10 ms·

UBI as a productivity dividend

125 points by 2noame 7mo ago

shahmeern 7mo ago
Does UBI really solve the problem, wouldn’t it just make everything more expensive?
- Detrytus 7mo ago
  Yes, it does cause huge inflation, but that's not even the biggest problem with it. That would be: people do not really like to share fruits of their labor with strangers, so UBI would significantly undermine the motivation to do anything other than bare minimum. UBI is not possible until robots and AI take over most jobs (but then we risk that one day the AI decides to just get rid of "those useless humans")
  - satvikpendem 7mo ago
    Isn't UBI just a sort of tax, which people pay already, whether they like it or not? I agree with your second paragraph though.
  - xantronix 7mo ago
    I don't think we should worry about the advent of AGI deciding to get rid of us; I'm more worried about the people who own the AI current AI infrastructure, as well as the current US regime, who don't see the value in the pesky humans beyond revenue and votes, respectively.
- ambicapter 7mo ago
  "Solve the problem" probably not, but trigger inflation, probably not, since the amount is so low, it will have very little impact on the behavior of the richest, but it would have a massive impact on the behavior of the poorest, and their purchase habits generally don't impact inflation as much. UBI is just a band-aid on not taxing the rich, though.
  - kbelder 7mo ago
    The purchase habits of the poor impact the products purchased primarily by the poor quite a bit. Cheap rental properties. Basic phone plans. Cheap food. The poor buy vastly more ramen noodles than the rich.
    - ambicapter 7mo ago
      > Cheap rental properties They buy at most one. > basic phone plans They buy at most one. > Cheap food, ramen noodles. Humans have fixed calorie needs and even the very obese spend maybe 10x the norm, nothing more. Compare that to the prospect of someone buying MULTIPLE properties, possibly multiple properties that are 10x more expensive the norm, the price disparity between a regular car and multiple supercars, the price disparity between owning a boat and/or yacht vs...not owning a boat.
- bryanlarsen 7mo ago
  Not necessarily. It's straightforward to make it revenue neutral. You make it revenue neutral for the average tacpayer. If you want UBI to be $1000/month, you increase the average tax by $1000. The average taxpayer still benefit because even though they don't get more money, they have a safety net. People making less than average get more UBI than the tax increase, and those making more pay more. Most people get more money because the median income us a lot lower than the average.
  - nostrebored 7mo ago
    This assumes all goods are wanted and consumed equally. Housing, milk, meat, eggs, etc. do not see downward pressure from this.
  - lotyrin 7mo ago
    Right, but people with lower incomes spend, and mostly on necessities, I think the idea is that most of those necessities would become more expensive (naturally or artificially due to price-fixing) if the poorest suddenly had more financial power. In the system as it stands, it seems to me like it'd just result in a bunch of money going to grocery giants and their suppliers, landlords, medical, etc.
    - shahmeern 7mo ago
      Yeah this is the downstream effect I had in mind. You could say we'd increase supply to meet the demand but that hasn't really worked out with housing for example
      - stevenhuang 7mo ago
        Housing is limited by supply of land. For basic goods we'd have no trouble producing more.
    - bryanlarsen 7mo ago
      Most of those are commodities, where the price is set by the cost of marginal supply. Housing prices should go down. Housing is expensive in places with jobs and cheap in places without jobs. UBI gives people the freedom to move from the former to the latter. Healthcare is screwed up, UBI or no.
- Galaxeblaffer 7mo ago
  Not everything, only stuff that are suddenly in higher demand that can't increase supply. If you take food as an example i don't imagine demand would increase? And if it did we could probably just produce more? And also it's not like everyone will have unlimited money, so you'll still have to prioritize and luckily we don't all have the same priorities. I'm pretty sure the idea is to fund this by taxing production and not by printing money, so inflation shouldn't be a problem.
- recursivecaveat 7mo ago
  If the only money is UBI money then things start to get weird. If UBI coexists with regular income in moderation then it doesn't change much. Consider that about 1/3 Americans receive some form of government assistance. There's already a kind of fallback UBI distributed across SNAP + Medicare + Medicaid + Unemployment + Social Security + etc, and no one on those programs is clamoring for them to be shut down so that lentils become cheaper. Giving money to everyone does increase inflation (though you can play with the tax rate to offset that), but the important effect is it transfers purchasing power to net recipients. Basically: the economy wide money supply would at worst go up by a modest factor, the income of the poorest goes up by an absolute amount (or a massive factor if you want to view it that way), which is a huge benefit to them.
- rrgok 7mo ago
  As if things are not getting already expensive by each day. Maybe it changes the pace, but that's another problem.
ambicapter 7mo ago
The only way? What about built out infrastructure? What about universal health care? What about enforcing laws? What about enforcing truth in advertising? What about punishing various types of crooks in the various markets and transactions, financial and otherwise, that ordinary people take part in? The only way? Like a silver bullet? Like that thing that the common idiom says doesn't exist?
- wartywhoa23 7mo ago
  When someone says something is "the only way", that's a sure sign they either have some vested interest in that only way, or have an idea fix.
- Spooky23 7mo ago
  It’s obviously not the only way. The more likely way is what is happening, a new medieval era with lords and serfs.
- keeda 7mo ago
  > What about universal health care? I haven't thought this through, but I don't see how you could have UBI without universal healthcare. If the point of UBI is to ensure the most basic necessities are covered, and "basic necessities" includes healthcare, and healthcare is the Luigi-inducing travesty it is in the US right now, how is it UBI without universal healthcare? The alternative is that UBI is high enough to cover healthcare, which is extremely (maybe unfeasibly so) expensive and creates all kinds of other incentives for abuse. Or we fix the systemic, profit motive-driven problems in the current system by nationalizing healthcare. Yes, nationalized healthcare is also problematic, but I think UBI will indirectly alleviate a lot of the systemic problems there as well.
randerson 7mo ago
I'm UBI-curious, but surely inflation would be inevitable if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year? Landlords and grocery stores and everyone else would raise prices because they know people can afford it. Obviously if you're living in poverty, anything is better than nothing, but would the average middle class person be better off? As far as I can tell no country has ever tested true UBI (unconditional and for all residents) so its all theoretical. Musk's idea of a Universal High Income (where money is no longer necessary because robots and AI give us anything we want) sounds great too until you consider scarce resources like land. Who decides who gets to buy the best properties on Earth if money is no longer a factor? What if you want, say, a human hair stylist or therapist: who would do such a job if they don't have to? We would lose the human touch in our lives, and that sounds awful.
