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Alaska is a state, not country.

The highest the Alaska oil royalty has ever been was $2,072 in 2015. I think they are now capping it at $1000.

The median household income in 2015 was $73,355, the third highest in the country. Certainly the royalty was enough to move it from number 5 to number 3.

I suspect the royalty does not have much to do with this high income. And this is EXTRA money, not money taken from the populace and then given back to them as UBI would be.

Interestingly, "Alaska has more residents on welfare, per capita, than any other state in the nation" according to the Alaska Dispatch News.

And, yes, not many rich people live in Alaska. Maybe the climate is a reason. Maybe it's the lack of big cities.

> Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone really honestly think that there's a high percentage of women out there wanting to give birth 10 to 20 times?

The numbers are overblown, but I see this as a real issue with utopian interpretations of UBI. I.e. those where, to quote the article, proponents expect "a majority of non-workers to live off the fruits of the labour of a small minority", as opposed to a more realistic UBI where the working poor use that free money to maybe cut one or two of their multiple jobs from their tight schedule.

But in the "utopian" version, a huge group would be left without anything to strive for. If the payout would be too generous, adding an entry level work income would not make a noticeable difference. When people are depraved of all other kinds of achievement, they are likely to use breeding as a substitute. If you can't climb or defend any ranks, you can still move up one level by spawning "subordinates". Instant status.

I feel bad just for thinking thoughts that cynical, but I can't help expecting that kind of outcome if it isn't openly addressed. A "nonutopian UBI" that just creates a smooth, regulation-free ramp (I almost want to say "interpolation") between welfare and full self-support would leave the cynic in me much more at ease.

(Edited: my writing is terrible)

Humans will strive to rise to the top in any game we choose to play together.

Competitiveness like this does not require that people are competing for basic needs.

Free people from the Puritan conceit that the majority should struggle and suffer, and observe what happens.

Independent of how you feel about it in other respects, Burning Man offers a fine large scale experimental environment into which observe the social organization that occurs in circumstances of plenty rather than scarcity. (Because it operates on a strictly enforced gift economy. Not barter. Not sale. Never mind people who don't play by the rules for now; as a 25 year attendee I have seen first hand the reality behind the cant.)

Humans will "strive" plenty whether they are fed or not. There are more needs than the ones we can and should provide for all (housing, food, education).

Humans will always find a way to self segregate and award status, whether it's in terms of karma or dollars.

At a social level, dollars too are a consensual fiction and useful primarily as a crude proxy for status and success and desirability. (Not talking about utility, talking about social status.)

I would like to think this as well, but the issue is complex.

I think the fear comes from 2 things.

1) Think about the children of the wealthy, if you are born with a trust fund you essentially already have a UBI. These children tend to grow up and do well. But the pressure on them to produce comes from family/social expectations. These children really DO have serious problems understanding the value of money. The "spoiled rich kid" is a real thing.

2) Now take that same "spoiled rich kid" and put them in a family that doesn't expect anything from them. Without the social pressure associated with the upper classes, will they have the incentive to work as hard?

I think UBI experiment would be interesting. My guess is that 1/3 of people would work just as hard at jobs they hate, trying to get ahead and "play the game". 1/3 of people might still work, but slightly change the course of their lives towards professions that gave them more fulfillment because the need for money was less. But 1/3 of people will absolutely optimize their lives to work as little as they possibly can.

There is nothing wrong with that. The movement towards "minimalism", "tiny houses", and frugality is already in full swing. But lets not delude ourselves, it would absolutely result in lower GDP.

Which is possibly a good thing, allowing humanity more time to adjust as robots take all the jobs.

Thought experiment: lock people up in a permanent Burning Man and measure the time it takes until it resembles a refugee camp more than the Burning Man of a handful of days per year. I do not share your optimism that it would last, and that's already factoring in the very self-selected group of Burning Man participants. Now imagine the same with a random selection of those who don't make up the "working caste" of utopian-UBI. (I do not think any of this would apply to a "regulation free interpolated unemployment benefit" kind of UBI)

I don't think BM itself would last, for sure; the scale of the vent is already greater than many people can hold up to.

That said, I think the gift economy element itself can be separated from all the rest and would stand up.

