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Comment by chriskanan | Hacker News Reader

I think that's one of the biggest open questions with UBI. What percent of people would use UBI to do productive or self-improving works vs those that solely play video games, watch TV, and feel like life is meaningless? I think psychologically, people need something to do with themselves. However, a counter argument is that many of the people that UBI may benefit the most might have jobs that they loathe.

I'd love to see a review of the impact of work and UBI on human psychological well-being. This is definitely not one-to-one, but it would be interesting to study people that inherited fortunes so they would never need to work. How many chose a life of leisure? For those that did, what is their mental health like? That population is much more privileged and probably better educated than the average citizen that would get UBI, but I think it might give some clues.

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I believe basic human nature includes curiosity. Living in a society means one will naturally seek the appreciation, acceptance and respect of their peers. I think these alone will eventually lead most people to contribute something useful to our world one way or another.

Mentally and/or physically exhausted after a long day of performing a meaningless job, or unable to get one and living off welfare, despised by the rest of society, no wonder one tries to escape reality by playing video games or watching tv excessively. Actually, escaping into 'work' is no more healthy.

But when everyone enjoys the security of having their basic physiological needs satisfied by default and not knowing what the hell you're supposed to do is a feeling widely shared and accepted by society, the situation is completely different. It's an enormous community building force. Additionally, we could build or designate community places and workshops where people get together to converse, build, play, create, cooperate to further help everyone find a direction, or find themselves.

>I believe basic human nature includes curiosity. Living in a society means one will naturally seek the appreciation, acceptance and respect of their peers. I think these alone will eventually lead most people to contribute something useful to our world one way or another.

As someone living in a small third world welfare state, I can't help but laugh at the naiveté that can lead someone to believe something like that.

In here, and I don't believe the rest of the world can be that much different, the overwhelming majority of people with their basic needs covered by the state dedicate themselves to a routine of TV, social media and other social rituals of all kinds, all devoid of intellectual pursuit. The few who do look into self-improvement are the same ones that have done it regardless of the economic condition of the lower class of their time; most of this very small minority managing to make it into the middle or upper class with or without welfare checks.

Are you suggesting the majority of those people are completely, utterly useless?

Useful contributions don't necessarily have to be intellectual. They may be able and happy to provide art, joyful company, social skills, physical assistance (eg. getting groceries, moving equipment) or other support to those in need.

That moves the goalposts. Sure, I can't think of a human being that can be categorized as completely useless, that doesn't mean that an UBI program is sustainable for society just because "no one is absolutely, completely useless".

In fact there is no shortage of individuals who, despite being outside of the category of "useless" by technicalities, dedicate their state-funded free time in making society worse.

A couple examples just from my last 2-day visit to a relative in a neighborhood with a high number of welfare recipients: People with houses crumbling down, but with huge sound systems running at full volume at any time of day or night; or those in the same conditions getting stolen motorcycles (buying with taxpayer money from thieves or stealing themselves) and racing in the streets or parading around with their silencers removed.

Doesn't stop there either, when our welfare system was first established, there were plenty of cases of people quitting a productive job to slob around. What for many in first world countries sound like "conservative scaremongering" is reality for us.

Mind you, despite all this I'm not against having a social safety net (albeit the one we have I believe to be an absolute disaster), but UBI is a terrible option that cannot work outside of carefully selected groups of people.

Those may be the very same people who play music, build stages or give water to overly wasted kids at summer festivals. Or they might fix your motorbike better and cheaper than your local mechanic if you asked them to.

Or they might not. Either way, I wouldn't consider them any more harmful to society than those probably millions of people working very hard to shove ads into peoples faces ever more efficiently, or those bankers and accountants looking for loopholes to effectively steal from others. Or corrupt politicians whose only concern is filling their pockets. Or I could name a bunch of other mostly useless leech industries.

My point is, I think you are judging these people from a faulty perspective very much ingrained into our society, where one's usefulness to humanity is primarily judged based on how much money they can get their hands on either by stealing from others or selling their freedom to someone willing to pay for it, regardless of what value they actually contribute (if anything) as long as it's considered legal and they do so as part of the so called "workforce".

