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In theory that sounds great, but what happens if everyone says "fuck it!" and just starts taking the basic income? I think it's fairly obvious that with nobody

In theory that sounds great, but what happens if everyone says "fuck it!" and just starts taking the basic income? I think it's fairly obvious that with nobody paying taxes there is not enough government revenue to pay and thus the system falls apart. Let's call this 0% workforce participation. On the other hand, if everyone works really hard and is super productive and starts businesses and etc then at some point their market wages totally swamp the basic income and it's essentially un-needed and kind of a joke. And if that were to happen, prices would rise to the point where the basic income isn't anywhere near enough to live off of comfortably and it's existence is worthless. Let's call this 100% workforce participation. There exists a whole spectrum of workforce participation between 0% and 100% and some of them might be stable-ish such that there isn't a positive-feedback loop that quickly runs society off the rails. The problem that the champions of basic income haven't really addressed is that people fear the degenerate case of 0% workforce participation (or nearly so) and the mental calculation that people seem so able to do but which proponents of basic income seem to find impossible: where does this money come from? Why will I as a worker have to pay for things that non-workers get? Why do I not get to keep the fruits of my labor? Ultimately money is useless by itself, and the economic system is one which allows us to divvy up the limited physical goods (the planet is finite, our ability to manufacture is finite, roboticized production lines don't operate at infinite speed, neither are they free, we still need SOME farmers, etc) to people. A system which says that everyone can have even if no-one works sounds an awful lot like a perpetual motion machine and thus people are skeptical.

