8 ms·

I think this is the piece so many that are stuck in the hustle culture mindset miss, and why they are so quick to dismiss anything like UBI or a strong social s

I think this is the piece so many that are stuck in the hustle culture mindset miss, and why they are so quick to dismiss anything like UBI or a strong social safety net that might “reduce people’s motivation”. There are many many creative, caring people that are motivated to create things or care for each other for the sake of it, not for some financial reward. Imagine the incredible programs, websites, games, crafts, artworks, animations, performances, literature, journalism, hobby clubs, support groups, community organizations that would spring into existence if we all just had more bandwidth for them while having our baseline needs met. Would it be chaotic? Sure, in the same way that open source or any other form of self-organization is. But boy it sounds a whole lot better than our current model of slavery-with-extra-steps…

ThrowawayR2 9mo ago
The hikikomori[1] or NEETs ought to be a hotbed of creative works if your hypothesis is true. And they aren't, plain and simple. There is effectively zero evidence suggesting a population on UBI will result in some sort of outpouring of creativity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori and it's not a phenomenon limited to Japan.
- adezxc 9mo ago
  and yet their hypothesis is true, there are already many people, with or without UBI, that volunteer, create things and in general help people surrounding them without any reward and they are the backbone of every society, not the career-chasers
  - pixelready 9mo ago
    I think phenomena like hikkikomori have more to do with (at least perceived) social rejection than lack of motivation. If the only acceptable message you receive from society is that you must chase the brass ring constantly and any setback means you are an abject failure, then withdrawing from the pain of that rejection makes sense for anyone who has experienced enough setbacks or strongly feels alien to that culture. A broader societal shift would occur if it was truly universally understood that everyone has value as a human being separate from their labor market leverage or capital accumulation. There will always be strivers who measure their self worth against superficial standards (Russ Hanneman “doors go up” hand gesture here), I just don’t see why everyone should be forced to play that game or starve I suppose. Giving everyone the option to settle for a life of basic dignity while caring for those around them, or going all in on some academic / creative pursuit seems equally valid investments for society.
    - skinnymuch 9mo ago
      Yes. The only real conclusion from people like NEETs is that society failed them. Outside of a fraction of total people (or when addictions are at play), it is very rare that someone never wants to be productive.
- dpark 9mo ago
  Hikikomori seems to be largely a symptom of mental illness. NEETs almost by definition are not productive. The fact that these groups are not producing mass amounts of creative works in no way implies that currently-productive people would not produce significantly more creative works if they had the time and resources to do so.
- christoff12 9mo ago
  a) I'm not sure it logically follows that the hikikomori would be a particularly artistic group, thus don't understand the assertion; b) how do we know they aren't? By definition, they wouldn't be out promoting their works or gaining recognition. Also, there is at least one example of UBI contributing to an increase in activity: "According to the research, 31% of BIA recipients reported an increased ability to sustain themselves through arts work alone, and the number of people who reported low pay as a career barrier went down from one third to 17%. These changes were identified after the first six months of the scheme and remained stable as the scheme continued." [1] [1] https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/ireland-s-basic-income-for-the-arts-scheme-to-become-permanent-from-202 https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/ireland-s-basic-income-fo...
- tehjoker 9mo ago
  The UK music culture of the 1960s was in large part due to the "dole" or cash payments to poor people.
  - joe_mamba 9mo ago
    I don't think that's the only reason since the dole exists today too and there's not as much good music coming out. Jazz and other music genres in the US came without government welfare, they came from struggle and oppression. Motivated artists will still work part time to fund their dream, they don't necessarily wait for welfare to start making art. IF you were to give a lot of people free money today, will you get more and higher quality art in return, or will most people just drink and smoke that money while playing videogames at home? Society, people and the world today are vastly different than back in the 1960s, so we need new polices targeting the society of today, not 1960s policies.
    - tehjoker 9mo ago
      What do you think those policies might look like? It's true that we have more screen based entertainment options today. We also have a very different music distribution system that is likely influencing things substantially. In the 1960s, I imagine getting on the radio was what it took to launch a career, now it's matching the algorithm on spotify.
      - joe_mamba 9mo ago
        I don't know what the right policies would be, but I noticed that smart, driven and disciplined driven people will always find a way to work around algorithms to get to the top, it's not something the government can legislate in order to get a desired outcome. It's not like becoming famous back then was easy either. Plenty of good bands never got anywhere. The Mona Lisa wasn't a famous painting until someone stole it in 1911, before that nobody gave damn and now it's the most famous of them all. Survivorship bias and randomness in art is real.
    - AngryData 9mo ago
      What do you mean there isn't much good music coming out? Maybe the genres people are creating more of don't match your personal preference, or you aren't looking for it and are just relying on major media companies to show it to you, but ive never had more high quality music of more variety than ever before. Much of it is farther in the electronica genres that many people somehow still ignore the existence of but I haven't had to listen to the same song twice unless I wanted to in a number of years. Just on my youtube discovery feed right now I got multiple 1+ hour synthwave mixes, EBM/EDM, industrial bass, multiple forms of metal, filk, jungle and DnB, punk rock, old and new jazz styles, and more, 95% of which was made in the last 2 years.
- skinnymuch 9mo ago
  No that wouldn’t. If the zeitgeist, culture, society at large are antagonizing toward you, if you are meant to feel like a useless negative part of society, why would we expect amazing output from them? This reinforces others talking about the flaws of hustle and grind culture. The status quo create the conditions for the negatives and then point to that and say “see”.
- remove-resolve 9mo ago
  People who are specifically not employed because they aren't motivated to do anything at all don't seem to be the best sample for what average people could do if they had more free time during their waking hours.
