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UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

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Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#131

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

codr7 wrote: post #20
cladopa wrote: post #13

It seems people forget the most obvious thing: A government powerful enough to give everybody a salary is powerful enough to REMOVE everybody's salary. It is also a monopoly of power. That already happened: In communist Russia if you were not a good communist (you believed communism was a crap system) it meant no salary for you, a shitty status or being sent to prison or forced labor. If your children, or any family…

Exactly, the list of conditions to keep what is now your only available source of income happy will keep growing. Hesitant about the latest gene therapy, no money for you.

The government can already tell you to do things.

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#132

Post by _heimdall »

bheadmaster wrote: post #125
_heimdall wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I'm not quite sure how that ties in. What's your point here with regards to a UBI and whether a government should work for or be parent to its constituents?

Citizens have to obey their country's laws (restriction of freedom) in exchange for government taking care of essential human needs like housing, clean water, electricity, food, and so on (obligation of the government). If a citizen cannot get access to those needs (and remember - 5% unemployment is optimal ), then why would anyone expect them to keep following their country' laws, and not steal and murder?

You seem to be assuming that we first have to have countries, laws, and governments. That seems like an obvious assumptuon today, but that isn't an absolute fundamental of life.

People don't need the heavy hand of governments and laws to stop them from stealing and murdering, as if that is the base state for all humans. If there were no laws, would you move right on to both of those acts?

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#133

Post by thunky »

_heimdall wrote: post #42
Apreche wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We want to guarantee for every human on the planet the right to food, water, shelter, health care, and education. Giving everyone enough money to buy all those things themselves is one way to do it. Raising funds (taxes) and then providing those services for free is another way. It doesn’t really matter which way. What matters is that we agree on that goal and find some way to achieve it. Right now we have a system w…

Handing out money will never make resources appear where they don't exist though. And if we want to say everyone should have access to certain resources, having money as an intermediary actually does us a diservice. If everyone should have access to water, federalize water utilities and don't charge anyone. You will them have to deal with access rights though. How much water is enough for everyone to have access to?…

> A UBI is only an agreement that some amount of money is a fundamental right, nothing more.

Conveniently, money can be used to acquire resources.

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#134

Post by xk_id »

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #16

I think people are beginning to see work as a sucker's game. The assets you hold are much more important. You can bust your ass and get a nice little startup exit -- and then look around at what real estate this massive windfall will buy you, only to realize that it's all gone up in price by the same amount. It would have been better to have bought a house, kept the easy job, and gone home at 4:30 each day. People se…

Does anybody have advice for finding appropriate assets to purchase for individuals of very low net worth? Suitable here means:

- affordable to begin with (max 3-4 figures)

- not mass produced (so they’re not already hyper-efficiently distributed to market)

- demand for them will continue to exist (so you can be assured to liquidate them when necessary)

- their value is likely to appreciate (at the very least in line with inflation).

The only example I could come up with is hand-crafted (unique) collectibles, like figurines and such.

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#135

Post by _heimdall »

thunky wrote: post #133
_heimdall wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handing out money will never make resources appear where they don't exist though. And if we want to say everyone should have access to certain resources, having money as an intermediary actually does us a diservice. If everyone should have access to water, federalize water utilities and don't charge anyone. You will them have to deal with access rights though. How much water is enough for everyone to have access to?…

> A UBI is only an agreement that some amount of money is a fundamental right, nothing more. Conveniently, money can be used to acquire resources.

Also conveniently, when prices are partly decided by market factors the fundamental right to a resource may be impacted. If we really think everyone should be guaranteed access to water, electricity, housing, food, etc those resources would just be available and wouldn't require the market abstraction of money.

