suggests it is unlikely that changes in health insurance and income can account for the increase in mortality at age 62. So, to further examine the plausibility of retirement leading to higher mortality, Moore examines which causes of death increase when men turn 62, and considers the connection between those and decreased labor force participation. https://business.purdue.edu/news/features/2022/retirement.php https://business.purdue.edu/news/features/2022/retirement.ph... >With utopian UBI, one would be free to do what they want.. even if it's just jagging off the whole day. People have need to feel like they are doing something. Usually something positive but they will settle for something negative, generally that ends poorly for society. Also UBI would only, as my understanding is, take care of the basics. Food, shelter, medical care. So you would end up with a population that has enough to survive, hungry for more and no way to achieve it.....
Tadpole9181 2y ago
This isn't a rebuttal, the only solution you're allowing space for is "kill everyone". The universe is finite and all things end. 1. We aren't close to exhausting our resources and we're getting better at minimization and reuse. We need to spend money on cultural initiatives that discourage consumerism and reduce waste. The bigger issues are not the limited resources in, but the nasty things going out: the stability of the biosphere is far more important and 100,000,000 people in America outright reject the responsibility. 2. No, it's not. Or is disability and child welfare and Medicare and veterans care all keeping them as pets too? It's called taking care of your people. Anyway, glad you're proposing solutions too. 3. They're leeches and need to be removed. Tax wealth and productivity gains from automation to pay for UBI.
alabastervlog 2y ago
> 2. UBI is basically keeping humans as pets. UBI is similar to confining an animal? Deciding what and when it eats, when it bathes, where it goes? Training it, whether it likes it or not? Deciding whether it gets medical care? Whether it gets to have companions of its own kind? I thought it was giving people money.
- Loughla 2y ago
  I mean, depending on the amount, yes it could be deciding all of the things you said. You would be limited in your choices depending on how much the ubi actually is.
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    Right now I get zero ubi so I guess I am even more limited on all of those, and am even more a pet.
    - c0nducktr 2y ago
      Right now you can live without it.
      - alabastervlog 2y ago
        As a pet. More of a pet than someone on UBI. I'm someone already experiencing the bad thing we worry might happen to someone on UBI—withdrawal of it. Not the worst, unclear to me why this was a concern in the first place. Be cool to have UBI though.
mitthrowaway2 2y ago
> 3. what value do billionaires bring to the table It's a good question. The Reagan-era response would be that having billionaires inspires people to work hard, take risks, come up with ideas and better themselves. In a post-scarcity era where the only route to wealth is capital, and machines handle the hard work and ideas, I'm not sure what benefit remains from having billionaires. What good are incentives at that point?

1. there are limits to natural resources. 2. UBI is basically keeping humans as pets. 3. what value do billionaires bring to the table if their insight and wisdom can be replicated by a machine.

ohplz 2y ago

[dead]

RealityVoid 2y ago

> 2. UBI is basically keeping humans as pets. That's one way of looking at it. Another is that humans will find other ways of exploring and spending time that doesn't necessitate productivity. I would love to be FIRE, for example. A lot of people will love it. Some won't, and they will work. I think UBI is not there yet, but a hallmark of this is the rise of influencers and time burned on media and Netflix. This tells me that leisure time is rising and we have the economic capability of sustaining non-productive activities. But we're not there _yet_. I don't fear the inevitability of UBI in my lifetime for example. But I'm confident we'll be able to devise a useful system when we get there. In the end, we didn't have capitalism untill we thought up this system. There is surely another kind of system we could have converged to, I seriously doubt it's some magical rule of nature. But we did not, we wound up here. We'll end up in another place at some point.