  - nickff 9mo ago
    It seems unlikely that the most motivated people will take up UBI; the most likely UBI recipients are those who are marginally employed, and likely marginally motivated.
    - tcfhgj 9mo ago
      did you mean to write the opposite of what you wrote?
      - nickff 9mo ago
        Accidentally posted in the middle of an edit; corrected now, thanks.
        locknitpicker 9mo ago
        You posted the edit over 7 hours ago and it still doesn't make sense. You should check what the U in UBI stands for.
    - weirdmantis69 9mo ago
      Guess what the U stands for
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - Loughla 9mo ago
      What do you think UBI is and how do you think it works? Honestly.
- anonymous908213 9mo ago
  Um, hikikomori are a hotbed of creative works, though. Your entire premise is false. I don't know that you could get reliable statistics proving this claim, but Japan likely has the highest number of creatives per capita of any country in the world, and a ton of them are NEETs who spend their time drawing fanart or writing trashy webnovels. The vast majority of this creative work isn't commercially successful, of course, which is part of why they're NEETs.
  - nickff 9mo ago
    Can it really be a 'hotbed' if there is no demand (or even maybe awareness) of the works? That just seems like a hobby done for selfish reasons.
    - anonymous908213 9mo ago
      Quoting GGGP: >There are many many creative, caring people that are motivated to create things or care for each other for the sake of it, not for some financial reward. Imagine the incredible programs, websites, games, crafts, artworks, animations, performances, literature, journalism, hobby clubs, support groups, community organizations that would spring into existence if we all just had more bandwidth for them while having our baseline needs met. As it happens, the Japanese internet is absolutely rich with content created by individuals, most of it done for the sake of love for creative work rather than financial motivation. I spend much of my free time either consuming it or contributing to the pool of such work myself. The entire point of this discussion thread was about the potential for creativity if you were to unshackle it from the demands of financial self-sustenance. As an aside, I believe this phenomenon manifested as strongly as it has in Japan because of the extremely low cost of living relative to the level of economic development; a studio apartment can be had for less than the equivalent of $200 USD per month, and many parents can afford to and are willing to pay this price to get the NEETs out of their house. In essence enabling them, not that they want to enable their adult children to depend on them but the burden is small enough that they can tolerate it.
      - nickff 9mo ago
- robrtsql 9mo ago
  NEETs are, by definition, people who are either unwilling or unable to do anything productive, so I don't think they are a good example. I expect you'd get better results if you include the people who are employed today.
- datsci_est_2015 9mo ago
  Counterpoint to your counterpoint: the flourishing of the arts in Bohemian districts[1] in the 19th and 20th centuries. Maybe there’s a feedback loop with societal expectations regarding the hikikomori / NEETs? The more they are demonized as unproductive, the less productive they become. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemianism
- nl 9mo ago
  > The hikikomori[1] or NEETs ought to be a hotbed of creative works if your hypothesis is true. This seems a non-sequitur. People whose motivation is isolation are unlikely to try to generate anything for other people. But your general idea is correct - is there group where motivated people don't need to worry about money? Well yes - we see this in artist colonies and indeed in entrepreneurial retreats like https://www.recurse.com/ https://www.recurse.com/
- k2052 9mo ago
  Chiming in as a former-ish member of the demographic you are just making stuff up about. There is no way to determine how much and how UBI would impact hikikomori because the demographic is inherently adverse to study. I personally know that some crucial open source work is maintained by people with schizoid-avoidant spectrum issues. I know a lot of them but I won't out them here. hikikomori are driven to be invisible because their extreme pathological avoidance of attention. You don't know them and their contributions because they don't want you to know that they still live at home, out of their car door dashing because no company ever hires them, are shut-in because of serious unhealed trauma, are still deeply in poverty in such a wealthy industry etc. A lot of these humans if given a no pressure handout of cash would likely contribute more to society. Would most not contribute? idk. But I do know that the contributions of those who would might offset all the others. Many prominent pseudonymous devs have had hikikomori traits. _why practically inspired a generation of Ruby devs. visualidiot (RIP) was a crucial driver behind a lot of web dev culture in the 2010s. Heck, I made significant contributions to Joomla and WP themes back in the day -- you have probably used sites with themes or plugins I made. Also I ran a blog a decade ago that used to rank prominently in google and receive dozens of emails a month from people struggling with mental illness -- many people crediting me with saving their lives. Surely that is something of value to society. Don't go around spreading bullshit like it is facts about a group of people we know little about.
  - ranger_danger 9mo ago
    https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/creative-explorations/201911/are-brilliance-and-genius-often-associated-disturbance https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/creative-exploration...
    - derektank 9mo ago
      Love a headline that conforms to Betteridge’s law
      - majorchord 9mo ago
        Strangely though, all the studies cited on the wiki page seem to suggest that there is a higher number of "yes" questions than "no." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines#Studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines#...
- locknitpicker 9mo ago
  > The hikikomori[1] or NEETs ought to be a hotbed of creative works if your hypothesis is true. And they aren't, plain and simple. It's funny how you chose to frame groups as "NEET", but you somehow failed to refer to "aspiring artist" or "aspiring musician" or "aspiring novelist". I mean "aspiring artist" already implies engaging in an activity albeit not professionally or reaching success. You also somehow failed to refer to "amateur artist". As if not enjoying enough success to live comfortably with your art to the point of requiring to hold a job to pay rent is something that would validate your argument. I'm not sure you are even aware of the fact that most of the mainstream artists you see around are not even professional, in the sense that in spite of their success and touring they still need to hold a job to make ends meet. Check out any summer festival, pick any random non-headliner band, and see how many members hold jobs, and had to take time off to go touring. Even some music legends have a history of holding humble jobs at least up to the time they made it. See Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi, who famously lost a couple of fingers in an industrial accident while working at a sheet metal factory. It's not just music, either. Luminaries like Fernando Pessoa could very well be classified as the ultimate NEET as he spent years of his early life not in education, employment, or training.