Maybe the TLDR for my optimism is,

Give humans a competition they can take seriously, e.g. because the social status accrued wins real rewards of various kinds–and we will be happy productive and competitive.

The part of the UBI skepticism I am eager to see tested pragmatically is that this competition must necessarily be for "that amount of money needed to lead a dignified healthy productive life worth living."

IMO the value proposition of the UBI is that we can do have it both ways. Free people from _fear_ first and foremost; then give them a motivation as well.

Maybe another way to put this is: keep the carrot, remove the stick. We've learned from evolutions in parenting that sparing the rod leads to better emotionally adjusted [and productive] kids.

Why would people be 'deprived of all achievement' just because they're not broke?

> When people are depraved of all other kinds of achievement, they are likely to use breeding as a substitute.

What? How does this follow? This makes no sense.

Well, "possibilities for achievement" - after a few years of electing not to work, few people will be able to revoke that decision and take up a career. Parenting is the most accessible leadership role, all takes is the approval of one other person.

> Does anyone really honestly think that there's a high percentage of women out there wanting to give birth 10 to 20 times?

I think 10-20 is hyperbole but the inverse relationship between GDP and birth rates is well documented -- a chief argument being unemployed people have time to make babies.

> With that said, I only see those changes as more possible through UBI because people with their basic needs met have more time and mental space to engage in being more informed and more involved as citizens.

This is where UBI loses me. So many of it's advocates are convinced people freed from labor will become scholar poets. Proles will be proles whether you call it Marxism or UBI.

So what if they're not poets, or whatever you consider worthy? If we don't need their labor (we might now, but someday we probably won't), what difference does it make what they do with their time?

The one exception to this is that children might not finish school if they think they won't need to get a job. To avoid this, we might limit UBI to those who have at least made an effort to get a high school education.

Because now you've structured your entire society around having a class of consumers who don't even have the pretense of contributing back to the greater good via productive labor. To the point of the original article this creates a situation that's ripe for exploitation.

Not to mention this opens the door to a whole bunch of uncomfortable questions: should we continue to subsidize childbirth as the economic value of a citizen tails off? Why spend money educating people who will never enter the labor force? What happens to immigration when immigrants statistically no longer provide economic value?

>should we continue to subsidize childbirth as the economic value of a citizen tails off? Why spend money educating people who will never enter the labor force? What happens to immigration when immigrants statistically no longer provide economic value?

That was one of the purposes of early universal healthcare in Europe and Canada at the end of WWII. To subsidise it even more. After the war, Europe needed babies.

My farmer grandparents had one child during WWII, in 1944, then another in 1947. After this point, maternal and infant healthcare became subsidised, and my grandparents went on to have ten more children. Their prosperity over the next thirty years was eased by this, and the extension to all citizens helped even more.

This enhanced the boom generation effect in my country, and small towns really started growing.

My family did much much better than equivalent farmers in the USA(we have cousins there), and everyone ended up as productive members of society. Instead of paying for healthcare insurance, they sent their kids to university.

People eating, getting educated, driving on the roads, taking vacation, all grow an economy. Non-working citizens, ie children and students, have economic value. Always have, always will.

Increasing native birthrates will drop the need for immigration, and the attendant terrors thereof, which will please a lot of people.

The early Australians were written off as useless, non contributing members of British society, and were consigned to transportation to the Antipodes. But instead of being lazy ne'er do well types, they rose above their reputations to craft a shining egalitarian society.

Good and productive people will come from big, poor families.

(I'll get downvoted as usual..) You seem to consider it "worthy" to get a high school education. That would make you someone who wants to "govern" the "citizens", right? What would be the basis/authority for that?

I won't downvote you, but a lack of government is pretty much anarchy. That's just the beginning.

See, you too want your fellow citizen to be educated. Their education leads to greater individual prosperity and that enables your greater prosperity.

Why is prosperity important? It affords one the chance to maximize the value of their liberties.

So, you could say that wanting food servers to wash their hands after going to the bathroom is governing - and you'd be right. There needs to be some form of governing because we humans don't do well without it at scale.

No, really, we suck at it. A good example is pedestrian traffic in crowds. We are too busy trying to get out the door to realize that we are unable to see the people in front can't open the doors to let us all out.

