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Comment by GodofGrunts | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to point out that Libertarians do not support basic income. In this instance, the argument is simply that basic income is a better system then the current welfare system.

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That's not true at all. Lots of libertarians support UBI (which this specific case is not).

It's a very capitalist solution to a post-labor world.

I am libertarian, and support UBI, though not necessarily via state taxation and administration. Pragmatically, though, that is how it would need to be instituted in the real world, even if it could possibly work differently in my personal libertarian fantasyland.

I'd say that a significant fraction of all libertarians don't want to admit that their fantasyland and the real world are so far apart that they will never meet in any living human's natural lifespan, and therefore resist any idea which would tend to empower government to a greater extent in the long run.

By my personal estimation, UBI is necessary to avoid the accelerating concentration of more economic power into fewer hands, until the common man again becomes a "useless eater" that must be disposed of for the sake of efficiency. I fear that without it, or something like it, class-based warfare is inevitable, and war is more damaging to liberty than the welfare state. Given the choice between backing a step away from the way I wish the world could work, and running ten steps in any direction in a blind panic, I choose the one controlled step.

I think UBI is a band-aid on a bullet wound which is the notion of capitalism (note that I see markets as independent from the concept of private ownership of capital/land). All it does is delay the inevitable collapse of capitalism under its own weight.

The better solution is to try to decouple capital ownership from individuals, corporations, or states. I'm not sure how that can be best achieved but honestly I think automating the economy itself may be the best approach. It can be done in a piecemeal fashion, but it's a question of whether the capital owners will give up the reigns of power to machines to decide how best to fulfill demands of people. I'm not so much arguing for the nonsensical approach of Jacque Fresco because his notion requires engineering wants of people and the abolition of money. For me, money and prices are good aggregators for demand, they just need to be adjusted in their use cases (probably away from capital speculation), but even an automated economy would need something akin to a price and a unit for which the price is measured in. Otherwise, how are goods created? I don't see happy thoughts and wishing being viable means to ration in any economy.

> I think automating the economy itself may be the best approach

That is subjecting ourselves from total control of the machines from the bare start.

Not saying this automation is inherently bad - it may be much better than any alternative - but simply automating away throws away all the diversity that can help us get into a good system.

Well I agree but if you want the world to be like the Mall of America where you can buy just about anything then you have to turn it all over to machines. Basically, we have to become like the people in Wall-E. Always consuming, never really thinking, and the majority of decisions being made by machines. I'm not saying I want that future, but you can't continue down the path of the excesses of consumerism without paying the price in some way (loss of personal autonomy to machines is one price of many to pay).

With a UBI/capitalist economy, you would still have monetary constraints on the individual consumers (just like today) and there would still be monetary constraints on raw materials/commodities (just like today).

Just the opposite actually. UBI will entrench capitalism as the basis for the economy, and rightly so, into the post-labor future. It will put the final nail in the coffin of already the already obsolete ideologies of socialism/communism/anarchism.

  Capitalism:  Hey, Socialism.  Remember how you worked your ass off
    trying to make Communism happen?  From each according to ability,
    to each according to need?
  Socialism:  Ahhhh.  Don't remind me.
  Cap:  Check out what I did, as a hobby, after going home from work.
  Soc:  You... bastard.
  Cap:  To each according to need, from each according to how awesome I am.
  Soc:  I hate you.  You are literally the worst.  Most of those
    people aren't even *working*.
  Cap:  I'd love to talk more, but I need to be on Mars soon,
    on a rocket built without taxes.
  Soc:  Yeah, you'd better run!  Jerk.

"It will put the final nail in the coffin of already the already obsolete ideologies of socialism/communism/anarchism."

I doubt that very much considering that most of the western world is in some form of social democracy (Fabian-like socialism). If anything, capitalism is on it's last legs due to the fact it's unable to continue to exist without turning humans into the hover-pod marshmallow people from Wall-E. A species that has to consume everything in sight without any natural check to its growth will inevitably be constrained by the physical limitations of its environment and it's technologies.

Social democracy is very much based on capitalism, and it can't support it's social programs without taxing gains of the capitalistic economies.

Inserting the word "social" into "social democracy" is the greatest propaganda trick socialists have ever pulled. It lets them take credit for an existing, functional system that they want to destroy. It's classic bait and switch.

If anything, "capitalist democracy" is a far more accurate term.

"The idea isn’t new. As Frum notes, Friederich Hayek endorsed it. In 1962, the libertarian economist Milton Friedman advocated a minimum guaranteed income via a “negative income tax.”"

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-aren...

(meant to post this on parent comment, but it works just as well here as an illustration.)

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