- Dilettante_ 9mo ago
  Hikkis will barely have their (speaking from Maslow) physiological needs met, and seldom their safety and security needs. This leaves them with very few mental-emotional resources to put into even having any creative thoughts. UBI would absolutely uplift these people into a position where they can start producing output.
kiba 9mo ago
Not really against welfare programs...but... UBI and safety net would just get eaten by economic rent. Basically your landlord would just raise the price of renting space leaving people right where they left off. You need to impose a tax called the Land Value Tax to prevent landowners eating up the public money. Even then we got a long list of much needed public spending before we can even think about a Citizen's Dividend.
- derektank 9mo ago
  > UBI and safety net would just get eaten by economic rent. Basically your landlord would just raise the price of renting space leaving people right where they left off. This is only true if there’s a static supply of rental units, which isn’t true in most places (despite new construction being constrained by regulation in many places). I support an LVT, but it is not a necessary precondition for redistribution.
keybored 9mo ago
UBI is an idea from another money-centric ideology, namely “libertarianism”. It’s not an idea for fostering creativity. It’s an idea for dealing with less employable dependents of society, while the true dependents (parasitic capitalists) take the real spoils of industrialized productivity.
- godshatter 9mo ago
  Doesn't UBI come from taxes? I can't reconcile the idea of welfare for everyone resonating very well with any of the libertarians I know. Personal charity, sure, absolutely, but not government controlled payouts to people, even if that includes everyone. They would probably consider it better than the current welfare system with all it's bureaucracy, but that's as positive a response as I can expect. Most libertarians I know (and I consider myself an on and off libertarian as I learn more about it) want the government to stick to making sure people's rights aren't being trodden upon and otherwise leave us alone.
  - keybored 9mo ago
    See Milton Friedman. Or Friedrich Hayek if Friedman isn’t crazy enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_advocates_of_universal_basic_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_advocates_of_universal...
PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
I've made my living working fulltime on a single open source project for more than 15 years now. I think it is important to differentiate between different kinds of projects that people might undertake, and 3 particular categories always come to my mind (you may have more): * "plumbing" - all that infrastructure that isn't something you'd ever use directly, but the tools you do use wouldn't function without it. This work is generally intense during a "startup" phase, but then eases back to light-to-occasional as a stable phase is reached. It will likely happen whether there is funding or not, but may take longer and reach a different result without it. * "well defined goal" - something that a person or a team can actually finish. It might or might not benefit from funding during its creation, but at some point, it is just done, and there's almost no reason to think about continuing work other than availability and minimal upgrades to follow other tools or platforms. * "ever-evolving" - something that has no fixed end-goal, and will continue to evolve essentially forever. Depending on the scale of the task, this may or may not benefit from being funded so that there are people working on it full time, for a long time. These descriptions originate in my work on software, but I think something similar can be said for lots of other human activities as well, without much modification.
- pamcake 9mo ago
  If a "well-defined goal" project gets popular and sticky enough, it can metamorphize into an "ever-evolving" project by injection of VC capital.
  - theshrike79 9mo ago
    Or just good old scope creep =) https://www.laws-of-software.com/laws/zawinski/ https://www.laws-of-software.com/laws/zawinski/ > Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can. -- James Zawinski, 1995
john-h-k 9mo ago
> There are many many creative, caring people that are motivated to create things or care for each other for the sake of it Very true. In a UBU world I have no doubt we’d have many exciting libraries, lots of pottery, and many books. But I’ve never met anyone passionate about collecting bins, development of accounting tooling, or pricing of phone insurance. You need rewards to allocate people effectively, because “passion” is random and not related to what people actually need
- true_religion 9mo ago
  I’ve met a lot of people who are passionate about public cleanliness to the point of organizing rubbish pickups, beach cleanups, and river dredging using their own power. With UBI, you may have to take your own trash to the landfill but rest assured the larger ecology will still be taken care of by passionate people. I think a bigger issue will be that the people who are passionate for a project may not be the most effective at accomplishing it, and without income you can’t motivate those more effective people into working on the project.
  - somenameforme 9mo ago
    This sounds like it'd be one of the many ideas that sounds great on paper but in reality just creates an even greater stratification in society. I think you're completely correct that in many places, particularly higher end - people would come together to keep the place looking great, possibly even better since you get to 'own' it on some ways. But on the other hand in many 'urban' neighborhoods, there's far less motivation to take care of things - and once you remove the external actors going in there to do what little they already do, these places would fall into an even more pitiful state very rapidly. But I also think we're looking at things superficially. There's a lot of technical work that can't be casually done like plumbing or electrical that is currently moderately compensated. In an UBI world costs for this would likely skyrocket which would lead to an even higher UBI which would lead to even higher costs which would lead to Zimbabwe. Pessimism aside I would probably actually support it, simply because I think it would be the ultimate expression of liberty - but you have to realize that you're not going to create anything like the same society we have, but with everybody being able to independently support themselves. You're going to completely destroy the contemporary economy and create a new entity that would probably be much closer to something of times long since past when the overwhelming majority of America was self employed. 'The Expanse' offers a realistic take on what UBI would probably entail.
carlosjobim 9mo ago
