I know that UBI, on paper, looks like it’s a good answer to many of the challenges listed at the end. But I don’t think that UBI, once put in place, would be as strong, politically, as other universal programs such as universal social insurance: => Round #1: new left-wing government enacts UBI with appropriate funding. => Round #2: left-wing government loses elections, new right-wing government decides to target UBI on the poor in order to master the costs. UBI becomes BI without the "U". => Round #3: the rich find that their taxes are too high and denounce the BI-claiming poor as welfare queens, contributing to the right-wing government winning reelection and weakening BI even more.

There are two kinds of universal benefits: the rich (and the middle class) all need universal health insurance (in case they have cancer), but they don’t really need UBI because they earn enough money from other sources.

So I’m not sure why, even if they’re supportive at the beginning, they would keep on supporting UBI under the inevitable ideological and financial pressure that comes with a polarized democratic society.

Considering this perspective, my understanding is that all the energy thrown in BI-related discussions is wasted while it could be invested in favor of universal health insurance for instance (which the US still lacks even with Obamacare, and which could benefit for the attention and design skills from the tech community).

The flaw here is that this would seem to apply to any form of social assistance. Why hasn't the same thing happened to social security?

The answer is that Round #2 doesn't make sense. You can't take someone who is making $60K/year + $10K UBI and take away the UBI without lowering their taxes unless you want them to burn you in effigy. But if all you propose to do is replace $10K in UBI with $10K in tax cuts for the same people, who is going to be the lobby in favor of that?

The dynamic you're describing is what happens to things like education assistance. Because people would rather have in $1 in cash money tax cuts than $1 in education vouchers. But the UBI is cash that spends just the same as the tax cut would.

It hasn't happened to Social Security because, if I'm not mistaken, the pension amount is proportional to what you earned during your career => hence the rich pay more but also receive more. Same with unemployment benefits.

This is actually the only way to make a universal monetary benefit politically sustainable. And UBI, with its fixed amount, doesn't match that criteria.

I think the reason that social security survives while welfare benefits continue to be slashed regularly is perfectly clear.

While I myself am a programmer and support basic income, I have talked with many people outside the technology world who are also in favor of such a system. YC is getting their hands dirty with their research project and Finland's government is most definitely aware of politics. The only way for us (US citizens) to get our hands dirty in politics when not voting is talking about these things.

> ... energy thrown in BI-related discussions is wasted while it could be invested in favor of universal health insurance for instance ...

BI and health insurance, universal or not, solve very different issues. Both deserve attention and one doesn't preclude the other. I do think that a very important part of BI discussions is what programs it can replace, what it can supplement, and what it doesn't solve.

The fact that so many people talk about BI without leaving their job, raising funds, going on strike, founding unions, etc., is proof in my eyes that we're having an intellectual discussion, not waging a political battle.

The one precedent of authentic political action in the current context, the foundation of the Freelancers Union, was meant to fight for health coverage for freelancers, not a monetary benefit.

I don't exactly think that going on strike or leaving your job, serves as a good argument for UBI - quite the contrary. And no, the same cannot be said for worker rights or work similar issues.

I do think that unions have a great role to play in this, and that they could easily focus and do research on the effects on UBI, much like the YC project.

Maybe BI won't work, and any money invested in it will be wasted. Maybe BI will work, and it will eventually solve many problems with today's Western societies.

Who are you to tell the rest of us we're not even allowed to try?

Is it your money being invested in the attempt?

Will it negatively impact you?

If we take your attitude, possible improvements will never be attempted, and therefore, nothing will ever improve.

>My understanding is that all the energy thrown in BI-related discussions is wasted while it could be invested in favor of universal health insurance for instance.

It's fantastic that you have another idea! Don't waste your energy nay-saying people who are trying something other than your idea, get to work making your idea happen!

Also I point out that real-life enactments such as the French RMI, even though they succeeded at providing critical resources to those in need, are under extraordinary financial and political pressure. That pressure explains why it's become so complex, ridden with adverse effects and hated by much of the political spectrum.

I'm fairly certain that basic income would suffer the same fate. Therefore I see it as a political dead end and a distraction from much-needed debates on critical social risks in the digital age.

"Momentum; i.e. the green party's candidacy is far less realistic" says Alice. "Therefore, the democratic party deserves your green vote." I don't like winner-takes-all elections since it incentives a two-party system. But despite this current state, I'd still vote for the green candidate if I preferred it over the dem candidate. Because in the long term, it gives the dems an incentive to more closely align with the greens if they want improve their chance of success.

