A few years ago, when I was unemployed for several months, I noticed that doing nothing all day gets boring real fast. I know that if I had my own UBI I'd definitely go pursue some sort of venture.
However, I also noticed that my cousin, who has been unemployed for the past 4 months, is just focused on playing video games, while his mom supports him. From this, I've concluded that the effects of UBI will vary greatly from person to person.
Before implementing UBI, I think we need to determine what % of the population will get bored and attempt to do something else, and what % of the population will just pool their attention into unproductive time sinks - maybe the Pareto principle will come into play here?
I think, on a playing field where people knew they could just literally sit in a chair all day for the rest of their lives, other motivations would eventually reveal themselves besides sloth. People would shift focus to power, charity, status, popularity, etc. As it stands, those games seem to be what make a society more complex, but they are usually reserved for people who have already figured out the money game first...
Then, as a society, you herd the population into cities where they can't grow their food, put the poor into forced service of the rich or they can't feed themselves or live. The poor lower class beings have the moral burden of working else they are some sort of lowly scumbag. The rich, they don't have this constraint - they are morally obligated to just live their lives.
The thinking that, "but hey! that guy is just going to sit in his chair and not do anything" - Well, that's exactly what people that have lots of money do right now. They just live their lives, they sit in their nice chairs for as long as they want - nobody blinks an eyelid. The moment you think a poor person is not working you start to think he is scum.
Look, its a game that makes things better for everyone and it has its upsides, agreed. The thing is - society does not need to be like it is right now. Between money and institutions people are literally put in a cage with no real escape hatch. The inability to escape all this "money-govt-society" is the problem.
Say a tiger wanted to claim an area and feed itself and be self sufficient he could do it. Now, we like to think we're better than animals. Are we really? all of us? Say you as a person with zero money decided to just build your house using things you find around that area that you don't own and try to live off the land. You cant do that, someones going to come knocking saying you're on someone elses property. That tiger out there is more free than the person. Problem is, there is no escape hatch where you say, screw civilization I want to be free - I don't want what it has to offer, I live on this land here. Only if you have sufficient amount of money are you actually free to live as you want. Otherwise you better stay in your economic-class and feed the monster of society..
When exactly was that? Because you know, humans are apes. And we don't observe any apes, any monkeys, any primates which are free from their societal norms. So when exactly were humans (or any other kind of ape) entirely free? Before our ancestors even evolved into monkeys?
> Say a tiger wanted to claim an area and feed itself and be self sufficient he could do it.
Unless other, stronger tiger decided otherwise.
And why are you choosing non-social animal to compare to social one? If you want a big cat then pick lion for comparison. Because lions gather into prides (and not without reasons).
An ape can leave its group and move to a different territory and not have someone else decide his life for him.
If there is no path for being able to attempt self sustenance, to be able to live and grow your own food, to be able to choose what social group you want to be a part of, you are stuck in the game - you have to make money, whether you like it or not.
All other living creature on earth can get by just fine without having imaginary against their name in a database. The cruelty is in the fact that society holds and hoards all the resources that will let you live and will make those available only if you have those imaginary numbers. It is presented as being for the greater good of everyone, but in essence the whole system is put in place so people that don't have resources can be pressured to do the dirty work of the people that have the resources.
Ah, the myth of the noble savage taken to evolutionary extreme.
I highly recommend Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate" if you'd like to disabuse yourself of this pernicious old wives tale. Then his "Better angels of our nature" should fix you right up with a more accurate and informed view of the world and society we live in.
In the real world, that stuff isn’t an unlimited, instantaneous resource. Someone has to build that shelter, farm that food, etc.
In order for this to work, we would need to find free labor... that hasn’t worked so well historically. And sure, you could say technology could fill these labor needs to fundamentally reduce the cost of basic resources to zero, but I don’t think that’s really possible either in practice (the robot maker needs some incentive to make the robots that are providing these free services).
Further, you start replacing fundamental tasks with technology and you begin to remove the opportunity for tasks to better your life (like in the game) because technology isn’t just niche applicable generally.
IMO: It works if you ignore the premise that the game represents a complicated issue in the most simplistic way. But as soon as you put some economics to it, it breaks down super fast.
Still, the better sophisticated MMORPGS (e.g. AO, or EVE) tend to mimick it as much as possible. Resources may seem unlimited at first sight but these games actually try to implement a universe that offers limited resources and a monetary system that responds to offer and demand, and may be subject to inflation/deflation. Failing to achieve this exposes game owners to attrition by loyal gamers (e.g. sudden price drops/increases in rare objects).
Also, AO was exposed to a hack that involved duplicating objects (I think it was in 2013), the exploitation of this vulnerability triggered a cascade of events that resulted in the deflation of the currency in the game and took months to be fixed. Again, this also raised attrition amongst gamers.
