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"The other way is thinking of the billions of brains wasted every generation just trying to survive, exactly what humans did 2000 years ago. Now imagine if all these brains could be freed and god knows how much innovation, progress and intellectual output can be unlocked into a completely different kind of society. That's a vision."

It's not so cut and dry. I don't believe that incentives under UBI will lead to greater innovation. I see it as wonderful gift to the most intelligent and self motivated, while killing the incentives to achieve anything for so many others.

I grew up in a poor rural area and have seen many examples of what guaranteed monthly checks does to ambition. I believe kids growing up in the inevitable "UBI communities" will be trapped even more strongly than in disadvantaged communities now.

My objection is not about taxes or wealth distribution, but the ethics of giving millions such a choice, much less making it the "default" one.

> what guaranteed monthly checks does to ambition

Do you think it's a coincidence that that check is only guaranteed in the absence of ambition? You've seen the perverse incentives of means-tested welfare, not the effects of a UBI.

The B is for basic. You won't starve or freeze, but if you want any luxuries then you will need to earn them. That's why UBI won't kill ambition. Contrast to welfare where if you earn anything the welfare is taken away.

Different people have different ideas of what a basic income is. The definition I first learned is that the "basic" in basic income means that it forms a base upon which you can build further in come. It's not about satisfying some level of basic needs. It can be any amount as long as everyone gets it unconditionally.

There's an optimal amount of basic income for social prosperity and it would be an amazing coincidence if that amount happened to be exactly enough to provide for people's basic needs and nothing more.

I agree that basic income won't kill ambition. But I don't think it's because we're withholding money from people. It's because people are naturally ambitious and competitive. Just because you have wealth doesn't mean you don't want more.

Maybe some people won't be ambitious, but that's not exactly a problem for those of us who are.

> Contrast to welfare where if you earn anything the welfare is taken away.

Yeah. I agree with you on this part.

"Basic" does not mean the same thing everywhere.

In Germany part of the basic rights granted by law is human dignity. Part of human dignity is participation in culture and society. As such the closest thing germany has to UBI includes a budget to permit participation in culture.

SNAP, section 8 housing, disability, and other programs are still necessary under UBI unless UBI is absurdly high. If is that high, then the sick/elderly/disabled are hugely disadvantaged relative to those who are not - not a desirable outcome for me.

We should overhaul our existing programs to provide graduated phase outs instead of creating new entitlement programs.

I see UBI in general as having far more perverse incentives than welfare does right now (and they are bad).

When you say "entitlement", I hear "progressive wealth redistribution".

Government is the source of all wealth. So administering cashectomies is a fine way to mitigate hoarding.

Once our Ginni coefficient is dragged back into the "democracy promoting" realm, we can talk about liberal over reach.

> Government is the source of all wealth. So administering cashectomies is a fine way to mitigate hoarding.

Labor is the source of all wealth, not government.

> Once our Ginni coefficient is dragged back into the "democracy promoting" realm, we can talk about liberal over reach

What exactly is the democracy promoting range? How does it promote democracy exactly? The richest Americans are nearly split between democrats/republicans, so this isn't a 1 party issue.

I don't think UBI is over reach, I think it's bad policy.

> Labor is the source of all wealth, not government.

Neither labor nor government is the source of all wealth. There is no one source of all wealth. Not all wealth is produced in the economy, but for the wealth that is, the source of that wealth is all of the resources (including labor) that collectively go into the production of that wealth.

Furthermore, we wouldn't produce wealth if people weren't able to buy it. So in a sense, you could say that the source of wealth is spending. And in the sense that the government funds spending (through a basic income or otherwise), the government is the source of wealth.

Depending on your perspective, wealth can have different sources. But figuring out the source of wealth isn't really that important when we know how to maximize people's wealth regardless of its theoretical source.

There's a lecture I really like by economist Steve Keen where he describes his own theory for the source of wealth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H1LIr2NMbE

His answer is that energy (a.k.a. the sun) is the source of all wealth. That's certainly a reasonable way of looking at it that you can't really argue with. But it doesn't tell us how to improve human prosperity.

My favorite quote from the lecture:

"The theory of production has got nothing to do with the theory of remuneration."

Basically this means that how much you get paid has very little if anything to do with how much you contribute. And that's exactly the way it's supposed to be. Markets determine the prices of various forms of labor and that's fine. Let supply meet demand and don't worry about whether wages happen to line up with individual incomes that are optimal for the economy.

Getting individual incomes to prosperity-maximizing levels what basic income is for.

Natural resources are the original source of all wealth.

Labor can only add value.

Government can only take value away.

If what government takes is significant, the amount must be bearable relative to the remaining resources and productivity of the labor, or collapse will be inevitable.

A benevolent government is sustainable.

A greedy or destructive government is not sustainable, even though the resulting collapse may be beyond any person's or institution's living time frame or vision. This can be exploited by design.

"So in a sense, you could say that the source of wealth is spending."

The currency you're trying to build is based on that model, and I just can't agree with it.

You do have intriguing points but I think we're coming at the issue from a far divide.

I think the people who would agree with you are the ones who see this firsthand. The people who back UBI generally live in a bubble or see things from an ivory tower.