In this sense, the green vote wasn't a distraction, it was a message. The sentiment that incumbents feel entitled to third party votes and feel that third party votes are "wasted", I find baffling. I could argue that all votes are wasted, because nobody but me voted for the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The only interpretation under which others' votes could be said to be "a distraction" rather than "political input" is if one believed in the objective superiority of their own beliefs.

I wonder if you would change your tune if (hypothetically) UBI one day gained more momentum than Universal Health Care. But in your ideal world, this could never happen. Because all reasonable people would expend effort only into the coalition with the most momentum, which A) happens to be Universal Health Care ATM and B) will only ever be Universal Health Care in the future since the positive feedback loop never breaks.

I happen to think it's the greatest challenge to be tackled by civic tech startups...

See this older story https://salon.thefamily.co/software-eating-politics-the-case...

So you believe UHC is better than UBI. All good. But to end the debate on UBI because it subtracts from a related discussion is ridiculous. I read the link, and I recognize that political campaigns require large expenditures. I also believe the market place of ideas can accomidate both discussions.

By calling UBI a "distraction", you are implying it'd be more convenient if the UBI discussion didn't exist because it's more convenient than letting the UBI and UHC compete on a their merits. It signals that it is inconceivable to you that UBI might in fact be the better idea, and that you'd bet the farm on UHC's superiority.

Sam Altman: "Let's perform a UBI experiment and see how it goes."

Nicolas Colins: "I'm a historian. I already know the outcome. The experiment is a waste of time and money."

Okay bud.

- there have been a lot of large-scale BI policy experiments in the past in many countries, and none turned out so well on the long term. Yes it's true that technology changes many things, but I think it should be exploited primarily to improve existing benefits (considering the criticality of healthcare and housing, two major factors of both economic insecurity and inequalities);

- I think a healthcare single-payer or public option experiment would be more impactful, because this is what is currently at stake in Congress, the Supreme Court and the coming presidential election + it's important to win many small victories in the present rather than a hypothetical large one in a distant future (any union leader would agree). Finish the job on healthcare, and you'll discover that it becomes easier to advance the cause of UBI.

I guess you're more of a communist and I'm more of a social-traitor ;-)

This suggests you believe UHC is a useful stepping stone to UBI. Is this actually your opinion? Because it doesn't reflect the vibe I got in your article. If I understand your article correctly, you believe

A) UBI is inherently fragile.

B) Conservative lobbyists will cause UBI to decay into something ugly.

C) UHC is more resilient.

D) Therefore UHC is better.

E) And France proves it.

But your comments upthread suggest you believe UHC is superior because it's easier to implement given its comfortable position within the Overton-Window. The Overton-Window Argument says it may become feasible in the future, while the Fragility Argument says it will never become feasible.

Frankly, I suspect the article is a Motte & Bailey. Maybe your real issue with UBI is that it will take too long to campaign for. I.e. you want your marshmallow sooner rather than later. Which is reasonable. But understand that it's another discussion entirely and was not clear to me from the article.

The more charitable interpretation is that you believe UBI's fragility is due to its immaturity. And that UHC will grant us experience. Okay. But if so, this was not clear to me from your article. And it would contradict your position that UBI experiments are a waste.

What I meant is that if you care for economic security and lesser inequalities, then you have to fight for the whole liberal agenda (improving the coverage of all risks), not just one issue, otherwise the bad guys win this time, and the next, and the next.

I you think UBI's worth fighting (I don't), your only chance to succeed is in the context of advancing that liberal agenda in its entirety over the long term.

And right now, with Obama's legacy and Trump on the verge of winning, the main social front is social health insurance. Sadly I don't hear many tech people on that issue (for hypothetical reasons laid out in the article) and I reckon the whole UBI discussion has a responsibility in that deafening silence.

How convenient for you. The reason why you believe UHC is a useful stepping stone is probably because making UHC a reality will pull UBI within the Overton Window. But perhaps there are other ways to improve UBI's legitimacy. Like... discussing ramifications. Or performing an experiment.

Allow me to reiterate: "Voters' power over a coalition varies directly with the voters' volatility." Once a vote is pledged, the voter's negotiating leverage is lost. It's like haggling. If a potential buyer says "Oh what a nice sweater", the sweater's price is mysteriously doubles. People learn not to say things like that, because they don't want to waste their money.

Agglomeration is one tactic at one's disposal. Walking away is another. Maybe that sounds weird. Because as far as you know, the only force at work in politics is economies of scale. "Join us! Resistance is futile!" True, the power of a coalition (over other coalitions) is proportional to its size. But it comes at the cost of the voters' power over its residing coalition. By analogy. A heavier motorcycle is more powerful. But a lighter motorcycle has better handling. Meditation: why do states/provinces/municipalities exist if the federal government has stronger economies of scale?

