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Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

timjrobinson.com

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Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#771

Post by macspoofing »

undergrowth54 wrote: post #765
macspoofing wrote: post #758

UBI, like block-chain, is a solution in search of a problem. It has the following problems: 1) Does not solve the issue of 'meaning' and 'purpose'. That is, now that UBI (and automation) has gotten rid of the need to work for a living, what is left? Said another way, why not fall into alcoholism, drub-abuse, and crime? We don't have any good examples of large populations living off the government dole and thriving. 2…

> Does not solve the issue of 'meaning' and 'purpose' For an engineer, it absolutely does. How? By giving a broader range humans the ability to shout "This problem matters to me. Please build something to solve it" into the economy. --------------------- Suppose it is 2013. I build a tool that helps a luxury hotel in New York do bespoke guest relations slightly better. They have customers who have money, so they have…

>"This problem matters to me. Please build something to solve it" into the economy.

That is a property of the free market. We're living in that world. UBI does nothing to improve that.

I'm not saying nobody will find meaning and purpose in a world where you don't need to work for a living. I'm saying huge swaths of the population will not and it will lead to major societal problems and unrest. Some of those problems will be drug addiction and crime. We don't have good examples of large populations succeeding (by any measure you choose) where nobody needs to work for a living.

>Helping people get fed and create community, or polishing a luxury experience for a very few -- Which job has more meaning and purpose?

Your examples are contrived and just plain odd. For one thing, UBI does not mean unlimited resources. People will still need to discriminate between option A or option B - so your food truck business in Flint isn't guaranteed to succeed in an UBI world because people may opt to spend their money elsewhere. Similarly, your luxury New York business is also not guaranteed to succeed (just because a profitable New York hotel has money, doesn't mean they will buy from you). Second, business needs a stable climate in order to operate. If you have crime, and riots and social unrest, that's not a good climate for businesses to operate in. UBI does not solve it, and in fact, probably aggravates it. There is more incentive to riot when you have nothing else to fill your day with.

Again, UBI does not improve the free market.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#772

Post by dragonwriter »

zpeti wrote: post #548
habosa wrote: post #526

I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption. I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic. 1. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages. 2. Predator…

Something no one ever talks about with UBI is how the effects will be eliminated in a few years. The very things poorer people would buy from it would get more expensive by the UBI proportion, it will just be inflated away. When everyone has an extra $1000 do you really think landlords won’t increase rent? The price of food and clothing won’t increase? When literally an entire country is richer by this amount? UBI do…

> Something no one ever talks about with UBI is how the effects will be eliminated in a few years.

No, this is something someone raises in literally every conversation, without any support.

> The very things poorer people would buy from it would get more expensive by the UBI proportion,

The argument you are making is that redistribution regardless of magnitude cannot affect buying power, even if the after-redistribution distribution is perfectly flat, people (at least those coming up from below) will retain exactly their pre-redistribution buying power.

> UBI does not create more wealth

Not as a first-order effect, no; it's first-order effect is redistribution.

> It just means everyone gets X+$1000 more tokens for the same wealth/goods.

Only if it is fully monetized, which doesn't seem to be anybody’s plan. If any of it is financed by traditional fiscal means (taxes and/or debt) it's redistribution, not flat addition.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#773

Post by mbrock »

sdunwoody wrote: post #761

I really don't think enough thought goes into the affordability of a UBI when it comes up in discussions. Just a quick estimate, assuming that we're talking about the UK here The UBI pays out to 53,000,000 people (very roughly the number of people 18 and over). The amount the UBI pays out is £1,000 a month (whether you could really live on this is debateable, but it's certainly not possible in most of London for exam…

The government just credits accounts. The money doesn’t have to come from anywhere other than the government’s decision—that’s why it’s called fiat currency!

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#774

Post by macspoofing »

luckylion wrote: post #710
bakuninsbart wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3. Charity - let's say we actually give every person enough money for food, housing, and utilities. Some people will mess up. They could spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment. Even with UBI they could still end up hungry or homeless. Will we help them? Or will we say "you had your UBI, the rest is on you". This changes the morals of how we treat people in the worst times. I think it should be p…

The parent comment said "spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment". What do we do with the person that gets e.g. their 1000€, spends it on a night with champagne and then has nothing to eat or pay their rent? Too outlandish for you? How about if they spend it on a new TV instead of rent, a new smartphone or a couch? There's a reason why some people get into debt because of consumption: they don't pl…

That just means that UBI does not replace a welfare system. You still need to have programs that provide a safety net for people who are irresponsible with their income, or just fall on hard times to the level that UBI isn't sufficient to dig them out.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#775

Post by miltondts »

I find it very sad that we live in a society where there appears to be no way of gracefully changing fundamental paradigms.

