Re:Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income?
by afarrell on Saturday January 23, 2016 @02:28PM
(#10959658)
The incentives aren't quite aligned to make this happen, but I wonder if a private entity could jump-start this.
Lets take an organization engaged in a massively profitable activity that is unpopular because it eliminates large numbers of peoples' jobs. As an example, lets assume that Alphabet has a company working on driverless long-haul trucking. Suppose they take a pile of capital and start an endowment that then pays a small monthly amount to everyone in the political entity that could possibly stop them. To whom do they cut a cheque? Voters. They only need to get access to a voter database with names and mailing addresses. So now everyone who votes is getting a cheque from that entity every month, however small. Their marketing department comes up with some way to brand it so as to make those voters now feel warm and fuzzy about this scheme.
They then structure their company in such a way that the profits from their job-killing activity add to the monthly amount paid. In effect, they give every voter a stake in them continuing to do this. Then, when any law comes up which threatens their activity, they defend it as strongly as they would defend social security. Over time, this activity has generated enough profit that what was once a tiny cheque is actually large enough for people to pay a few bills.
The problems with this are:
1) I'm pretty sure the math wouldn't ever work out to paying anyone anything significant. 140 million voters is a lot of people to pay. The cost of postage alone would eat up the payout in the beginning.
2) There isn't enough incentive for an organization to do this just for the sake of profit. It would be cheaper to maintain a skilled team of lobbyists.
3) I suspect that people would be suspicious of cashing a random cheque that purports to be from a well-known company.
4) It might make voter fraud a non-trivial problem.
Lets take an organization engaged in a massively profitable activity that is unpopular because it eliminates large numbers of peoples' jobs. As an example, lets assume that Alphabet has a company working on driverless long-haul trucking. Suppose they take a pile of capital and start an endowment that then pays a small monthly amount to everyone in the political entity that could possibly stop them. To whom do they cut a cheque? Voters. They only need to get access to a voter database with names and mailing addresses. So now everyone who votes is getting a cheque from that entity every month, however small. Their marketing department comes up with some way to brand it so as to make those voters now feel warm and fuzzy about this scheme.
They then structure their company in such a way that the profits from their job-killing activity add to the monthly amount paid. In effect, they give every voter a stake in them continuing to do this. Then, when any law comes up which threatens their activity, they defend it as strongly as they would defend social security. Over time, this activity has generated enough profit that what was once a tiny cheque is actually large enough for people to pay a few bills.
The problems with this are:
1) I'm pretty sure the math wouldn't ever work out to paying anyone anything significant. 140 million voters is a lot of people to pay. The cost of postage alone would eat up the payout in the beginning.
2) There isn't enough incentive for an organization to do this just for the sake of profit. It would be cheaper to maintain a skilled team of lobbyists.
3) I suspect that people would be suspicious of cashing a random cheque that purports to be from a well-known company.
4) It might make voter fraud a non-trivial problem.