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Likely you will end up with people with free time doing what a good number who have no real jobs do, sit on their ass and watch tv or surf the net. Nothing cur

Likely you will end up with people with free time doing what a good number who have no real jobs do, sit on their ass and watch tv or surf the net. Nothing currently today prevents any person unemployed and receiving assistance from doing what he claims people would do IF ONLY except society does not penalize sloth and laziness. Before we get onto the give everyone an income train we need to do some work getting people back into the idea of contributing whether they are compensated directly or not. The idea of take take take without doing giving of your own should gradually moved into the idea of simple repulsiveness. This is where the internet/tv come into play.

zanny 12y ago
That culture only exists today because if you ever live in poverty you develop a mindset of a vulture. You need to seize opportunity and give nothing to maximize your position because you are so far behind. It is socially toxic, and only exists because you can fall through the bottom of society and become forgotten and discarded. It is treading water just to survive. It makes people hostile, selfish, and bitter. Plenty of studies show how poverty will change your brain chemistry for the worse. Of course the first generation of UBI would be a trying time. It is correcting so many social wrongs at once it upsets your worldview completely. But I cannot imagine anyone beyond the first batch ever having anything but significantly increased happiness, social cohesion, voluntarism, and enterpenurism, because once you can (hate to say it) cull the damaged goods, you have a society where everyone can take risks but always keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, and be as generous as they want while always having a bed to sleep on. That is such a huge psychological advantage for society. Which is kind of why I find UBI such a no brainer nowadays. You can approach it from so many angles - cultural, microeconomic, macroeconomic, social, psychological, and every one of them in and of itself has so many benefits it seems insane not to implement it at almost any cost just for those benefits alone. But they are not alone, it helps in almost every problem center of the modern world.
ddod 12y ago
I couldn't really disagree more. In the US, the lower economic rungs are either working incredibly hard for little gains (try making a livable wage when most employers only offer part time hours that are constantly changing, preventing you from getting health insurance or secondary jobs), living off of welfare, or some combination thereof and also working in the drug/sex/theft trade. That to me shows that most people have a natural interest in gain above the minimum for survival and an interest in working for it. Unfortunately, most of that work isn't really benefiting society or the people doing it, and it creates a poverty loop. Even if you believe humans are naturally lazy, what is the takeaway? When their labor value decreases to next to nothing, what value is all their willingness to work for survival?
gutnor 12y ago
> we need to do some work getting people back into the idea of contributing whether they are compensated directly or not First thing though, the scenario analysed here is a scenario where there is not enough thing to contribute to. Let's imagine that everything can be done through a computer and only a few million developers worldwide are required to program the machines. Do you want 10 billion uninsterested people fight to get the job or only the motivated ones ? If there are 2 persons for 1 job, that is stupid to chose the one that hates it and just want to be home doing something else. Secondly, considering that our whole economy is driven be consumption ( nowadays, there is virtually unlimited amount of money available on the investment side ), so a guy consuming the whole day is playing a bigger part in society than a guy working 12 hours a day and saving his money.

zanny 12y ago

That culture only exists today because if you ever live in poverty you develop a mindset of a vulture. You need to seize opportunity and give nothing to maximize your position because you are so far behind. It is socially toxic, and only exists because you can fall through the bottom of society and become forgotten and discarded. It is treading water just to survive. It makes people hostile, selfish, and bitter. Plenty of studies show how poverty will change your brain chemistry for the worse. Of course the first generation of UBI would be a trying time. It is correcting so many social wrongs at once it upsets your worldview completely. But I cannot imagine anyone beyond the first batch ever having anything but significantly increased happiness, social cohesion, voluntarism, and enterpenurism, because once you can (hate to say it) cull the damaged goods, you have a society where everyone can take risks but always keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, and be as generous as they want while always having a bed to sleep on. That is such a huge psychological advantage for society. Which is kind of why I find UBI such a no brainer nowadays. You can approach it from so many angles - cultural, microeconomic, macroeconomic, social, psychological, and every one of them in and of itself has so many benefits it seems insane not to implement it at almost any cost just for those benefits alone. But they are not alone, it helps in almost every problem center of the modern world.

ddod 12y ago

I couldn't really disagree more. In the US, the lower economic rungs are either working incredibly hard for little gains (try making a livable wage when most employers only offer part time hours that are constantly changing, preventing you from getting health insurance or secondary jobs), living off of welfare, or some combination thereof and also working in the drug/sex/theft trade. That to me shows that most people have a natural interest in gain above the minimum for survival and an interest in working for it. Unfortunately, most of that work isn't really benefiting society or the people doing it, and it creates a poverty loop. Even if you believe humans are naturally lazy, what is the takeaway? When their labor value decreases to next to nothing, what value is all their willingness to work for survival?

gutnor 12y ago

> we need to do some work getting people back into the idea of contributing whether they are compensated directly or not First thing though, the scenario analysed here is a scenario where there is not enough thing to contribute to. Let's imagine that everything can be done through a computer and only a few million developers worldwide are required to program the machines. Do you want 10 billion uninsterested people fight to get the job or only the motivated ones ? If there are 2 persons for 1 job, that is stupid to chose the one that hates it and just want to be home doing something else. Secondly, considering that our whole economy is driven be consumption ( nowadays, there is virtually unlimited amount of money available on the investment side ), so a guy consuming the whole day is playing a bigger part in society than a guy working 12 hours a day and saving his money.