Big Tech’s View of Universal Basic Income Is Deeply Flawed • Hacker News Board

Re: Big Tech’s View of Universal Basic Income Is Deeply Flawed

#71

Post by prolikewh0a » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 6:25 PM UTC

claytonjy wrote: post #44

prolikewh0a wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>uncomfortably large part of the population just really doesn't have anything economically worthwhile to offer in the modern context? Someone still has to do the jobs. The sanitation workers, the McDonalds employees, the truck drivers, the waiters, the cooks -- they all have a role in society and are economically worthwhile -- it's just that nobody has had a raise since the 90's and income inequality is the highest i…

> Someone still has to do the jobs. I think GP's argument is that we won't need them too much longer. The jobs you mention don't need to disappear completely for there to be problems; if the demand for that class of fungible unskilled labor drops by 20% (not hard to imagine in the next decade or so), what happens to those tens of millions of people who have no way to provide for themselves and their families? Curious…

>what happens to those tens of millions of people who have no way to provide for themselves and their families?

In our current system of late capitalism, they probably get told to pull up their boot straps and work more/different jobs with no help at all. You won't hear about it on the news, you won't see it in the paper, you won't see it on TV because there are only 5-6 corporations that own almost all media, but people will be struggling and in poverty no doubt. We've been continuously taking away SNAP benefits, taking away medicaid benefits, adding work requirements, and now HUD wants to raise rent on people receiving federal rent assistance. I have absolutely no faith USA will do anything beneficial for its people anymore, only for the benefit of corporations and now with full Republican control we're probably going to see a Lochner Era 2.0.

>Curious to know what you mean by "implementing full employment", given we're about as close to that now as anyone has ever been.

Wages aren't rising because 4.0% unemployment[1] is still 15 million people unemployed, and not all people out of work are included in the official US unemployment numbers. That's a huge reserve of employment that doesn't allow workers to really have any control in their workplace because they have absolutely no job security, and it doesn't allow them to bargain for higher wages. It turns the tables and gives workers control instead of bosses & corporations, it gives the power to the people who do the work.[2]

Wages are actually falling. This shouldn't happen if unemployment is extremely low.[3]

[1]https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

[2]http://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf

[3]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/15/for-t...

Re: Big Tech’s View of Universal Basic Income Is Deeply Flawed

#72

Post by thorell » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #43

thorell wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My preferred argument in favor is that depression can render government form-filled disability bureaucracy into an unnavigable hellscape and since it's one of the most common disabilities, a lot of human misery could be spared by making a living income automatically accessible.

> a lot of human misery could be spared by making a living income automatically accessible You don't honestly think that those of us who have doubts about UBI are actually cackling and rubbing our hands together gleefully over all the human misery we're causing by denying living income to the miserable, do you? Of course that would be nice - and I do believe that humanity will eventually get to that point, but we're…

Of course I don't think that. I'm not even certain I support UBI in general. That's just an argument I found compelling compared to others.

Re: Big Tech’s View of Universal Basic Income Is Deeply Flawed

#73

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

prolikewh0a wrote: post #28

bandrami wrote: post #9

This will be unpopular, but: what if an uncomfortably large part of the population just really doesn't have anything economically worthwhile to offer in the modern context? Nobody wants to say that, but if it's true, then something like a UBI or dole (even granting the author's problems with it) is all we can do short of mounting a massive Plato's Cave-like conspiracy to convince people they are doing something usefu…

>uncomfortably large part of the population just really doesn't have anything economically worthwhile to offer in the modern context? Someone still has to do the jobs. The sanitation workers, the McDonalds employees, the truck drivers, the waiters, the cooks -- they all have a role in society and are economically worthwhile -- it's just that nobody has had a raise since the 90's and income inequality is the highest i…

> won't allow this at the expense of the middle & lower classes. I keep saying this here: workers really need to see the surplus value they create instead of just their wages; the surplus value goes into the pocket of the shareholder and benefits absolutely nobody.

So, tax capital income at non-preferential rates and use the funds as part of the funding stream for UBI.

Alternatively, mandate labor cooperatives as the exclusive form of business entity granted artificial personality with liability protection, but UBI is probably an easier political sell and less risky.

Re: Big Tech’s View of Universal Basic Income Is Deeply Flawed

#74

Post by bena » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

repolfx wrote: post #60

bena wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I don’t get about articles like this is how they just go on and on about how bad of an idea UBI is but don’t propose any kind of a solution. You're falling for the politician's fallacy. You see a problem, you see a proposed solution, and not hearing any other solutions, you've determined that this solution will fix the problem. Recognizing that a solution is bad is worthwhile in and of itself. If he's right an…

The fallacy runs even deeper than that. There might be no solution at all, by the construction of the problem. The correct response to "this will not solve the problem you want to solve" is not "ok so you give me a better solution then", unless the problem is so existential that even doing something horribly wrong is still better than doing nothing. The correct response may well be, "this will not work, therefore we…

That is true. It's like the Jurassic World movie that just came out. The dinosaurs are in danger of dying because the island is about to explode. Some characters are trying to figure out a way to save the dinosaurs, but, to paraphrase the original Jurassic Park, they're so preoccupied with how to do it they're not even stopping to think whether they should.

It's also very likely that the issues with this fall into the category of a "wicked problem".

