There’d still be footballers - the person who was picking fruit left that role to follow their UBI funded dream of being a footballer. They’re just not going to make the same amount of money.
Same goes for CEOs and other roles with comparatively enjoyable execution vs high pay. Every man and their granny will be a CEO of a one person company when you take all the risk out of the system by giving everyone a safety net.
Enjoyable jobs will pay less, hard jobs will pay more.
CEOs aren't paid a lot because the assume risk, they're paid a lot because business leadership is hard, and good leaders are scarce. I also don't know of many CEOs at large companies whose job I would classify as "enjoyable".
> Every man and their granny will be a CEO of a one person company
Then we'll need a new word for "company" as it's meant today. Also no one is stopping anyone from being an independent contractor, which is basically this. I'm not sure I'm following.
A UBI would be more efficient than the extensive patch-work of policies and regulations that we use today to artificially redistribute income. There would be a lot more work happening on material things, not less - especially when adjusted for productivity. Minimum wage work today is some of the least productive.
Who will do all the hard, unpleasant work then? Who will pick strawberries, work retail, or do hard labour, for anything less than a fortune? What substitute to the current "don't starve/end up homeless" incentive structure will motivate people to do these jobs?
Productivity improvements aren't universal, they're specific. We've not improved productivity for strawberry pickers because we've not come up with a way to automate the picking of strawberries. The least productive work tends to pay minimum wage.
That’s an easy yes.
The people who are currently not able to make ends meet are suddenly succeeding. So not everyone is poorer.
You’re confusing “things will be vastly different” - which is not disputed. The richest today will be relatively less rich.
How are you quantifying this success? If people have "more money" but are suddenly unable to afford things they previously could (those same strawberries), wouldn't they be worse off?
> The richest today will be relatively less rich.
Isn't this just communism with extra steps? Why do you think these things have always worked out poorly, economically speaking, triggering runaway inflation and material scarcity?
My thesis is that the the threat of abject poverty is the only thing keeping much of our economy functioning. If we remove this threat, then the economy shrinks significantly and we all end up in poverty anyways.
By the lack of:
>> threat of abject poverty
>> Isn't this just communism
Where would a planned economy come in?
Surely UBI results in something more like an-cap? You collect your ubi payment in exchange for agreeing to live in the area serviced by the United States corporation.
UBI wouldn’t be a small tweak around the edges of the current system. It’d be fairly radical.
By redistributing the amount of money in question, you are effectively planning the economy. You are writing into law the idea that everyone should be able to afford to eat, with no means to contend with the fact that there may not be enough food.
I don't think you're addressing my core thesis. When I worked in a restaurant, I did it to maintain myself - to pay primarily for rent and food. My coworkers were much the same. If I was provided these things, I wouldn't have applied at the restaurant. Multiply this by every tedious or difficult job and you'll find that many of them just wouldn't get done. People will avoid them, and pursue other fields. This sort of thing has actually happened in places like the USSR. Loads of highly educated, trained specialists, talented (or not) artists, shortages of farmers and labourers. Breadlines.
Anarchist capitalism is probably the closest as far as i can see so far.
(see in broad lines eg. US North (machines) vs South (slavery) in first half of 19th century)
If we increased the minimum wage 10x and somehow that policy was binding, there would be a whole lot of involuntary unemployment, workers' overall income would plummet and we would have a deep economic depression. But there's nothing that suggests such effects from an economically viable UBI. Such an UBI would barely be enough for subsistence, possibly not even that, so people would still choose to work if only to acquire some disposable income. For every single thing that 'ceased to be done' because of increased expenses, there would be growing employment in some other, higher-productivity sector.
(In fact, I would argue that high-paying manufacturing jobs have always required some degree of skill, even when this kind of manufacturing work was especially common in the West.)
The ones I've met are intelligent, though their locus of intelligence is in their thumbs. Someone on a project needs to have it there, so that's just fine by me!
Last time I did a robot project, the people who would ultimately be the machine operators were involved every step of the way, learning and building together with the team.
I'm not sure how installing a handful of machines in one small corner of a huge factory that's already full of machines would somehow change someone's entire life. Hopefully it does make it a little easier though!
I have never worked in robotics, save for hobby drones and hexapods. The question is not whether we would enjoy it, it’s whether someone else will. You seem very convinced that you should decide what people do for work. That’s the part I’m trying to get across to you, you should not have that power for anybody but yourself.
I don't think that I've ever decided what people do for work. I unsure if that that is a thing. As far as I (can/do) know, they decide internally and then hire me to help.
I'm not sure how to proceed. Could you unpack your assumptions for me?
If you increase the minimum wage by 10x, well... quite some low wage work wouldn't actually cost 10x a single person's wage to automate. Depending on the nature of the good or service, the price might go up a bit at first to recover development costs, and later it might go down drastically once those costs are recovered.
