Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

businessforscotland.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 238 posts

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#161

Post by gnaritas »

flubert wrote: post #154
gnaritas wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic income is a hot topic because forward thinking people who see what's going on in the world right now already see it. You say lets cross that bridge when we get there; that's the point, we're there, you just aren't looking very hard.

Haven't people been saying this since about 1848?

No, they haven't; we're talking about AI here, not industrialization, they were talking about a different problem back then. The two are not comparable, industrialization just pushes humans to do different kinds of labor, AI eliminates human labor, vastly different problem.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#162

Post by eanzenberg »

mikeash wrote: post #137
vinceguidry wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how that could possibly fly, politically. Everybody who works has to pay for everybody who doesn't want to work to just fuck around.

It's not qualitatively different than what we have now.

The magnitude is different, and you shouldn't be ignorant to that detail.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#163

Post by eanzenberg »

lukev wrote: post #28
vinceguidry wrote: post #12

I'm cautiously enthusiastic about basic income. I want to believe that it really can change everything, until that nagging doubt of "but human nature just doesn't work that way!" inevitably kills the buzz. The idea behind basic income is to remove day-to-day struggle from people's lives. If only they didn't have to worry where their next rent check is coming from, then potentially a huge groundswell of human capital…

Except that there are strong social incentives for anyone who is capable of getting a paying job and going off welfare to do so. If it were socially acceptable for an artist, scientist or entrepreneur to fall back on "welfare" for some amount of time to work on a project, improve themselves or bootstrap a startup, I think you'd see that more often (including outcomes that end up contributing back to society. Which is…

Why do you assume people behave this way, when there's every indication that human's don't behave with "utopian ideals"? This is exactly why BI is such a terrible idea, along with communism, socialism, and free-market capitalism. The system we have now works "pretty-ok" which is leaps and bounds better than this theory and others which require people to act as "honorable actors".

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#164

Post by Mz »

I am really skeptical. My understanding is that every Utopian scheme to provide equally for all citizens without expecting them to work ended up having to ultimately declare "You don't work, you don't eat." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_does_not_work,_neither_... This is what Lenin ultimately declared after The Russian Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution

In a nutshell, Russian communism was supposed to be something that benefited the commoners -- the workers -- and ultimately it did not accomplish its goal. Russian communism is kind of a famous failure of this sort of thing. Russia ended up staying rather poor for a long time.

I see no reason to believe that it works better in an automated society where we increasingly face shortages of enough people who are adequately skilled at administering the automated tech. Historically, societies dependent upon a complex, educated bureaucracy to make their system work went through cycles of failing and resurging, then failing again. If we have no means to motivate people to get educated enough to run the fancy automated tech and the tech upon which our wealth depends dies, then the wealth goes away and the society built upon it ends suddenly and catastrophically.

I am extremely skeptical.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#165

Post by gnaritas »

Grishnakh wrote: post #140
gnaritas wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree. Humans tend to create new market segments in response to this problem. You can disagree if you like, but you're relying on the past to make your presumption that humans will just create more markets; the future of automation isn't like the past, future automation will include AI and is already doing so. AI changes the game, the future is not like the past, humans won't just do something else. Labor base…

This is extremely optimistic. We don't have AI that advanced, or evidence that AI will get that advanced any time soon. People joke all the time about the crazy stuff that Siri comes up with. What IS coming soon is automation of mindless, lower-level jobs. Waiting tables is a good example here: humans do a terrible job of it, and add 10-20% to your food bill in exchange for screwing up your order. Having a tablet com…

> This is extremely optimistic.

It's inevitable.

> We don't have AI that advanced

Correct.

> or evidence that AI will get that advanced any time soon.

That's incorrect. The trend is obvious, watson can already out diagnose a doctor. AI doesn't have to work like a human to out do a human just as planes don't have to flap their wings.

> What IS coming soon is automation of mindless, lower-level jobs.

That is coming, but as things like Watson show, it won't be limited to mindless lower level jobs. All but the more pure intellectual pursuits will gone in very short order. Most jobs, even white collar ones, don't take that much thinking.

> It's going to be a long time before engineers, for instance, are replaced by robots

It's not going to be long at all before the bulk of humanity is replaced by robots; that humans are still useful in the highest levels of intellectual fields is for all purposes irrelevant, the labor based economy will crumble far before unemployment reaches 50%. If robots put the lower half of society out of work, it's game over for our current economic system regardless of whether we have strong enough AI to replace engineers.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#166

Post by dllthomas »

SixSigma wrote: post #51
lftl wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plenty of people already receive checks from the government every month that they live on. Like, a whole lot of people. There should already be a not-so-huge wave of accomplishment coming from all these people. Not to belittle them and their abilities, but there isn't. I'm not well versed in the structure of European welfare systems, but when you look at the US welfare system there are some absolutely perverse ince…

> All it would take is requiring graduated income checks so for every $1 you make more in wages you lose less than $1 of benefits. Or just universal benefits and a progressive income tax, then you don't have to have the bureaucratic machinery of the means tested welfare state.