- lotsofpulp 7mo ago
  > I'm UBI-curious, but surely inflation would be inevitable if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year? This does not have to be the case if higher taxes decrease purchasing power for some.
  - nostrebored 7mo ago
    This does not address the relative purchasing power change on the left of the bell curve.
    - lotsofpulp 7mo ago
      The whole purpose of UBI is to increase the relative purchasing power on the left of the bell curve. But inflation (sum total) is a moot point if total supply of dollars for total demand stays the same. Prices might temporarily increase for staples, such as shelter and food, but that should incentivize sellers in the economy to supply more staples, and fewer luxury goods. The additional supply will eventually bring prices down, but end result is more people have more of the basics.
      - 7mo ago
wstrange 7mo ago
UBI will require a more progressive tax system. The Oligarchs are having none of that.
wartywhoa23 7mo ago
Communists shared alright 110 years ago in Russia, tens of millions of people failed to cope with that much prosperity and wellbeing, and then even more with unbearable freedom and peace.
- steve-atx-7600 7mo ago
  I think folks may not realize that communism was more popular in the early 20th century US just because of how desperate a lot of the population became without any safety nets at all provided by the government. Educated proponents genuinely wanted to improve the plight of other folks. But, where it was practiced it became just a worse kind of power and resource monopoly - concentrated in the government instead of among a minority of robber barren types. I think the learning is you have to never stop pushing for no entity to have too much power - not the government and not private sector monopolies.
- amelius 7mo ago
  It's probably an established law now that whenever someone points out that capitalism has flaws, another person always points at communism.
  - wartywhoa23 7mo ago
    Yes, because the humankind has been flickering between extremes since name your date, and no balanced system managed to survive for more than a couple of decades.
ciwchris 7mo ago
I recently came across the idea of Universal Basic Capital (UBC): "granting every person a meaningful ownership stake in productive assets from birth." UBC would be enormously difficult to implement, as well as have its own weaknesses. It doesn't seem realistic, but introduces a new idea into the conversation. https://www.digitalistpapers.com/vol2/autorthompson#:~:text=Hedging%20our%20labor%20bets https://www.digitalistpapers.com/vol2/autorthompson#:~:text=...
- gruez 7mo ago
  How do you prevent people from being swindled and selling their stake off? If it can't be sold off, how's that any different than a corporation tax?
  - rangestransform 7mo ago
    Part of living in a free society is being able to destroy your own life by various means
neversupervised 7mo ago
UBI will likely be necessary but that won’t appease society. Everyone wants to have a chance to climb the ladder. If it becomes self evident that humans can no longer have a meaningful impact on their outcome, there’ll be riots whether they have a roof and food or not.
K0balt 7mo ago
UBI is the actual solution, and is well understood enough now to know that most of the arguments against it are moot points or simply falsehoods. Unfortunately, with regulatory capture at near 100 percent and electoral capture almost as bad, there is no incentive structure with sufficient influence to make it happen. Wealth will continue to be funneled to the top, and taxation schemes that act as a de-facto sales tax create incentives that favor even more centralized systems. But wouldn’t it be great? An interesting aspect is that I am constantly observing innovators with significant technical and technological skills that are employed in fields outside of their expertise as a “temporary “ measure that often becomes permanent if they get further encumbered, simply because they can keel out an existence while trying to build the next cool thing. So we are wasting probably trillions of GDP in talent because people need to go work in a labor job to support their wife and child instead of continuing his very promising project in training data for humanoid robots, which could easily net 100m+ in the next decade. (Actual example. I offered him $1000 a month to keep on it, but he unfortunately needs more to survive and he has eaten through his savings over the past two years of working on it.)
- dmitrygr 7mo ago
  > most of the arguments against it are moot points or simply falsehoods. Ah the “I am sure we can all agree … that I’m right” argument. In actuality, there are plenty of very good arguments against unions. That you don’t like them changes nothing
  - K0balt 7mo ago
    lol “unions” was thanks to AI deciding “ubi is” couldn’t be what I meant. This might be saying something about the possibility of this working out.
    - AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
      OK, but the same response still applies. There still are plenty of arguments against UBI, and you still need to actually refute them rather than just dismiss them with "they're false or moot".
softwaredoug 7mo ago
What if we build UBI but we turn out not to need it? Thats my worry. AI might possibly be “just another technology”. If we put in UBI we may disincentivize labor from adapting to an economic shift. The real solution is to regulate the industry and break up monopolies. UBI is the modern equivalent of Walmart workers on Medicaid and food stamps. It’s raiding public funds for private profit.
xixixao 7mo ago
If you believe UBI can work, why do you think communism failed?
- MrDrDr 7mo ago
  I'm not sure UBI would work. But what's that got to do with communism? Communism failed (IMO), because it was incompatible with human nature. People form social hierarchies and like to own property. Would UBI prevent that?
  - xixixao 7mo ago
    You are answering my question - you posit that communism failed because people like to own property (and form social hierarchies) - and UBI doesn’t prevent those. I’m not sure this is the case. Especially since people did form social hierarchies and did own propety in communist/socialist regimes of the Eastern block. One might argue that UBI is incompatible with human nature, because most humans require a sense of worth, which paid work provides (to most). Take away the motivation, will the self-worthiness remain? (especially when thinking about _most_ people, not the struggling artists who wished they could pursue art without the burden of bills). I’m not sure about this at all. I just think drawing the parallels and discussing communism failure modes is interesting for the discussion of UBI.
- beej71 7mo ago
  Seems to be ok in Alaska.
  - xixixao 7mo ago
    I don’t think Alaska has the kind of UBI people are discussing here? You probably cannot survive on $1000/year. In that situation it doesn’t seem much different to social programs standard in Europe + progressive tax.
- orangecat 7mo ago
  UBI doesn't replace market forces with central planning. You're still incentivized to produce goods and services that other people want, and to do so more efficiently than your competitors.
markus_zhang 7mo ago