This is highly speculative, and almost certainly false. The requisite developments in chemistry and metallurgy were nowhere close to realized during classical antiquity.
> quite some low wage work wouldn't actually cost 10x a single person's wage to automate
What about the rest of it?
For example, the Netherlands started out industrializing on wind power using wood and rope and cloth, ...actually they still use a lot of wind power today, though now with exotic composites. (At some point in between there were traditional windmills that were still being updated with odd things like aviation leading edge slats made of aluminium up to something like the 1950s! )
So -while speculative and certainly open to discussion- in some alternate history Romans could have had some sort of industrial system, though it might not look like something we would immediately recognize.
I'm trying to convey the intuition that if you have a perfectly workable society based on slavery (the cheapest form of labor), you don't have as strong an incentive to start using machines instead. Conversely, I have the impression that the abolition of slavery in the 19th century is one of the big contributors to our modern industrial society.
I'm just being cautious wrt saying that most low wage work wouldn't cost 10x to automate. One can never be sure one hasn't missed an example somewhere.
Of course, if we find some examples of low wage work that really do cost more than 10X the cost of the work needed to automate it, possibly we've been under-valuing those tasks all along.
Emerging global trade networks incentivized producers to scale up indefinitely. The resulting innovations transformed the textile industry. Textiles are always in demand, and their non-mechanized production is extremely labour intensive. The lessons learned from mechanizing this industry were applied everywhere else. It's true that competition with cheap Indian labour was a major factor in textile automation in the UK, but these global trade networks could not have been sustained without massive advancements in stellar navigation provided by the invention of the telescope. This in turn was only made possible by advancements in chemistry that enabled the production of clear glass.
All of these processes were well underway before the abolition of slavery in the US. It should be noted that innovations such as the cotton gin were eagerly adopted by the slave-powered US cotton industry. There's nothing like efficiency for an industrialist.
With regards to automation, I think all of the low-hanging fruit has been picked. We're left with things that seem simple, but are in fact horribly difficult, and require near-human levels of dexterity and situational awareness, such as driving or construction work or food handling. That however doesn't mean that our society would be just fine if we provided workers in these industries an alternative to their jobs.
WRT windmills, don't take my word for it.
Already ahead of you: a one-person company is called a ZZP'er here in NL. ZZP = zelfstandige zonder personeel == self-employed without employees.
This is not my experience at all. I once had a job setting up home PCs and internet for low income people in my community. Almost every single home had a projection TV (the top of the line at the time) and a recent mercedes in the driveway. They’re able to afford these things because they are actually receiving income, it’s just not reported (and therefore also not taxed)
Everyone’s a drug dealer? Doesnt sound plausible. Or at least They’re getting so much income they can afford to run a fancy car (debt free because who’s lending to a person with minimal documented income).
I mean is that a poor person when they have $50k laying around to go buy a fancy car outright?
Something about your proposition doesnt add up in a really basic obvious way.
Where did I say drug dealer? Or is this the first time you’ve heard of jobs getting paid under the table?
And yes some of them had much more than $50k judging by their things. But hey, make them more wealthy. Some people are really good at gaming the system.
Pay for waiters and labourers, like pay for everyone else, is on top of UBI. There's no particular reason it would have to rise by 2x or 3x—unless the industry is categorically unwilling or unable to ensure that their workers are treated well enough that they just don't see it as being worthwhile for less.
If the industry is dying out because we introduce universal basic income, then the poorest people will still be at least as well off as they are now, and in many cases much better, because they are guaranteed to continue to be able to pay their bills, no matter what happens with their employment status.
> guaranteed to continue to be able to pay their bills
This all depends on how well your UBI keeps up with inflation. If you trigger runaway inflation, then you won't be able to buy bread with a wheelbarrow full of cash. Fundamentally, it's not about how much money people have, but about how much work they do. If UBI reduces the amount of work done overall in the economy, it will contract said economy and make everyone poorer as a result.
Another study discussed here showed only a mild net reduction in amount of paid work being done on the short term; and arguably the unpaid work being done instead was also beneficial to society.
Interestingly, in general, UBI studies don't show really alarming reductions in amount of work done. Sadly they also don't show hoped for amazing increases in productivity either. It seems like the advantages and disadvantages of UBI for stimulating work seem to balance each other out. I think people's arguments don't need to be about the work aspect so much.
UBI is basically communism lite - with all its flaws. People who are provided for tend to behave just like animals who are provided for - after all, people are animals - they mainly lounge around and try to amuse themselves. This isn't a moral judgement, just an observation. I've not seen any study that has conclusively refuted this.