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#136

Post by _heimdall »

Retric wrote: post #122
_heimdall wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to take the SNAP program as a baseline and only slightly tweak the limits on when funds taper off, why bother with a new UBI program at all? It sounds like SNAP gets you 90% of the way there, it mainly just needs the restrictions on what the money can be spent on removed. With limits so low I'm not totally sure how it would make a meaningful difference compared to the various welfare and entitlement progr…

I was bringing it up as a starting point for discussion and to show how UBI doesn’t imply extra spending. Proponents suggest bring more programs into a single UBI could significantly lower operating costs. A single check each month could replace some or all of: Housing assistance, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, In…

Interesting, I could see that going either way. Surely there is waste when funds are split across multiple programs, but the potential benefit to that approach is that people may get benefits from one or two programs rather than all of them.

WIC and the CA are great examples. The population helped by both programs is purposefully smaller than the total population. If the funds currently spent only on mothers or veterans is spread across everyone it seems reasonable that efficiencies of moving to a single program wouldn't make up for the increased number of beneficiaries.

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#137

Post by bheadmaster »

_heimdall wrote: post #132
bheadmaster wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citizens have to obey their country's laws (restriction of freedom) in exchange for government taking care of essential human needs like housing, clean water, electricity, food, and so on (obligation of the government). If a citizen cannot get access to those needs (and remember - 5% unemployment is optimal ), then why would anyone expect them to keep following their country' laws, and not steal and murder?

You seem to be assuming that we first have to have countries, laws, and governments. That seems like an obvious assumptuon today, but that isn't an absolute fundamental of life. People don't need the heavy hand of governments and laws to stop them from stealing and murdering, as if that is the base state for all humans. If there were no laws, would you move right on to both of those acts?

> People don't need the heavy hand of governments and laws to stop them from stealing and murdering, as if that is the base state for all humans. If there were no laws, would you move right on to both of those acts?

In absence of police-like force enforcing rules, crime happens often, so people naturally create police-like forces like neighbourhood watches to prevent crime.

Countries, laws and governments aren't un-natural - they're just more complex and powerful versions of institutions that naturally appear in any organized group of people.

If you were in a tribe whose hunters were hoarding meat for their fat sons, would you starve to death to avoid stealing because stealing is wrong?

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#138

Post by sofixa »

packetlost wrote: post #104
rho138 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, they just threw bodies at the problem - shifts be damned. In the US people were working most if not all days of the week. We’re lucky we got where we are now with a 5 day work week brought about by union pressure.

> We’re lucky we got where we are now with a 5 day work week brought about by union pressure. This is not backed up by any source I can find. Nearly every source says that the 5 day week was invented by unions in the 1800s, popularized by Henry Ford at the Ford motor company due to measurable improvements to productivity, and made law in the 1930s (in the US) to attempt to counter wide-spread unemployment during the…

> Union pressure is not mentioned anywhere, and honestly doesn't make any sense given that unions were not particularly powerful in those time periods.

Unions were so powerful in the early 1900s that multiple revolutions occurred in part due to their pressure and actions all around the industrialised world. And the fear of strikes led to many reforms and regulations to take talking points off unions (like Bismarck enacting the first welfare state to be a step ahead of social democrats).

Specifically in the US, look at the Coal Wars and the Battle of Blair Mountain in which the US army fought with aircraft and artillery against striking miners.

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#139

Post by codr7 »

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #131
codr7 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, the list of conditions to keep what is now your only available source of income happy will keep growing. Hesitant about the latest gene therapy, no money for you.

The government can already tell you to do things.

Of course, but they don't have the same means to force me.

Look, I think taking care of everyone is a great idea, about time too.

But giving centralized government even more power is likely a very, very bad idea.

Re: UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

#140

Post by Jedd »

HPsquared wrote: post #57
Jedd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can usefully equate 'UBI' to a single outcome of UBI. One of the goals of UBI, as I interpret it, is to reduce the cost of living closer to zero. And that's the literal cost of living - not the macroeconomist's use of the term. That phrase, once you contemplate it, is a ludicrous reflection of how our society has gone wrong. Why should it cost to live? (You can consider the answer in terms of > 11ky…

Surely cost of living, expressed as hours of labour, remains the same regardless. Anyone can reduce their cost of living by reducing the standard of living.

Your premise is patently not true.
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