UBI proponents should pledge their allegiance to liberals? Wouldn't that be convenient for you. Oops, the price just doubled. Question: how does a store convince a potential customer to part with their money? The store courts them with something of value. And how does a liberal convince a UBI proponent to part with their vote? "Your idea is dumb but mine is better. So buy into mine instead. Whoah, no need to compare -- trust me I'm a professional. Now shut up and give me your vote. By the way, your vote is worthless so you should totally give it to me." The pitch didn't start out bad, but things get sketchy fast. You're essentially trying to conscript (rather than entice) mercenaries into your coalition when you're not in a position to do so.

That being said, what I suggest is not throwing away the UBI concept for the greater good. Mostly I regret the lack of participation in the discussion over social risks and economic security in general, which I don't think can be reduced to UBI and the problems it (supposedly) solves.

For lack of that participation, UBI ends up resembling a solution looking for a problem (a very bad starting point as you know if you're in the startup world). And those who support it so enthusiastically look like they're single-issue voters.

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-unethical-to-be-a-single-issue-v...

Workers engaged in the labor movement didn't fight for social insurance because it was a good idea. Rather they fought for it because some of them felt ill and couldn't afford proper care and then they died in misery.

Another way to put it: if I was aiming at building a giant tech company with a mission to provide economic security, I wouldn't start by promoting UBI but rather by solving my future customers' most pressing social problems—and those are (surprise) unaffordable housing and lack of health insurance, two issues that UBI doesn't address (or am I missing something?).

Maybe 10 years later, when you serve 1.7 billion users with a very large pool of risks, sophisticated financial tools and advanced machine learning, you'll end up with something vaguely resembling UBI. But UBI as a starting point seems like a failed startup to me.

Do something people want :-)

Your opinion does not give you the right to stop others from voicing theirs, and working hard to achieve what they think is a worthwhile goal.

The fact you ignored that's what my comment is saying, and merely paraphrased your article makes me think you don't care about other people's opinions and ideas, which is a really, really great way to make people not care about yours.

I'm not really sure why an "old age and unemployment" security net is intrinsically more politically stable than a "basic income" social security net. You need some deal of political cleverness to implement both.

2: Universal and free market oriented. You are not told how to spend that income and you can then use it to support small business/entrepreneurial endeavors.

In practice, my guess is that it wouldn't be long before UBI is converted a means-tested benefit, for both financial and political reasons.

As for advantage number 2, yes you're not told how to spend that income but chances are that income is far from enough to pay for proper healthcare / childcare / elderly care or well-located housing.

The history of the social state shows us that transferring money to people is not enough: you also have to supplement the market and correct its imperfections.

There has not been UBI so history tells you little. By supplement the market you mean

We saw that happen in many cases in the recent period of austerity, because scarcity of resources is a powerful argument to convince the rich, then the middle class, to renounce their benefits in favor of the poor.

As for "there has not been UBI" I disagree. Many supporters provide examples such as the Alaska dividend. There are many lessons to be drawn from many social policies in developed countries.

In France alone we had two BI-like programs which, for various reasons, underwent slow financial and political destruction: - the RMI/RSA, about which I wrote in the article - less known is the "régime des intermittents du spectacle", which works like a universal unemployment insurance for freelancers in the entertainment industry (and it costs so much money to the taxpayer that governments regularly try to kill it). It only survives because the entertainment industry is a powerful lobby in France.

As both US parties currently have significant trust issues with one another, I would say UBI is a complete non-starter.

I couldn't seem to find a clear definition of UBI in the article, which helps people discuss the concept as many people view possible UBI programs completely differently.

While I am in agreement that UBI is massively overhyped and not a true, large-scale solution to income inequality, I'm happy that it has gotten so much interest and might lead to productive conversations around tax reform.

Like knots in tangled string. We need to fix the system one knot at a time. We might even need to cut out whole sections but there's not one simple solution for the whole problem.

It's interesting how many of the techies out there would laugh at the idea of replacing the internet with just computers and wires - what could be simpler. Yet according to many, we can replace a complicated system like welfare with a simple system like basic income. To me this points out lack of understanding and as you said, reluctance to get ones hands dirty.

Well, dumb pipes are in fact simpler and superior to the centralized systems of control and preferential treatment that telcos are constantly trying to impose.

Many (all?) libertarians lean left on a great many social issue and consider the social part of libertarianism as important if not more important than the right leaning economic part. I think the term "libertarian right" while not an incorrect term at face value -- there are in fact right leaning Libertarians just as some Democrats are further left than others -- is miss-leading and can potential lead to misconceptions about Libertarians as similar to Republicans. I for one share much more in common with the Democrats but I am very definitely a Libertarian.

