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

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

#81

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dragonwriter wrote: post #70
tatersolid wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we can actually experiment and see if it works. Actually, we can’t test UBI without enormous risk. If the number of people involved isn’t close to 100%, it isn’t universal . Any societal effects for good or ill cannot be reasonably extrapolated to the full population. What might “work” for 5% of the population getting UBI might cause the next Great Depression at 100%.

> Actually, we can’t test UBI without enormous risk. Yes we can. > If the number of people involved isn’t close to 100%, it isn’t universal. Right, so your test has 100% coverage but not at a level that completely displaces all other means tested benefit programs. Maybe it initially just displaces, say, General Assistance type programs. Then you can gradually scale it up and continuously evaluate.

I'm not sure that's a valid test. UBI at $10/month is absolutely worthless. UBI at $500/month is probably worthless. UBI at $1000/month is barely adequate. If you start the test at small amounts, you're going to experimentally decide that it doesn't work. But that only means that it doesn't work at those amounts. It could still work at larger amounts.

Of course, it could bankrupt the country at larger amounts, too...

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #56

I have a working theory that the fundamental differences between conservatives and liberals include the following: (1) While both groups would like an accurate understanding of human nature, conservatives tend to be pessimistic and liberals tend to be optimistic. (2) While both groups would like to be compassionate and charitable, they're riled by different problems: Conservatives especially hate the idea of freeload…

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by AnimalMuppet »

mmirate wrote: post #77
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.

It shouldn't be quite that stark.

I view society as "spending" people, rather than "employing" them. We used to spend a huge chunk (35%?) of our population on agriculture. Then we industrialized agriculture, and now we spend something like 2% of our population on it. The rest could go make that farm equipment, and washing machines, and thousands of other things. Society as a whole became better off.

As a society, we need to find useful things for these people to do. Maybe we'll have to train them. But just leaving them where they can't do anything useful is a huge waste. We're leaving an enormous amount of progress on the table here.

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

#84

Post by slededit »

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…

I've noticed over time that "doing nothing" is scary to most people on a subconcious level. It breaks the illusion that we have total control over our world.

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

#85

Post by ghthor »

JamesBarney wrote: post #51
40acres wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting thought, I'd wager that our economy isn't as efficient as it should be with respect to the labor force. For instance there are tons of men in their prime age working years who are dropping out of the labor force, and the teen employment rate is low compare to previous years. You also have older Americans who may be physically unable to do manual work but could be hired in a sort of a human + software augm…

Those content monitor jobs sound pretty terrible. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/04/facebook-...

Only if you couldn't work remotely and could set your own hours.

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

#86

Post by invalidOrTaken »

slededit wrote: post #84
repolfx wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've noticed over time that "doing nothing" is scary to most people on a subconcious level. It breaks the illusion that we have total control over our world.

I am one of those people. My productivity has improved greatly by gritting my teeth and forcing myself to do it(nothing), though. For instance, rather than commenting here right now, I should be doing nothing and figuring out which of my many tasks I should be doing.

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

#87

Post by usrusr »

repolfx wrote: post #57
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe your mom would, I'm sure she's a lovely woman. But I know from hard experience that a lot of people wouldn't. My ex lost her job at some point and was looking for a year for a new one. She became terribly depressed, just staying in bed and crying all day. I'd talk her out of it, she'd be OK for a while, and then get depressed again because she felt "useless" and "like a loser". I encouraged her, again and again…

> My ex lost her job at some point and was looking for a year for a new one. She became terribly depressed

Typical optimistic UBI visions would see a person like that stop looking for a job so hard and start some form of UBI-enabled self employment as the closest simulacrum of that fancy middle class job (that may turn into a full replacement or not, but even just keeping the business net positive could already feel like a small success). Easy to say from a distance, but surely more of an incremental path than job hunting could ever be.

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

#88

Post by usrusr »

mmirate wrote: post #77
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.

Any implementation ideas for that perishing? Starvation? In the streets or organized in ... camps? Or something quicker, the arena perhaps? Suicide booths? "Perish" is such a comfortably abstract term...

Personally, I suspect that one day, unlikely within our lifetime, ethics will evolve to the point where it becomes acceptable to pay people for getting sterilized. This could turn into the biggest boost to average education since mandatory schooling.

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

#89

Post by mmirate »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #83
mmirate wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It shouldn't be quite that stark. I view society as "spending" people, rather than "employing" them. We used to spend a huge chunk (35%?) of our population on agriculture. Then we industrialized agriculture, and now we spend something like 2% of our population on it. The rest could go make that farm equipment, and washing machines, and thousands of other things. Society as a whole became better off. As a society, we…

But who is "we", and who is anyone to decide which of the 35% should be retrained, or which new field to retrain them in, or how to allocate resources to such retraining?

Those are the difficult questions that are most deftly answered by the Dead Hand when we grant each "35-percenter" the responsibility for their own retraining; they either retrain ("evolve"); figure out how to stay relevant in their old field (also "evolve"); or fail, and in doing so, demonstrate that they were unwilling to be "spent" in any way that society was willing to spend them ("perish").

Which is to say, I do not quite understand how you are disagreeing with me.

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

#90

Post by tatersolid »

dragonwriter wrote: post #70
tatersolid wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we can actually experiment and see if it works. Actually, we can’t test UBI without enormous risk. If the number of people involved isn’t close to 100%, it isn’t universal . Any societal effects for good or ill cannot be reasonably extrapolated to the full population. What might “work” for 5% of the population getting UBI might cause the next Great Depression at 100%.

> Actually, we can’t test UBI without enormous risk. Yes we can. > If the number of people involved isn’t close to 100%, it isn’t universal. Right, so your test has 100% coverage but not at a level that completely displaces all other means tested benefit programs. Maybe it initially just displaces, say, General Assistance type programs. Then you can gradually scale it up and continuously evaluate.

As animalMuppet said, if you’re not providing a “basic income” level to nearly everyone, your experiment is invalid.

I also think UBI would simply cause massive inflation to the point where $X/month was no longer a sufficient “basic income”. It would turn into a subsidy for landlords, grocery stores, and predatory lenders at the very least.

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