UBI would fundamentally change that by allowing people to spend time doing things they consider useful, rather than working for whatever gets food on the table, however useless it may actually be. Of course, for that to work, people need to be open to other people's ideas of useful and the currently dominant view of measuring usefulness in GDP or whatever may become obsolete.

Mind sharing where you live?

Uruguay.

Interesting. As someone who has never been there, I always had a positive impression of Uruguay, and have even remarked on HN that I'd like to live there for a while. What I've read about Uruguay has all been very positive and by many indicators it seems prosperous in comparison to other countries in the region. What's your impression of the country as a whole?

We've enjoyed great global PR, that's for sure. A good bunch of it undeserved.

There was a huge uproar about us legalizing pot. While you can now grow your own cannabis, the most important part: legal sale, is yet to be finalized despite plans starting 5 years ago without power changing hands.

There was another huge PR boost with the story about "Uruguay's poor president José Mujica". His administration ended as one of the worst ever experienced in the country's republican (as in Republic, not the US party) history. Corruption hit new peaks with public enterprise bleeding money into party officials' pockets left and right, something we're still paying via "tarifazos" (annual increases in costs of public infrastructure such as electricity, fuel and telecommunications despite their production costs going down).

Reality is that moving here can be suicide for many, as we're one of the most expensive countries to live in of Latin America (and the world) when you account for salaries. We have a growing culture of crime with a government that's disinterested in fixing it, and often tries to downplay it. Import tariffs are insane (usually 150%+ over retail price), and while citizens can make a few international orders under 200 USD without being taxed (used to be 5, then 4, now they just changed it to 3), it helps little and I expect they will scrap them altogether next year.

And oh my god the bureaucracy. It's the only thing more central to the Uruguayan identity than mate and football. The past couple of leftist administrations and this current one has been all about e-government, yet most interactions with the government will be in a crowded office after waiting an hour waiting for your number to come up on the screen. The little web infrastructure we have is inconsistent across public enterprises, is ridiculously insecure (national ISP, Antel, has a max password length of 8 alphanumeric characters; all sites are made in hacked together PHP and/or ASP.NET by FullStackOverflow programmers and one determined black hat could probably stop the country for a while in a boring weekend) and despite the government's interest in tracking all financial transactions, they're in no rush to implement online payment.

My SO starts studying engineering this year, and with me being a software developer (meaning remote is an option and there's offerings everywhere), our hope is that either a miracle happens or we fuck right off after she gets her diploma. We have a deeply ingrained cultural and political problem that will not allow the country to get out of this hole. But then again, Donald Trump is the leader of the free world; it's fair to expect the unexpectable when it comes to political change.

>In here, and I don't believe the rest of the world can be that much different, the overwhelming majority of people with their basic needs covered by the state dedicate themselves to a routine of TV, social media and other social rituals of all kinds, all devoid of intellectual pursuit.

So what? Why is the purpose of other people's lives to serve your idea of nobility?

Wow. That's a huge straw man if ever I've seen one.

I will entertain you, however:

We aren't talking about anyone's "life purpose", whatever the hell that means.

We are talking about having the state (and for a quick reminder, that means citizens producing value, not a magical entity that pulls money with value out of hat) fund people with no desire to create value. Not just people going through a rough time, not people unable to give back, but people who will take, yet willingly not give back. They're free to do live their lives as they see fit within the law, but no one can expect for the rest of society to fund their chosen lifestyle.

If you feel like they deserve income, you can gather like-minded people and open a charity that does just that.

EDIT: Those chiming in with a downvote, I'd appreciate if you explain where I'm so wrong.

Well, I didn't downvote you, but I do feel like your comment ignores the elephant in the room. Your model ("takers rob makers with state") implicitly assumes something like a Labor Theory of Value, in which "value creation" always and only requires that a human being perform painful, undesirable labor. Within that model, the 20th century gave us all sorts of debates regarding job guarantees, job-creation programs by the government for stimulus, privatization, socialization, et cetera.

