9 ms·

Not just that. With guaranteed basic income, in effect everyone has f-you money. No employer could easily coerce employees to do what they don't think is right:

Not just that. With guaranteed basic income, in effect everyone has f-you money. No employer could easily coerce employees to do what they don't think is right: the employees could more easily walk away. We could eliminate copyrights. After all, with basic income, artists and creators are getting paid. Some might release their work to the public domain right away. Others might pursue different publishing options. All sorts of corporate (not just individual) welfare benefits could be eliminated; after all, everyone is getting a basic income. Basic income would greatly shift power from the most wealthy back to ordinary people. It could be that the effects would be profoundly democratic.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> Not just that. With guaranteed basic income, in effect everyone has f-you money. No employer could easily coerce employees to do what they don't think is right: the employees could more easily walk away. While a basic income guarantee would reduce the capacity for coercion, unless you have fantastic levels of productivity such that you can have very high output with very low labor input, its not going to be anything like what is usually considered "F-you" money. > We could eliminate copyrights. After all, with basic income, artists and creators are getting paid. The purpose of copyrights is to create a marginal incentive to create, which basic income does not do. OTOH, a well-established basic income guarantee would further weaken the case for very long term copyrights -- but the case for that has always been weak, anyway.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  >its not going to be anything like what is usually considered "F-you" money. If you have no need to save for retirement, "f-you"'s become free.
- lukifer 13y ago
  > The purpose of copyrights is to create a marginal incentive to create Income is not the only incentive to create. Many are drawn to the impulse that Eddie Izzard calls "creativist": rather than making things in order to make money, make money in order to make things. Currently, copyrights and markets are the least-worst way we've found to enable these creations to bootstrap, but if we can do better, we should. > unless you have fantastic levels of productivity such that you can have very high output with very low labor input The combination of robotics and software make a high-output/low-labor future highly probable, if not inevitable. How long it will take until Basic Income is affordable is debatable.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > The combination of robotics and software make a high-output/low-labor future highly probable, if not inevitable. Sure. But the future is, you know, different than the present. > How long it will take until Basic Income is affordable is debatable. Some level of Basic Income guarantee is affordable now. What varies with productivity is the level at which Basic Income is sustainable.
    - lukifer 13y ago
      Agreed. I'd be curious what the numbers added up to if we eliminated all social welfare programs and spent it it on Basic Income instead (not that I would necessarily advocate for or against that). I'll have to run some fuzzy numbers when I can find a moment.
- gshubert17 13y ago
  My reading of the US constitution is that the purpose of copyrights is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts". The marginal incentives you mention are of course one way to implement that, but not the only way, it seems to me.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> Not just that. With guaranteed basic income, in effect everyone has f-you money. No employer could easily coerce employees to do what they don't think is right: the employees could more easily walk away. While a basic income guarantee would reduce the capacity for coercion, unless you have fantastic levels of productivity such that you can have very high output with very low labor input, its not going to be anything like what is usually considered "F-you" money. > We could eliminate copyrights. After all, with basic income, artists and creators are getting paid. The purpose of copyrights is to create a marginal incentive to create, which basic income does not do. OTOH, a well-established basic income guarantee would further weaken the case for very long term copyrights -- but the case for that has always been weak, anyway.

pessimizer 13y ago
>its not going to be anything like what is usually considered "F-you" money. If you have no need to save for retirement, "f-you"'s become free.
lukifer 13y ago
> The purpose of copyrights is to create a marginal incentive to create Income is not the only incentive to create. Many are drawn to the impulse that Eddie Izzard calls "creativist": rather than making things in order to make money, make money in order to make things. Currently, copyrights and markets are the least-worst way we've found to enable these creations to bootstrap, but if we can do better, we should. > unless you have fantastic levels of productivity such that you can have very high output with very low labor input The combination of robotics and software make a high-output/low-labor future highly probable, if not inevitable. How long it will take until Basic Income is affordable is debatable.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > The combination of robotics and software make a high-output/low-labor future highly probable, if not inevitable. Sure. But the future is, you know, different than the present. > How long it will take until Basic Income is affordable is debatable. Some level of Basic Income guarantee is affordable now. What varies with productivity is the level at which Basic Income is sustainable.
  - lukifer 13y ago
    Agreed. I'd be curious what the numbers added up to if we eliminated all social welfare programs and spent it it on Basic Income instead (not that I would necessarily advocate for or against that). I'll have to run some fuzzy numbers when I can find a moment.
gshubert17 13y ago
My reading of the US constitution is that the purpose of copyrights is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts". The marginal incentives you mention are of course one way to implement that, but not the only way, it seems to me.