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One fundamental challenge with basic income that gets overlooked is that if you’re a smart person and you’ve built a career where you make a lot of money, you h

One fundamental challenge with basic income that gets overlooked is that if you’re a smart person and you’ve built a career where you make a lot of money, you have cash flow issues that prevent you from going to basic income. It’s a huge sacrifice that requires drastic quality of life changes which means the people who will be subsisting on that aren’t the people who have the motivation to set up that room nor are necessarily going to be people you want running it. Universal income is a fancy name around what happened in Soviet Union with the key difference is that in the Soviet Union you were forced to work to collect it - you couldn’t not work. The whole “make work optional” part of the idea sounds like it adds a “fun” new twist on the outcome if “fun” means dystopia. It is hilarious to me that all the AI CEOs are libertarians and right wingers that complain about welfare fraud and espouse Ayn Rand yet at the same time push for UBI which is essentially a form of communism. The problem with paying everyone the same wage is that it disincentivizes personal growth and those that have invested in that growth don’t get rewarded. The problem with not investing in personal growth is you end up with a socially ill population in a death spiral. Russia still hasn’t recovered from the Communists and the imperialists before them. China has had to be quite violent and repressive to create stability.

inigyou 4mo ago
UBI is in addition to whatever you can make from a wage and the B stands for not very high, just barely high enough to live.
- vlovich123 4mo ago
  My point is that it doesn’t solve the room problem outlined in the post - someone who’s just relying on UBI isn’t going to be motivated to create this space because the space will exist regardless, they get UBI either way. That’s why the funding is necessary - it creates a market need through the coercion of pay. UBI will not magically incentivize self organization of social goods, only give marginally more freedom for personal goods.
  - em-bee 4mo ago
    there is no need for magic. it only takes a small part of the population that is motivated enough to get something going. education in the right direction is enough to instill that motivation.
em-bee 4mo ago
since the past few decades china was neither violent nor repressive to the average person living there. it also can't afford to much of that because unhappy people are more likely to revolt. so the goal is to keep people happy. a big factor in the past decades was to enable people to accumulate more wealth. before that it was through controlling information. but as the chinese get a better life, controlling information is less and less necessary since life outside of china is no longer as attractive and thus no longer causes chinese to question their own situation. you have cash flow issues that prevent you from going to basic income. It’s a huge sacrifice that requires drastic quality of life changes which means the people who will be subsisting on that aren’t the people who have the motivation to set up that room nor are necessarily going to be people you want running it. that's a transition problem only for those who are used to make a lot of money. people who grew up subsisting on basic income will not have a problem here. but it seems you misunderstand UBI. because UBI gets paid in addition to the money you earn, not instead of it. paying everyone the same regardless of their work is not UBI. money earned from work you get to keep on top of UBI. there is no sacrifice to be made, unless you are talking about a situation where people can't find work anymore. but people who can't find work are going to suffer regardless. UBI only helps to soften the blow.

inigyou 4mo ago

UBI is in addition to whatever you can make from a wage and the B stands for not very high, just barely high enough to live.

vlovich123 4mo ago
My point is that it doesn’t solve the room problem outlined in the post - someone who’s just relying on UBI isn’t going to be motivated to create this space because the space will exist regardless, they get UBI either way. That’s why the funding is necessary - it creates a market need through the coercion of pay. UBI will not magically incentivize self organization of social goods, only give marginally more freedom for personal goods.
- em-bee 4mo ago
  there is no need for magic. it only takes a small part of the population that is motivated enough to get something going. education in the right direction is enough to instill that motivation.

em-bee 4mo ago

since the past few decades china was neither violent nor repressive to the average person living there. it also can't afford to much of that because unhappy people are more likely to revolt. so the goal is to keep people happy. a big factor in the past decades was to enable people to accumulate more wealth. before that it was through controlling information. but as the chinese get a better life, controlling information is less and less necessary since life outside of china is no longer as attractive and thus no longer causes chinese to question their own situation. you have cash flow issues that prevent you from going to basic income. It’s a huge sacrifice that requires drastic quality of life changes which means the people who will be subsisting on that aren’t the people who have the motivation to set up that room nor are necessarily going to be people you want running it. that's a transition problem only for those who are used to make a lot of money. people who grew up subsisting on basic income will not have a problem here. but it seems you misunderstand UBI. because UBI gets paid in addition to the money you earn, not instead of it. paying everyone the same regardless of their work is not UBI. money earned from work you get to keep on top of UBI. there is no sacrifice to be made, unless you are talking about a situation where people can't find work anymore. but people who can't find work are going to suffer regardless. UBI only helps to soften the blow.