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So are we to compensate the workers who make pipes and plumbers that install them each time we open the tap and water comes out? Or each time an air conditioner

So are we to compensate the workers who make pipes and plumbers that install them each time we open the tap and water comes out? Or each time an air conditioner turns on to cool you off? Do we compensate the manufacturers of processors and fiber optic lines each time we write a message online instead of needing to give it to a courier to take to a scribe's home to copy? Instead of making your entire life into a microtransaction-fest requiring dystopian tracking of everything, what if we just converted expected sequence of value to current dollars and made a lump sum payment? Of course different people will have different utility functions, so we could allow them to judge what is a fair trade.

danaris 1y ago
> So are we to compensate the workers who make pipes and plumbers that install them each time we open the tap and water comes out? This philosophy only really applies for things that we have to pay for on a subscription, or in a metered fashion. So setting up a fund to ensure that people who laid the pipes, etc, get paid a portion of our collective water bills would follow, but doing the same with our air conditioning would not. Ultimately, that sort of tracking is likely much more effort than it's worth, and what makes by far the most sense is a UBI, funded by appropriate taxes.
- ndriscoll 1y ago
  So do we exclude open LLMs like Deepseek or Llama then? If you do your own taxes on a computer, you don't owe anyone anything, but if you pay an accountant and they use a computer, they should revenue share with the entire chain of production from mining to manufacturing for the tools they use? Or if you pay an HVAC technician, they should revenue share from each job to miners and tool manufacturers, but that's not necessary if you DIY? Why is the idea of just owning a tool bad in the first place? There still seems to be plenty of labor to be done to improve the world before we reach a point of unconditional UBI making sense. Why not have guaranteed work instead? Plenty of streets to clean or beautify, kids to tutor, buildings that need efficiency upgrades, etc.
  - danaris 1y ago
    There's plenty of resources to go around to make UBI (the "unconditional" is baked right in) make sense. There's plenty of work that people want to do, that's otherwise unprofitable, that UBI would enable. The barrier to UBI is not that we don't have enough to go around if not everyone is doing "productive work". It's that we're stuck on a model of human value that only considers productive work, and that we're stuck on a model of resource ownership that gives everything to the people at the top. "Guaranteed jobs" is certainly better than what we have today, but it seems stupid to tell someone who's got an amazing artistic talent, "Nope, you don't get to do the thing you're great at that gives you fulfillment in life and brightens other people's lives with your work. You have to clean the streets."
    - ndriscoll 1y ago
      We value productive work because there's always so much of it to do. We have programs to fund the arts already. If we want to expand those programs, we should just do that. At some point though we will have enough artists (especially since ML models can now generate soulless corporate art). Given that we're currently relying on an underpaid foreign underclass for basic needs like food, and every developed country has a policy of leaning on large amounts of immigration to fill in gaps in the workforce, it seems to me that we haven't demonstrated that we have enough to go around to then support people doing nothing.

danaris 1y ago

> So are we to compensate the workers who make pipes and plumbers that install them each time we open the tap and water comes out? This philosophy only really applies for things that we have to pay for on a subscription, or in a metered fashion. So setting up a fund to ensure that people who laid the pipes, etc, get paid a portion of our collective water bills would follow, but doing the same with our air conditioning would not. Ultimately, that sort of tracking is likely much more effort than it's worth, and what makes by far the most sense is a UBI, funded by appropriate taxes.

ndriscoll 1y ago
So do we exclude open LLMs like Deepseek or Llama then? If you do your own taxes on a computer, you don't owe anyone anything, but if you pay an accountant and they use a computer, they should revenue share with the entire chain of production from mining to manufacturing for the tools they use? Or if you pay an HVAC technician, they should revenue share from each job to miners and tool manufacturers, but that's not necessary if you DIY? Why is the idea of just owning a tool bad in the first place? There still seems to be plenty of labor to be done to improve the world before we reach a point of unconditional UBI making sense. Why not have guaranteed work instead? Plenty of streets to clean or beautify, kids to tutor, buildings that need efficiency upgrades, etc.
- danaris 1y ago
  There's plenty of resources to go around to make UBI (the "unconditional" is baked right in) make sense. There's plenty of work that people want to do, that's otherwise unprofitable, that UBI would enable. The barrier to UBI is not that we don't have enough to go around if not everyone is doing "productive work". It's that we're stuck on a model of human value that only considers productive work, and that we're stuck on a model of resource ownership that gives everything to the people at the top. "Guaranteed jobs" is certainly better than what we have today, but it seems stupid to tell someone who's got an amazing artistic talent, "Nope, you don't get to do the thing you're great at that gives you fulfillment in life and brightens other people's lives with your work. You have to clean the streets."
  - ndriscoll 1y ago
    We value productive work because there's always so much of it to do. We have programs to fund the arts already. If we want to expand those programs, we should just do that. At some point though we will have enough artists (especially since ML models can now generate soulless corporate art). Given that we're currently relying on an underpaid foreign underclass for basic needs like food, and every developed country has a policy of leaning on large amounts of immigration to fill in gaps in the workforce, it seems to me that we haven't demonstrated that we have enough to go around to then support people doing nothing.