Comment by leovailati | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leovailati | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Exactly that! As I read the article, I kept thinking "this guy is not following the money".

The author's ultimate assumption is that money supply is somehow decoupled from accumulation. People receiving money from the government and using it to buy their basic needs may not drive inflation because their labor is not being procured by anyone else AND those basic goods they are buying would not be produced otherwise. However, the constant money stream will drive accumulation on the other side of the economy.

The owners of capital (or the 1%, however you may want to call them) would become unimaginably wealthy in a scenario like this. And it would be hard to prevent that. A super wealthy class is already a big problem today. Imagine the influence that group would have in politics if they had 10x the purchase power they have today.

Another problem that I believe exists with instituting a UBI through money creation (e.g., MMT) is lack of innovation and market disruption. It essentially puts a tax on innovation. In order to hire people you now have to be able to afford to pay more than the government and still have sufficient funds to fight well-established mega corporations.

But think about this: if you're a startup founder, you can get co-founders for so much cheaper and more easily. If your buddy and you both know you have UBI, you can start a business without risking that much. The next hires can be lured with equity - this is a great thing because people have emotional and professional ownership in startups, but the one to three founders generally have all the equity. What if UBI forced those founders to both distribute equity and alongside that, the responsibility for the company? I think it would benefit all parties. Talking to founders, those first months and years are stressful as heck - I would wish that on nobody for any price. We can do better.

Think about startups before financing. Loans with interest used to be considered immoral - it's prohibited in the Bible. If you wanted to start a business, you had to save or find a lender that would let you take money and then just wait for you to give it back. And if you didn't pay it back, the lender could put you in prison. No wonder people didn't do that very often. Even with these new ways to fund a startup, you could lose your job and with it your income and healthcare coverage. What if that risk just went away? Of course some people would waste it, but think of all those folks that would turn their lives into hackathons until they struck gold.

I am actually in favor of a UBI, as long as it is truly universal. That means money every month, no questions asked.

I agree with your point: under a true UBI, workers would be able to seek their passions, do whatever they like to do. Doesn't matter if the position is risky or if the pay is low. Worst case scenario, if anything goes wrong, people can fall back on UBI and have their basic needs covered.

In my comment I meant to talk about the guaranteed government job thing that the article mentioned. In that case workers wouldn't have the kind of mobility or guarantees granted by UBI. Startups would actually be competing with the government for people.

I apologize I misused the term UBI before (which is what caused the confusion.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com