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Comment by drummer | Hacker News Reader

UBI is extremely dangerous as long as governments exist. Take what China is doing with their citizen score and it's not hard to imagine what could go wrong.

"...imagine how easy it would be for such a government that was also providing a basic income to its citizens to manipulate their citizens based on that basic income that they depended on. If they can deny citizens access to things like public transportation based on their ‘citizen score’, they can also deny those citizens (part of) their basic income depending on how ‘good’ their behavior is. So if you were too critical and thinking too independently, you could very easily be denied your basic income, and this could be a serious problem especially if you were brought up to be dependent on the government and to (heavily) rely on the income they provided."

More: https://blog.kareldonk.com/an-example-of-the-dangers-of-a-go...

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You’re right that a UBI effectively vastly increases the power a government could wield over its citizens.

One of the most important sets of principles the US founders relied on were the facts that power corrupts, that it (unfortunately) has to be wielded by someone in a governing sense, and that the best ways to keep government from becoming corrupt and abusive are to (a) limit its power to that which is essential for rule-of-law, representative government; and (b) divide that power among different people who have checks and balances on each others’ power.

Therefore it seems to me that a UBI is likely not a good idea because it vastly increases government’s power.

Note that the US government already wields a ton of power not explicitly granted by the constitution in the form of federal grants...

That’s literally the “universal” part of it. If you don’t have that, you don’t have UBI. The fact that the government has the physical power to withhold a hypothetical UBI might be an issue, of course, but every government has the physical power to do pretty much anything to any citizen, so there’s nothing unique there.

Until we are in a time where I can't find a disturbing number of people who are willing to deny someone UBI for saying the wrong things--and willing to vote for someone who will do that--then UBI should never be seriously considered.

But if you don’t support it being universal then you don’t support UBI. Those people you’re talking about just don’t support UBI.

How does that change anything besides making a "ha, gotcha!" point? That's your definition of universal, which is (I assume) limited to citizens of the USA who are adults.

EDIT>> Also there is plenty of precedent for limiting things which are worded in such a way as to suggest they cannot be limited, eg: "shall not be infringed"

It’s just weird to say that you don’t support a policy if there a lot of people that don’t support it. Surely that’s true of every taxation and welfare system in every government, for instance.

The tautology you see is in your own phrasing. The problem being raised here is that UBI is easy to abuse. Voters and politicians and bureaucrats can more easily hijack a deceptively simple UBI system after it's enacted, and no amount of "but that's not what Universal means" hairsplitting will help you then.

Welfare, on the other hand, is better understood and more narrowly focused. And even there you still have a ton of bullshit. I think UBI's deceptively simple yet vaguely broad scope will be tussled & twisted even more.

Why would it be easier to abuse? If anything, the “universal” part is even clearer since it’s right there in the name.

"Universal" is a lot vaguer than you claim. Even though you claimed that it means "no restrictions", you probably implicitly accept basic restrictions like "only for citizens" or "only people residing in the US" or "only people who bothered to register". "Universal" has practically never meant "free of all restrictions", but everyone who sees it thinks they know what those restrictions are and should be. Someone right now is probably thinking "obviously it doesn't include people who are in prison for life".

Beyond that, it's also ripe for political agitation because UBI would have fewer restrictions than welfare. You can already find provocative "news" segments about how disgraceful and undeserving welfare recipients are because they found one dude buying some crab meat or something using foodstamps. Imagine the outcry when people buy weed with UBI. The pressure to start policing and controlling UBI recipients would be enormous, even more than welfare which already has so many restrictions.

> Even though you claimed that it means "no restrictions", you probably implicitly accept basic restrictions like "only for citizens" or "only people residing in the US" or "only people who bothered to register". "Universal" has practically never meant "free of all restrictions", but everyone who sees it thinks they know what those restrictions are and should be.

Yes, and it's only for humans too. Raccoons and shrubs don't receive the basic income.

A very good example of how bad and wrong things can go with governments is comparing what the founding members of the USA fought for, with the status quo. Basic rights that they fought for back then are almost completely gone today, including freedom of speech, where you can get cancelled for simply speaking your mind and even the truth. Not to mention personal taxation which brought everyone back to slavery -- something they warned about 200 years ago. It is not difficult to see the train coming at the other end of the government supported UBI tunnel.

That’s equating all governments and forms of governance with China’s government. To be able to say that, you have to also say why you think this has a non-negligible chance of happening in a democratic society for example.

This is an interesting angle I never considered. I think that a lot of us are seeing UBI as a flat rate everyone gets.

I never thought of it evolving into different levels for different categories of people.

Do you feel the same way about foodstamps? This isn't an argument against UBI, it's an argument against any kind of government provided assistance at all.

Not only that, it's an argument against all forms of taxation. What if the government starts setting your tax rate based on your "social credit score"?

It's purely speculative FUD. It would be terrible if they did that, so make sure they don't. But it's a completely independent problem.

Or, even more obviously, prison.

The proper analogy would be universal food stamps, rather than need-based, where everyone would begin to rely on the government for food.

If that's the case, then I would personally feel the same way!

I don't know, I kind of love the idea of basic sustenance being a hassle-free given and "money for food" being limited the realm of pleasure or entertainment.

Not to make any argument for the feasibility of the idea, of course.

So, to be clear, non-universal foodstamps (what exists now) are ok, but if there were universal foodstamps that then became non-universal, then those non-universal foodstamps would not be ok and also proof that universal foodstamps are bad and scary?

'Ok' is tricky — we're weighing an unhealthy reliance on the government that gives it a dangerous amount of power against the well-being and guaranteed sustenance of our fellow citizens.

If people truly need to rely on the government for food, it would be absurdly inhumane of a society to let them starve.

Simultaneously, promoting reliance on the government and attempting to make that reliance universal has the potential to take away our freedoms.

Food stamps is an acceptable principle to Americans because it's meant to be temporary and need-based, and if you remove those two characteristics, it isn't just a reductio ad absurdum argument of taking the same concept further; it's entirely different.

Good point. Because as we all know need based food stamps are never subject to political meddling!

What do you not understand about UNIVERSAL? This is not a need based income, everyone gets it, rich or poor, needy or wealthy.

Alaska UBI is a cautionary tale:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/5/20849020/alaska-...

Feels a lot like no fly lists, or holywood blocklist during rhe red scare

I find it rather hard to take seriously the writings of someone (Karel Donk) who believes that Hitler was good and that the holocaust never happened.

But I'll answer this anyway. UBI is unconditional. If a cash payment depends on the recipient's behaviour, it wouldn't be UBI. The same amount would be paid to everyone of working age.

Why mention China here? Something very similar happens in the UK with benefit sanctions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobseeker%27s_Allowance#Sancti...

Is there a meaningful difference between a government withholding basic income in a UBI world and a government fining away some traditional income in normal capitalism?

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