We don't do anything. The nature of reality is that there is not equal distribution of [anything]. The universe is a dynamical system - portions of the system will through probability always get stuck at local/global minima.
"It is the way it is because it's natural" is a pretty naive fallacy.
And the ones who do the work to change it reap the biggest rewards that come from those changes.
Unless you want to go down the AGI/transhumanism path with me, which I doubt you do.
Stop typing and look around you. You live in a huge improbability already.
we systematically fail to develop the full human capacity of millions of people
We conjure these things and peddle them to the masses as the "one true path" for human development and expansion, which is BS.
That is, unless there is a source or sink in the vector field. Then one has to ask why it's there.
I suspect that when most people talk about inequality, what they mean is, "a few people are doing really good and a lot of people are doing really bad". If you can lessen or remove the "doing really bad" part, whether through UBI or some other means (progressive taxation to fund other programs, whatever your ideology prefers), then statements of inequality start to mean just "a few people are doing really good" and I think there are far fewer people that are bothered by that.
I also think these conversations tend to get stuck on the definition of poverty. Some people say, "well, it can't be poverty because they all have smartphones", and other people say, "well, it's poverty because they lack any opportunity". I think that if these discussions are going to get anywhere we have to start by convincing people that the definition of poverty is allowed to change and that we shouldn't in the 21st century be defining poverty in 19th-century terms.
I'd say the problem with inequality is something else entirely than "some people doing really good" vs "lots of people doing really bad".
It's that there are resources in the world, and some people have way more access to them.
This can hold even when all people are out of poverty: of the potential and resources of the world, still some people could take the lion's share to the exclusion of others, regardless of whether everybody has a house and food on their table.
And this inequality (with the true sense of the word, not mere poverty vs richness) is also related to opportunities and squandered potential (as in: yeah, we all have UBI, but this dumb mega-rich person could pay his way to Harvard, whereas some other with much larger potential -- e.g. smarts, inventiveness, etc-- had to settle for some lesser school, and didn't get as far in their career).
It sounds like you're further to the left of that scale than I am, which is fine, except that it's harder to convince people to the right of me on that scale to move that far left.
Sometimes it's better to suggest small changes.
* inequality subverts the democratic process
* inequality subverts the rule of law
* I'd argue it even threatens human dignity
* in economics, my utility function typically only takes my well-being/wealth/consumption/circumstances into consideration, not my neighbour's. That's a simplification, so that one can do economics. It's pragmatic and expedient - it is certainly neither descriptive nor normative. Although there is a tendency in libertarian/"economism" circles (google James Kwak "economism" if you don't know what it means) and even others (skeptic Michael Shermer, for example) to consider it the rational thing to do.
I don't see why. Yes, if I get 10$ more, and all my neighbours get $10000 more, I will be cranky and unsatisfied, utility function bla bla my ass.
Inequality also depresses human happiness.
TL;DR: excessive inequality jeopardizes democracy, the rule of law, human dignity, peace, and happiness.
In other words, I believe that without penalizing the upper end, too, things will just "adapt" to define a new lower end, if only the only change is to give everybody a little bit of money. To some extent, Germany has been doing something close to UBI for quite a while now ("Grundsicherung", "Harz IV", etc.). It certainly helped prevent that a few people fall into some nasty global minimum with zero income, so its probably better than not having it. But I don't think that only clamping the lower income end alone had a society-transforming impact in Germany.
For instance, I sometimes idly wonder how many fairly sharp and/or self-driven people ended up working for the illegal drug industry vs how society (and those individuals) could have benefited had other paths been available to them. Maybe we've missed out on many exceptional CEOs because they were taken up by the illegal drug industry, became drug lords then somewhere along the line locked up or killed.
Or the looming Automation issue. We may take care of many basic economic activities by automation, and now many people will be out of work - we see that couched as a "jobs" problem, but looked at another way it's and extension that our economic system really doesn't know how to harness human capability. Our current economic system says only give people just enough resources - any excess is pulled away from people who lack leverage (like many who exchange labor for income). And increasingly I think the fact that allocating for leverage != allocating for potential is unbalancing our economy. Now most wealth has accumulated at the top to a very few - and, from world economic growth numbers, that group basically doesn't know how to more productively allocate it on a world-wide scale (or maybe doesn't want to to preserve the accumulated wealth, or some mix).
Massive inequality is driven not by productivity but by compounding debt and other forms of rent-seeking. This always spirals out of control eventually leading to poverty, default or both.
So when we start to hit the limits of growth, one of two things can happen. Either everyone accepts that things are slowing down and agrees to accept less than they were expecting based on the exponential projections, or some people don't accept this and use their political power to change the rules so that they can continue to live according to their expectations, which necessarily comes at the expense of everyone else at that point.
To transition smoothly from a period of exponential growth back to a steady state, or even just sub-exponential growth, -- heck, even to exponential growth with a smaller exponent! -- requires a degree of cooperation that is very difficult to achieve in human societies.
2) Via the same community which invests in roads, schools and (in other countries) hospitals.
