I just have to wonder —- how do you create such a city in a way that insures it’s actually populated and doesn’t become a ghost town.
Work in our city and get a $20,000 federal tax write off...?
California won't allow building a park bench there, much less a new major city.
California is a state. You might be thinking of Marin county, which surrounds only about 12 miles of the 101 freeway, so this is nonsense from multiple angles.
I'll repeat my answer with less sarcasm: Because building new cities there is not legally allowed. It's physically, but not regulatorily possible.
Any large construction needs to go an approval process, the article talks about the same thing. This article is about a giant project, the point isn't about any single place that would be more or less resistant. It is about the fact that large amounts of unused land with close proximity to major cities is common.
[EDIT] and no, I don't have a link, I lost the URL years back and have repeatedly tried to find it again, failing every time.
Maybe "zone" them in ways which allows for many tiny oasis in the deserts of asphalt, concrete, steel and glass?
Like Brasilia:
http://tourplans.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/brasilia-cap...
https://brasiliaarch638.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/aerea200...
High-rises but tons of wasted space. If they'd just put in a normal allocation of space for parks & plazas and right-sized roads the whole city could be much smaller and everyone would be fairly close to the actual countryside, not just unpleasant strips of green between wide roads.
Once you start looking for it in concept-art type city plans, it's everywhere: way too much purposeless, empty space, mostly in the form of non-park green spaces and too-wide streets and sidewalks. And if you have all those problems, in a real city at least, then you need a ton more parking, because nothing's walkable and the buses are slow (because everything's so far apart), and that's even more wasted space.
I think this is part of building to a larger initial scale and using partnerships to bootstrap the city.
If you think about what features a thriving major city has, and which of those might be seeds to populations, things like universities and community colleges, large corporate campuses (if those ever matter again), and transportation/logistics hubs could be very good draws. Plus you'll need housing for the construction workers, food and services for them, etc.
I would imagine that in the unlikely future of something like this happening, there would be major investors from philanthropists, corporations, that would help start the seed institutions as well.
It's been a while since a billionaire started a new prestigious university with their name on it. Maybe Bezos, Buffett, or Page is game.
Maybe Google or Amazon wants a new campus that's designed for a partial work-from-home employees and near suitable WFH housing with easy transportation to campus?
One thing to keep in mind is that the centrally-planned Chinese cities that were criticized as ghost towns are now populated. Housing is expensive, and if there's a place with available housing, it'll likely be filled.
Cynically, China could do it but not many places else have the ability, certainly not the US.
First step, don't build in the US nor any country with strong property rights nor a free citizenry. You need a place where control of the project is not going to get stuck in the courts of law or public opinion. This same place would need sufficient funds to pull it off and the desire to do so if it gained the leadership sufficient fame. As in, you need a China or similar.
I had a nice long reason for why it could never happen in the US but you can summarize it as, politicians and special interest groups would dictate every thing either directly, intimidation, or through the courts.
IDK how you keep such a city from dilapidating though.
Federal or state agencies could be an option.
And at some point the "others" (read: the rest of the country) will not want to pay to fund the cool new city.
But the city is not for free. UBI is just enough to pay for a basic life. If you want to eat great food, have a nice house or want to impress your friends or send your kids to a good school, money is needed. Money, that comes from taxable activities.
The advantage of UBI is that there are no homeless people, no beggars, no petty crimes, no robberies. There is no excuse for robbing somebody because it clearly is a move to get luxuries. Punishment can be harsh, including expulsion from the city.
Thus you have a friendly city where people can create value the most efficient way.
All the people who don't create taxable value still create value. They create the network effect of the city and they manage the focus of the production processes. Somebody has to be an early adopter of a new restaurant or a new service. Who is better suited than somebody who has an entire day to spend?
After all, money that is spent in the city is not lost. The only problem is spending money on external goods which can be managed by taxing imports.
But you need the import (of money, specifically) to run the city for the people who live there on UBI. I don't believe that UBI will ever be self-sustaining, but I'd love to see an experiment that tries to prove me wrong. For now, they're all like "free energy machines" that are plugged into a wall socket: outside funding paying for the UBI. But that doesn't help, because you need self-sustainability, or you'll need an external work-force slaving away for your luxury not to work. And I'm pretty sure that external work-force won't be too happy about that.
The premise of UBI is that it creates a more productive society. If there is no possibility to be self-sustained, why implement it? However, if there is the possibility, then funding is possible because you can sell future surpluses for external current currencies and get the city going.
As far as I know, there have been ancient UBI societies, like Persia and Egypt where everybody received free grain.
Don't forget that luxury is the tool of kings to show their power. On one hand, kings live in luxury, but they still keep working. On the other hand, not working stops being a status symbol and a luxury if common people do it by default in a UBI society.