Re: Big Tech’s View of Universal Basic Income Is Deeply Flawed

#75

Post by prolikewh0a » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

theothermkn wrote: post #37

prolikewh0a wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm fond of Zizek's remark that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Can you provide a source for that? Only because I'm reading some Zizek books right now :)

He's said it a number of times. Googling "zizek easier" yielded a ton of autocompletes, and then a ton of hits. :)

Thank you!

Re: Big Tech’s View of Universal Basic Income Is Deeply Flawed

#76

Post by mrfredward » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

repolfx wrote: post #59

shafte wrote: post #20

The author makes a false equivalence between the RSA in France and the typical UBI proposal. An individual's RSA benefit decreases as their work income increases. This has the effect of making an individual weakly indifferent to working, since it will provide no marginal increase in income. Most UBI proposals involve a benefit that doesn't phase out with income (or phases out at an income level so high that it doesn'…

No, I think it's a reasonable comparison. Yes, phasing out benefits creates an incentive not to work. But even many UBI proposals have some phase out, if only because the taxpayer paying money to a millionaire feels fundamentally wrong on so many levels. And the bigger problem is more basic. The idea of UBI is that freed from the need to work, people will form utopian societies full of volunteering and self improveme…

Our culture ties self-worth to work. From CEOs to social workers, people get fulfillment and create their sense of self by seeing the impact they have while at their jobs, and we judge others based by the same metrics.

UBI can help people pay their bills, but poverty is a lot more than a financial problem. The communities where work is drying up are the communities most heavily affected by opioid addiction at the moment. Drugs are expensive--people don't get addicted because they lack money, they get addicted because they feel hopeless or lack a sense of purpose. Maybe government assistance can help hopelessness, but it sure as hell won't give people a sense of purpose.

It going to take a big shift in culture before UBI can really work out.

Re: Big Tech’s View of Universal Basic Income Is Deeply Flawed

#77

Post by mmirate » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 7:11 PM UTC

bandrami wrote: post #9

This will be unpopular, but: what if an uncomfortably large part of the population just really doesn't have anything economically worthwhile to offer in the modern context? Nobody wants to say that, but if it's true, then something like a UBI or dole (even granting the author's problems with it) is all we can do short of mounting a massive Plato's Cave-like conspiracy to convince people they are doing something usefu…

> what if an uncomfortably large part of the population just really doesn't have anything economically worthwhile to offer in the modern context?

They and their skillsets must evolve or perish.

This is nothing new, ever since at least the Industrial Revolution.

Re: Big Tech’s View of Universal Basic Income Is Deeply Flawed

#78

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 7:28 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #27

bandrami wrote: post #9

This will be unpopular, but: what if an uncomfortably large part of the population just really doesn't have anything economically worthwhile to offer in the modern context? Nobody wants to say that, but if it's true, then something like a UBI or dole (even granting the author's problems with it) is all we can do short of mounting a massive Plato's Cave-like conspiracy to convince people they are doing something usefu…

We also have the problem that people are forced to evaluate what activities would be productive for them in terms of the money paid to them, but it's debatable whether the aggregated signals of demand in a given economy truly reflect what people would believe are "important" or "needed" or "valuable" activities (using scare quotes specifically because obviously the whole debate revolves around how to determine the me…

> I think if my mom knew she had a reasonable guaranteed basic income, she would volunteer her time at the local hospital, deliver meals to sick people...

If everybody had a reasonable guaranteed basic income those people would be able to pay her for her services, so it wouldn't need to be voluntary.

Re: Big Tech’s View of Universal Basic Income Is Deeply Flawed

#79

Post by bandrami » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 7:37 PM UTC

zqfm wrote: post #15

bandrami wrote: post #9

This will be unpopular, but: what if an uncomfortably large part of the population just really doesn't have anything economically worthwhile to offer in the modern context? Nobody wants to say that, but if it's true, then something like a UBI or dole (even granting the author's problems with it) is all we can do short of mounting a massive Plato's Cave-like conspiracy to convince people they are doing something usefu…

> mounting a massive Plato's Cave-like conspiracy to convince people they are doing something useful Maybe I'm missing something but I feel like that's what most of us are doing now anyway.

No, you're exactly right

Re: Big Tech’s View of Universal Basic Income Is Deeply Flawed

#80

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

repolfx wrote: post #59

shafte wrote: post #20

The author makes a false equivalence between the RSA in France and the typical UBI proposal. An individual's RSA benefit decreases as their work income increases. This has the effect of making an individual weakly indifferent to working, since it will provide no marginal increase in income. Most UBI proposals involve a benefit that doesn't phase out with income (or phases out at an income level so high that it doesn'…

No, I think it's a reasonable comparison. Yes, phasing out benefits creates an incentive not to work. But even many UBI proposals have some phase out, if only because the taxpayer paying money to a millionaire feels fundamentally wrong on so many levels. And the bigger problem is more basic. The idea of UBI is that freed from the need to work, people will form utopian societies full of volunteering and self improveme…

> But even many UBI proposals have some phase out, if only because the taxpayer paying money to a millionaire feels fundamentally wrong on so many levels.

UBI has no phase out, by definition. Something with a phase out can not be called "universal".

You can decide it's reasonable or not as you wish (but those millionaires pay more taxes than they receive). Just try to criticize the correct program.