Re:India floats the idea of a universal basic income
by jjoonathan on Wednesday February 08, 2017 @08:45PM
(#13603925)
> What you described as its weakness is actually its strength. It's the natural mechanism that balance demand and supply...
I understand how markets balance supply and demand and I consider the injustice of its methods to be a necessary evil for which I have no substitute. That wasn't my original complaint, however. Rephrased in terms of supply and demand, my complaint was that the market's insistence on weighting demand according to wealth made it inherently inept at addressing unweighted demand (i.e. the actual needs of the people). I have no trouble believing that the market will continue to meet wealth-weighted demand. I am much less certain that it will continue to meet unweighted demand. We've seen it fail before, but only in pockets. I fear that automation may eventually see it fail on a much wider scale.
> monopolies aren't all created the same. The kind of monopoly that Facebook or Google have is not the same kind of a state-enforced monopoly which rules out competition by force of the law.
We are in agreement then. Perhaps not on the relative magnitude of the various problems, but it's a start.
I understand how markets balance supply and demand and I consider the injustice of its methods to be a necessary evil for which I have no substitute. That wasn't my original complaint, however. Rephrased in terms of supply and demand, my complaint was that the market's insistence on weighting demand according to wealth made it inherently inept at addressing unweighted demand (i.e. the actual needs of the people). I have no trouble believing that the market will continue to meet wealth-weighted demand. I am much less certain that it will continue to meet unweighted demand. We've seen it fail before, but only in pockets. I fear that automation may eventually see it fail on a much wider scale.
> monopolies aren't all created the same. The kind of monopoly that Facebook or Google have is not the same kind of a state-enforced monopoly which rules out competition by force of the law.
We are in agreement then. Perhaps not on the relative magnitude of the various problems, but it's a start.