UBI is like heat pumps: you don't use the energy of the wall socket to create heat or cold, but you use it to move energy from one area to another. That way, you create a net surplus. With UBI, people stop worrying. All that mental energy is used to create value. The insight needed for a UBI city is the ability to tax it.
Money is a placeholder for value, not just paper. Like the "free energy machine" that's plugged into the wall socket: the power that flows from the wall socket is what drives it.
> The premise of UBI is that it creates a more productive society. If there is no possibility to be self-sustained, why implement it?
There is a possibility, there's a possibility for humans evolving telepathy. It's just not a certainty, and the probability isn't too high. But it's easy to test: get a bunch of people together that believe in it, make an agreement to pool some amount of resources and then pay out a UBI to each person. If it raises productivity, it's a big win for anyone involved.
If "free grain" is a "UBI society", then we're far beyond UBI already. In most of Europe, you'll receive an apartment, food, clothes, utilities, transportation, tv etc. That's 2020 reality. As far as I understand, the point of UBI is to go beyond that because these basics are seen as limiting.
> With UBI, people stop worrying.
Primarily, they stop working. We already have too many who are quite alright with the welfare they receive and prefer not to work. I really don't want to expand the number, because it just increases the work load for the rest.
Where can you live that life without being an outcast? People in need get Basic Income, but it is not Universal. You have to trick the system if you want to get it indefinitely.
>As far as I understand, the point of UBI is to go beyond that because these basics are seen as limiting.
Of course they are limiting. That's why UBI works. As you have analysed correctly, you would have to enslave other people if you want more.
Thus, people don't stop working, because there is always something that isn't covered by UBI.
>Primarily, they stop working. We already have too many who are quite alright with the welfare they receive and prefer not to work. I really don't want to expand the number, because it just increases the work load for the rest.
Don't forget that you need people to decide who is eligible for welfare and who isn't. In an UBI society, those people could do something else and reduce the work load for everybody else. Basic resources are cheap and get cheaper with more automation. At one point, you will be able feed the entire world from the work of a few persons.
Germany, for example. Yeah, sure, on paper you have to be "looking for work", but it's really on paper only.
> In an UBI society, those people could do something else and reduce the work load for everybody else.
They won't though. I live in a mixed income apartment complex, including lots of people on perpetual welfare with no desire to change their situation.
I keep reading about UBI from well-meaning people who explain how it will totally work and I believe that they actually believe that. I also believe that they have no experience with the people that live off of government transfers not because of necessity but because of laziness. It's enough for a nice apartment (50+ square meters for one person), a flat screen TV, an X-Box, a smart phone, internet, food, cigarettes and the occasional alcoholic beverage, healthcare etc included obviously. And that's enough for quite a significant amount of people. They won't "make the world better" if you give them more money, they'll just buy a bigger TV and throw more parties.
> At one point, you will be able feed the entire world from the work of a few persons.
Possibly. Let's talk about UBI when we're there. We're not, we're not close, and we won't be for decades, unless you're talking about 4 square meters per person and 2500 calories of nutrious slime with no extras. And nobody is talking about that.
Drop UBI and replace it with a job guarantee and you'll have my attention. That gets you essentially the same: everybody has enough, but it doesn't come with the moral hazards. On the other hand, it also doesn't reward the lazy.
>>In an UBI society, those people could do something else
I meant that the administrative layer could be used for other processes than managing welfare.
Why bother how many people don't work? There are 9 billions on this world. Even if 8 billions don't work, you can still run societies with 1 billion.
>we're not close,
Check how many people have to work on farms to create food. We are at a point where providing basic stuff is possible.
>unless you're talking about 4 square meters per person and 2500 calories of nutrious slime with no extras.
Why not? It doesn't have to be slime. Fast food, cereals, sweets, people actually crave cheap food. On the other hand, offering healthy cheap slime with all nutritions, if you look at soylent, that's something people are actually paying for.
Likewise, 50 square meters don't have to be expensive.
With UBI, you cannot make scarce resources affordable to everybody. On the other hand, you can make UBI affordable by reducing the costs of basic goods. If people can live on $100 a month, in a society with an average pre-tax income of $3000, then one working person can take care of 10 non-working citizens.
>Drop UBI and replace it with a job guarantee and you'll have my attention.
There is no way that a government can create meaningful jobs. How cruel is a society where 90% of people only earn the money to buy nutrious slime after having worked on a meaningless job for 8 hours? Allow those people to stay at home and come up with better ways to spend their time. Even if they just play video games, that's less corrupting for the entire society than forcing them to shovel gravel from one ditch into another. They are essentially prisoners and a society is best judged by the way it treats its prisoners.
Life will be better for everybody because the people who work, they know that it is their choice.