In some online universes, resources are scarce enough so that players engage in the trading of virtual goods through external transactions (i.e. virtual items paid through real money). This also tends to affect the internal currency in the game.
You mentioned the "shelter" example. I think this is where we get an analogy with State intervention (i.e. taxes) when the players do not allocate resources to actually set up theses infrastructures in the virtual universe.
I agree with you, it is an imperfect imitation of our world. But acknowledging this as formally insufficient/imperfect would require acknowledging that we actually understand what characterizes and constitutes our reality, and that we can somehow infer that a theoretical model is unsustainable without even testing it. I think that if I were to accept this, that would mean I surrender and stop believing there are better models :)
Quite a few successful studies on UBI - people become more productive, get better education, wean themselves off of addiction. It is an overall better investment than pretty much any other program - including because it doesn’t carry thenoverhead of controlling how money gets spent.
It is cheaper to provide UBI than not.
- Universal health care would likely have the most impact on a lot of people and companies if there was a system to fund it across the board for basic health coverage (i.e. healthy visits, major events and mental health covered, progressive co-pays for other stuff)
- In the US there already is universal education up to just before university, extend that to 2 years college at first. I know the K-12 system probably needs work, the idea here is to benefit the most people.
- Food and shelter are tough because these will look more like hand-outs from the government. Subsidies already exist for lower income people, maybe it starts there with expanding those programs.
If you start out with UI as the goal its likely going to get push back, much like some biz person wanting a waterfall software project to build a startup with the goal of a fully functioning SaaS at the end of the project. Iterations with benefits getting delivered over time is a better approach.
No more deciding who is entitled to what. Just give everyone enough and let them go from there.
The thing that is holding us back from expanding the social programs we have is an obsessive fear of giving the undeserving "too much".
I think UBI as a model sucks, for a bunch of reasons.
1. It allows people to do nothing. People who are able should work. People who can't, we can help. But it shouldn't be an abusable system where one can simply say "I can't work" and no questions are asked. Everybody in society can't just say "I don't want to work" -- everything would fall apart if we did that. In the interest of fairness, then, all who are able should contribute.
2. What do you do when someone blows their UBI on drugs or gambles it away? Do you just let them starve to death? Maybe they don't have a drug or gambling problem, but they just suck at managing money and routinely overextend themselves. How do you handle that? If your answer is "just give them more money", then we have a big problem where now anybody can game the system for as much money as they want. If your answer is "tough shit", I think you will miss some nuanced situations.
3. Do people with children get more? Can we put a cap on that, or do people just get to have as many children as they like, and everyone else has to pay? Kids in the US are already fairly heavily subsidized through tax breaks.
4. All the people who are doing the work to make UBI viable get nothing from it (sure they get a check, but that's just going to be some amount less than whatever extra they pay in tax to support the system). There's nobody there to ask questions and keep people honest. And yes, there is administrative overhead for social services you need to qualify for, but I'd argue that has its benefit in encouraging people to be productive members of society and not moochers.
I don't think UBI would result in mass unemployment but I do think we'd have a good number of people at the bottom doing absolutely nothing productive with their lives.
All that said, I do think that social services need an overhaul. I just don't think UBI is the way.
This is GP's entire point. Given the freedom to choose what to do, "do nothing" is not a common choice. In a world where everyone has the option to say, "I don't want to work", most won't actually say that, especially in the long term.
> In the interest of fairness, then, all who are able should contribute.
Why fairness? The system we have now is incredibly unfair. UBI would at least provide more fairness by removing wage slavery.
Points 2 and 3 are about trivial implementation details:
2. Addictions are already putting people in poverty, and the best solution is recovery from those addictions. That recovery requires access to healthcare.
3. Children are people who can't really manage finances yet, so it's pretty obvious that their caretakers would be recipient to their income. People aren't having that many children, and wealthier parents tend to have significantly fewer children than parents who experience poverty. Remember you were a child once, too.
4. Of course people who are working will earn more than they have to pay in taxes. It will look like less than they make today if you don't include their universal basic income, but it will be entirely (by definition) disposable income.
4. There's no need to keep people honest in the first place. That's a key feature. You can only cheat social security if you aren't entitled to it, and literally everyone is entitled to UBI.
> I don't think UBI would result in mass unemployment but I do think we'd have a good number of people at the bottom doing absolutely nothing productive with their lives.
Prove it. I don't see any evidence to support that conclusion, and I see a wealth of evidence that contradicts it.
The reality is that most people don't need to be working in the first place. Right now, half of the wealth in the US is concentrated to only 50 individuals, yet most of the rest of us aren't experiencing scarcity. Those who are don't choose to out of laziness.
