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Enough with Basic Income

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Re: Enough with Basic Income

#171

Post by glenda »

esarbe wrote: post #159
glenda wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment made me a bit sad because I read it as "What happens when those who struggle everyday to survive no longer have to?" - I understand your fear of entitlement etc... but I don't think things could get much worse than where we are now. For instance, "affluenza" is an acceptable excuse for killing a person in the US.

Hey glenda, I wanted to congratulate you on your enduring politeness and civility while enduring exactly the opposite. I thank you for your tone and your contribution. While I may not agree with you, I applaud the manner in which you communicate. It's people like you that really make HN a different place.

Thank you! This means a lot to me.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#172

Post by Double_Cast »

Nicolas_Colin wrote: post #140
grecy wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gets me about your article is your utter lack of willingness to allow people to attempt to improve something. Maybe BI won't work, and any money invested in it will be wasted. Maybe BI will work, and it will eventually solve many problems with today's Western societies. Who are you to tell the rest of us we're not even allowed to try? Is it your money being invested in the attempt? Will it negatively impact you?…

I sincerely regret that the US is currently missing critical opportunities such as that to deploy a state-of-the-art universal health insurance, while most of the energy of those who could support that effort is dedicated to discussing basic income. Also I point out that real-life enactments such as the French RMI, even though they succeeded at providing critical resources to those in need, are under extraordinary fi…

Do you not see how this argument is symmetric though? It's like when Alice says to Bob "Your vote for the green party was wasted, it could have gone towards the democratic party". Sure it could have. But was Alice's vote not also wasted, when her vote could have gone towards the green party? What prevents all the dems from voting green?

"Momentum; i.e. the green party's candidacy is far less realistic" says Alice. "Therefore, the democratic party deserves your green vote." I don't like winner-takes-all elections since it incentives a two-party system. But despite this current state, I'd still vote for the green candidate if I preferred it over the dem candidate. Because in the long term, it gives the dems an incentive to more closely align with the greens if they want improve their chance of success.

In this sense, the green vote wasn't a distraction, it was a message. The sentiment that incumbents feel entitled to third party votes and feel that third party votes are "wasted", I find baffling. I could argue that all votes are wasted, because nobody but me voted for the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The only interpretation under which others' votes could be said to be "a distraction" rather than "political input" is if one believed in the objective superiority of their own beliefs.

I wonder if you would change your tune if (hypothetically) UBI one day gained more momentum than Universal Health Care. But in your ideal world, this could never happen. Because all reasonable people would expend effort only into the coalition with the most momentum, which A) happens to be Universal Health Care ATM and B) will only ever be Universal Health Care in the future since the positive feedback loop never breaks.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#173

Post by andrenth »

jpindar wrote: post #168
andrenth wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give everyone $1000 a month (to round the numbers) now the work of someone who makes $1200 a month is only worth $200 (as one can make $1000 just by idling). Would this person want to work for $200 a month? This is a major disincentive of work.

That's not how basic income is supposed to work. The person who worked would get $1000 basic income PLUS their $1200 wages = $2400. Sure, above a certain level people's taxes would go up, so they pay back some of their basic income as tax. But that wouldn't kick in until people are earning rather more than $1200 a month.

Ignoring the magical thinking aspect of this (where will this money come from), this assumes that people will still want to work after receiving basic income.

This also has the inflationary consequences that I mentioned in another comment: you're effectively increasing wages without increasing productivity. This will cause prices to rise because employers will face higher taxes so that the state can support basic income, and demand will rise because people will have more money.

This will cause inflation, and in the long run purchase power will not increase, while society will be worse off with less people doing productive work.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#174

Post by geezerjay »

calvano915 wrote: post #137
geezerjay wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When kids are raised without the persistent threat of not surviving? Having to contribute to society by keeping a job, and using the income of said job to finance your cost of living is far from being a life-risking enterprise. You're trying to avoid the point by inventing absurd emotional examples.