I think many of us would prefer you just use the term Libertarian and leave off left or right.

Edit: or perhaps if you were in-deed referring to the conservative party, add some clarity and say "Republicans that lean Libertarian"

Many (not all, maybe not even most, but definitely a good amount) libertarians are environmentalist and see the EPA as a valuable tool to ensure that people's rights are violated.

However, in general the cause is the same but the approach is different. For example, just of those two causes should be handled by the courts (as a libertarian sees it at least) rather than through regulatory agencies.

To rephrase, Libertarian's generally agree people should be safe at work. They just disagree with the top down approach to solving that issue.

In certain narrow situations where there is an identifiable property right at issue (e.g. dumping waste on private land). But there aren't a lot of libertarian theorists espousing a general "right" to untouched wilderness, preserving endangered species, or having clean rivers.

> To rephrase, Libertarian's generally agree people should be safe at work.

Libertarians generally believe that the level of safety in the workplace should be set by the market, rather than by a regulatory agency. I.e. if a workplace is known for being unsafe, it won't be able to hire employees (or will have to pay a premium for employees to take on the extra risk). Liberals in contrast believe that the government should impose a safety floor on all workplaces, irrespective of the market.

To me, this is where the libertarian philosophy loses its internal consistency. For two reasons:

1) There is no such thing as a closed system, so land use is fundamentally social

2) For the most part, all existing property deeds were obtained by force, not through the voluntary agreeing to contracts, so no one who holds a deed really has any kind of moral claim on it.

Libertarians have to fall back on some other political system (manifest destiny, kraterocracy, democrasy, etc) to resolve the land use question. But to me land use is the foundation of all property law and the fact that Libertarianism has nothing to say about it makes it largely useless as a foundational political system. It's a nice thing to think about, but it can't be relied on to answer basic questions.

Essentially this highlights the difference between your particular policy opinions and your enthusiasm for having a government enforce those policies on everyone.

On the other hand, in my experience, libertarians are pretty far from being liberals, and even farther from being typical Democrats. Personally, I share even less with typical Democrats than with typical (non-Trump and non-Evangelical) Republicans. I do share a lot of social beliefs with people who consider themselves to be liberals first and foremost, and agree with them about some of this nation's greatest challenges. I've found typical Democrats to be against drug legalization and only with great hesitation have started supporting LGBT rights, when most libertarians were supporting gay rights 40 years ago (in the sense that gays rights mean that gays have the same rights as everyone else, because what people do in the privacy of their homes is not the government's business).

Anyway, I think it's fair to say that there's support for BI from two different parts, if not sides, of the political spectrum.

But fair point about there being left libertarians and right libertarians, I don't really disagree. I mean, Chomsky calls himself a libertarian, but is definitely "of the left" (and I happen to disagree with him on a lot of issues, yet share some of his core beliefs about the dangers of government and authoritarianism). I'll take more care in the future.

To be fair I think "The Libertarian Left" would also be miss-leading. We defy the left and right labels :)

By world standards, not to mention many past US standards, the two presidential candidates (and the current president) are clearly right-wingers.

On the left, we find the giant social bureaucracy we are all fed up with. The quintessential bureaucratic social state is the British National Health Service (NHS). The advantage of a system such as the treasured NHS is that it guarantees everyone access to affordable and professional care providers whatever your location and your income level. The painful problem, which turned the NHS into a thorn in the side of every British government, is that in the current context of tax revolt, hatred of government, and fiscal austerity, the quality of the experience provided by the NHS can only go down, with longer waiting lines, less customized care, and ultimately a vicious circle in which everybody loses, patients as well as professionals.

On one side, it's economically unsound, and will require massive taxation to be sustainable. Otherwise, it will only work until all the Angels run out of money, then it will cause massive inflation. Mathematically, there are no other options.

Second, who's going to administer it? Governments, being made from people, are notorious for corruption and scandal, and poor service.

The NHS is also great value, costing us far less for universal healthcare than the US government spends on healthcare.

The NHS is also amazingly popular, and until the ideological austerity movement was pretty much getting better.

I'm not sure why so many people in the US think that government cannot run things effectively. The NHS is a great example. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than the alternatives? Clearly.

You've missed the point.

The point is that the foundation of the basic income concept is that the income redistribution scheme works flawlessly and according to the people's expectations. This assumption is patently false, as the system is established and managed by people, particularly elected officials and the regime's apparatchiks, who have a long and plentiful resume of manipulating, distorting and corrupting the state to fit their own personal agendas.