The whole point of proposing UBI, however, is that we now (almost) universally agree that the LTV is just plain false, and much "value creation" actually involves machines doing the work. We believe that if we impose work requirements by force on humans by depriving them of machines of their own, forcing them to compete with machines to survive, there will be immense human suffering for completely arbitrary reasons.

UBI is thus the moderate proposal to deal with the issue. The radical proposal is to give everyone whole or partial ownership of enough machines to supply for themselves, perhaps through some collective-ownership arrangement like a cooperative, commons trust, or the state.

"The few who do look into self-improvement are the same ones that have done it regardless of the economic condition of the lower class of their time..."

Citation needed. Otherwise, it's not even anecdata. If your perspective from "...a small third world welfare state..." is to be informative, please expand and explain.

> Otherwise, it's not even anecdata

While it's no comprehensive study, it is very much anecdata, for it's how my parents, parts of my family and plenty of people I know have managed to climb out of poverty of all degrees before there was a welfare system. Hunger and work did not deter them. The word "mutante" (mutant) is often used to describe this kind of people, for how they decide to break the norm despite the environment.

Growing up in a poor/lower middle-class neighborhood I haven't seen this change for the better with the welfare system. But I have seen people quitting their jobs to qualify for welfare.

As I mentioned in another comment, I'm not opposed to a well-designed social safety net for those who can't get back into the workforce nor train themselves to do so, but rest assured, UBI or anything that allows people who are perfectly capable of working, the possibility to leech off the welfare system (read: their fellow citizens) permanently without giving back, is nothing short of a disgrace for society.

Thank you for expanding on your post.

There was a job guarantee program instituted in Argentina (called plan jefes e jefas - meaning head of household). The jobs were typically care-style jobs (looking after elderly, etc.). The government then tried to shift the women into a sort of UBI (called Plan Familias) by offering more money than under Jefes

Unsurprisingly the majority of women took the money. Perhaps more surprisingly (to advocates of basic income, anyway), they took the money and continued to do the jobs "for free".

http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_705.pdf

> Perhaps more surprisingly (to advocates of basic income, anyway), they took the money and continued to do the jobs "for free".

Isn't this exactly what UBI advocates say will happen: People will start doing useful tasks, because they no longer need to find a job?

When I was made unemployed, it was the lack of money that made me feel undignified. I couldn't feed my kids and had to as for handouts.

UBI would have been amazing. I would have spent the money on food, shelter and heating. I would have spent the time writing software and trying to start a company.

There are absolutely people like you, and absolutely people who will just play WoW all day, every day. The question is, how many of each?

why does it matter? The point of UBI is to allow people to do what they want.

What would happen if everybody left their jobs overnight and started playing WoW? Other than Blizzard having to open thousands of new realms.

Of course not everybody will quit their job to play a videogame, but what if a significant % of workers were simply "lost" overnight?

If you look at the tragectory of humans from star dust, it's clear the pattern is progress

We are progress, it's the inability to progress that is the problem for a lot of us

If we break down that barrier then wow like things that supply fake progress will be less relevant

It matters because of the potential impact on society? Part of the promise of UBI that proponents often talk about is unleashing more human potential that's currently stuck in some corporate grind.

And while playing WoW all day isn't exactly the worst thing, I could see issues if that turns into people getting depressed. MMO addiction isn't really healthy.

> And while [sitting in an office] all day isn't exactly the worst thing, I could see issues if that turns into people getting depressed. [Office work] isn't really healthy.

> And while [bagging groceries] all day isn't exactly the worst thing, I could see issues if that turns into people getting depressed. [Menial labor] isn't really healthy.

> And while [driving an truck / bus / uber] all day isn't exactly the worst thing, I could see issues if that turns into people getting depressed. [Sitting all day] isn't really healthy.