Money was invented in a time of scarcity and it was a very useful tool then. In some situations it still is today, but for many things we have more than enough for everyone, so maybe those should be provided without the need to go through the money system.

Anyway, I don't know what would work, but it still bothers me that we don't try to constantly improve our systems and if necessary change them in radical ways. We just implement systems that then become controlled by a few people who greatly benefit from it and thus have no incentive to change it.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#776

Post by rocqua »

onion2k wrote: post #544
habosa wrote: post #526

I like the simple argument made here about UBI enabling efficient consumption. I worry about three things with UBI though and they're more social than economic. 1. Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. We can see this a little bit with the coronavirus relief packages. 2. Predator…

Power Divide - society will be easily divided into two groups: those who depend on the UBI to live and those who don't. The former will be absolutely at the mercy of the latter. One aspect of UBI is that poor people would be less at the mercy of the rich. If you're a poor person now you absolutely have to try to keep your horrible job else you'll lost the ability to pay rent and buy food. You have to take all the cra…

Thing is, poor people would be _more_ at the mercy of the politicians. Especially at the start, when UBI will still be 'novel'. Because the politicians will be able to change UBI, and poor people would at some point start depending on UBI.

When the government can just take your money out from under you, that starts making politics quite important.

Do note that there will need to be provisions for changing the amount of UBI. At the very least to index it to inflation. Heck, refusal to raise UBI for inflation for long enough would already screw over the people who depend on it.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#777

Post by macspoofing »

miltondts wrote: post #775

I find it very sad that we live in a society where there appears to be no way of gracefully changing fundamental paradigms. Money was invented in a time of scarcity and it was a very useful tool then. In some situations it still is today, but for many things we have more than enough for everyone, so maybe those should be provided without the need to go through the money system. Anyway, I don't know what would work, b…

>I find it very sad that we live in a society where there appears to be no way of gracefully changing fundamental paradigms.

That is a feature, not a bug.

Society is incredibly complicated and is an intrinsically chaotic system resulting from the beliefs and actions of hundreds of millions of individuals. The system has generations of iterative 'fixes' to problems and with delicate balances negotiated and fought for by various groups across tens or hundred of years. What makes you think you think you can rebuild it better? What makes you think you can account for all the things that the system does well in your new 'paradigm'? We saw with various revolutions (e.g. French, Russia, and Chinese) that when you try to upend even a bad system and rebuild from scratch with a 'new paradigm', it leads to something much much worse.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#778

Post by take_a_breath »

miltondts wrote: post #775

I find it very sad that we live in a society where there appears to be no way of gracefully changing fundamental paradigms. Money was invented in a time of scarcity and it was a very useful tool then. In some situations it still is today, but for many things we have more than enough for everyone, so maybe those should be provided without the need to go through the money system. Anyway, I don't know what would work, b…

== I find it very sad that we live in a society where there appears to be no way of gracefully changing fundamental paradigms.==

People who have benefited from this paradigm have most of the power and aren’t going to give it up easily. Typically, things need to get very bad before significant changes are made.

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#779

Post by cyberdrunk »

lkschubert8 wrote: post #326
jonstaab wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I see with that is that if a huge number of people take that route and happily (let's assume) live their lives without working, they lose access to the ability to participate in a meaningful way in the economy by producing something of value; if they're not producing value, no one is going to value them, and they'll eventually be locked out of the new, smaller elite group that controls the means of produc…

This gets at a problem I always wonder about with UBI (as someone who genuinely sees the value in a successful implementation of it). What happens in 20-30 years once the system has been entrenched. Will the children of those that choose not to work for additional income have decreased social capital an struggle to enter the workplace if they choose? How do you prevent those that choose to work from using the increas…

> What happens in 20-30 years once the system has been entrenched.

What about a scenario where we get one big step closer to a vision shown in Idiocracy? A world where people don't need to struggle may be great for some self-directed people, but I suspect it will be ultimately terrible for many (even if they won' see it that way).

Re: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0

#780

Post by Miner49er »

I agree with all the problems and analysis this article does, but disagree with (most of) the solution. Socialism seems to be the answer to me. Not the top-down, government controlled socialism described by the author, but a form of socialism that still has markets for most things. The only major difference in this solution vs. capitalism is that workers would own the companies they work at, not rich shareholders who have no interest in the well-being of their workers beyond what is necessary to keep productivity up.

UBI may still be a part of the solution, but applying UBI with the current system will be capitalism 2.0, and therefore won't fix anything long-term. It'll simply be a band-aid.

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