UBI is good on paper but far from enough. Without Universal Ownership of the State, UBI is easily removed by inflation. A better yet more difficult model is universal basic resources (food stamp to exchange for packages, social housing, etc.). People can work X hours on these social projects after reviewing some training (e.g. training of plumbing to maintain the social housing apartments). This also gives them some meaning in life. Of course this will degrade in the future if there is no ownership of the state by the people, but I think it’s going to last longer.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > UBI is easily removed by inflation Source? A $20k UBI wouldn’t likely secularly increase food costs on a per-calorie basis. Those folks are already eating. There will just be supply-chain friction as the system adjusts to their newly-expressable preferences.
  - markus_zhang 7mo ago
    Just my hunch, as no major country has really rolled out UBI for everyone. For example, how about supermarkets increasing prices? We already saw that happening for a few years since the COVID. And how about landlords increasing rents?
GeoAtreides 7mo ago
instead of UBI, we could just reduce working hours, while keeping the same pay. Easier to manage shifts than to upend the whole economy. Something like 3 days a week, with a german approach to sundays (everything closed).
- marcosdumay 7mo ago
  Those are two completely different things, with completely independent results.
SequoiaHope 7mo ago
The goal we all seek - liberation - is a distant one. That said I’m skeptical that UBI is the right way. UBI assumes and requires an elite ownership class and a powerful state to force them to share their profits. But as we’ve seen, such class members will organize to penetrate the state and contort it for their own ends. Thus any successful UBI will be a compromise or it will be dismantled by the powerful class that owns the economy. In my mind, only community ownership of the means of production can truly achieve what we desire. Of course with all distant goals, it is hard to see how we get there. And to be clear I do not mean state ownership. But I am curious, on my basic point of elite capture of the state, does that make sense? I am struck that TFA’s title says UBI is “the only way to share”, amusing to me since literally directly sharing is another way. I understand we all have spooky ideas of what that means, but think for example of the concept of library economies. You borrow what you need, but you don’t own it nor have the right to destroy it. We share.
- PaulDavisThe1st 7mo ago
  > UBI assumes and requires an elite ownership class and a powerful state to force them to share their profits. It makes no assumption about an elite ownership class at all. It merely assumes profits, and rearranges how those profits are distributed (away from shareholders, towards labor). There is no need for community ownership of the means of production (though that might have some different benefits, along with some different disadvantages). You need high marginal (or maybe not even marginal) corporate taxes and a committment to the concept of UBI. Who owns the companies, from the perspective of UBI, is immaterial. Community ownership does not share the productivity in sector A with workers in sector B. UBI does.
  - AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
    Community ownership does share across sectors if the community owns both sectors. Why would it not? Also, you haven't really answered the point. You may be able to get this established. But how do you keep it established? How do you keep the elite ownership class from dismantling it? (Based on historically observed behavior, the default assumption is that they will try.) If you don't have a plan that accounts for that, you don't really have a workable plan.
dangus 7mo ago
Well, there's definitely other ways. I would prefer a system where company ownership public and private has a mandatory public stake in both ownership and voting on company policy and major business decisions. I would prefer it illegal for the wealthy to possess an excessive amount of assets. If your assets became more valuable than the limit, the asset share would automatically rebalance toward other employees and owners in the organization who are below the asset ownership limit. You don't even really need UBI if healthcare, housing, food, and education are considered basic human rights that are included and free of cost at point of usage.
keeda 7mo ago
My take is that UBI is the most obvious solution but not one we should count on happening. There is just too much political resistance and a population-level mental block against it, at least in the US. Not to mention, Capitalism doesn't like if it can't push labor around. (Which is largely why the mindset exists, but I digress.) I say that we need to realize that by the same token(s) that AI reduces the need for labor, it also reduces the need for capital. A single motivated, disciplined individual can now do, using AI and public elastic clouds, what used to require an entire team. So companies can decimate teams, but companies are largely a source of capital. If you don't need so many people, you don't that much capital either! You could potentially parlay an insight or domain expertise into a viable business. Your moat could be the obscurity of your niche, or relationships, or IP (yes, patents. Suck it up and use every leverage you can.) Easier said than done, of course. This essentially means everyone becomes an entrepreneur. Most people are not cut out for that because (besides hard-to-acquire domain expertise) that requires being immersed in an ocean of uncertainty at all times. None of our education systems prepare people for that, or for what is coming. I expect a time of disruption, but we need to realize that AI not only a tool for the Capital class. It's a tool for us too, if only we can adapt.
mattlondon 7mo ago
A think a more workable and politically palatable version of UBI would be some form of universal utility allowance. E.g. the first x kWh electric you use, or the first X litres of water, or the first x GB of data you use is entirely free, for everyone (where X is some reasonable number that someone could just conceivably survive on). Then as you use more and more the prices start to gradually increase across a series of bands so that the heaviest users are subsidising those using the least. It would promote efficiency, would be progressive, and would allow people to live without quite so much "bill fear" for essential utilities. Plus it is not literally putting money in people's hands which is often unpopular with some demographic groups. People would still need to work but there would be some element of safety net.
- skybrian 7mo ago
  That seems worse because it doesn't encourage conservation enough. You want people to be able to keep the gains if they conserve energy, to set the right incentives.
- cogman10 7mo ago
  > Plus it is not literally putting money in people's hands which is often unpopular with some demographic groups I'd be really opposed to this. It'd only be ok if we nationalized the industries where we set these rules and rates. Otherwise, this ends up being a simple handout to private industries. For example, let's say we say x liters of water. Well who's deciding how much x liters cost? If it's a private company and the government is guaranteeing it, you can bet water (which is relatively cheap where I live) will end up being the most expensive resource imaginable. And that may actually be true depending on the location, but it'd also be true in non-desert areas with plenty of water. We've effectively had that here with the ACA, where the government has decided that it will cover the first $800 or so dollars of your health insurance. What happened? Magically, the cost of health insurance increased by $800. Private industries aren't stupid, they'll always charge the maximum price the market will bear. And when we start talking about captured industries like data provider, power provider, or your water provider... well that's where we can trust private industry the least as they literally have the public over a barrel. Utility boards are an OK solution, but the better solution is to turn these into public institutes instead of private ones.
