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Being from Spain and having seen the reaction to high quantities of money available. A system like this will need to be very well monitored, it can help immense

by omegant 13y ago

Being from Spain and having seen the reaction to high quantities of money available. A system like this will need to be very well monitored, it can help immensely to those in need, but if done unconditionally it will certainly encourage laziness in a sector of the society. My wife is a doctor and before the crisis she used to have patients DEMAND the permanent disability, because they wanted to stop working. They were always saying "It´s my right, give MY disability!". They were regular people with no or little physical problems. Of course the people that really really needed the disability (very ill and in pain) didn´t want it. They just wanted to keep working and bringing money home. Now as there is no money, the former has almost disappeared from the hospital.

Radim 13y ago
Upvoted you back. Discussing such things on HN must feel surreal if you're not the median HN reader (educated, white, entitled westerner with 1st world problems). Talking about what the "poor" would do if this and that, based on your own "hunches", worldview and ambitions. Mass social experiments designed by intellectuals from an ivory tower... uhh. Good luck to Switzerland though, they may be able to afford providing one much needed data point!
- omegant 13y ago
  I think that it is a Necessary idea, but the implementarion has to be dreaven by results or lack of them. It can not be a static system or it will certainly degrade and be abused, it has to be refocused on a regular basis to help the people that is in need in that moment, and not the ones that are are merely taking profit of it. A high educated and civic society like the Swiss, is more likely to make the best of it.
summerdown2 13y ago
> A system like this will need to be very well monitored, it can help immensely to those in need, but if done unconditionally it will certainly encourage laziness in a sector of the society. Thought experiment: If the overall effect of basic income is to make things better overall(1), does it really matter if some people become lazy? (1) Through whatever metric you want to measure. ... To give some background, my question is whether the existence of laziness is a sufficient critique in itself. If things get better on average, but some people are enabled to sit around all day, is that really a problem? I'm asking this because the UK government at the moment is constantly railing against lazy people taking benefits, as if it's self-evident that should be stopped. To me, this just sounds like the politics of envy and hate (though I admit I could be wrong). Put another way: if a utopia involves some people getting benefits they don't deserve, would that be a bad thing? Obviously, I'm not saying basic income will produce a better society. I think it might, but needs empirical testing. My question is more whether the existence of undeserving beneficiaries is sufficient to rule it out.
- danbmil99 13y ago
  This assumes a static proportion of "lazy" or unethical people. I think the counterargument is one of moral hazard: if you reward laziness, more and more people will decide to be lazy. There is also a motivational issue -- many people (I suspect) will find it harder to work for a living if they sense that their hard-earned money is taxed and given away to freeloaders.
  - urish 13y ago
    But why would you equate "lazy" with unethical? That's already an assumption that could be challenged. We now don't deem someone who's unwilling to work from sun up to sun down in the rice fields as lazy or unethical, but 300 years ago that might have been the case. Why? Because now a few people grow our food so efficiently that most people can afford to be "lazy" and work 40 hours a week in an office job, or at least an air-conditioned job.
    - tnorthcutt 13y ago
      But the rest of us pay the efficient farmers for that food. That's the difference.
    - danbmil99 13y ago
      what is unethical is to work 20 hours a week when you are perfectly capable of 40, collect 40 hours worth of pay, and let people who work harder take up the slack. That is patently unfair to the ones who work the full week. Fairness matters.
  - summerdown2 13y ago
    > if you reward laziness, more and more people will decide to be lazy. Potentially, but I'm still interested in my thought experiment. What if a) It gets better, using some metric of better. at the same time as: b) Some people are lazy. Even if b) is a larger number than at present, does that matter? It doesn't to me, but my intuition is that there are some people who will not tolerate others being lazy even if that's the optimum solution. I suspect that Basic Income will be unpopular in some quarters, even if the empirical results are that it works.

by omegant 13y ago

Radim 13y ago

Upvoted you back. Discussing such things on HN must feel surreal if you're not the median HN reader (educated, white, entitled westerner with 1st world problems). Talking about what the "poor" would do if this and that, based on your own "hunches", worldview and ambitions. Mass social experiments designed by intellectuals from an ivory tower... uhh. Good luck to Switzerland though, they may be able to afford providing one much needed data point!

omegant 13y ago
I think that it is a Necessary idea, but the implementarion has to be dreaven by results or lack of them. It can not be a static system or it will certainly degrade and be abused, it has to be refocused on a regular basis to help the people that is in need in that moment, and not the ones that are are merely taking profit of it. A high educated and civic society like the Swiss, is more likely to make the best of it.

summerdown2 13y ago

> A system like this will need to be very well monitored, it can help immensely to those in need, but if done unconditionally it will certainly encourage laziness in a sector of the society. Thought experiment: If the overall effect of basic income is to make things better overall(1), does it really matter if some people become lazy? (1) Through whatever metric you want to measure. ... To give some background, my question is whether the existence of laziness is a sufficient critique in itself. If things get better on average, but some people are enabled to sit around all day, is that really a problem? I'm asking this because the UK government at the moment is constantly railing against lazy people taking benefits, as if it's self-evident that should be stopped. To me, this just sounds like the politics of envy and hate (though I admit I could be wrong). Put another way: if a utopia involves some people getting benefits they don't deserve, would that be a bad thing? Obviously, I'm not saying basic income will produce a better society. I think it might, but needs empirical testing. My question is more whether the existence of undeserving beneficiaries is sufficient to rule it out.

danbmil99 13y ago
This assumes a static proportion of "lazy" or unethical people. I think the counterargument is one of moral hazard: if you reward laziness, more and more people will decide to be lazy. There is also a motivational issue -- many people (I suspect) will find it harder to work for a living if they sense that their hard-earned money is taxed and given away to freeloaders.
- urish 13y ago
  But why would you equate "lazy" with unethical? That's already an assumption that could be challenged. We now don't deem someone who's unwilling to work from sun up to sun down in the rice fields as lazy or unethical, but 300 years ago that might have been the case. Why? Because now a few people grow our food so efficiently that most people can afford to be "lazy" and work 40 hours a week in an office job, or at least an air-conditioned job.
  - tnorthcutt 13y ago
    But the rest of us pay the efficient farmers for that food. That's the difference.
  - danbmil99 13y ago
    what is unethical is to work 20 hours a week when you are perfectly capable of 40, collect 40 hours worth of pay, and let people who work harder take up the slack. That is patently unfair to the ones who work the full week. Fairness matters.
- summerdown2 13y ago
  > if you reward laziness, more and more people will decide to be lazy. Potentially, but I'm still interested in my thought experiment. What if a) It gets better, using some metric of better. at the same time as: b) Some people are lazy. Even if b) is a larger number than at present, does that matter? It doesn't to me, but my intuition is that there are some people who will not tolerate others being lazy even if that's the optimum solution. I suspect that Basic Income will be unpopular in some quarters, even if the empirical results are that it works.