It is the rare, exceptional, person that will spend their free time on something truly productive and constructive. We can see examples of this already - we've made it very easy to get a loan and go to college, partially socializing college education. As a result, we have a surplus of college graduates and a shortage of labourers and trades. Introducing UBI would simply magnify this effect. When people have alternatives, they don't tend to want to go work on farms, construction sites, or in restaurants or shops. People work these jobs primarily because they would otherwise be destitute. I know that's why I did.
Since HN discussions tend to be short and fleeting; I think the point to focus down on would be "free time". Just because you take (some of the) money out of the picture, doesn't mean that there still isn't a lot of work to be done. And it doesn't mean that all the other motivators to do that work aren't still present.
Instead of or in addition to money: people work for power, prestige, recognition; but also for love, honor, duty, "FOR SCIENCE", beauty, tradition, for personal satisfaction&improvement, and many other reasons.
With all these different reasons to want to work, and all kinds of different people and professions, (eg. politicians, artists, homemakers, soldiers, police officers, doctors, nurses, scientists, students, artists ), you might imagine that taking money off the table might not actually have such an influence on these people's desire to work.
If you think back, surely you'll recognize these motivations showing up everywhere; including in stories, newspapers, citations, history books, holy books, and surely even scientific studies. They're all part of the human condition, after all.
The examples you give of farming, construction, hospitality and retail are often mixed motivation. Some people (like you?) only work in those jobs because they need the money. And without further motivation, then surely one won't like the work.
But many people who work in these sectors actually do so because they believe in their job, because they want to build something, and/or because they see it is valued and helps the community. When they are down and demotivated, this is where they draw their strength to carry on.
This is especially true in SME's, which is where I've had a lot of my experiences.
Overall, I don't think the "human condition" is much of a thing. People are marginally more clever than apes on average, and that small margin pushed us past a tipping point into civilization. Give a chimp a smartphone and they start to behave remarkably like people (or is it vice versa).
However, even if you're right, and most people would find humanistic motivation to work, my point is that we just can't have all the people who do menial, necessary, jobs pursue careers motivated by higher values. If all baristas were suddenly free to pursue their dream art careers, who will pour the coffee?
More in general: I think that Maslow's hierarchy of needs [1] has a quite a lot of levels between "basic physiological needs" and "transcendence". I think that as long as people need to fulfill needs anywhere on that ladder, they'll be willing to do work. If people are lucky and/or smart, a lot of their needs will be immediately fulfilled by their work; other times things may still need to be covered by money and/or free time.
I think it'd be strange if people would only have boolean motivation (either 100% staying alive, or 100% enlightenment). I think in real world people, it's often going to be some mix of motivations, with all sorts of levels in between. Sometimes more towards one side, sometimes more towards the other.
So that's my theory anyway.
Here's some examples of anecdata I have:
* An electrical technician I met at $factory. Possibly they'd work somewhere else if not for money, but on the other hand they do get a kick anytime a machine they fixed starts working again.
* An industrial programmer who got to play with $MM worth of robots and computers and lasers. They outright forgot to bill me and needed to be reminded. (oops)
* An awesome Barista who made coffee into an art form indeed; A lot of deep knowledge and skill and creativity went into it. They charged me about 2-4x what it would cost out of a machine, but it was worth it!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
> very few kids say they want to stay at home and sit on the couch all day
You will notice however that, in absence of intervention, most kids do sit on the couch all day, especially in the digital age. We also observe that this behavior continues as long as it is materially supported. Countless articles have been written about the increasing numbers of seemingly-functional adults who live under the care of their parents and don't do very much at all. UBI will enable more people to adopt this lifestyle, to become starving (read: non-productive) artists, man-children or hikikomori. Why don't you think they'll take the opportunity?
> people would only have boolean motivation
I agree that it's not a binary motivation. In aggregate however the point stands, removing x% of motivation for work will inevitably result in x% less work being done. Furthermore, any decrease in x represents wealth transfer from those who are motivated to work by higher values to those who are motivated to work by lower ones (in Maslow's hierarchy). All of this raises many moral questions, and I think these are fundamentally worth discussing.
Note: I do appreciate your continued replies =)
Well, sure. That's more or less a given, but it's also an implementation detail, not a problem with UBI as a concept.
The only way an industry "can't survive" is if there is no price for their product/service at which both of these are true:
1) People can afford to pay for it
2) The employees can afford a living wage
If an industry is vital to our modern way of life, but it fails to meet those criteria, there's a third option: government subsidies, ensuring that the price can stay affordable while not shortchanging the employees.
However, as critical as I generally am of market-based solutions, in this case I genuinely believe that at least in the vast majority of cases, the second-order effects of the safety net offered by UBI will not require additional government subsidies for any vital industries. Some things may get more expensive, but overall, life will get better.
You can postulate about how much we should value these jobs, but the reality is that most people wouldn't be able to afford a meal at a restaurant where all the staff make 50k, or a packet of strawberries picked by pickers who make the same.