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How do we ensure that we don’t enter the failure mode of “not enough necessities get made”? Like it seems like people are ideologically for or against UBI, but
by pfannkuchen 9mo ago
How do we ensure that we don’t enter the failure mode of “not enough necessities get made”?
Like it seems like people are ideologically for or against UBI, but I’ve never seen anyone discuss how the mechanism would avoid this outcome. Like I’m not saying it’s 100% the outcome that would happen on whatever time frame, just that even e.g. a 10% chance of that happening would make it too risky to attempt at scale. And like I don’t accept “some people just love farming” or “a lot of stuff that isn’t needed gets made now”, I need an actual mechanism description.
- yetihehe 9mo ago> How do we ensure that we don’t enter the failure mode of “not enough necessities get made”? Pay higher when someone does things. UBI + income. If you want to live better, try doing something that will bring you money, but if you fail, you can still live and try something other next time. Current model: if you try something and fail, you are homeless and starving.
- SoftTalker 9mo agoI could maybe support UBI if you completely shut down Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, school lunches, subsidized housing, and every other assistance program. It must replace all of that to achieve the so-called operational efficiency of just giving people cash. Give them enough to buy those things on the open market, and if they choose to spend it on something else, that's on them. If you don't trust people enough to do that, then you don't trust them enough to do UBI.
- yetihehe 9mo agoI think most proponents of UBI want this and I think it's a good idea. UBI is meant as social security, just not dependent on what you do and doesn't disappear when you have cash. Just give minimum wage to everyone and remove minimum payment requirement from economy. If you use up your social security/UBI in wrong way, that's on you. But there should be probably some education. And if someone can't effectively use your allowance (mentally ill, non-functioning alcoholic), then maybe we should put such people in proper institutions, but they could be funded by UBI instead of specialised assistance program.
- pfannkuchen 9mo agoFailing -> homeless and starving is a failure mode at the level of the individual. That’s not good, but failure modes of the entire structure are higher priority and the two don’t really compare apples to apples. Capitalism (absent corruption) is actually sort of cleverly recursive there because financial destitution by definition cannot affect producers of vital goods, because the act of producing vital goods is precisely what is rewarded by the system. So at least what you mentioned cannot result in systemic failure from a mechanistic point of view, only an individual level failure (which isn’t to say that the individual is “to blame”, I am not talking moralistically, just that it affects individuals and not the entire structure). On first paragraph, okay how does that scale though. Who does the actual work of producing things people need to live, and how do we make sure that enough people keep doing that specifically, even across plausible variable configurations such as “birth rate increases because people have more free time which means now you need more farming” etc. We need to characterize these dynamics, wouldn’t you say? Have you thought about it, or are you satisfied by hand waving?
- saagarjha 9mo ago> financial destitution by definition cannot affect producers of vital goods This is why people who work critical jobs never go hungry.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- tpoacher 9mo agoI don't think the "producers" argument is true, and even so it really does depend on the profession and on current trends. What was vital yesterday may be obsolete tomorrow (see hospital secretaries vs ambient scribes for instance). I assume when you think of people taking a potentially "destitution-risky" decision, you think "entrepreneur without savings or backup income", not "hospital secretary". Yet here we are. Also, in many professions, "production" is multi-level. Who is the producer in a hospital, the nurse, or the hospital manager? Yet I can assure you nurses, as vital as they are, get fixed term contracts or get fired all the time. Same with teachers and academics. So, no, the system rewarding the hospital manager and the university deans for the "vital" work of their nurses and teachers isn't "cleverly recursive"; it's exactly the failure mode both you and OP speak of, except it's somehow both systemic and personal, depending in what angle you're looking at.
- verdverm 9mo agoHow is UBI different from welfare? On the surface, they sound the same > Current mode... Or, ya know, save money or get a job. Failure rarely leads to homeless and starvation. Most people are far more resilient than that, the current US homeless rate is ~1/500 If we need/want UBI to be a thing, educating people on the difference is going to part of the effort and debate
- scotty79 9mo agoNecessities get made because there's someone to buy them. Only 5% of people are employed in agriculture and 15% in manufacturing. 80% of working people could do nothing and we'd still be fine when it comes to necessities. And we don't even have peak automation.
- polshaw 9mo agoCould we perhaps include medical care in the necessities don't you think?
- scotty79 9mo agoSure thing. Doctors and nurses are maybe about 2% of workers.
- peterpost2 9mo agoAnd educational workers and cleaners.
- scotty79 9mo agoEducation is mostly for keeping children busy while their parents are at work. I think people working in agriculture and in the industry includes people who clean there.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- polshaw 9mo agoUBI discussion invariably is way off the mark. The only thing UBI solves is how to give out the money, which is a massive misdirection, the real problem is how to get the money. Do you gut the state and allow people who don't work to have enough money to barely survive as an underclass, or do you end billionaires and usher in a new renaissance where all needs are met and labour shall just be at our whim. These two vastly different visions are both UBI, but most discussion about UBI completely sidesteps that as it requires touching upon the more difficult issues. Once you have control of the money to give out, literally every way of redistribution is as good as UBI. If you calculate how much money would be required for a reasonable UBI.. then imagine what could be done if that money was spent on communal, humane, services then it would be able to revolutionise the world every bit as much.