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The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

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Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#41

Post by ThomPete »

notahacker wrote: post #38
ThomPete wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of evidence that this is how things are moving. What most people get wrong about a job is that they confuse the human doing them with the job they human is doing. Most if not all jobs only require you to be a subset of a human to actually be useful. And so there is a general misconception that computers would need a general intelligence to take over a job when in fact most of the jobs we do require onl…

There was a lot of evidence that this was how things were moving a century ago, but the predictions made at the time look more than a little bit wrong. Not only have the sons of the increasingly obsolete production line employees mostly found jobs, but so have their daughters! Trouble with breaking down jobs into smaller subsets is that you need an awful lot of robots, and suddenly the rental on those doesn't look an…

No there wasn't a lot of evidence because back then the human intellect wasn't being outcompeted by the machines.

This is what is happening now. Machines are gradually moving further and further up the abstraction ladder.

So unless you are aware of another human ability used to do a job it kind of stops there.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#42

Post by ebbv »

golemotron wrote: post #17

UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. Some people will use free money to build enriching lives. Others will fall into various addictions because they haven't found meaning. I'd like to see a UBI conversation that discusses is this point because it is significant and the history of welfare shows that it is real.

Yes and some people will spend their UBI on weapons and murder people.

Does that mean we try to figure out who's going to be murders so we don't give them any money?

Some people have problems. That doesn't mean you scrap a good thing just because you don't like dealing with problems.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#43

Post by beat »

chrisco255 wrote: post #32
beat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much that there won't be a labor market, but rather than radical changes to the labor market are accelerating. Two centuries ago, well over 90% of income earners were farmers. Today, it's like 2% and dropping. But unemployment didn't become a more massive problem than it was then. Labor became available for other purposes, enabling the industrial revolution.

We had 25%+ unemployment during the Great Depression, at a time when hardly any women were in the workforce. I would say that was a much more difficult time than this great stagnation we find ourselves in currently. Our economy is now largely service-based, but we are still quite a ways off from automating most services. There's a lot of speculation that the economy will imminently suffer rapid upheaval with few jobs…

"Automated" jobs language reminds me of the old saw that "Technology is stuff that didn't exist when I was a kid". Entire industries worth of jobs have been "automated" away over the past couple of centuries.

Say, 150 years ago, you needed to move a ton of rock a hundred yards. How was it done? By hand. You needed to harvest an entire field of grain. How was it done? By hand. A couple of centuries ago, virtually everyone was employed in farming. Now, hardly anyone is. Powered vehicles and hydraulic lifting wiped out more jobs than computers ever have.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#44

Post by ThomPete »

notahacker wrote: post #38
ThomPete wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of evidence that this is how things are moving. What most people get wrong about a job is that they confuse the human doing them with the job they human is doing. Most if not all jobs only require you to be a subset of a human to actually be useful. And so there is a general misconception that computers would need a general intelligence to take over a job when in fact most of the jobs we do require onl…

There was a lot of evidence that this was how things were moving a century ago, but the predictions made at the time look more than a little bit wrong. Not only have the sons of the increasingly obsolete production line employees mostly found jobs, but so have their daughters! Trouble with breaking down jobs into smaller subsets is that you need an awful lot of robots, and suddenly the rental on those doesn't look an…

Fast food vendors are already now starting to look for ways to automate as they continue to push the prices down on their products.

Prices that needs to keep going down in order for them to 1) survive the competition, 2) deliver affordable food from the majority of their customers who are making less and less money.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#45

Post by dragonwriter »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #40
golemotron wrote: post #17

UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. Some people will use free money to build enriching lives. Others will fall into various addictions because they haven't found meaning. I'd like to see a UBI conversation that discusses is this point because it is significant and the history of welfare shows that it is real.

The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system.

> The entire point of UBI is to get rid of 19th century style notions of worthy and unworthy poor people, thats a huge part of the inefficency and waste of the current system.

Well, not the entire point (there's lots of different reasons that people advocate UBI), but its certainly one of the points.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#46

Post by ones_and_zeros »

golemotron wrote: post #17

UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. Some people will use free money to build enriching lives. Others will fall into various addictions because they haven't found meaning. I'd like to see a UBI conversation that discusses is this point because it is significant and the history of welfare shows that it is real.

For this to be a concern you'd have to believe that there are currently a significant amount of people that would "fall into various addictions" if only they could afford to...

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#47

Post by humanrebar »

gshulegaard wrote: post #31
golemotron wrote: post #17

UBI seems like a good idea but it is important to recognize that the problem it seeks to solve has a cultural component too. Some people will use free money to build enriching lives. Others will fall into various addictions because they haven't found meaning. I'd like to see a UBI conversation that discusses is this point because it is significant and the history of welfare shows that it is real.

For me, I don't see this as being a problem. First, I am a believer in economic momentum and money multiplier dynamics (perhaps irrationally so). But with this belief more money being spent (consumption) makes for a stronger economy, for everyone, including those of us who are not in need of welfare. Our current welfare system places too much restriction and I feel leaves too many welfare recipients with non-optimal…

> But with this belief more money being spent (consumption) makes for a stronger economy, for everyone, including those of us who are not in need of welfare.

So what's your counter to the 'broken windows' objection? It's pertinent in this case because we're talking not about broken windows but broken (addicted, depressed, isolated) people.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#48

Post by humanrebar »

mjevans wrote: post #14
jupiterrising wrote: post #5

[deleted]

Addressing the implication of breeding for money, I actually prefer the solutions explored in Larry Nivin's main fictional universe. Importantly, in that universe, different regions of human colonization had different limits for births; including un-affiliated areas (space between planets) having unregulated birthrates. For the context of Earth/Terra: I forget if it was one or two children, but for sure, for two pare…

> ...I actually prefer the solutions explored in Larry Nivin's main fictional universe.

Was he advocating that? I thought it was just a setup for plot points explored in Ringworld.

Re: The principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income (2015)

#50

Post by Introvertuous »

chrisco255 wrote: post #36
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely - and UBI would free people who want to work from having to find dead-end jobs. They would have the financial freedom to pursue education, volunteering or educational unpaid internships.

This idea of a "dead-end job" is foreign to me. Only privileged, spoiled people talk like this. All job experience is valuable and will teach you lessons if you let it. If you can't look at even an entry-level job as a chance to gather experience and use it as a stepping stone to something better, and you'd rather sit back and be idle and privileged with some welfare check over working then you're the problem, not th…

Clearly you have never worked at mc.donalds.
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