1. Work for free making open source code and giving it away for free. 2. Giant corporations take all my code without giving me anything. 3. Now I'm really angry! I should have gotten some money from them! 4. The government must force my neighbours to pay a salary to me! 5. Continue to work for free making open source code for giant corporations, so they can profit. How about instead?: 1. Don't work for free or give away your code. Instead charge a fair price for people to use your code or software. 2. If your code is good, people and corporations pay you for it. 3. Now you're really happy! You got money for your labour. 4. The government doesn't need to oppress innocent people to pay your salary. 5. You can continue to work for money and make more money.
- whattheheckheck 9mo ago
  And everyone can get stuck with big corporation proprietary software that they have no idea how it runs or what it does under the hood
  - carlosjobim 9mo ago
    You can then make your own software. Nobody owes you free software.
    - ranger_danger 9mo ago
      You're not wrong, but I think it is increasingly harder (and perhaps socially taboo) to stay far away from proprietary software while still being part of a functioning society. FOSS zealots love to dunk on capitalism, but unless you're prepared to go off-grid and live in the woods, and try to convince other people to be poor along with you, you might be very lonely.
- no-name-here 9mo ago
  I'm not agreeing with the OP proposal, but with LLMs today, no matter how you license your code and no matter what ToS or other prohibition you put on it, there does not seem to be any way to prevent LLMs from absorbing and using it to implement a replacement based on your code unless you choose to only do closed source code - there's no "opt out" for someone's source code, let alone an opt-in (again, unless we give up open source). (A very different situation from the AI companies themselves, where companies such as Anthropic make Claude Code closed source, and their ToS provide strict prohibitions on using it to work on something that could compete with them - can you imagine if Windows or MacOS's ToS prohibited people from using their OS to work on a competing OS, of if the VSCode ToS prohibited people from using VSCode to work on another editor?)
piekvorst 9mo ago
“Strong” social safety can be achieved only by enslaving producers who have to provide the ground for “many many” caring people. This is always the case. Consider Russian support of young families: the government takes the money from families without children and gives it to those who have. Personally, I cannot imagine a worse moral depravity than supporting this atrocity as a matter of justice. Capitalism is not “slavery with extra steps,” it’s freedom in a fragile world repleted with conflicting goals. Just because people don’t agree with your goals doesn’t make you a slave.
- derektank 9mo ago
  >the government takes the money from families without children and gives it to those who have IDK, this seems perfectly reasonable if the state also provides an old age insurance / pension system for retirees. Without a younger generation of people paying into the system (i.e. the children of parents) these systems collapse. It seems appropriate to support the people that keep the government functioning. Of course, I’m guessing you oppose systems like social security too, given your comment. I just find it odd that you can’t imagine anything worse than giving money to parents, given most governments give money to a lot of people, most of whom aren’t opting into anything as noble as parenthood.
  - ZoomZoomZoom 9mo ago
    Giving uncharacteristically large direct stimuli for procreation disproportionately incentivizes the people in dire need of money, meddling with the rationality of the decision and increasing social tension later. The only other way to be promised a big pile of cash from the govt there is a military contract.
golergka 9mo ago
> Imagine the incredible programs, websites, games, crafts, artworks, animations, performances, literature, journalism, hobby clubs, support groups, community organizations that would spring into existence if we all just had more bandwidth for them while having our baseline needs met. If people find these things useful, they can actually pay for them. If you can't find people who value it enough to pay for it, then may be it's not as valuable as you think it is.
- Dilettante_ 9mo ago
  By that measure, doing something for a poor person who cannot pay would be entirely worthless, while delivering food to a particularly generous billionaire would be more valuable than an entire month of an average person's work. The error of your argument lies in the assumption that any participant in the market possesses enough money to pay the true "value-to-them" of a thing.
croon 9mo ago
I'm generally an advocate for a robust safety-net such that people shouldn't be on their knees every month just to scrape by with food/housing/healthcare, and would love it if we reached Star Trek/The Culture levels of post-scarcity, but I'm simultaneously not convinced by this idea, but possibly from another angle. 1) I'm not sure I want Github to be the arbiter of FOSS resource distribution (See: Spotify and small artists). 2) A second order effect could be creating a reliance on it which enables a future rug pull once the current framework is eroded. TL;DR: I wholly agree with your overall vision of the future, but not necessarily this step towards it.
paulddraper 9mo ago
Somehow no one talks about the incredible plumbing.
bloppe 9mo ago
I support UBI, funded by high capital gains taxes, to offset the growing value of capital relative to labor due to ever-improving automation, but I think it's silly to think a significant number of people will ever be happy with UBI alone. First of all, "baseline needs" are fluid. These days, electricity and internet are broadly considered baseline needs, but would have been unimaginable luxuries for previous generations. The future will inevitably bring new "baseline needs" we can hardly yet comprehend. Secondly, the vast majority of people will never be satisfied with the bare minimum, no matter what that minimum is. If you have a friend who can afford fancy things, and you can't, then more likely than not, you will not be satisfied. It's also much easier to attract a partner if you're financially successful, for similar reasons. That's just human nature. Just because you don't have to worry about starving or succumbing to the elements does not mean people will stop competing with one another.
- DerArzt 9mo ago
  > The vast majority of people will never be satisfied with the bare minimum Isn't that a benefit for UBI? If everyone's basic needs are met and they want more, nothing would stop them from taking a job and making more money right?
  - bloppe 9mo ago
    Ya. I'm saying I support UBI, and that the concern most people raise about UBI (usually along the lines of "I don't think anybody should just coast by without working") is completely unfounded. The parent post was talking about how everybody would have more time for unpaid pursuits if only we had UBI. I'm saying that I don't think UBI would change that much. People will continue to pursue unpaid hobbies much like they do today, but making money will still be just as important.