Zigurd 12y ago
> In theory that sounds great, but what happens if everyone says "fuck it!" and just starts taking the basic income? That's actually an argument for basic income. It's the mirror image of money politics, only its actually democratic.
- msandford 12y ago
  I want to write a really sarcastic comment, but that won't really achieve anything. I suspect that either I really don't get something, or that you really don't get something but I can't tell which. You said "That's actually an argument for basic income" in response to my statement "if everyone stops working and starts taking basic income" which I don't understand. I thought I laid out a fairly clear argument that if everyone stopped working everything falls apart. To me, the logical next events are that with not enough taxes the government either prints money or defaults on its debt. That leads to either to massive inflation (undermining the value of basic income and perhaps resulting in civil unrest like in the Arab Spring when food prices got too high) or in the case of default, quite possibly the government ceasing to exist. So how does everyone taking the basic income solve a problem? Is the goal to get rid of the government? I can't take that seriously because if people are serious about a basic income, then it stands to reason that they want it to continue, and if the government fails, so does the basic income which it provides. I'm not saying US-style capitalism is great and perfect; it's clearly flawed in huge, huge ways. But that doesn't somehow make the flaws of a basic income system non-existent does it?
  - Zigurd 12y ago
    > I thought I laid out a fairly clear argument that if everyone stopped working everything falls apart. Or the price of labor goes up. In a system where money buys the legislature, your only real recourse is to say "Fuck it, I'm out." Basic income would enable labor to vote by withholding labor. That's a feature, not a bug.
    - msandford 12y ago
      Okay, that's an interesting take on the matter. I think in a world where money buys the legislature you'd end up with basic income repealed (or not passed in the first place) and as a result, it doesn't serve the intended function. That's actually why I'm really in love with mayday.us; Lawrence Lessig's PAC to get money out of politics by supporting people who want to do actual reform rather than just saying that want to. If we can actually vote the bastards out and get better people who won't be bought in, we've got a chance to shake things up and maybe fix some of the underlying problems that basic income seems like a solution to. I maintain that everyone could stop working and prices could rise enough such that basic income is a joke and everyone has to work again in order to eat, which kind of defeats the purpose of basic income. But I do appreciate your response.
  - unprepare 12y ago
    lets think about it. Basic income is implemented tomorrow. First, only the people making up to the amount of the basic income would be willing to quit their jobs - anyone making more than needed to survive would certainly continue wanting to maximize their earnings. We would then have a vacuum of a large number of poorly payed jobs that are now in demand - would this not immediately raise the wages for these jobs? Would employers not have to raise wages to attract workers? They would either have to raise wages or automate in some way - this would be a big shakeup for companies, but with basic income even people losing jobs or companies going under would not be a huge deal since basic needs will be met for all those people So what if everyone quit their jobs and withdrew from the workforce all at once? Well, i think that wont happen - Would warren buffet quit his job? Would professional athletes? actors? Corporate accountants? Would your average HNer close up his startup? Would the bureaucrats running basic income quit? Would the bank tellers stop processing the checks? If they all did of course that would be chaos - food would immediately stop getting produced, water would stop flowing - sounds like a serious problem that hundreds of millions of people now have all the time and motivation to solve - but lets be honest, the likelihood of EVERYONE quitting their job is laughable, at worst the wages for most jobs will raise and some jobs will more rapidly be automated
logfromblammo 12y ago
Using only the statistics skimmed from elsewhere in the thread, a 1% workforce participation rate feeds everyone in the US, and several other countries that import from the US. A 9% rate does that plus manufacturing all goods. I think it is not unreasonable to think that 10% of all people able to work might just do so because they want to do something meaningful with their lives. If everyone takes the basic income, they will spend their 16 free hours a day doing things that they find value in, but not necessarily valuable enough to others to support their basic needs. In the degenerate case, a self-sustaining automated economy produces a massive surplus for human consumption. Robotic slave labor, programmed not to want anything or complain, will serve all your basic needs. A good portion of the robotic production army is already in place, but it still requires human maintenance and operators. All that is required is a sub-economy that produces more than it consumes, and requires zero inputs from anyone outside it. Autotrophic organisms already do this. Everything else on the planet eats them. If you want to feed more people for free, you just design a better algae or plankton, and they build themselves. The rest of the ecosystem simply builds on top of them.
dllthomas 12y ago
If people are able (in terms of practicality, affordability, possibly legality) to live entirely on imported goods and services, then as you say when everyone stops working, everything breaks hard. If people only buy domestic (including the case of a global BI) then when "everyone stops working" then we see supply of most things shrink dramatically. This raises prices, which means that the BI people are receiving doesn't go as far. This motivates people to get back to work. Note that it does so before the purchasing power of the BI is negligible - it does so as soon as it falls below "what you can live on with the comfort we want", which itself will have variation. I would expect such a dynamic to be self-stabilizing, not self-destructive, though it certainly depends on the constants involved. In reality, some things are purchased from abroad for cheap, some things at a premium over domestic goods, and some things can only be provided domestically. Your point is most strongly an argument against too high a BI in too small an area. The flip side, 100% participation, doesn't seem like something liable to be caused by the basic income, and it if is it should be self limiting for exactly the reason you note - we quickly find ourselves in a situation where the basic income is approximately zero in real terms. As an aside, out of fears over feedback loops I have said before that a BI should not be pegged to actual inflation, but to targeted inflation. I think that would help it generally track the real value that we are best capable of providing.

Zigurd 12y ago

> In theory that sounds great, but what happens if everyone says "fuck it!" and just starts taking the basic income? That's actually an argument for basic income. It's the mirror image of money politics, only its actually democratic.