stego-tech 7mo ago
UBI, as the OP points out, as many of us have continued to point out/scream about, is a single component of a larger agenda of reforms. It's not just about giving people money (though we absolutely should), it's also about ensuring wealth pumps can't just vacuum up that money into the hands of the already wealthy - like the stimulus checks did during COVID, like tax subsidies for healthcare do, like tax breaks for employer-provided benefits contribute to. It's reforming housing from investment asset into human right. It's detaching healthcare from employment as much as it's about negotiating with pharmaceutical companies on pricing and creating more public healthcare rather than outsource to private firms. It's rent controls on older housing stock to incentivize growing revenue through volume (more housing) instead of scarcity like we have now. It's levying taxes on higher-priced rentals and luxury housing stock to force investing in more affordable supplies. It's penalizing for-profit employers whose staff disproportionately rely on government subsidies to make ends meet, and taxing the shareholders for supporting such bad governance. It's taxing wealth and assets properly, rather than capping rate increases to keep people in homes (and thus drive up values). It's cities who reward businesses whose staff take public transit and taxing those who rely on private vehicles. Lifting property tax caps so that taxation rates float with the market, and accepting that this will mean some folks will see foreclosures and others will see valuations plummet as the market corrects itself. Incentivizing longer leases from landlords by tying property tax increases to lease renewals (yearly renewals mean yearly appraisals), to encourage more community and investing in buildings. It's expanding SNAP to everyone by default on raw foods only, and expanding access to cooking and nutrition courses so every adult can eat healthy meals. It's shrinking the work week to create more jobs, capping overtime instead of merely 1.5xing it, and raising minimum wages. It's also taxing the absolute shit out of executive compensation, especially on equities and securities. It's barring share buybacks other than those amounts that would give the company 51% control over its outstanding shares (or more), and replacing Capital Gains with Income Taxes. It's closing loopholes and shrinking the tax codes. It's so much more than "UBI and we're fine". There is no silver bullet. Nothing is an "easy fix", and no single fix will make a meaningful impact on the whole. It's nothing short of a coordinated rejection of the status quo in favor of a more equitable future that balances the need for innovation and growth with the needs of the masses for basic sustenance, shelter, healthcare, education, and safety. It's a cessation of promoting business over all, and a return to balancing business with community, with family, with individuality. It's a lot of fucking work, and anyone lounging in here nitpicking UBI specifically without considering the whole of the problem shows they're simply not ready to deal with problems of this scale.
drbojingle 7mo ago
I think the issue with ubi is it's not really basic. Cloths food and shelter are basic. I'm much more inclined to support ubi if it's food shelter cloths.
asdff 7mo ago
UBI doesn't make any sense when you imagine how it will play out. Let's consider what it actually implies on the face: labor has been obviated through automation and therefore humans no longer have a purpose on earth. UBI then amounts to a bribe paid to the remaining surviving masses of humanity so they don't go on to destroy all the automated economy and those who remain in control of the automated economy, if those are actually people in this future and not some statistical models running on their own. This is unsustainable. The masses of humanity will inevitably want a larger and larger bribe to sustain a standard of living in probably an inflationary environment. Eventually a tipping point will be reached where the models in charge of the planet determine it is more efficient to eliminate humanity than to continue paying increasing bribes.
theopsimist 7mo ago
Have not seen a counter to the what-seems-to-me trivial point that the condition of possibility of UBI is the elimination of manual labour - or otherwise slavery and slave labour like exploitation
exabrial 7mo ago
If you want UBI, just give away all of your money and stop demanding others do it instead.
6510 7mo ago
We never accomplished anything by everyone agreeing. If you want something and there are enough of you you take it. (It's easier if morality is on your side.) People who want to antagonize, moan or otherwise desire to get in the way need to be so afraid they wont do it or be discontinued prematurely. At a time 99.9% worked in agriculture and agriculture was and still is complete bullshit. You can just mix plants and leave them alone. Just visit the garden if you want something to eat. Do a bit of modest pruning. Rabbits and other creatures will eat everything if you don't eat them. Just like with agriculture the rabbits will upscale their population to match whatever food is available. I'm simplifying of course. The point being, 3% now works in agriculture. We know how to make durable houses, durable clothing, durable everything-you-need's stop listening to your wife (lol), all you need is a roof, bed, cloths, food, a good book and some time to think about what the hell we are doing. Everything else is certainly nice to have but it should not be part of this topic. One of my funny hypothetical: Say we rip all the roads out of the city and fill her up with chickens. Then, in stead of driving to your job you pick eggs and catch a chicken. Then, after 10 minutes your job is done for the day. If people don't like eggs or chicken that's fine, we can feed them to the chickens, or the delicious maggots that grow on them. I mean proverbial of course, no way you need to explain how it works to the chicken, it will do all that for free on factory settings. I'm sure this is all very hard to understand, it might not make any sense to you. Then think of the UBI as the ultimate crypto currency. You take a unit of humans, a unit of time, multiply the two and hand the coins to the human. You get nice linear expansion and nice coin distribution. You only need proof of humans and proof of time. The white paper will be very short and (sadly) lack all the interesting math.
ZooCow 7mo ago
I still haven’t seen a convincing exoneration for how to avoid UBI warping politics. It seems politically impossible to lower (see Alaska’s challenges [1]) and too attractive for politicians to promise to increase in order to easily win votes. [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/07/03/738569508/university-of-alaska-readies-for-budget-slash-we-may-likely-never-recover https://www.npr.org/2019/07/03/738569508/university-of-alask...
camgunz 7mo ago
UBI doesn't address structural inequality, and because of inflation it doesn't make necessities (health care, housing, child care, education, food) affordable. We've suffered conservatives opposing simple policies of: * progressive taxation * wealth tax * government training workers, procuring supplies, and investing in advances ...but they're all gone now, so let's get going on this stuff.
rudolftheone 7mo ago
I'm (again) shocked that so poor article on UBI triggers any serious discussion: I mean, where's a math behind it? For US alone 1400usd for each adult and 500usd for kid would generate...4,95 trillion fucking dollars annually! Won't any BUI proponent explain simply HOW (realistically) can it happen?