ThrowawayR2 9mo ago

The hikikomori[1] or NEETs ought to be a hotbed of creative works if your hypothesis is true. And they aren't, plain and simple. There is effectively zero evidence suggesting a population on UBI will result in some sort of outpouring of creativity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori and it's not a phenomenon limited to Japan.

adezxc 9mo ago
and yet their hypothesis is true, there are already many people, with or without UBI, that volunteer, create things and in general help people surrounding them without any reward and they are the backbone of every society, not the career-chasers
- pixelready 9mo ago
  I think phenomena like hikkikomori have more to do with (at least perceived) social rejection than lack of motivation. If the only acceptable message you receive from society is that you must chase the brass ring constantly and any setback means you are an abject failure, then withdrawing from the pain of that rejection makes sense for anyone who has experienced enough setbacks or strongly feels alien to that culture. A broader societal shift would occur if it was truly universally understood that everyone has value as a human being separate from their labor market leverage or capital accumulation. There will always be strivers who measure their self worth against superficial standards (Russ Hanneman “doors go up” hand gesture here), I just don’t see why everyone should be forced to play that game or starve I suppose. Giving everyone the option to settle for a life of basic dignity while caring for those around them, or going all in on some academic / creative pursuit seems equally valid investments for society.
  - skinnymuch 9mo ago
    Yes. The only real conclusion from people like NEETs is that society failed them. Outside of a fraction of total people (or when addictions are at play), it is very rare that someone never wants to be productive.
dpark 9mo ago
Hikikomori seems to be largely a symptom of mental illness. NEETs almost by definition are not productive. The fact that these groups are not producing mass amounts of creative works in no way implies that currently-productive people would not produce significantly more creative works if they had the time and resources to do so.
christoff12 9mo ago
a) I'm not sure it logically follows that the hikikomori would be a particularly artistic group, thus don't understand the assertion; b) how do we know they aren't? By definition, they wouldn't be out promoting their works or gaining recognition. Also, there is at least one example of UBI contributing to an increase in activity: "According to the research, 31% of BIA recipients reported an increased ability to sustain themselves through arts work alone, and the number of people who reported low pay as a career barrier went down from one third to 17%. These changes were identified after the first six months of the scheme and remained stable as the scheme continued." [1] [1] https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/ireland-s-basic-income-for-the-arts-scheme-to-become-permanent-from-202 https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/ireland-s-basic-income-fo...
tehjoker 9mo ago
The UK music culture of the 1960s was in large part due to the "dole" or cash payments to poor people.
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  I don't think that's the only reason since the dole exists today too and there's not as much good music coming out. Jazz and other music genres in the US came without government welfare, they came from struggle and oppression. Motivated artists will still work part time to fund their dream, they don't necessarily wait for welfare to start making art. IF you were to give a lot of people free money today, will you get more and higher quality art in return, or will most people just drink and smoke that money while playing videogames at home? Society, people and the world today are vastly different than back in the 1960s, so we need new polices targeting the society of today, not 1960s policies.
  - tehjoker 9mo ago
    What do you think those policies might look like? It's true that we have more screen based entertainment options today. We also have a very different music distribution system that is likely influencing things substantially. In the 1960s, I imagine getting on the radio was what it took to launch a career, now it's matching the algorithm on spotify.
    - joe_mamba 9mo ago
      I don't know what the right policies would be, but I noticed that smart, driven and disciplined driven people will always find a way to work around algorithms to get to the top, it's not something the government can legislate in order to get a desired outcome. It's not like becoming famous back then was easy either. Plenty of good bands never got anywhere. The Mona Lisa wasn't a famous painting until someone stole it in 1911, before that nobody gave damn and now it's the most famous of them all. Survivorship bias and randomness in art is real.
  - AngryData 9mo ago
    What do you mean there isn't much good music coming out? Maybe the genres people are creating more of don't match your personal preference, or you aren't looking for it and are just relying on major media companies to show it to you, but ive never had more high quality music of more variety than ever before. Much of it is farther in the electronica genres that many people somehow still ignore the existence of but I haven't had to listen to the same song twice unless I wanted to in a number of years. Just on my youtube discovery feed right now I got multiple 1+ hour synthwave mixes, EBM/EDM, industrial bass, multiple forms of metal, filk, jungle and DnB, punk rock, old and new jazz styles, and more, 95% of which was made in the last 2 years.
skinnymuch 9mo ago
No that wouldn’t. If the zeitgeist, culture, society at large are antagonizing toward you, if you are meant to feel like a useless negative part of society, why would we expect amazing output from them? This reinforces others talking about the flaws of hustle and grind culture. The status quo create the conditions for the negatives and then point to that and say “see”.
remove-resolve 9mo ago
People who are specifically not employed because they aren't motivated to do anything at all don't seem to be the best sample for what average people could do if they had more free time during their waking hours.
- nickff 9mo ago
  It seems unlikely that the most motivated people will take up UBI; the most likely UBI recipients are those who are marginally employed, and likely marginally motivated.
  - tcfhgj 9mo ago
    did you mean to write the opposite of what you wrote?
    - nickff 9mo ago
      Accidentally posted in the middle of an edit; corrected now, thanks.
      - locknitpicker 9mo ago
        You posted the edit over 7 hours ago and it still doesn't make sense. You should check what the U in UBI stands for.
  - weirdmantis69 9mo ago
    Guess what the U stands for
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Loughla 9mo ago
    What do you think UBI is and how do you think it works? Honestly.
anonymous908213 9mo ago
