That would be a valid result of the experiment though, in light of the fact it is completely impossible to implement UBI everywhere at once. UBI isn't useful if there isn't a path from here to there. We have no lack of wonderful utopias whose only problem is that there is no path from here to there. If UBI can't prove itself out on a smaller scale it can on no account be tried on a larger scale. If the worst some bad social engineering idea does is leave a single county worse off, then it will be doing very well as bad social engineering ideas go.
It appears from reading this post that tracking the skills of the community is already part of the plan. There are certainly predictions about this from both sides.
(I'm a skeptic, yes, but I promise to treat the results from this experiment fairly. However, bear in mind that even total success at this level still wouldn't prove to me that we should immediately adopt it at a national level; I'll need to see a larger one. But I will admit that I was at least wrong about this experiment, because I don't expect this to prove out very well either. I also expect a lot of spinning of the results to make them look as good as possible, so I reserve the right to unspin the results.
As a token of such good faith, I offer that while I remain a cryptocurrency skeptic, and a BitCoin skeptic in particular, I expected BitCoin to be totally dead by now, and it is not. I say this to demonstrate that I can indeed eat crow.)
There have been lots of previous experiments with stuff sort of similar with UBI. While there are many problems with those studies preventing their use as any sort of conclusive proof, they have been predominantly neutral or positive. Yet I don't see that accounted for in the predictions of doom and gloom any of the UBI skeptics. If this experiment goes well, you need to do more than just admit you were wrong about the experiment, you and other skeptics need to lower your confidence in your overall skepticism of UBI.
> while I remain a cryptocurrency skeptic, and a BitCoin skeptic in particular, I expected BitCoin to be totally dead by now, and it is not. I say this to demonstrate that I can indeed eat crow.)
It sounds to me like you have not eaten any crow. If you had you would say: based on my understanding of the forces at play, I thought BitCoin would be dead. BitCoin has thrived instead so my understanding of the forces at play is less than I had estimated. Based on that, I am now less skeptical (or less confident of my skepticism) of the future crypto currencies. (I share your skepticism of the future of BitCoin, but I am far less certain of that skepticism than I used to be for these exact reasons)
I don't think any of them have even raised to the level of "interesting" compared to the scale of what is being proposed ("rework the entire global economy"). I am aware of them. UBI experiments need to be about UBI, not about things that vaguely resemble it. In particular they need to be large enough that the hypothesized bad effects could even be witnessed, as most of them revolve what will happen once people are habituated to it. For them to be useful, you need to not be referring to them in the past tense because they should still be ongoing, and indeed, really just at the beginning of their run. Most of them are the equivalent of claiming free college works because they went into a single small community and promised anyone who wanted to that they could attend the first three weeks of college for free if they liked; the results hardly matter.
"If you had you would say: based on my understanding of the forces at play, I thought BitCoin would be dead. BitCoin has thrived instead so my understanding of the forces at play is less than I had estimated."
I did say that. I just used fewer words.
So I'm not seeing why you think skills will atrophy? It seems like there's more danger of that when people are poorer? (For one thing, education becomes less affordable.)
The poverty rate is just under 50%, per Wikipedia at least. If all the money is coming from the county (presumably it is), then it's going to be coming from the other 50%, and at a rate higher than neighboring (non-UBI) counties.
It will be in the rational self-interest of that non-impoverished 50% to leave. Labor will be more expensive as fewer people want to do less-desirable work due to no strong need. I don't know how freely workers can move between counties, but obviously I imagine some people in neighboring counties will want to move in for the free paycheck.
Over time, you've chased out the productive people and bolstered the less productive ones, and you're drawing from a smaller and smaller pool to pay for a larger and larger group of people.
I've always felt like UBI is unsustainable, but at least worth debating. I haven't yet seen even proposed what should be done if UBI fails this way, though.
I also don't see anything about people moving in or out.
Put plainly: It's not surprising at all that one can take a lot of voluntarily-given money and distribute it to an impoverished village in Africa, resulting in them being happy and saying they're seeking work (in the short term). Normally, though, that's called "charity" rather than a UBI experiment, and even UBI opponents will acknowledge the likelihood of that happening.
Isn't assuming this the basic failing of economics as a science? Not trying to be provocative, sincerely asking.
When the federal government started subsidizing higher ed loans, it is not some unimaginable outcome that higher ed prices will increase. Banks, colleges, students, and parents are all operating in their own self-interest, but by artificially making more money available to consumers, they are naturally willing to spend more.
