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We need a BIG because it is becoming a required human right in an information society. More and more, power and opportunity are determined by access to informat
by c3o 13y ago
We need a BIG because it is becoming a required human right in an information society. More and more, power and opportunity are determined by access to information, and we're making strides in democratizing that and thereby decentralizing power. But to actually realize the benefits from increased access to information requires freedom from existential fear (and education and a mostly discrimination-free society). If we do not fix these problems, we're not improving the world with all our wonderful tech tools but establishing a digital elite.
We need a BIG because it encourages risk taking. Society is built largely on the backs of low-wage laborers, but actually benefits most from free, educated, motivated people chasing not just a living wage but a fulfilling occupation. The ingenuity of human minds is our greatest, most renewable, still hugely untapped resource. It should be society's goal to enable and tap that potential. YCombinator sort of pays smart people BIs for a summer not as a reward for work but to ENABLE them to work, to great benefit (though not entirely unconditionally, obviously). When and why have we given up hope of expanding such concepts to all of society?
We need a BIG because markets are made of people, which means there can be no free market without free people. Many people today are not free but under economic duress. Only once people's livelihoods are secured, the labor market will produce win-win situations and exploitation will be eliminated (giving everyone a benefit most of us techies already enjoy). Finally, jobs will be paid what they're actually worth to us rather than what employers can get away with. Unpopular tasks will have to be fairly (=highly) paid or automated. A BIG actually perfects capitalism, rather than undermining it.
We need a BIG because it's not possible to "live off the land" by your own labor anymore in our society. An income is required for survival.
We need a BIG because progress is eliminating (the need for) many low-wage, manual labor jobs. "Full employment" is becoming less and less necessary or desirable.
We need a BIG because many tasks society benefits from aren't paid: Caring for the elderly, raising kids,... but even writing open source software or contributing to Wikipedia. People doing such work today are either privileged, dependent on others or in precarious living conditions. All of these strike me as things we should work to avoid.
We need a BIG because it is fair and simple – paid not just to the jobless, but everyone. It is empowerment rather than a bureaucratically administered handout with all kinds of social stigma attached.
- ahomescu1 13y ago> We need a BIG because it's not possible to "live off the land" by your own labor anymore in our society. An income is required for survival. This brings up an idea I had recently: how about a Basic Land Guarantee instead? You give everyone who asks some piece of fertile land, where they can move and start a farm. If they can't live decently in the big city, they could move to the countryside and support themselves.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- kevingadd 13y agoEven if the US's population was half its current total I think you'd be hard-pressed to actually have everyone support themselves on independent farms in the countryside. Farming is HARD WORK, the expenses are numerous and unpredictable, and profit margins are slim. If you want to understand this more you should read up on the various farm subsidies and other programs currently in effect in the US, and maybe talk to some people who've lived in rural areas or actually operated farms.
- ihateloggingin 13y agoIt kind of sounds good but then you realize it's completely insane. Do you want to go back to pre-industrial agriculture?? That is a waste of land. There probably is not enough even land for it anymore; even if there were, it would mean a massive reduction in food production capacity. ...Unless you were going to allow people to pool their land and farm it using industrial methods. So they could exchange their land for shared stock in an agricultural corporation. The corporation would sell the produce, and distribute the resulting funds as dividends... oh wait it's a Basic Income!
- notahacker 13y agoYCombinator sort of pays smart people BIs for a summer not as a reward for work but to ENABLE them to work, to great benefit (though not entirely unconditionally, obviously). When and why have we given up hope of expanding such concepts to all of society? I think tech investment actually works better as an argument against expecting returns from giving people money to do what they want. Venture capitalists distribute capital to the most talented and motivated individuals in the entire country and have significant leverage when it comes to ensuring those elite recipients use that capital to generate positive financial returns. And yet most VC funds still lose money. Do we really think that taking money from people performing tasks people are willing to pay for and giving it to people performing tasks people are unwilling to pay for will be, on average, a winning bet for society? If it is, the misallocation of resources is probably too big a problem to be solved simply by throwing money at people. It's one thing to subsidise public service and the risk of trying to produce something else. It's another thing to subsidise self-service and insulate people from the consequences of never producing anything.