Absolutely wrong? The U-3 unemployment rate always lags 3-7% behind the U-6: https://unemploymentdata.com/current-u6-unemployment-rate/
To suggest up to 7% of people just not looking for a job is "not a common choice" is terribly misleading. Even during good periods for the economy, the number sits around 4%. I don't expect that number to get smaller by adding UBI. Do you?
> Why fairness? The system we have now is incredibly unfair. UBI would at least provide more fairness by removing wage slavery.
Why not fairness? How many individuals can you speak to who have done _literally anything_ to invest in their career skills who are earning "wage slavery" levels of pay? If you're 30 years old, and the best thing you can do is make Subway sandwiches... what are you doing with your life?
> 2. Addictions are already putting people in poverty, and the best solution is recovery from those addictions. That recovery requires access to healthcare.
Access to healthcare and UBI are different discussions entirely. And often "access to healthcare" by itself is not sufficient to get people to stop being addicted. You actually have to hold them accountable. I recommend watching a documentary called "Seattle is Dying" [1] to see why just being nice is not a solution.
> 3. Children are people who can't really manage finances yet, so it's pretty obvious that their caretakers would be recipient to their income. People aren't having that many children, and wealthier parents tend to have significantly fewer children than parents who experience poverty. Remember you were a child once, too.
Ah, so we just give people more money to have more children. I don't see any problem with that - it clearly can't be abused.
> 4. Of course people who are working will earn more than they have to pay in taxes. It will look like less than they make today if you don't include their universal basic income, but it will be entirely (by definition) disposable income.
What point are you even making here? The money to pay for UBI has to come from somewhere. If it comes from taxes, the people who are working and making beyond some threshold will now be making less. And what is that threshold? $70k? $80k? $100k? If the government just prints more money, inflation becomes a concern and that impacts everybody.
> 4. There's no need to keep people honest in the first place. That's a key feature. You can only cheat social security if you aren't entitled to it, and literally everyone is entitled to UBI.
Uh... lol? Are you aware of many fradulent benefits were claimed over the last year or so of the pandemic [2]? Many of those claims were people stealing _other peoples'_ benefits, viable either because the recipient was dead, incapacitated, or in prison. There is no "feature" here.
> Prove it. I don't see any evidence to support that conclusion, and I see a wealth of evidence that contradicts it.
If you don't see the evidence, you haven't really been looking very hard. At any given moment in the US, 3% or more of our population could be working and isn't even looking for a job.
> The reality is that most people don't need to be working in the first place.
Says who?
> Right now, half of the wealth in the US is concentrated to only 50 individuals, yet most of the rest of us aren't experiencing scarcity.
Wealth concentration is an entirely different problem than UBI.
> Those who are don't choose to out of laziness.
There are absolutely people who are living in poverty because they are lazy. I can tell you that with certainty because I know people who fit that mold. And I can tell you, knowing people who actually work in social service roles, there are more than you think.
UBI is a non-starter for the same reason communism is. Humans are inherently greedy, and any system we operate in must account for that. Capitalism is effective precisely because it exploits that greed. It's not without its drawbacks, but nothing is.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw [2] https://reason.com/2021/02/22/there-has-been-a-mind-boggling...
During that discussion, I came to the realization that even if I did absolutely nothing "productive" in the game, I always had access to food, clothes, health services and shelter. Things were organized in a way that I had to work (kill monsters/bad people, harvest, salvage, heal, repair, etc.) to get money or more direct rewards. For example, clothing and homes were standardized and quite basic. I could "work" to actually get access to a better home and good-looking clothes to customize my avatar. Still, I could decide to do nothing, wander around, watch stuff, and still have my "avatar" alive and well. Anarchy Online gives all users access to a set of basic universal services that include shelter, food, education, health, etc.
~700'000 users playing this universe quite intensively on a daily basis (at that time), would you think they just did "nothing" and sat down?
During that same dinner, I became conscious that this could be a reality. I learned later that I was getting introduced to the concept of universal income (UI).
I started reading about it, talking about it around me. I quickly noticed two things: 1. People around me thought (and still think) it's an impossible/unsustainable model, although there is an increasing amount of research supporting it could be sustainable. 2. Most countries / States that tried UI implemented it as a monthly paycheck given to citizens. I honestly tried understanding why people absolutely want to implement this as a paycheck.
In 2020, we voted about universal income in my country. It was widely refused (78% no). Political parties successfully scared "us" into believing that UI would decimate the country's economy and put everybody into unemployment. It worked.
Today, I am still amazed that I have to work to get money to pay for the most basic things I need to stay alive. I do not think I should get a "paycheck" to get food and shelter. I am not sure the game taught me something that is actually possible, but it showed me an alternate model of society, which I still often think about and do not see as "impossible".