UBI at least gives people options. If someone is happy playing WoW all day, and society doesn't really need them anyway... I see no harm in that. At least they have the option to quit playing and do something else. People doing menial labor often don't.

I'm worried about the inter-generational effect of UBI. What happens to the kids in a family who plays WoW all day? What if neighbourhoods become segregated between workers and non-workers? How are kids going to learn to develop marketable skills and basic work ethic?

Because, if it turns out that most people are just fine with fucking off all day and living off their UBI check then UBI is unworkable (pardon the pun).

The cycle would go something like this: * UBI checks start getting sent out * Large droves of people quit the shitty jobs * Due to reduced labor supply, cost of producing goods rises * The increased cost of living means that now we need to send out even bigger UBI checks (i.e. raise taxes)

This feedback loop continues until even the most motivated individual cannot rationally continue to pay into the system.

Straw man. No data to support that; just a scare story. How about: cost of goods continues to drop as automation continues to expand explosively (as it has in the last 10 years). Standard of living rises steadily as the workforce decreases.

What's the difference in the two scenarios? Data. Which we don't have. So certainly a UBI should be carefully introduced to keep the economy stable.

This is why we need more experiments like the one in Finland. It would be irresponsible to implement a UBI until we know which of these two scenarios is most likely. Although, I suspect the reality will fall somewhere between the two.

Or, just implement it and adjust the payment for stability.

There's not any data to support it because there's no data around a nationwide, long-term UBI, period. All we have are little experiments where people know it could end at any time.

Qualify that enough, you can make the point. But UBI has been around long enough to collect data (pensions, Alaska, experiments). What people 'know' has no place in economics. We can measure - did prices rise in those places? No? Yes? How much?

This is a persistent and pernicious misconception. UBI is intended to increase people's autonomy, but manly by eliminating the poverty trap. Too many people live off benefits they would lose if they took a low paying no job, so are better off or only marginally worse off not working. UBI takes that problem away to that everyone would always be substantially better off working. It would act as a major subsidy for low paying jobs by ensuring even quite low pay would represent a major improvement in marginal income, thus making it cheaper to hire unskilled labour and increasing the number and variety of jobs. It's not intended that a significant number of people would only rely on their UBI.

In the UK the poverty trap is very real. A young person with a family in social housing and on benefits has to jump right up to something like average income to be better off. The penalty for getting a job is colossal. UBI would mean that if they could get work for even 4 hours a week it would represent an improvement to their income. It is an incentive to work

> UBI is intended to increase people's autonomy

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autonomy

1. the quality or state of being self-governing; 2. self-directing freedom and especially moral independence

exactly. The point is that they can do what they want.

This was in the context of talking about people playing WoW all day every day. That's not the sort of lifestyle UBI is intended to enable or encourage.

and vehicles were never intended to enable or encourage teenagers joy riding or drunk drivers, but NO ONE is going to seriously argue we should get rid of vehicles as a result.

Oh yeah! I long for times when 100% of society can play WoW all day long and Blizzards alone will foot the bill for all of us :) Ultimate economic perpetum-mobile with an Orcs race in it! :-)

So the more controversial question here is if we should do it anyway even if it turns out to be a net loss because.. we can.

Then the more dystropian view would be how else are we gonna keep the plebs under control if we think the unemployed will be the majority in the future?

Just pointing out there's a couple of different angles on this not just the net gain one.

> if it turns out to be a net loss because

Doesn't this assume a fixed loss? What if this encourages the former behavior to grow?

I doubt this will be read as I've taken too long in replying. But does it matter? If only 1% get to create new and interesting projects, then that is 1% more than at the moment.

> However, a counter argument is that many of the people that UBI may benefit the most might have jobs that they loathe.

That's not really a counterargument. Suppose you have a job you hate and suddenly you have a UBI. Quit immediately and go find a job you love -- even if the pay is crap, add the UBI to it and it's as good what you had before. Meanwhile the horrible degrading McJob nobody actually wants can either be replaced by a machine or will have to have sufficiently better pay or working conditions to get anyone to do it.

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