Universal Basic Income – A Report for Unions [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Universal Basic Income – A Report for Unions [pdf]

world-psi.org

29 pointsColanR34 comments

Where is the evidence that people need a "compelled purpose" ? Many people struggling to survive are not gaining meaning from being threatened by the constant insecurity of poverty, homelessness, poor nutrition and general stress from fear that someone else more desperate will try to take from you something you need. If this stress is removed from people's lives the thought is they'd have a better chance to actually figure out what they want to do and pursue higher goals than simply survival in a hostile environment. But seriously I've known quite affluent people who chose to work jobs because they wanted something to do not because they needed money and I think that people in general would probably be more engaged with whatever activity they actively chose vs. the ones they we're compelled to do. I also think that there is a general idea that certain people have that they are somehow better than other people and while they might be able to choose a higher goal the "poor" would just be lazy and do nothing with their lives. I tend to believe that a lot of the reasons people are "lazy" is because they understand or believe that the game is rigged. Any way you look at it our economic system does tend to highly favor those who were born into situations where they didn't have to worry about money constantly and so I tend to believe removing that worry one way or another should be a basic goal of humanity in general.

It's clear from the cover letter that this report is written by people biased in favor of waged labor. I think that the economic pressure to work is a terrible thing that limits most people's potential in ways big and small. The sooner we can be rid of it, the better. There are other ways to make meaning, than to be running from poverty.

You sound like someone who once lived on my sofa

So what did this person do when they weren't on your sofa?

Not a heck of a lot

What is your solution to scarcity, then?

The elimination of scarcity through prudent investments in automation and technology. Energy and mass in, Maslow’s Hierarchy out.

It’s the distribution (and prevention of the gains from being collected by the few) that is most important.

Even if not done voluntarily, it will happen organically through IP “theft” from the haves to the have nots. The details are more about how history looks upon parties involved.

Controlled consumption.

That's kind of vague, do you mind going into some more detail?

Only allow people to own and control what is naturally reasonable.

If a lion kills more than will fit in its belly it shares the rest with the pride.

If there's still more than the Lions can eat, the hyenas eat. Then the vultures. Then the bacteria.

Humans have no such natural limit on their ability to consume. Bank accounts can be infinite. One person can own all the houses.

The logical conclusion of capitalism as we know it is this: One person owns everything.

Things that can't go on forever, don't.

Who decides what’s reasonable?

The logical and factual conclusion from capitalism thus far is that more people have owned more stuff than each previous generation.

Only a benevolent dictator could make that decision. As it stands people who already have more than they, plus several generations of their progeny, need make that decision.

The owning of more stuff has contributed to an accelerated carbon cycle and the untimely advance of a major global extinction, likely rendering humanity extinct.

Source (book): https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062364807/the-ends-of-the-...

Hn says I'm posting to fast, so that's it from me. Which is ironic because knowing this will happen causes me to want to invest less in each post, rather than more like the Hn guidelines say to do in conversations like this.

I think you’re moving the goalpost here. Initially you said the problem was one person owning everything. Now you say people owning too much is the end of the world.

We don’t have and will not have benevolent dictators, so we have to make do with the real world. Given that, our best bet seems to be the system which has brought us to the unmatched current levels of prosperity.

They are both problems. Just stated in response to the arguments for capitalism.

I say capitalism creates a world where ownership accumulates to too few people. We see that in the wealth gap. 6 people own as much as 50% of the all people in the world.

Yes you can say those 50% also have better lives, however those better lives came without any controls on consumption. Capitalism has promoted green house gas emissions and lots of other bad things too.

So while on the surface it seems good that we have more, it's not. It's worse. If we all had less right now, we'd be fine. If we don't have more tomorrow, we'll be fine.

If we start having less, we might be better off. We don't even know well need the things we will think in 10 years are critical to own.

See where I'm going?

Capitalism needs limits. If you as 1 person own as much as 1% of all people, isn't that enough? Is time to divest some assets. likely assets you didn't earn.

> So while on the surface it seems good that we have more, it's not. It's worse.