msandford 12y ago
I want to write a really sarcastic comment, but that won't really achieve anything. I suspect that either I really don't get something, or that you really don't get something but I can't tell which. You said "That's actually an argument for basic income" in response to my statement "if everyone stops working and starts taking basic income" which I don't understand. I thought I laid out a fairly clear argument that if everyone stopped working everything falls apart. To me, the logical next events are that with not enough taxes the government either prints money or defaults on its debt. That leads to either to massive inflation (undermining the value of basic income and perhaps resulting in civil unrest like in the Arab Spring when food prices got too high) or in the case of default, quite possibly the government ceasing to exist. So how does everyone taking the basic income solve a problem? Is the goal to get rid of the government? I can't take that seriously because if people are serious about a basic income, then it stands to reason that they want it to continue, and if the government fails, so does the basic income which it provides. I'm not saying US-style capitalism is great and perfect; it's clearly flawed in huge, huge ways. But that doesn't somehow make the flaws of a basic income system non-existent does it?
- Zigurd 12y ago
  > I thought I laid out a fairly clear argument that if everyone stopped working everything falls apart. Or the price of labor goes up. In a system where money buys the legislature, your only real recourse is to say "Fuck it, I'm out." Basic income would enable labor to vote by withholding labor. That's a feature, not a bug.
  - msandford 12y ago
    Okay, that's an interesting take on the matter. I think in a world where money buys the legislature you'd end up with basic income repealed (or not passed in the first place) and as a result, it doesn't serve the intended function. That's actually why I'm really in love with mayday.us; Lawrence Lessig's PAC to get money out of politics by supporting people who want to do actual reform rather than just saying that want to. If we can actually vote the bastards out and get better people who won't be bought in, we've got a chance to shake things up and maybe fix some of the underlying problems that basic income seems like a solution to. I maintain that everyone could stop working and prices could rise enough such that basic income is a joke and everyone has to work again in order to eat, which kind of defeats the purpose of basic income. But I do appreciate your response.
- unprepare 12y ago
  lets think about it. Basic income is implemented tomorrow. First, only the people making up to the amount of the basic income would be willing to quit their jobs - anyone making more than needed to survive would certainly continue wanting to maximize their earnings. We would then have a vacuum of a large number of poorly payed jobs that are now in demand - would this not immediately raise the wages for these jobs? Would employers not have to raise wages to attract workers? They would either have to raise wages or automate in some way - this would be a big shakeup for companies, but with basic income even people losing jobs or companies going under would not be a huge deal since basic needs will be met for all those people So what if everyone quit their jobs and withdrew from the workforce all at once? Well, i think that wont happen - Would warren buffet quit his job? Would professional athletes? actors? Corporate accountants? Would your average HNer close up his startup? Would the bureaucrats running basic income quit? Would the bank tellers stop processing the checks? If they all did of course that would be chaos - food would immediately stop getting produced, water would stop flowing - sounds like a serious problem that hundreds of millions of people now have all the time and motivation to solve - but lets be honest, the likelihood of EVERYONE quitting their job is laughable, at worst the wages for most jobs will raise and some jobs will more rapidly be automated

logfromblammo 12y ago

Using only the statistics skimmed from elsewhere in the thread, a 1% workforce participation rate feeds everyone in the US, and several other countries that import from the US. A 9% rate does that plus manufacturing all goods. I think it is not unreasonable to think that 10% of all people able to work might just do so because they want to do something meaningful with their lives. If everyone takes the basic income, they will spend their 16 free hours a day doing things that they find value in, but not necessarily valuable enough to others to support their basic needs. In the degenerate case, a self-sustaining automated economy produces a massive surplus for human consumption. Robotic slave labor, programmed not to want anything or complain, will serve all your basic needs. A good portion of the robotic production army is already in place, but it still requires human maintenance and operators. All that is required is a sub-economy that produces more than it consumes, and requires zero inputs from anyone outside it. Autotrophic organisms already do this. Everything else on the planet eats them. If you want to feed more people for free, you just design a better algae or plankton, and they build themselves. The rest of the ecosystem simply builds on top of them.

dllthomas 12y ago

If people are able (in terms of practicality, affordability, possibly legality) to live entirely on imported goods and services, then as you say when everyone stops working, everything breaks hard. If people only buy domestic (including the case of a global BI) then when "everyone stops working" then we see supply of most things shrink dramatically. This raises prices, which means that the BI people are receiving doesn't go as far. This motivates people to get back to work. Note that it does so before the purchasing power of the BI is negligible - it does so as soon as it falls below "what you can live on with the comfort we want", which itself will have variation. I would expect such a dynamic to be self-stabilizing, not self-destructive, though it certainly depends on the constants involved. In reality, some things are purchased from abroad for cheap, some things at a premium over domestic goods, and some things can only be provided domestically. Your point is most strongly an argument against too high a BI in too small an area. The flip side, 100% participation, doesn't seem like something liable to be caused by the basic income, and it if is it should be self limiting for exactly the reason you note - we quickly find ourselves in a situation where the basic income is approximately zero in real terms. As an aside, out of fears over feedback loops I have said before that a BI should not be pegged to actual inflation, but to targeted inflation. I think that would help it generally track the real value that we are best capable of providing.