125 points by 2noame 7mo ago

shahmeern 7mo ago

Does UBI really solve the problem, wouldn’t it just make everything more expensive?

Detrytus 7mo ago
Yes, it does cause huge inflation, but that's not even the biggest problem with it. That would be: people do not really like to share fruits of their labor with strangers, so UBI would significantly undermine the motivation to do anything other than bare minimum. UBI is not possible until robots and AI take over most jobs (but then we risk that one day the AI decides to just get rid of "those useless humans")
- satvikpendem 7mo ago
  Isn't UBI just a sort of tax, which people pay already, whether they like it or not? I agree with your second paragraph though.
- xantronix 7mo ago
  I don't think we should worry about the advent of AGI deciding to get rid of us; I'm more worried about the people who own the AI current AI infrastructure, as well as the current US regime, who don't see the value in the pesky humans beyond revenue and votes, respectively.
ambicapter 7mo ago
"Solve the problem" probably not, but trigger inflation, probably not, since the amount is so low, it will have very little impact on the behavior of the richest, but it would have a massive impact on the behavior of the poorest, and their purchase habits generally don't impact inflation as much. UBI is just a band-aid on not taxing the rich, though.
- kbelder 7mo ago
  The purchase habits of the poor impact the products purchased primarily by the poor quite a bit. Cheap rental properties. Basic phone plans. Cheap food. The poor buy vastly more ramen noodles than the rich.
  - ambicapter 7mo ago
    > Cheap rental properties They buy at most one. > basic phone plans They buy at most one. > Cheap food, ramen noodles. Humans have fixed calorie needs and even the very obese spend maybe 10x the norm, nothing more. Compare that to the prospect of someone buying MULTIPLE properties, possibly multiple properties that are 10x more expensive the norm, the price disparity between a regular car and multiple supercars, the price disparity between owning a boat and/or yacht vs...not owning a boat.
bryanlarsen 7mo ago
Not necessarily. It's straightforward to make it revenue neutral. You make it revenue neutral for the average tacpayer. If you want UBI to be $1000/month, you increase the average tax by $1000. The average taxpayer still benefit because even though they don't get more money, they have a safety net. People making less than average get more UBI than the tax increase, and those making more pay more. Most people get more money because the median income us a lot lower than the average.
- nostrebored 7mo ago
  This assumes all goods are wanted and consumed equally. Housing, milk, meat, eggs, etc. do not see downward pressure from this.
- lotyrin 7mo ago
  Right, but people with lower incomes spend, and mostly on necessities, I think the idea is that most of those necessities would become more expensive (naturally or artificially due to price-fixing) if the poorest suddenly had more financial power. In the system as it stands, it seems to me like it'd just result in a bunch of money going to grocery giants and their suppliers, landlords, medical, etc.
  - shahmeern 7mo ago
    Yeah this is the downstream effect I had in mind. You could say we'd increase supply to meet the demand but that hasn't really worked out with housing for example
    - stevenhuang 7mo ago
      Housing is limited by supply of land. For basic goods we'd have no trouble producing more.
  - bryanlarsen 7mo ago
    Most of those are commodities, where the price is set by the cost of marginal supply. Housing prices should go down. Housing is expensive in places with jobs and cheap in places without jobs. UBI gives people the freedom to move from the former to the latter. Healthcare is screwed up, UBI or no.
Galaxeblaffer 7mo ago
Not everything, only stuff that are suddenly in higher demand that can't increase supply. If you take food as an example i don't imagine demand would increase? And if it did we could probably just produce more? And also it's not like everyone will have unlimited money, so you'll still have to prioritize and luckily we don't all have the same priorities. I'm pretty sure the idea is to fund this by taxing production and not by printing money, so inflation shouldn't be a problem.
recursivecaveat 7mo ago
If the only money is UBI money then things start to get weird. If UBI coexists with regular income in moderation then it doesn't change much. Consider that about 1/3 Americans receive some form of government assistance. There's already a kind of fallback UBI distributed across SNAP + Medicare + Medicaid + Unemployment + Social Security + etc, and no one on those programs is clamoring for them to be shut down so that lentils become cheaper. Giving money to everyone does increase inflation (though you can play with the tax rate to offset that), but the important effect is it transfers purchasing power to net recipients. Basically: the economy wide money supply would at worst go up by a modest factor, the income of the poorest goes up by an absolute amount (or a massive factor if you want to view it that way), which is a huge benefit to them.
rrgok 7mo ago
As if things are not getting already expensive by each day. Maybe it changes the pace, but that's another problem.

ambicapter 7mo ago

The only way? What about built out infrastructure? What about universal health care? What about enforcing laws? What about enforcing truth in advertising? What about punishing various types of crooks in the various markets and transactions, financial and otherwise, that ordinary people take part in? The only way? Like a silver bullet? Like that thing that the common idiom says doesn't exist?

wartywhoa23 7mo ago
When someone says something is "the only way", that's a sure sign they either have some vested interest in that only way, or have an idea fix.
Spooky23 7mo ago
It’s obviously not the only way. The more likely way is what is happening, a new medieval era with lords and serfs.
keeda 7mo ago
> What about universal health care? I haven't thought this through, but I don't see how you could have UBI without universal healthcare. If the point of UBI is to ensure the most basic necessities are covered, and "basic necessities" includes healthcare, and healthcare is the Luigi-inducing travesty it is in the US right now, how is it UBI without universal healthcare? The alternative is that UBI is high enough to cover healthcare, which is extremely (maybe unfeasibly so) expensive and creates all kinds of other incentives for abuse. Or we fix the systemic, profit motive-driven problems in the current system by nationalizing healthcare. Yes, nationalized healthcare is also problematic, but I think UBI will indirectly alleviate a lot of the systemic problems there as well.

randerson 7mo ago

I'm UBI-curious, but surely inflation would be inevitable if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year? Landlords and grocery stores and everyone else would raise prices because they know people can afford it. Obviously if you're living in poverty, anything is better than nothing, but would the average middle class person be better off? As far as I can tell no country has ever tested true UBI (unconditional and for all residents) so its all theoretical. Musk's idea of a Universal High Income (where money is no longer necessary because robots and AI give us anything we want) sounds great too until you consider scarce resources like land. Who decides who gets to buy the best properties on Earth if money is no longer a factor? What if you want, say, a human hair stylist or therapist: who would do such a job if they don't have to? We would lose the human touch in our lives, and that sounds awful.