You're ignoring the seemingly obvious threat of less job opportunities over time that provide a living, thriving wage. There's many people who have "a job" now who are barely getting by, enough to live but not thrive by any means. As efficiency increases over time because of tech, in combination with increasing reliance on cheap global labor and further stagnating wages locally, there will need to be some way to keep…

> You're ignoring the seemingly obvious threat of less job opportunities over time that provide a living, thriving wage.

That's your assumption, and a baseless one at that.

Back in reality, we're experiencing unprecedented economic development which includes the inception of a whole new economic sector.

You're essentially complaining that buggy whip artisans have less job opportunities in a world that's creating whole new jobs such as forum moderators, social media experts, and data scientists.

Today's economy even creates jobs playing video games, surfing, and talking about gourmet food.

The world's most developed economies are enjoying structural unemployment rates.

And you're here talking about "less job opportunities over time".

You need to separate facts from fiction, including your own baseless beliefs.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#175

Post by Nicolas_Colin »

dang wrote: post #166
Nicolas_Colin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote the article. Thank you for your response. I'm certainly not the first to point out that Silicon Valley, as an ecosystem, is fundamentally uninterested in politics and history (especially social history). Would you disagree with that? I didn't write that basic income won't work as a solution designed to fix a problem. My point is that I don't see a political path to enacting it, and even though it was enacted,…

> Silicon Valley, as an ecosystem, is fundamentally uninterested in politics and history (especially social history). Would you disagree with that? Yes, for two reasons. First, the meaning of the label 'Silicon Valley' is unclear, but whatever it means, it shouldn't be anthropomorphized. Doing that is usually just a rhetorical device, and that dilutes arguments. Second, the people I know in Silicon Valley are acutely…

Thanks for replying. I'd say Silicon Valley is synonymous with tech industry here (the article effectively mentions "Silicon Valley and its satellites").

As for the second argument, I trust there is much progress in terms of tackling politics and history in SV, but many sources contributed to forming my opinion:

- In "Googled" (published in 2004), Ken Auletta of the "New Yorker" explains in great detail how clueless Google initially was in dealing with Washington, DC., a trait he claims can be linked to the naïveté of engineers who see the world as a collection of "problems" all waiting for a "solution". As an engineer myself, I really recognize that engineering bias. Yet I agree the engineering culture may be stronger at Google than at other tech companies. But it's still dominant in the tech industry.

- In his "Secret History of Silicon Valley" conference, Steve Blank constantly jokes about the fact that people in Silicon Valley are ignorant of history, to the point where even students at Stanford University don't have a clue about who was Frederick Terman.

- More recently, another "New Yorker" article told the story of Mark Zuckerberg "getting an education" in his failed attempt to transform the education system in the state of New Jersey—see http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/19/schooled

-In Europe most of us are appalled at how clumsy SV-based tech companies are when dealing with local governments and adapting to the various cultures, institutions, and special interests => hence the many problems that Uber, Airbnb, Google, and others have here in Europe on the regulatory front (Apple being the latest to suffer that fate with the infamous €14B European tax bill).

Maybe it's a false impression. Or maybe in Silicon Valley those who are genuinely interested in geography, history, and politics are not in the executive seats and so far fail to make a difference.

But I can assure you that the tech industry's passion with basic income has a direct consequence on the ground: when you try to open up the discussion about the future of social policy, the tech people's response is always: "nevermind those complex policies from the past, basic income will solve everything". Ugh.

In most cases the reason is that they read the books by Peter Thiel and others, they read the blogposts by American Entrepreneurs and VCs, they believe the hype around basic income, and, I'm sorry to say, I think they don't have a clue about what it takes to build inclusive and sustainable social institutions.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#176

Post by daenney »

jkot wrote: post #35
TillE wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't vote in Germany. I'm not a "second class of citizen", I'm literally not a citizen.

But you are "citizen enough" to pay taxes or receive social benefits. And some non-citizens can vote in Germany. Anyway, by definition Basic Income is unconditional. Anyone who applies should get it.

