Hacker News Reader

Comment by warfangle | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand, those 5 million additional people probably aren't going to sit around doing nothing. That's not how human nature works, either - most people are happier doing something rather than nothing! Self actualization and all that.

So are they going to contribute as much to the sovereign wealth that funds the basic income as the citizens?

And is the basic income extended to guest workers / temporary residents as well as citizens? I would think it would be limited to citizens.

So you would actually have immigrants contributing to funding basic income without benefiting from it until they obtain citizenship.

View on HN

The majority of Norway's sovereign wealth is derived from oil exports, it does not scale with population.

This is really the core assumption behind Marxism; perhaps not so much the sclerotic centrally-planned dictatorship of the proletariat 'Marxism' we saw in the 20th century as the idealized communal society that Marx envisioned, but un-monetized self-motivation is still required for either.

Does that make it wrong? I don't think so; but at least we should think carefully about how we arrange incentives for work in our shining city on the hill. Even if most people aren't working, we still need for that motivated and creative minority to be putting in some hours and to be happy about it.

Un-monetized self-motivation is not required, here. They would be have the opportunity to earn above and beyond the basic income. It's not Marxist or communal at all. We are not talking about abolishing work for pay. We are simply talking about an un-earned payment in addition to whatever they earn in conventional jobs.

The previous poster made the point,

I don't think that it's completely relevant to the BI debate, but what if everyone actually did just decide to sit around doing nothing?

I think the general response is, in a real world it's never an all or nothing proposition, and even if it were, the fewer people contributing, the greater the opportunities for those who do. (greater uncontested target market share, less competition, more demand, less supply.) The economics 101 supply demand curve hopefully helps incentivize ENOUGH people at sufficient levels to do what productive work needs/is desired to be done.

And if then everyone STILL decides to do nothing, I think we have bigger problems than a matter of economic policy :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com