I can tell you exactly what happened in my country's income redistribution scheme. It is supposed to be entirely independent of the state and self-managed. Yet' somehow the ruling regime managed to manipulate the system to finance golden parachutes to the nation's career politicians (golden pensions paid off to people who never contributed to the scheme) as well as forcing it as a cash cow to the state as a exceedingly cheap source of state loans.

And it is supposed to be a simple system where worker contributes 1/3 of their salary to finance pensions and unemployment benefits.

That's what these organizations made by people are used for, in reality, and reality always trumps fiction.

Now again, the fact that there is corruption in many countries and money is used wrongly simply means there might be initial or additional work be done, but it definitely does not mean it's inherently not possible, there are plenty of government with low corruption, too.

Finally, what's the alternative? Let the market work and private companies, which I highlighted have the exact same flaws as the government, possibly just on a smaller scale!?

Just putting our heads in the sand and saying this will never work is not a way forward, unless you think of course there's no problem in the first place.

Dubious claim. Most serious proposals are largely revenue neutral and simply redistribute.

> and will require massive taxation to be sustainable.

Not anymore than already exists.

> Second, who's going to administer it? Governments, being made from people, are notorious for corruption and scandal, and poor service.

It requires no new infrastructure if given as a tax rebate. It also introduces no additional corruption than already exists via tax loopholes. Centralizing all debate and scrutiny over corruption in one location is a benefit of the proposal, not a problem.

I suppose that my previous comment's wording could be construed as assuming we couldexist in a post-scarcity economy. That was not intentional. However, universal basic income does not require a post-scarcity framework to be workable, and the claim that universal basic income will cause inflation to 'spiral out of control' is left unsupported.

Money is currently created out of nothing through the banking system, and the FED controls inflation just fine through various mechanisms e.g. setting interest rates. Basic income proposals can have similar inflation controlling mechanisms e.g. tie payouts to inflation rate or changes in tax rate. In any case inflatuon caused by basic income could be offset by increasing the fed interest rate which is currently near zero.

Actually, it is more economically unsound to maintain poverty in the midst of plenty (i.e, in the US there lies ~6 empty homes for every homeless person), if you consider the external effects. Poverty inevitably leads to violence, drug abuse, disease, overpopulation, war, and other erratic behaviors.

How much more do we spend on bureaucracy in vain attempts to mitigate these resulting effects? Prevention is far more cost effective than maintenance in this case.

I am from Canada, so that is the data I am most familiar with. The employment rate has almost never been higher (2008 was the highest), the unemployment rate has almost never been lower (2008 was the lowest). The US housing crash did take some toll on the Canadian economy as did the more recent fall in oil prices, but we're still looking far better than the historic norms when it comes to job numbers.

At the same time, I remember in the mid-1980s there was widespread media panic about how the robots starting to become common in manufacturing were going to eliminate all the jobs. A rise in employment, and decline in unemployment is exactly the opposite of what I would have expected in the following 30 years based on the panic at the time. The claims being made today are exactly the same as they were 30 years ago.

When was the last time we saw the most common job on the brink of being wiped out? Even if tech continues to grow and add jobs, will it surpass the loss from the trucking and transportation industry?

[0]: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...

Edit: [1] questions the claim that trucking in the most common job by state. There's still a lot of drivers out there though!

[1]: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-driver-isnt-the-mo...

A couple of hundred years ago. And not just the most common job, but the job that was employing 90% of the labour force at the time. For comparison, transport truck driver accounts for just 1.5% of the labour force in Canada.

> Even if tech continues to grow and add jobs, will it surpass the loss from the trucking and transportation industry?

Yes. I struggle to believe we've reached the pinnacle of human achievement. Do you think the last time we went through this that people were sitting around thinking that the internet will provide jobs in the future? I'll be amazed if they even grasped that an internet could be possible. The jobs that will need to be done are things we cannot even dream of right now. If we could dream of them, we'd already be doing it.

Not if I have anything to do it! Luckily not everyone is a defeatist.

First principles analysis shows there is plenty of valuable work to be done, and not nearly enough people to do it all.

Unemployment is a phenomenon fabricated by the ruling class for social control. As long as people are afraid of becoming unemployed, they'll stay in an exploitive job.

It's not as if there is some kind of fundamental limit on productivity. We've been trying to finish the work for a thousand years, and yet each year we keep finding more!

Not if I have anything to do it! Luckily not everyone is a defeatist.

First principles analysis shows there is plenty of work to be done, and not nearly enough people to do it all. We could probably erase global unemployment by adding mental health care jobs alone.