That doesn't seem an alternative, so much as it seems one potential (particularly smooth) approach.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#167

Post by Alupis »

beat wrote: post #153
Alupis wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are those people you mention actually productive now? Well, kind of, but only enough to pay rent and eat. But that's my point, individuals like this, who only work the bare minimum to just keep existing and have no drive or motivation to achieve more, are very likely to just not work anymore at all since their basic needs are now provided. At the moment, they at least work somewhat. This helps keep local businesses…

It's different for me. I know a bunch of people who are deeply creative, artists and musicians and such, who spend enormous amounts of time volunteering their productivity - or what's left of it, after "earning a living". I'd love to see them with the opportunity to not have to worry about eating, so they could make things instead. The conflation of value and money is one of the worst things about our society. Money…

> I know a bunch of people who are deeply creative, artists and musicians and such, who spend enormous amounts of time volunteering their productivity - or what's left of it, after "earning a living". I'd love to see them with the opportunity to not have to worry about eating, so they could make things instead

Well, I'd love more time for my hobbies too, however it's not realistic to think more time spent doing pleasureful activities will yield more productivity in general. The world is filled with musicians and artists, but very few of them actually produce anything beneficial to society.

Art and music are important components of society, but the influential pieces come from a very small minority, and that's unlikely to change. The successful people are more closely paralleled with an entrepreneur than a typical street artist... they posses the drive and motivation to do what it takes to become great. This involves schooling/training, often more than 40 hour work-weeks, managing people and the business around your work, etc. Everyone else is a hobbyist, producing things for self-consumption in large-part, which does not contribute towards society in a meaningful way.

The people we're discussing here are the types that loathe and bemoan a 20 hour workweek, let alone a 60+ hour workweek the Jay-Z's of the world find routine.

> Jobs pay because no one would do them if they didn't pay.

I disagree. There are many types of occupations which do not pay (volunteer work comes to mind). Further, if there was no means to generate income, there wouldn't be a way to purchase goods, which in turn keeps others employed, etc. In a society where things are all totally provided for free, society will stop innovating (there's no reason to push the boundaries anymore).

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#168

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Alupis wrote: post #167
beat wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different for me. I know a bunch of people who are deeply creative, artists and musicians and such, who spend enormous amounts of time volunteering their productivity - or what's left of it, after "earning a living". I'd love to see them with the opportunity to not have to worry about eating, so they could make things instead. The conflation of value and money is one of the worst things about our society. Money…

> I know a bunch of people who are deeply creative, artists and musicians and such, who spend enormous amounts of time volunteering their productivity - or what's left of it, after "earning a living". I'd love to see them with the opportunity to not have to worry about eating, so they could make things instead Well, I'd love more time for my hobbies too, however it's not realistic to think more time spent doing pleas…

Pretty pessimistic - I'd suggest that only a small minority are influential precisely because of the making-a-living issue. Some of the most influential are lucky art-lottery-winners, not geniuses.

And I wouldn't worry about society falling around our ears if the work ethic is replaced by a creative-energy ethic or something like that. I'd love to try it.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#169

Post by bsder »

stevesearer wrote: post #92
dawnbreez wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Except that there are strong social incentives for anyone who is capable of getting a paying job and going off welfare to do so Debatable. In the US, many welfare programs are designed to cut off anyone who actually gets a job...even if that job pays less than what you'd get from welfare. This problem gets even bigger as you factor in the fact that multiple welfare programs exist, making it nigh-impossible to preven…

One question I have about BI is if it replaces other forms of social welfare (food stamps, unemployment, etc...), what happens when some percentage of people inevitably make decisions and still cannot afford the basics of what BI should cover? Will a new set of social welfare programs replace the ones that were previously removed?

This ... is complicated.

If you have someone in your family going through Alzheimer's or dementia, you suddenly realize that there is a spectrum of functionality as a human being.

There is no single point where there is changeover from human being who is "functional" and "not functional". There is no bright line where we can say "this person is still responsible for their actions" and "this person is no longer responsible for their actions and the someone must step in".

We, as modern societies, do NOT handle this with any amount of grace.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#170

Post by bsder »

vinceguidry wrote: post #62
gnaritas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he idea behind basic income is to remove day-to-day struggle from people's lives. If only they didn't have to worry where their next rent check is coming from, then potentially a huge groundswell of human capital could rise out of nowhere and carry us all into a new age. That is not at all what basic income is about. The point of basic income is not as a means to enable anything; it's a natural byproduct of and sol…

> The point of basic income is not as a means to enable anything; it's a natural byproduct of and solution to a problem, the problem of ever increasing automation removing the need for human labor. I disagree. Humans tend to create new market segments in response to this problem. Service jobs, creative jobs, people are remarkably effective at finding ways to be productive. Basic income almost seems like a measure foc…

> Basic income almost seems like a measure focused on finding ways for people to be unproductive.

Yet, "the dole" provided for J. K. Rowling as well as Noel Gallagher of Oasis before they became famous. I'm sure there are others. We, as a society, would nominally be worse off without these people.

Post reply on HN