Um, hikikomori are a hotbed of creative works, though. Your entire premise is false. I don't know that you could get reliable statistics proving this claim, but Japan likely has the highest number of creatives per capita of any country in the world, and a ton of them are NEETs who spend their time drawing fanart or writing trashy webnovels. The vast majority of this creative work isn't commercially successful, of course, which is part of why they're NEETs.
- nickff 9mo ago
  Can it really be a 'hotbed' if there is no demand (or even maybe awareness) of the works? That just seems like a hobby done for selfish reasons.
  - anonymous908213 9mo ago
    Quoting GGGP: >There are many many creative, caring people that are motivated to create things or care for each other for the sake of it, not for some financial reward. Imagine the incredible programs, websites, games, crafts, artworks, animations, performances, literature, journalism, hobby clubs, support groups, community organizations that would spring into existence if we all just had more bandwidth for them while having our baseline needs met. As it happens, the Japanese internet is absolutely rich with content created by individuals, most of it done for the sake of love for creative work rather than financial motivation. I spend much of my free time either consuming it or contributing to the pool of such work myself. The entire point of this discussion thread was about the potential for creativity if you were to unshackle it from the demands of financial self-sustenance. As an aside, I believe this phenomenon manifested as strongly as it has in Japan because of the extremely low cost of living relative to the level of economic development; a studio apartment can be had for less than the equivalent of $200 USD per month, and many parents can afford to and are willing to pay this price to get the NEETs out of their house. In essence enabling them, not that they want to enable their adult children to depend on them but the burden is small enough that they can tolerate it.
    - nickff 9mo ago
robrtsql 9mo ago
NEETs are, by definition, people who are either unwilling or unable to do anything productive, so I don't think they are a good example. I expect you'd get better results if you include the people who are employed today.
datsci_est_2015 9mo ago
Counterpoint to your counterpoint: the flourishing of the arts in Bohemian districts[1] in the 19th and 20th centuries. Maybe there’s a feedback loop with societal expectations regarding the hikikomori / NEETs? The more they are demonized as unproductive, the less productive they become. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemianism
nl 9mo ago
> The hikikomori[1] or NEETs ought to be a hotbed of creative works if your hypothesis is true. This seems a non-sequitur. People whose motivation is isolation are unlikely to try to generate anything for other people. But your general idea is correct - is there group where motivated people don't need to worry about money? Well yes - we see this in artist colonies and indeed in entrepreneurial retreats like https://www.recurse.com/ https://www.recurse.com/
k2052 9mo ago
Chiming in as a former-ish member of the demographic you are just making stuff up about. There is no way to determine how much and how UBI would impact hikikomori because the demographic is inherently adverse to study. I personally know that some crucial open source work is maintained by people with schizoid-avoidant spectrum issues. I know a lot of them but I won't out them here. hikikomori are driven to be invisible because their extreme pathological avoidance of attention. You don't know them and their contributions because they don't want you to know that they still live at home, out of their car door dashing because no company ever hires them, are shut-in because of serious unhealed trauma, are still deeply in poverty in such a wealthy industry etc. A lot of these humans if given a no pressure handout of cash would likely contribute more to society. Would most not contribute? idk. But I do know that the contributions of those who would might offset all the others. Many prominent pseudonymous devs have had hikikomori traits. _why practically inspired a generation of Ruby devs. visualidiot (RIP) was a crucial driver behind a lot of web dev culture in the 2010s. Heck, I made significant contributions to Joomla and WP themes back in the day -- you have probably used sites with themes or plugins I made. Also I ran a blog a decade ago that used to rank prominently in google and receive dozens of emails a month from people struggling with mental illness -- many people crediting me with saving their lives. Surely that is something of value to society. Don't go around spreading bullshit like it is facts about a group of people we know little about.
- ranger_danger 9mo ago
  https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/creative-explorations/201911/are-brilliance-and-genius-often-associated-disturbance https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/creative-exploration...
  - derektank 9mo ago
    Love a headline that conforms to Betteridge’s law
    - majorchord 9mo ago
      Strangely though, all the studies cited on the wiki page seem to suggest that there is a higher number of "yes" questions than "no." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines#Studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines#...
locknitpicker 9mo ago
> The hikikomori[1] or NEETs ought to be a hotbed of creative works if your hypothesis is true. And they aren't, plain and simple. It's funny how you chose to frame groups as "NEET", but you somehow failed to refer to "aspiring artist" or "aspiring musician" or "aspiring novelist". I mean "aspiring artist" already implies engaging in an activity albeit not professionally or reaching success. You also somehow failed to refer to "amateur artist". As if not enjoying enough success to live comfortably with your art to the point of requiring to hold a job to pay rent is something that would validate your argument. I'm not sure you are even aware of the fact that most of the mainstream artists you see around are not even professional, in the sense that in spite of their success and touring they still need to hold a job to make ends meet. Check out any summer festival, pick any random non-headliner band, and see how many members hold jobs, and had to take time off to go touring. Even some music legends have a history of holding humble jobs at least up to the time they made it. See Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi, who famously lost a couple of fingers in an industrial accident while working at a sheet metal factory. It's not just music, either. Luminaries like Fernando Pessoa could very well be classified as the ultimate NEET as he spent years of his early life not in education, employment, or training.
Dilettante_ 9mo ago
Hikkis will barely have their (speaking from Maslow) physiological needs met, and seldom their safety and security needs. This leaves them with very few mental-emotional resources to put into even having any creative thoughts. UBI would absolutely uplift these people into a position where they can start producing output.