lotsofpulp 7mo ago
> I'm UBI-curious, but surely inflation would be inevitable if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year? This does not have to be the case if higher taxes decrease purchasing power for some.
- nostrebored 7mo ago
  This does not address the relative purchasing power change on the left of the bell curve.
  - lotsofpulp 7mo ago
    The whole purpose of UBI is to increase the relative purchasing power on the left of the bell curve. But inflation (sum total) is a moot point if total supply of dollars for total demand stays the same. Prices might temporarily increase for staples, such as shelter and food, but that should incentivize sellers in the economy to supply more staples, and fewer luxury goods. The additional supply will eventually bring prices down, but end result is more people have more of the basics.
    - 7mo ago

wstrange 7mo ago

UBI will require a more progressive tax system. The Oligarchs are having none of that.

wartywhoa23 7mo ago

Communists shared alright 110 years ago in Russia, tens of millions of people failed to cope with that much prosperity and wellbeing, and then even more with unbearable freedom and peace.

steve-atx-7600 7mo ago
I think folks may not realize that communism was more popular in the early 20th century US just because of how desperate a lot of the population became without any safety nets at all provided by the government. Educated proponents genuinely wanted to improve the plight of other folks. But, where it was practiced it became just a worse kind of power and resource monopoly - concentrated in the government instead of among a minority of robber barren types. I think the learning is you have to never stop pushing for no entity to have too much power - not the government and not private sector monopolies.
amelius 7mo ago
It's probably an established law now that whenever someone points out that capitalism has flaws, another person always points at communism.
- wartywhoa23 7mo ago
  Yes, because the humankind has been flickering between extremes since name your date, and no balanced system managed to survive for more than a couple of decades.

ciwchris 7mo ago

I recently came across the idea of Universal Basic Capital (UBC): "granting every person a meaningful ownership stake in productive assets from birth." UBC would be enormously difficult to implement, as well as have its own weaknesses. It doesn't seem realistic, but introduces a new idea into the conversation. https://www.digitalistpapers.com/vol2/autorthompson#:~:text=Hedging%20our%20labor%20bets https://www.digitalistpapers.com/vol2/autorthompson#:~:text=...

gruez 7mo ago
How do you prevent people from being swindled and selling their stake off? If it can't be sold off, how's that any different than a corporation tax?
- rangestransform 7mo ago
  Part of living in a free society is being able to destroy your own life by various means

neversupervised 7mo ago

UBI will likely be necessary but that won’t appease society. Everyone wants to have a chance to climb the ladder. If it becomes self evident that humans can no longer have a meaningful impact on their outcome, there’ll be riots whether they have a roof and food or not.

K0balt 7mo ago

UBI is the actual solution, and is well understood enough now to know that most of the arguments against it are moot points or simply falsehoods. Unfortunately, with regulatory capture at near 100 percent and electoral capture almost as bad, there is no incentive structure with sufficient influence to make it happen. Wealth will continue to be funneled to the top, and taxation schemes that act as a de-facto sales tax create incentives that favor even more centralized systems. But wouldn’t it be great? An interesting aspect is that I am constantly observing innovators with significant technical and technological skills that are employed in fields outside of their expertise as a “temporary “ measure that often becomes permanent if they get further encumbered, simply because they can keel out an existence while trying to build the next cool thing. So we are wasting probably trillions of GDP in talent because people need to go work in a labor job to support their wife and child instead of continuing his very promising project in training data for humanoid robots, which could easily net 100m+ in the next decade. (Actual example. I offered him $1000 a month to keep on it, but he unfortunately needs more to survive and he has eaten through his savings over the past two years of working on it.)

dmitrygr 7mo ago
> most of the arguments against it are moot points or simply falsehoods. Ah the “I am sure we can all agree … that I’m right” argument. In actuality, there are plenty of very good arguments against unions. That you don’t like them changes nothing
- K0balt 7mo ago
  lol “unions” was thanks to AI deciding “ubi is” couldn’t be what I meant. This might be saying something about the possibility of this working out.
  - AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
    OK, but the same response still applies. There still are plenty of arguments against UBI, and you still need to actually refute them rather than just dismiss them with "they're false or moot".

softwaredoug 7mo ago

What if we build UBI but we turn out not to need it? Thats my worry. AI might possibly be “just another technology”. If we put in UBI we may disincentivize labor from adapting to an economic shift. The real solution is to regulate the industry and break up monopolies. UBI is the modern equivalent of Walmart workers on Medicaid and food stamps. It’s raiding public funds for private profit.

xixixao 7mo ago

If you believe UBI can work, why do you think communism failed?

MrDrDr 7mo ago
I'm not sure UBI would work. But what's that got to do with communism? Communism failed (IMO), because it was incompatible with human nature. People form social hierarchies and like to own property. Would UBI prevent that?
- xixixao 7mo ago
  You are answering my question - you posit that communism failed because people like to own property (and form social hierarchies) - and UBI doesn’t prevent those. I’m not sure this is the case. Especially since people did form social hierarchies and did own propety in communist/socialist regimes of the Eastern block. One might argue that UBI is incompatible with human nature, because most humans require a sense of worth, which paid work provides (to most). Take away the motivation, will the self-worthiness remain? (especially when thinking about _most_ people, not the struggling artists who wished they could pursue art without the burden of bills). I’m not sure about this at all. I just think drawing the parallels and discussing communism failure modes is interesting for the discussion of UBI.
beej71 7mo ago
Seems to be ok in Alaska.
- xixixao 7mo ago
  I don’t think Alaska has the kind of UBI people are discussing here? You probably cannot survive on $1000/year. In that situation it doesn’t seem much different to social programs standard in Europe + progressive tax.
orangecat 7mo ago
UBI doesn't replace market forces with central planning. You're still incentivized to produce goods and services that other people want, and to do so more efficiently than your competitors.

markus_zhang 7mo ago

UBI is good on paper but far from enough. Without Universal Ownership of the State, UBI is easily removed by inflation. A better yet more difficult model is universal basic resources (food stamp to exchange for packages, social housing, etc.). People can work X hours on these social projects after reviewing some training (e.g. training of plumbing to maintain the social housing apartments). This also gives them some meaning in life. Of course this will degrade in the future if there is no ownership of the state by the people, but I think it’s going to last longer.

JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
> UBI is easily removed by inflation Source? A $20k UBI wouldn’t likely secularly increase food costs on a per-calorie basis. Those folks are already eating. There will just be supply-chain friction as the system adjusts to their newly-expressable preferences.
- markus_zhang 7mo ago
  Just my hunch, as no major country has really rolled out UBI for everyone. For example, how about supermarkets increasing prices? We already saw that happening for a few years since the COVID. And how about landlords increasing rents?

GeoAtreides 7mo ago

instead of UBI, we could just reduce working hours, while keeping the same pay. Easier to manage shifts than to upend the whole economy. Something like 3 days a week, with a german approach to sundays (everything closed).

marcosdumay 7mo ago
Those are two completely different things, with completely independent results.

SequoiaHope 7mo ago

The goal we all seek - liberation - is a distant one. That said I’m skeptical that UBI is the right way. UBI assumes and requires an elite ownership class and a powerful state to force them to share their profits. But as we’ve seen, such class members will organize to penetrate the state and contort it for their own ends. Thus any successful UBI will be a compromise or it will be dismantled by the powerful class that owns the economy. In my mind, only community ownership of the means of production can truly achieve what we desire. Of course with all distant goals, it is hard to see how we get there. And to be clear I do not mean state ownership. But I am curious, on my basic point of elite capture of the state, does that make sense? I am struck that TFA’s title says UBI is “the only way to share”, amusing to me since literally directly sharing is another way. I understand we all have spooky ideas of what that means, but think for example of the concept of library economies. You borrow what you need, but you don’t own it nor have the right to destroy it. We share.

PaulDavisThe1st 7mo ago
> UBI assumes and requires an elite ownership class and a powerful state to force them to share their profits. It makes no assumption about an elite ownership class at all. It merely assumes profits, and rearranges how those profits are distributed (away from shareholders, towards labor). There is no need for community ownership of the means of production (though that might have some different benefits, along with some different disadvantages). You need high marginal (or maybe not even marginal) corporate taxes and a committment to the concept of UBI. Who owns the companies, from the perspective of UBI, is immaterial. Community ownership does not share the productivity in sector A with workers in sector B. UBI does.
- AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
  Community ownership does share across sectors if the community owns both sectors. Why would it not? Also, you haven't really answered the point. You may be able to get this established. But how do you keep it established? How do you keep the elite ownership class from dismantling it? (Based on historically observed behavior, the default assumption is that they will try.) If you don't have a plan that accounts for that, you don't really have a workable plan.

dangus 7mo ago

Well, there's definitely other ways. I would prefer a system where company ownership public and private has a mandatory public stake in both ownership and voting on company policy and major business decisions. I would prefer it illegal for the wealthy to possess an excessive amount of assets. If your assets became more valuable than the limit, the asset share would automatically rebalance toward other employees and owners in the organization who are below the asset ownership limit. You don't even really need UBI if healthcare, housing, food, and education are considered basic human rights that are included and free of cost at point of usage.

keeda 7mo ago

My take is that UBI is the most obvious solution but not one we should count on happening. There is just too much political resistance and a population-level mental block against it, at least in the US. Not to mention, Capitalism doesn't like if it can't push labor around. (Which is largely why the mindset exists, but I digress.) I say that we need to realize that by the same token(s) that AI reduces the need for labor, it also reduces the need for capital. A single motivated, disciplined individual can now do, using AI and public elastic clouds, what used to require an entire team. So companies can decimate teams, but companies are largely a source of capital. If you don't need so many people, you don't that much capital either! You could potentially parlay an insight or domain expertise into a viable business. Your moat could be the obscurity of your niche, or relationships, or IP (yes, patents. Suck it up and use every leverage you can.) Easier said than done, of course. This essentially means everyone becomes an entrepreneur. Most people are not cut out for that because (besides hard-to-acquire domain expertise) that requires being immersed in an ocean of uncertainty at all times. None of our education systems prepare people for that, or for what is coming. I expect a time of disruption, but we need to realize that AI not only a tool for the Capital class. It's a tool for us too, if only we can adapt.

mattlondon 7mo ago

A think a more workable and politically palatable version of UBI would be some form of universal utility allowance. E.g. the first x kWh electric you use, or the first X litres of water, or the first x GB of data you use is entirely free, for everyone (where X is some reasonable number that someone could just conceivably survive on). Then as you use more and more the prices start to gradually increase across a series of bands so that the heaviest users are subsidising those using the least. It would promote efficiency, would be progressive, and would allow people to live without quite so much "bill fear" for essential utilities. Plus it is not literally putting money in people's hands which is often unpopular with some demographic groups. People would still need to work but there would be some element of safety net.

skybrian 7mo ago
That seems worse because it doesn't encourage conservation enough. You want people to be able to keep the gains if they conserve energy, to set the right incentives.
cogman10 7mo ago
> Plus it is not literally putting money in people's hands which is often unpopular with some demographic groups I'd be really opposed to this. It'd only be ok if we nationalized the industries where we set these rules and rates. Otherwise, this ends up being a simple handout to private industries. For example, let's say we say x liters of water. Well who's deciding how much x liters cost? If it's a private company and the government is guaranteeing it, you can bet water (which is relatively cheap where I live) will end up being the most expensive resource imaginable. And that may actually be true depending on the location, but it'd also be true in non-desert areas with plenty of water. We've effectively had that here with the ACA, where the government has decided that it will cover the first $800 or so dollars of your health insurance. What happened? Magically, the cost of health insurance increased by $800. Private industries aren't stupid, they'll always charge the maximum price the market will bear. And when we start talking about captured industries like data provider, power provider, or your water provider... well that's where we can trust private industry the least as they literally have the public over a barrel. Utility boards are an OK solution, but the better solution is to turn these into public institutes instead of private ones.