That's not citizenship, that's residency. Those are two different things with very different implications as to your status in a country which can also vary depending on the length of residency.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#177

Post by Nicolas_Colin »

dang wrote: post #166
Nicolas_Colin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote the article. Thank you for your response. I'm certainly not the first to point out that Silicon Valley, as an ecosystem, is fundamentally uninterested in politics and history (especially social history). Would you disagree with that? I didn't write that basic income won't work as a solution designed to fix a problem. My point is that I don't see a political path to enacting it, and even though it was enacted,…

> Silicon Valley, as an ecosystem, is fundamentally uninterested in politics and history (especially social history). Would you disagree with that? Yes, for two reasons. First, the meaning of the label 'Silicon Valley' is unclear, but whatever it means, it shouldn't be anthropomorphized. Doing that is usually just a rhetorical device, and that dilutes arguments. Second, the people I know in Silicon Valley are acutely…

Proof of current progress: http://a16z.com/2016/05/16/regulatory-hacking/

I can't wait for regulatory hacking to join the field of social policy. Many people will convert to social realpolitik at that point :-)

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#178

Post by randomdata »

DanFeldman wrote: post #153
randomdata wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really tech-related job loss? Or does tech actually create more jobs? I am from Canada, so that is the data I am most familiar with. The employment rate has almost never been higher (2008 was the highest), the unemployment rate has almost never been lower (2008 was the lowest). The US housing crash did take some toll on the Canadian economy as did the more recent fall in oil prices, but we're still looking f…

There will be a huge loss of jobs in the next 10 years, not job creation. At some point, self driving cars will exist with no driver, and around the same time, self driving trucks. Truck driver is still the most common job in many states [0]. When was the last time we saw the most common job on the brink of being wiped out? Even if tech continues to grow and add jobs, will it surpass the loss from the trucking and tr…

> When was the last time we saw the most common job on the brink of being wiped out?

A couple of hundred years ago. And not just the most common job, but the job that was employing 90% of the labour force at the time. For comparison, transport truck driver accounts for just 1.5% of the labour force in Canada.

> Even if tech continues to grow and add jobs, will it surpass the loss from the trucking and transportation industry?

Yes. I struggle to believe we've reached the pinnacle of human achievement. Do you think the last time we went through this that people were sitting around thinking that the internet will provide jobs in the future? I'll be amazed if they even grasped that an internet could be possible. The jobs that will need to be done are things we cannot even dream of right now. If we could dream of them, we'd already be doing it.

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#179

Post by Nicolas_Colin »

Double_Cast wrote: post #172
Nicolas_Colin wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sincerely regret that the US is currently missing critical opportunities such as that to deploy a state-of-the-art universal health insurance, while most of the energy of those who could support that effort is dedicated to discussing basic income. Also I point out that real-life enactments such as the French RMI, even though they succeeded at providing critical resources to those in need, are under extraordinary fi…

Do you not see how this argument is symmetric though? It's like when Alice says to Bob "Your vote for the green party was wasted, it could have gone towards the democratic party". Sure it could have. But was Alice's vote not also wasted, when her vote could have gone towards the green party? What prevents all the dems from voting green? "Momentum; i.e. the green party's candidacy is far less realistic" says Alice. "T…

Maybe in the future you can vote for a party with which you are not perfectly aligned, then weigh on it while it exerts power to bring it closer to your views?

I happen to think it's the greatest challenge to be tackled by civic tech startups...

See this older story https://salon.thefamily.co/software-eating-politics-the-case...

Re: Enough with Basic Income

#180

Post by Nicolas_Colin »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #106

Kinda stopped reading when he described "the four things states are proxy insurers for", demonstrating a pretty drastic misrepresentation of how modern functional democratic social policies can be grouped and analyzed.

How so? It's exactly the way it's grouped and organized in all European social systems. It's also the framework used by Yale University's Jacob Hacker in "The Great Risk Shift" to discuss US social policy: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Risk-Shift-Economic-Insecurity/...

(I wrote the Medium article)

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