I'm not sure, there are a lot of perverse incentives in the welfare system in the UK, I assume they exist in the US as well. If you replace it with a system where the benefits don't disappear when you start work then there is more of an incentive to work.

The main problem I see is most people promoting it want to set it so high that the figures just don't add up.

That's my current biggest problem with UBI. We are not even close to post-scarce.

A friendly note: 'cut and dried'. As an aside are these kind of remarks welcomed or seen as pedantic?

I think appreciated if done tactfully, as you've done. The upvotes/downvotes would decide.

TIL. https://english.stackexchange.com/a/34794

I'm generally on top of my idiom game, but I didn't know about this one. Thanks for pointing it out, if nothing else for satisfying a curiosity I didn't know I had.

I appreciate it!

This might sound radical, but I've always thought it would make sense to bring back some of the programs from the New Deal as part of UBI. In the US and Canada, infrastructure is crumbling. As part of your UBI (if you can't or choose not to work) maybe people should spend a week a month working for the good of their society. It's not perfect but if there is a job skills/training component of these things, and exposure to people of all types it would be good for a lot of people.

I've been 100% on board with this kind of thing. Help people who lack a sense of purpose to contribute towards maintaining the things that make their lives better. Infrastructure is exactly the kind of area that needs bodies thrown at it (under skilled supervision, of course)

The "laziness" issue is such a distraction. If some percentage of UBI recipients sit on their couches all day, that's perfectly fine.

1 - These weren't the people who were going to move our economy and society forward in the first place.

2 - It's better if they sit on the couch and have their needs met than having them turn to violence or fueling the rise of the next Hitler. That's what will happen if we take away a huge number of people's jobs via automation and give them nothing to fill the gap.

3) its much worse if they use their newfound free time and available resources to do things that actively harm society

Wow, going to Hitler already?

The people who were going to move our economy and society forward are not the motivated ones. A fire needs to be lit under their asses. What else are they entitled to for _no_ effort?

If they weren't going to benefit our society at all and might be a detriment, a round of ammunition costs far less than UBI.

>Now imagine if all these brains could be freed and god knows how much innovation, progress and intellectual output can be unlocked into a completely different kind of society.

This may sound cynical, but those who can actually deliver innovation, progress and intellectual output of a meaningful magnitude are already doing pretty well. To a big extent, because they can be determined and can work hard. Most people (myself included) are rather mediocre and have no capacity to advance the society beyond its current, rather advanced state.

You have a very valid answer from pixelbill, who seems to be shadowbanned.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15919850

I'm a proponent of UBI, but this Utopian kind of vision is naive at best.

The power of UBI is that it solves the immediate problem that many jobs will disappear, and with modern technology people shouldn't be starving. But it keeps the tried and tested incentive-based capitalism underneath.

Perhaps one day mankind will evolve to a utopian state, but in the intermediate to long term we absolutely are still capable of great selfishness, laziness, and ready to take any shortcut to advance our own goals.

It is easy for some of us to remember what it was like 40 years ago when SF rose to become the US center of non-capitalism at the time.

The Grateful Dead were local musicians who gained more widespread popularity whether every one of them wanted it or not, especially once they signed a record deal with a capitalist outfit that could advertise and promote in ways that the musicians could not or would not do on their own.

As the purported leader of the band, Jerry Garcia for one indicated that he was soon earning more income than he really needed, and having a strong balance toward benevolence over greed, set out to give 1000 dollars each to numerous individuals who without a doubt were truly in need of the funds.

A thousand dollars really would go a lot further then compared to a short 10 years later once the devastating devaluation of the US dollar was set into motion after it was unlinked to a universally appreciated natural resource (gold).

Anyway, turns out that before too long it was determined that it was costing twelve hundred dollars to give away each thousand, and the program ended up grinding to a halt.

No it's even more basic then that. There are two competing theories for humanity. One is, do you have faith in society and the peoples of that society? The other, do you not have faith in society and the peoples of it?

Many of the human-made constructs in our world were defined as a stop-gap for the lowest depths of humanity. Certain people are extremely selfish, narcissistic, care only for themselves? We have some laws to combat that such as taxes, environmental protections, etc. Certain people are violent? We have some laws to combat that and gone to war against that.

So you need to ask yourself, do you have faith that UBI will "free brains enough to produce innovation, progress, and further intellectual output", or lead to massive work reduction, increased prices, and increased complacency?

> So you need to ask yourself, do you have faith that UBI will "free brains enough to produce innovation, progress, and further intellectual output", or lead to massive work reduction, increased prices, and increased complacency?

You don't need to know that yet. As long as you accept that work for the sake of work is not the purpose of life, you can study UBI to see how people behave.

>>As long as you accept that work for the sake of work is not the purpose of life

But I don't accept that! And I doubt I'm not alone in this country. I believe that you are the work you do. If you spend the majority of time doing it, then that's who you are and you should own it and be proud of it.

Reality is never as black and white as that.

It kind of is, and you can see how real-world countries behave when pushed more towards the UBI end-goal. You can then figure out whether to put faith in society or not.