stego-tech 7mo ago

UBI, as the OP points out, as many of us have continued to point out/scream about, is a single component of a larger agenda of reforms. It's not just about giving people money (though we absolutely should), it's also about ensuring wealth pumps can't just vacuum up that money into the hands of the already wealthy - like the stimulus checks did during COVID, like tax subsidies for healthcare do, like tax breaks for employer-provided benefits contribute to. It's reforming housing from investment asset into human right. It's detaching healthcare from employment as much as it's about negotiating with pharmaceutical companies on pricing and creating more public healthcare rather than outsource to private firms. It's rent controls on older housing stock to incentivize growing revenue through volume (more housing) instead of scarcity like we have now. It's levying taxes on higher-priced rentals and luxury housing stock to force investing in more affordable supplies. It's penalizing for-profit employers whose staff disproportionately rely on government subsidies to make ends meet, and taxing the shareholders for supporting such bad governance. It's taxing wealth and assets properly, rather than capping rate increases to keep people in homes (and thus drive up values). It's cities who reward businesses whose staff take public transit and taxing those who rely on private vehicles. Lifting property tax caps so that taxation rates float with the market, and accepting that this will mean some folks will see foreclosures and others will see valuations plummet as the market corrects itself. Incentivizing longer leases from landlords by tying property tax increases to lease renewals (yearly renewals mean yearly appraisals), to encourage more community and investing in buildings. It's expanding SNAP to everyone by default on raw foods only, and expanding access to cooking and nutrition courses so every adult can eat healthy meals. It's shrinking the work week to create more jobs, capping overtime instead of merely 1.5xing it, and raising minimum wages. It's also taxing the absolute shit out of executive compensation, especially on equities and securities. It's barring share buybacks other than those amounts that would give the company 51% control over its outstanding shares (or more), and replacing Capital Gains with Income Taxes. It's closing loopholes and shrinking the tax codes. It's so much more than "UBI and we're fine". There is no silver bullet. Nothing is an "easy fix", and no single fix will make a meaningful impact on the whole. It's nothing short of a coordinated rejection of the status quo in favor of a more equitable future that balances the need for innovation and growth with the needs of the masses for basic sustenance, shelter, healthcare, education, and safety. It's a cessation of promoting business over all, and a return to balancing business with community, with family, with individuality. It's a lot of fucking work, and anyone lounging in here nitpicking UBI specifically without considering the whole of the problem shows they're simply not ready to deal with problems of this scale.

drbojingle 7mo ago

I think the issue with ubi is it's not really basic. Cloths food and shelter are basic. I'm much more inclined to support ubi if it's food shelter cloths.

asdff 7mo ago

UBI doesn't make any sense when you imagine how it will play out. Let's consider what it actually implies on the face: labor has been obviated through automation and therefore humans no longer have a purpose on earth. UBI then amounts to a bribe paid to the remaining surviving masses of humanity so they don't go on to destroy all the automated economy and those who remain in control of the automated economy, if those are actually people in this future and not some statistical models running on their own. This is unsustainable. The masses of humanity will inevitably want a larger and larger bribe to sustain a standard of living in probably an inflationary environment. Eventually a tipping point will be reached where the models in charge of the planet determine it is more efficient to eliminate humanity than to continue paying increasing bribes.

theopsimist 7mo ago

Have not seen a counter to the what-seems-to-me trivial point that the condition of possibility of UBI is the elimination of manual labour - or otherwise slavery and slave labour like exploitation

exabrial 7mo ago

If you want UBI, just give away all of your money and stop demanding others do it instead.

6510 7mo ago

We never accomplished anything by everyone agreeing. If you want something and there are enough of you you take it. (It's easier if morality is on your side.) People who want to antagonize, moan or otherwise desire to get in the way need to be so afraid they wont do it or be discontinued prematurely. At a time 99.9% worked in agriculture and agriculture was and still is complete bullshit. You can just mix plants and leave them alone. Just visit the garden if you want something to eat. Do a bit of modest pruning. Rabbits and other creatures will eat everything if you don't eat them. Just like with agriculture the rabbits will upscale their population to match whatever food is available. I'm simplifying of course. The point being, 3% now works in agriculture. We know how to make durable houses, durable clothing, durable everything-you-need's stop listening to your wife (lol), all you need is a roof, bed, cloths, food, a good book and some time to think about what the hell we are doing. Everything else is certainly nice to have but it should not be part of this topic. One of my funny hypothetical: Say we rip all the roads out of the city and fill her up with chickens. Then, in stead of driving to your job you pick eggs and catch a chicken. Then, after 10 minutes your job is done for the day. If people don't like eggs or chicken that's fine, we can feed them to the chickens, or the delicious maggots that grow on them. I mean proverbial of course, no way you need to explain how it works to the chicken, it will do all that for free on factory settings. I'm sure this is all very hard to understand, it might not make any sense to you. Then think of the UBI as the ultimate crypto currency. You take a unit of humans, a unit of time, multiply the two and hand the coins to the human. You get nice linear expansion and nice coin distribution. You only need proof of humans and proof of time. The white paper will be very short and (sadly) lack all the interesting math.

ZooCow 7mo ago

I still haven’t seen a convincing exoneration for how to avoid UBI warping politics. It seems politically impossible to lower (see Alaska’s challenges [1]) and too attractive for politicians to promise to increase in order to easily win votes. [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/07/03/738569508/university-of-alaska-readies-for-budget-slash-we-may-likely-never-recover https://www.npr.org/2019/07/03/738569508/university-of-alask...

camgunz 7mo ago

UBI doesn't address structural inequality, and because of inflation it doesn't make necessities (health care, housing, child care, education, food) affordable. We've suffered conservatives opposing simple policies of: * progressive taxation * wealth tax * government training workers, procuring supplies, and investing in advances ...but they're all gone now, so let's get going on this stuff.

rudolftheone 7mo ago

I'm (again) shocked that so poor article on UBI triggers any serious discussion: I mean, where's a math behind it? For US alone 1400usd for each adult and 500usd for kid would generate...4,95 trillion fucking dollars annually! Won't any BUI proponent explain simply HOW (realistically) can it happen?