kiba 9mo ago

Not really against welfare programs...but... UBI and safety net would just get eaten by economic rent. Basically your landlord would just raise the price of renting space leaving people right where they left off. You need to impose a tax called the Land Value Tax to prevent landowners eating up the public money. Even then we got a long list of much needed public spending before we can even think about a Citizen's Dividend.

derektank 9mo ago
> UBI and safety net would just get eaten by economic rent. Basically your landlord would just raise the price of renting space leaving people right where they left off. This is only true if there’s a static supply of rental units, which isn’t true in most places (despite new construction being constrained by regulation in many places). I support an LVT, but it is not a necessary precondition for redistribution.

keybored 9mo ago

UBI is an idea from another money-centric ideology, namely “libertarianism”. It’s not an idea for fostering creativity. It’s an idea for dealing with less employable dependents of society, while the true dependents (parasitic capitalists) take the real spoils of industrialized productivity.

godshatter 9mo ago
Doesn't UBI come from taxes? I can't reconcile the idea of welfare for everyone resonating very well with any of the libertarians I know. Personal charity, sure, absolutely, but not government controlled payouts to people, even if that includes everyone. They would probably consider it better than the current welfare system with all it's bureaucracy, but that's as positive a response as I can expect. Most libertarians I know (and I consider myself an on and off libertarian as I learn more about it) want the government to stick to making sure people's rights aren't being trodden upon and otherwise leave us alone.
- keybored 9mo ago
  See Milton Friedman. Or Friedrich Hayek if Friedman isn’t crazy enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_advocates_of_universal_basic_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_advocates_of_universal...

PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago

I've made my living working fulltime on a single open source project for more than 15 years now. I think it is important to differentiate between different kinds of projects that people might undertake, and 3 particular categories always come to my mind (you may have more): * "plumbing" - all that infrastructure that isn't something you'd ever use directly, but the tools you do use wouldn't function without it. This work is generally intense during a "startup" phase, but then eases back to light-to-occasional as a stable phase is reached. It will likely happen whether there is funding or not, but may take longer and reach a different result without it. * "well defined goal" - something that a person or a team can actually finish. It might or might not benefit from funding during its creation, but at some point, it is just done, and there's almost no reason to think about continuing work other than availability and minimal upgrades to follow other tools or platforms. * "ever-evolving" - something that has no fixed end-goal, and will continue to evolve essentially forever. Depending on the scale of the task, this may or may not benefit from being funded so that there are people working on it full time, for a long time. These descriptions originate in my work on software, but I think something similar can be said for lots of other human activities as well, without much modification.

pamcake 9mo ago
If a "well-defined goal" project gets popular and sticky enough, it can metamorphize into an "ever-evolving" project by injection of VC capital.
- theshrike79 9mo ago
  Or just good old scope creep =) https://www.laws-of-software.com/laws/zawinski/ https://www.laws-of-software.com/laws/zawinski/ > Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can. -- James Zawinski, 1995

john-h-k 9mo ago

> There are many many creative, caring people that are motivated to create things or care for each other for the sake of it Very true. In a UBU world I have no doubt we’d have many exciting libraries, lots of pottery, and many books. But I’ve never met anyone passionate about collecting bins, development of accounting tooling, or pricing of phone insurance. You need rewards to allocate people effectively, because “passion” is random and not related to what people actually need

true_religion 9mo ago
I’ve met a lot of people who are passionate about public cleanliness to the point of organizing rubbish pickups, beach cleanups, and river dredging using their own power. With UBI, you may have to take your own trash to the landfill but rest assured the larger ecology will still be taken care of by passionate people. I think a bigger issue will be that the people who are passionate for a project may not be the most effective at accomplishing it, and without income you can’t motivate those more effective people into working on the project.
- somenameforme 9mo ago
  This sounds like it'd be one of the many ideas that sounds great on paper but in reality just creates an even greater stratification in society. I think you're completely correct that in many places, particularly higher end - people would come together to keep the place looking great, possibly even better since you get to 'own' it on some ways. But on the other hand in many 'urban' neighborhoods, there's far less motivation to take care of things - and once you remove the external actors going in there to do what little they already do, these places would fall into an even more pitiful state very rapidly. But I also think we're looking at things superficially. There's a lot of technical work that can't be casually done like plumbing or electrical that is currently moderately compensated. In an UBI world costs for this would likely skyrocket which would lead to an even higher UBI which would lead to even higher costs which would lead to Zimbabwe. Pessimism aside I would probably actually support it, simply because I think it would be the ultimate expression of liberty - but you have to realize that you're not going to create anything like the same society we have, but with everybody being able to independently support themselves. You're going to completely destroy the contemporary economy and create a new entity that would probably be much closer to something of times long since past when the overwhelming majority of America was self employed. 'The Expanse' offers a realistic take on what UBI would probably entail.