That's welfare's job. UBI is to provide a living wage when its not possible or difficult to do so (depressed areas, automation taking jobs, etc).
As a social safety net UBI does nothing welfare doesn't, and in most cases does worse. Welfare can be controlled via food stamps that stop people from wasting their money on alcohol, cigarettes, lottery tickets, and casinos. UBI is just a cash handout which absolutely will go to those things as well as illegal drugs and other vices. Why shouldn't it? Forcing people to spend responsibly is not solved with UBI. As someone who has lived in Chicago's not so great neighborhoods, this is a common sight. Cash handouts do not suddenly make good people.
>including starting businesses which may change the world.
If the government guaranteed me $100k a year I wouldn't work. I mean I'd "work" but at being a rock musician or comic book artist or a non-practical technical pursuit. I think UBI would lead to leisure lifestyles, not nose-to-the-grindstone business stuff that we're used to in the startup world. Look at the wealthy who don't run their own businesses and who live off their investments or trust fund kids in general. Sure a few engage the business world and do interesting things, but its mostly do nothing lifestyles of learning to paint, kinda sorta finishing that phd, being an 'author' or 'photographer', etc. In fact, I know several people like this.
One of the things UBI advocates don't like to talk about is that the carrot approach isn't usually effective. The stick gets most of the results. In capitalist society the stick is failing economically and living a poor and unsatisfying lifestyle. People work to stay out of the ghetto, if not more so, than for nice things.
Middle-class life is pretty nice. If UBI lets me keep mine, I really see no incentive to work and I suspect many agree with me. A UBI society will be a lot of things, but it will not be productive or innovative like modern society is. I think that's just something you need to accept if you truly advocate for UBI.
Not to mention, how price gouging will match UBI. If the poor go from making $8,000 a year to $50,000 then their rent and cost of food, etc will go up to match. So you can't have an 'income floor' where everything 'just works.' Unless you want to move into a command economy with authoritarian control of all pricing and labor. At that point you've just re-invented authoritarian communism, which history has shown absolutely doesnt work.
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The system won't let me post (posting too much?), so here' my reply to novia:
>Why are you so opposed to allowing people to spend money on mood altering substances?
Because many are physically addictive and when money runs out the rational move is to rob/murder your neighbor for more. Addiction is that powerful. The idea that all drugs are perfectly fine and addiction doesn't happen is naive fairly naive. I don't think we can assume that a UBI society will be people just smoking pot and doing shrooms the same way modern drug use is not just those things.
>And maybe your artistic pursuits would help make others happier and motivated and inspired to work on their projects that would qualify as real "work" to you.
That's fine, I made that argument I believe, but productivity and innovation will absolutely not be the same. We'll make great strides in 3 chord rock and super hero storytelling, but not much else. In the off chance we do better in any realm, it will be the Arts, which is nice but not nice for the guy waiting on a parkinson's or alzheimer's treatment. The gal who would have cured it is instead a harp player and romance novelist. Or maybe she did try but where are the billion dollar investments for her startup going to come from when everyone lives in what is going to be like a retirement arts community because of UBI?
I don't think we can assume there are no tradeoffs with UBI. I think you need to accept a certain level of lack of innovation. The capitalist system works as-is because of many incentives and disincentives which will largely disappear with UBI. I'm not sure why we're assuming that innovation, investment, and progress will be exactly the same. It seems very unlikely. The culture and system UBI brings may not be to our liking at all, especially those of us who saw so much progress and innovation in our lifetimes.
Why are you so opposed to allowing people to spend money on mood altering substances?
>If the government guaranteed me $100k a year I wouldn't work. I mean I'd "work" but at being a rock musician or comic book artist or a non-practical technical pursuit.
And maybe your artistic pursuits would help make others happier and motivated and inspired to work on their projects that would qualify as real "work" to you.
For example: Lots of people listen to music to get in the groove when they are working on something that requires them to block out the distracting real world.
The most important effect of UBI on the poor is that it gets rid of the welfare trap. Even the poorest paid part-time job will increase your income. At the same time you can walk away from a shit job without becoming destitute.
Are you certain they are effective at that? It isn't hard to imagine that a secondary market for food stamps could exist wherein they're traded for cash at some reduced rate.
There already is a secondary market for welfare benefits, to the point where someone who wants to squander it is able to do so, and worth mentioning that the end result to someone who burns their benefits irresponsibly is the same either way, crime or starvation.
Administering the bureaucracy necessary to enforce these controls (of varying effectiveness) carries a very real cost outlay.
With that in mind, UBI carries the promise of significantly less overhead with the idea of identical societal goals.
The alternative is a great ramp-up in the scope and size of welfare systems, like what you might see in the Nordic countries. This idea also has its proponents, but I don't think it would fly in the USA.
I like the idea of Basic Income, but it's a somewhat limited solution to capping how far down someone can fall in society - what would really supercharge a future economy is opening up avenues to truly distributing equal opportunity. Wealth inequality suppresses this strongly, when people receive better margin of income over the absolute minimum economic allocation of their wages, they can then allocate their own wealth from their personal outlook in multiple ways - including starting businesses which may change the world.