It's just a sign of really bad policy when nobody is cheating the system and everyone is following the rules, but it results in really bad outcomes. And it's even worse when that happens and blame is passed to those rational actors (banks, colleges, etc.) because that further justifies bad policy.
I believe most of the money comes from outside the country, I started donating $25 a month to GiveDirectly this summer.
In the years to come technology is going to replace the need for a lot of human labor and UBI will be required to maintain a civil society.
So it will lead to short-term inflation, and without the long-term investments in production, that inflation will continue for as long as the injections continue.
As the cash injections aren't universal, those who receive it will benefit, while the ones who don't will see their purchasing power drop significantly, and their lives worsen.
Cash injections CAN lead to inflation as an effect, but this is not a tautology (i.e. by definition).
And if solving economic problems were as simple as "just take more money from the rich people and give it to the poor people," this problem would have been solved centuries ago.
That's why we don't have any rich people any more and wealth inequality is at it's lowest point in decades, right?
> And if solving economic problems were as simple as "just take more money from the rich people and give it to the poor people," this problem would have been solved centuries ago.
When in history have we tried anything like UBI? How can we know if it works if we have never tried it?
UBI isn't inherently different. It's trying to pretend you can manipulate a market with no detrimental side effects, but it's been tried many, many times.
You seem to be of the opinion that nothing can be done to eliminate poverty, so why even try?
Plenty can be done to eliminate poverty. I'm confused why you would think large-scale involuntary wealth redistribution is the only way.
It is, by definition, not a subsidy since it does not target a subset of economic sectors.
> Plenty can be done to eliminate poverty.
Name one means of eliminating poverty without wealth re-distribution or subsidies. The only ones I know of involve sterilizing, deporting, killing or otherwise demographically elminating poor people.
Nobody's eliminated poverty yet, so it may be impossible. We do have ways of fighting it, though, which can (and does) include charitable giving (note: voluntary) and economic development of areas.
When this situation comes, the good option is that the society simply gives the new class of unemployable people their basic needs one way (like UBI) or another; the evil option is that the society doesn't give them the basic needs and they starve (since their labor has no value and they have nothing to trade for these basic needs); and the third option is that they take the basic needs in a revolution that likely destroys half of the society. Really, noone wants the second or third options, including most of the 0.1%, so we will see some mass redistribution system being implemented.
In 1917, taking all the resources from rich people and giving it to poor people wasn't enough to keep the poor people out of starvation for long and destroyed the productivity totally. In 2017, taking more money from the rich to feed the poor doesn't require even close to taking all their resources, as feeding the poor is so much cheaper compared to 1917; it would be deeply unpopular but is doable without killing the rich, and the society could sustain such level of taxation indefinitely if they wished even if nothing changed - but it's going to change, and in 2037 taking enough resources from the rich (i.e. the owners of highly automated means of production) to feed everyone UBI-style would be expected to be just a minor tax, and a boost for the economy, giving spending power to people who'd otherwise have no spending power at all.
Regarding your second paragraph: You're looking at this as a measurable global issue that will happen at a single time resolvable by a single government entity, but that's not how it will unfold.
It won't happen overnight, so there will be no point for those options to be evaluated. Let me pitch you (what I see as) a more realistic option:
Some countries will try to implement UBI. They will encounter the same problems opponents have been warning about. The productive will (over time) move to countries that don't take so much of their wealth. The people receiving more than they're contributing will have more children, will have more votes, and will vote to take more and more from the decreasing minority. Even if you can make food truly post-scarcity, housing, healthcare, and other goods/services are not.
If everything is truly post-scarcity: It'll be no problem. Those countries won't really need the wealthy. But I'm not sure true post-scarcity actually exists, and I think (especially in the US) UBI would be a moving target that only ever goes in one direction.
You're right, though, that I don't really have a solution if (e.g.) 80% of people no longer have a meaningful way to contribute to society. That may be fundamentally impossible to solve. But that may never happen and we may never have true post-scarcity, so we shouldn't be redesigning society based on the premise that wealthy people are an endless money tree, and if it's wrong, society collapses.
My concern is that with this we're likely looking at an even worse version of the problems seen with sending shoes to Africa [1]. Over the duration of this experiment, it's quite possible you'll create a society that abandons skills / equipment / expertise necessary to sustain an economy. That won't be a problem until the experiment ends, and then you've left people in a place far less than where you found them.
[1] http://www.djiboutijones.com/2014/02/dont-send-your-used-sho...