We are objectively not worse though. We have more life expectancy, quality of life, basically no more hunger, etc. This was given to us by capitalism. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's responsible for these extraordinary advances.

Consumption in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. It just means people have the means of acquiring whatever they believe will make their lives better.

To blame environmental problems on capitalism is misguided, I think. To give an example, before the invention of the car, streets were full of horse manure and associated diseases. So you could argue that fossil fuels have made our cities cleaner. Yes, industrialization has led to air pollution. Technology advancements are taking care of that, again thanks to the incentives of capitalism.

If you allow me some snark, I must say that the Soviet Union wasn't exactly an environmentalist paradise, so is it really capitalism that is the problem?

First step: confirming actual scarcity.

Tell me, what basic human necessity or resource for individuals is in actual global scarcity right now? Food? Housing? Schooling? Internet/knowledge access? Sanitation?

There is hoarding, rent-seeking, market-controlling of these things, but not actual scarcity, except maybe sanitation, and possibly healthcare if you count that as a resource rather than a process.

Pure capitalism as the vehicle of resource distribution has been proven as a failure to distribute existing resources to the lower echelons of society, even after multiple generations. Any solution that requires more than 2 generations to "solve" what it was designed to solve, I think we can safely call a failure.

It's time to try something else.

Scarcity is not the same thing as shortage.

There’s a scarcity of oxygen, real estate, food, and fresh water.

We can’t just keep expanding the population, and we have already started a mass extinction event with the few billion we have now. What’s the world going to be like when we hit 11 billion in a couple of decades?

In Australia we have overconsumed fresh water to the point that our largest cities treat desalination as “water supply” rather than “environmental disaster”. When the fresh water availanlemis not enough to sustain your population, it’s not the water supply that’s the problem.

Why should I be forced to give away my hard earned cash to anyone who simply refuses to work? Being sick and unemployable is unfortunate, and I am happy to help those who genuinely need help, but what you are suggesting is utterly despicable and unethical.

they just canceled the universal income project in my province early because of p̶o̶l̶i̶t̶i̶c̶s̶ the budget, before any research was concluded. so there is no evidence one way or the other about its effects :(

You think the opiod epidemic is bad now?

As someone who grew up in the post-Clinton “new left” exposure to some of the “old left” helps me understand the right a lot better. They’re afraid of socialism because folks like trade unionists actually espoused socialism. Not like Scandinavian market socialism, but like “quoting Marx on the first page” socialism.

Cf. Labour’s old Clause Four

Thanks, I didn’t know about that.

Hacker News should model UBI. Just give every member 10 'upvotes' a week or so.

The arguments against chapter doesn't mention what seems to me to be the killer reason - that people are very bad at enjoying life without a compelled purpose. Doing work gives us the motivation to pursue our hobbies. Being useful keeps people sane. Having a lifetime of free food, shelter, and consumption of entertainment would be torture. That's the sort of lifestyle that leads to drug addiction, suicide, crime.

If there really are going to be a lot of unemployed in the future, that itself is the problem, not their lack of income.

Do you have any statistics to back that?

Poverty sounds like the more likely cause of all those things than basic income.

This argument works only if you consider those of us lucky enough to have interesting jobs, which we had some hand in choosing. Do you honestly believe that the person who cleans the toilets at your work thinks that this labor gives his life meaning?

Yet those jobs still need to be done.

That’s the other thing- they still would get done. All the jobs we really need would stick around under UBI and we would have people working them. We would just have to pay them more, since their other option wouldn’t be starvation.

Maybe some do, maybe some see it as a means to a different meaning.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/29/janitor-secretly-amassed-an-...

He might not believe it, but it may well be true if the alternative is watching TV all day.

Based on a sample size of 1 (me), I don't think that's a reason at all. I took a year off once and being able to to whatever I want every single day was awesome. I went back to work because I needed money, not because I wanted to.

But did you build things or work hard to develop some skills or otherwise feel like you're improving something? Or did you scroll through Facebook and drink alcohol all day? Many people don't have an interest in anything fulfilling.

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