carlosjobim 9mo ago

1. Work for free making open source code and giving it away for free. 2. Giant corporations take all my code without giving me anything. 3. Now I'm really angry! I should have gotten some money from them! 4. The government must force my neighbours to pay a salary to me! 5. Continue to work for free making open source code for giant corporations, so they can profit. How about instead?: 1. Don't work for free or give away your code. Instead charge a fair price for people to use your code or software. 2. If your code is good, people and corporations pay you for it. 3. Now you're really happy! You got money for your labour. 4. The government doesn't need to oppress innocent people to pay your salary. 5. You can continue to work for money and make more money.

whattheheckheck 9mo ago
And everyone can get stuck with big corporation proprietary software that they have no idea how it runs or what it does under the hood
- carlosjobim 9mo ago
  You can then make your own software. Nobody owes you free software.
  - ranger_danger 9mo ago
    You're not wrong, but I think it is increasingly harder (and perhaps socially taboo) to stay far away from proprietary software while still being part of a functioning society. FOSS zealots love to dunk on capitalism, but unless you're prepared to go off-grid and live in the woods, and try to convince other people to be poor along with you, you might be very lonely.
no-name-here 9mo ago
I'm not agreeing with the OP proposal, but with LLMs today, no matter how you license your code and no matter what ToS or other prohibition you put on it, there does not seem to be any way to prevent LLMs from absorbing and using it to implement a replacement based on your code unless you choose to only do closed source code - there's no "opt out" for someone's source code, let alone an opt-in (again, unless we give up open source). (A very different situation from the AI companies themselves, where companies such as Anthropic make Claude Code closed source, and their ToS provide strict prohibitions on using it to work on something that could compete with them - can you imagine if Windows or MacOS's ToS prohibited people from using their OS to work on a competing OS, of if the VSCode ToS prohibited people from using VSCode to work on another editor?)

piekvorst 9mo ago

“Strong” social safety can be achieved only by enslaving producers who have to provide the ground for “many many” caring people. This is always the case. Consider Russian support of young families: the government takes the money from families without children and gives it to those who have. Personally, I cannot imagine a worse moral depravity than supporting this atrocity as a matter of justice. Capitalism is not “slavery with extra steps,” it’s freedom in a fragile world repleted with conflicting goals. Just because people don’t agree with your goals doesn’t make you a slave.

derektank 9mo ago
>the government takes the money from families without children and gives it to those who have IDK, this seems perfectly reasonable if the state also provides an old age insurance / pension system for retirees. Without a younger generation of people paying into the system (i.e. the children of parents) these systems collapse. It seems appropriate to support the people that keep the government functioning. Of course, I’m guessing you oppose systems like social security too, given your comment. I just find it odd that you can’t imagine anything worse than giving money to parents, given most governments give money to a lot of people, most of whom aren’t opting into anything as noble as parenthood.
- ZoomZoomZoom 9mo ago
  Giving uncharacteristically large direct stimuli for procreation disproportionately incentivizes the people in dire need of money, meddling with the rationality of the decision and increasing social tension later. The only other way to be promised a big pile of cash from the govt there is a military contract.

golergka 9mo ago

> Imagine the incredible programs, websites, games, crafts, artworks, animations, performances, literature, journalism, hobby clubs, support groups, community organizations that would spring into existence if we all just had more bandwidth for them while having our baseline needs met. If people find these things useful, they can actually pay for them. If you can't find people who value it enough to pay for it, then may be it's not as valuable as you think it is.

Dilettante_ 9mo ago
By that measure, doing something for a poor person who cannot pay would be entirely worthless, while delivering food to a particularly generous billionaire would be more valuable than an entire month of an average person's work. The error of your argument lies in the assumption that any participant in the market possesses enough money to pay the true "value-to-them" of a thing.

croon 9mo ago

I'm generally an advocate for a robust safety-net such that people shouldn't be on their knees every month just to scrape by with food/housing/healthcare, and would love it if we reached Star Trek/The Culture levels of post-scarcity, but I'm simultaneously not convinced by this idea, but possibly from another angle. 1) I'm not sure I want Github to be the arbiter of FOSS resource distribution (See: Spotify and small artists). 2) A second order effect could be creating a reliance on it which enables a future rug pull once the current framework is eroded. TL;DR: I wholly agree with your overall vision of the future, but not necessarily this step towards it.

paulddraper 9mo ago

Somehow no one talks about the incredible plumbing.

bloppe 9mo ago

I support UBI, funded by high capital gains taxes, to offset the growing value of capital relative to labor due to ever-improving automation, but I think it's silly to think a significant number of people will ever be happy with UBI alone. First of all, "baseline needs" are fluid. These days, electricity and internet are broadly considered baseline needs, but would have been unimaginable luxuries for previous generations. The future will inevitably bring new "baseline needs" we can hardly yet comprehend. Secondly, the vast majority of people will never be satisfied with the bare minimum, no matter what that minimum is. If you have a friend who can afford fancy things, and you can't, then more likely than not, you will not be satisfied. It's also much easier to attract a partner if you're financially successful, for similar reasons. That's just human nature. Just because you don't have to worry about starving or succumbing to the elements does not mean people will stop competing with one another.

DerArzt 9mo ago
> The vast majority of people will never be satisfied with the bare minimum Isn't that a benefit for UBI? If everyone's basic needs are met and they want more, nothing would stop them from taking a job and making more money right?
- bloppe 9mo ago
  Ya. I'm saying I support UBI, and that the concern most people raise about UBI (usually along the lines of "I don't think anybody should just coast by without working") is completely unfounded. The parent post was talking about how everybody would have more time for unpaid pursuits if only we had UBI. I'm saying that I don't think UBI would change that much. People will continue to pursue unpaid hobbies much like they do today, but making money will still be just as important.