kcb 2y ago
I don't think anyone would choose to work in any way like today, especially if work is focused on generating wealth with a large portion of it being redistributed. Work would have to change to something more like volunteerism.
- RealityVoid 2y ago
  Well, many people would choose to work for the extra income that would bring them. Or some other status symbol that working could bring, welfare won't bring you that Rolex! Or some cultural shift that makes certain work "cool" (1). Or just fostering a sense of community and mission for doing certain work. People do many many many things motivated by other things than money. I agree that it's only a subset of the population, but if you decrease the work input needs to less than that percent of the population, that's doable. Still, as I said, we're not there yet and I believe we won't be there yet for a long long time. 1. Sometimes I wonder if the state shouldn't hire one of those fancy firms to push cultural outlooks about stuff to change. They have campaigns, but they mostly suck. If you put money on the table and say "hey, marketing company, by each 1% you improve this behavior you get x million dollars" I'm sure that would help motivation.
razakel 2y ago
>Another is that humans will find other ways of exploring and spending time that doesn't necessitate productivity. Take just about any British musician from the past 50 years - the ones who weren't middle or upper class almost all say that being on welfare (the dole) was what gave them the time and freedom to be creatives. UB40, for example, are literally named for the application form.
- themaninthedark 2y ago
  I think that there are definitely people who have been on welfare and used it to better themselves and there are people who thrive in the face of adversity, overcoming the worst situations. I also think that there are a large number of people who ended up lost without direction or purpose. People are weird and different.
  - RealityVoid 2y ago
    Fully agree. But I do believe that cultural norms and societal expectations and what people push you to do with your life play a big role, so these are all levers to be pulled if you want to make a more self-driven population.
  - netsharc 2y ago
    > I also think that there are a large number of people who ended up lost without direction or purpose. People on welfare? I can imagine a lot of these people "accept" that the goal is to get themselves out of welfare, ASAP (especially if there's a deadline), but they can't see a way to that goal - e.g. applying for jobs but getting rejected left and right, and feeling dejected. With utopian UBI, one would be free to do what they want.. even if it's just jagging off the whole day.
    - themaninthedark 2y ago
      No, there a lot of people who have no idea what to do when they have free time. There are lots of older people who go back to work, not because they need the money but because the need the structure. In fact, there is an increased risk of death due to retirement. >Available evidence suggests it is unlikely that changes in health insurance and income can account for the increase in mortality at age 62. So, to further examine the plausibility of retirement leading to higher mortality, Moore examines which causes of death increase when men turn 62, and considers the connection between those and decreased labor force participation. https://business.purdue.edu/news/features/2022/retirement.php https://business.purdue.edu/news/features/2022/retirement.ph... >With utopian UBI, one would be free to do what they want.. even if it's just jagging off the whole day. People have need to feel like they are doing something. Usually something positive but they will settle for something negative, generally that ends poorly for society. Also UBI would only, as my understanding is, take care of the basics. Food, shelter, medical care. So you would end up with a population that has enough to survive, hungry for more and no way to achieve it.....

Tadpole9181 2y ago

This isn't a rebuttal, the only solution you're allowing space for is "kill everyone". The universe is finite and all things end. 1. We aren't close to exhausting our resources and we're getting better at minimization and reuse. We need to spend money on cultural initiatives that discourage consumerism and reduce waste. The bigger issues are not the limited resources in, but the nasty things going out: the stability of the biosphere is far more important and 100,000,000 people in America outright reject the responsibility. 2. No, it's not. Or is disability and child welfare and Medicare and veterans care all keeping them as pets too? It's called taking care of your people. Anyway, glad you're proposing solutions too. 3. They're leeches and need to be removed. Tax wealth and productivity gains from automation to pay for UBI.

alabastervlog 2y ago

> 2. UBI is basically keeping humans as pets. UBI is similar to confining an animal? Deciding what and when it eats, when it bathes, where it goes? Training it, whether it likes it or not? Deciding whether it gets medical care? Whether it gets to have companions of its own kind? I thought it was giving people money.

Loughla 2y ago
I mean, depending on the amount, yes it could be deciding all of the things you said. You would be limited in your choices depending on how much the ubi actually is.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  Right now I get zero ubi so I guess I am even more limited on all of those, and am even more a pet.
  - c0nducktr 2y ago
    Right now you can live without it.
    - alabastervlog 2y ago
      As a pet. More of a pet than someone on UBI. I'm someone already experiencing the bad thing we worry might happen to someone on UBI—withdrawal of it. Not the worst, unclear to me why this was a concern in the first place. Be cool to have UBI though.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago

> 3. what value do billionaires bring to the table It's a good question. The Reagan-era response would be that having billionaires inspires people to work hard, take risks, come up with ideas and better themselves. In a post-scarcity era where the only route to wealth is capital, and machines handle the hard work and ideas, I'm not sure what benefit remains from having billionaires. What good are incentives at that point?