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Comment by AmericanOP | Hacker News Reader

In ancient Rome there were a few honest reformers who felt bread subsidies (classical UBI) were deserved by the people. It was an economic argument (as is Sam's) since Roman conquest generated massive wealth that did not reach the masses who made it possible.

It was an honest attempt at economic reform by a few forward thinking leaders. Within a generation the movement was captured by politicians who used its popularity to further their ambitions. The fight against opponents self-perpetuated and wins became more important than change. The program morphed to the infamous bread and circuses, subsidizing a city of a million people that ultimately collapsed.

I will aplaud the reformers but some things never change.

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Not a good comparison.

The reformers (Gracchi brothers, Caesar, etc) wanted Roman citizens to have their fair share of the actual land that Rome conquered. Not regular hand outs of grain. The idea was that citizens would actually own a piece of The Roman Dream. Land is income, then and now.

Never happened. The wealthiest Romans were successful in assassinating reformers and dominating the Roman 99% for a thousand years.

I'll second this as a poor analogy. Roman politics during the Second Punic war, the Sulla era, and then the Civil Wars/Imperial Birth is a very complicated thing and not very open to a UBI analogy. At best, maybe the grain dole of Julio-Claudian dynasty is better, but not for the whole Rome's span, and especially not the Republic until Sulla.

For an Excellent intro into Roman history see this very good podcast: http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/the_history_of_rome/arch...

>The program morphed to the infamous bread and circuses, subsidizing a city of a million people that ultimately collapsed.

Rome did not collapse because of UBI, if that is what you are suggesting.

When you say "a city of a million people that ultimately collapsed", your portentous "ultimately" takes over 500 years to arrive! It might be "infamous", but it's not very quick about it.

This is my fear: the UBI would be instituted and then the "Universal" part slowly erode into a sticks-and-carrots regime like how taxes and transfer payments are used today.

We need to make damn sure that adequate opportunities to generate wealth ourselves remain so that UBI doesn't become the only income for large swaths of the population. That'd just put producers and UBI-only recipients at odds. Not to mention inflation pressures.

Ah, the "I'll give you more free stuff than my political opponent" political model.

This is a legitimate concern, but it's at minimum partially addressed by the "as a share of the gdp" part.

We should also probably forbid Congress from increasing this share without a massively overwhelming vote.

Collectivism is really the domain of the small.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful

For human beings, the number where a communal understanding can work and seem like magic is about 350. The missing key to understanding this, is the network of interpersonal relationships that form in any society. These networks are like strong fibers in a composite material, giving it a cohesion and tensile strength that the aggregate wouldn't have otherwise. Those who operate small companies know this firsthand.

A lot of collectivism is akin to selling concrete by advertising using the specs of reinforced concrete. It doesn't hold together as well as it should on paper, because there is something very important missing in the theoretical description. For larger numbers, in the millions and beyond, there needs to be some kind of larger organizational structure. Historically, this has been hierarchical, but other solutions could exist enabled by technology.

Roman wealth was generated in an unsustainable process - through pillage, theft, and tribute of newly conquered states.

As Rome ran out of new conquests, the empire collapsed.

Compare that to whether or not modern society can provide for its members sustainably with UBI. By far, the biggest expense people have is housing - which is not limited by some natural law. One of the reasons for why housing on the coasts is so expensive is because people can't make a living in the rest of the country.

Rome reached it's maximum size in 117 AD, the fall of the Western empire is considered to be 476 and the fall of the Eastern empire was 1453. The time between Rome's period of conquest and the "fall" is longer than the US has existed.

Instead of accomplishing a collective objective, a few bad actors accomplished personal objectives. It points to an idea that we should remove counter party risk in these situations. One very popular attempt to mitigate counter party risk exists in crypto currencies.

Here is a subreddit discussing UBI + crypto combinations https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoUBI/

Personally, I believe that collective human interests can be accurately modeled with crypto currencies. Things like UBI, health insurance, other new unrealized collaborative goals likely will be modeled in this way. For example, if I could help end homelessness by accepting a certain coin for my goods and services, I likely would.

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