Fortunately, the government has usually mandated those types of doors open out, or sideways.

Is there too much governing? Absolutely. Those are authoritarian states and they come in many forms. The question is not all or nothing, but where we draw the lines and what we protect.

No, I won't downvote you - but I'm happy to hear you out and engage in a productive dialogue with you. We don't even have to agree with each other.

I don't want to think of it as being "worthy". I do think that it is important for people to get an education, entirely apart from its economic value, and that children may not realize this. I'd rather think of some other way to discourage them from deliberately dropping out (you'll note I did put in an exception for those who are simply not capable), but I couldn't think of something better. Can you?

Perhaps this only serves as an example of what I see as one of the main problems with UBI - it won't stay universal.

> I think 10-20 is hyperbole but the inverse relationship between GDP and birth rates is well documented

The observed inverse relationship is between birth rate and strength of social support systems; this roughly tracks GDP, but it also explains the outliers, like the US which (among developed countries) has both a high birthrate and a weak social support system.

UBI strengthens the social support system (it also removes bureaucratic drag on the economy and replaces systems which disincentivize certain economic exchanges, which should also increase GDP.)

> a chief argument being unemployed people have time to make babies.

That is an incredibly stupid argument, and I've never heard anybody make it, chief or not.

It's easily proven by comparing across time: being a peasant in the middle ages didn't come with a lot of leisure time, yet they had plenty of children.

Reproductive rates are driven by education, health care (esp child mortality), women's agency, and alternative methods of ensuring one's welfare in old age.

It's the reductionist view but certainly not wrong. You're saying the same thing: time is more valuable for educated women with agency. Women in poor countries have more time on their hands because it's undervalued, and that excess of time tends to translate into a larger family.

http://www.econ.yale.edu/~pschultz/cdp925.pdf

over the long span of history (things may have changed) reproductive rates are chiefly driven by whether not having children is a economically a liability.

> It's stuff like this that really annoys me, and I feel gives academics a bad name.

TFA's author bio: "Shai Shapira is a computer programmer and writer."

Poli-sci academics usually don't construct their premises so obviously poorly and proceed to build a castle on sand like this article does. Typically they're at least good enough that any, "wait, what?"s aren't apparent at first glance.

> Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone really honestly think that there's a high percentage of women out there wanting to give birth 10 to 20 times? Is that theoretically possible?

Religious extremists.

In the early days of the State of Israel, the largest secular party needed the support of the parties of religious extremists, in order to form a majority in parliament and create a government. Those parties set a price: they would support the government, but only if the government exempted their young men from military service, and pay them a living stipend, so that they could spend their days engrossed in religious studies. All told, about 400 men would be granted such an exemption and stipend.

At the time, the secular party's leader thought that religiosity in Israel was going the way of the dodo anyway. He didn't have a problem with setting up a kind of living museum for religious study, so he accepted.

The official birthrate for those religious-extremist families is around eight, but it is not uncommon to find families with a dozen or even more children. Because of how Israeli parliamentary politics works, the religious extremist parties often served as kingmakers for parties which sought to form governments, and they kept that price as the price for support. Today there are more than 10,000 such people receiving such exemptions and stipends, and more than 25% of all children in Israeli elementary schools come from ultra-religious families, in spite of such measures being almost universally unpopular outside that sector and continually struck down by the Israeli Supreme Court every few years.

To finally answer your question: it's not just theoretically possible, it's a guarantee. And demography is one hell of a time bomb.

alaska is typically in the top 10 of most corrupt state indices.

http://fortune.com/2014/06/10/most-corrupt-states-in-america...

> I also see a population who comes out to vote, especially when anything dividend related is voted on.

that's exactly part of the point of the aricle.

Calm down mate:) author done great job analysing dangerous cases. Prepare for the worst, that it never happen.

UBI is freedom ? Tell that to the the generational families of the projects of Chicago.

I like to think you're right, but given the cheaty nature of men, most would trick the system by having a large number of children, even with different women, it doesn't matter.

That's what they already do where children are subsidized by the state welfare, imagine what they would do if it would mean another salary in the house.

It's only basic logic.