Hacker News Reader

Comment by aeternum | Hacker News Reader

As a society we should increase the standard of living for everyone. In order to do that, people need to be motivated to contribute.

View on HN

I might agree with what you are saying, but it doesn't address the question, which is to provide a rationale for the claim "Fairness is not about everyone getting the same amount just for existing, for that in itself is not fair."

Your statement is about motivations, not fairness.

You're right, it's not very clear, this is what I was going for:

It's not very fair to society as a whole if we implement policies which impede standard of living increases.

Again, something I could probably agree to, but it is interesting that we seem to have to move the frame from the individual up to (the individual's share of) society in order to provide a meaningful answer.

Despite others' somewhat antagonistic answers I really just wanted to explore the reasoning behind the original statement, which I think many people instinctively agree with whilst not being able to convincingly explain why (without referencing other ideas).

Society is a critical part of the answer because without it, there is no "amount" of anything.

Effort has a clear opportunity cost which is why I think a lot of people instinctively agree that individuals should be rewarded based on the amount they contribute to the societal pot.

Which is why Communism doesn't work. If what you get has no relationship to the work you do, there is no reason to do the work. But that's the problem a UBI solves -- you still get it when you take a job but you also get what you earn from the job. As compared with the status quo, which is already worse than this, because we have existing assistance programs that you lose by taking a job or earning more money.

> Which is why Communism doesn't work. If what you get has no relationship to the work you do, there is no reason to do the work.

It may surprise people to learn that even the Soviets effectively acknowledged the validity of that second statement. According to the 1936 Constitution of the USSR:

"ARTICLE 118. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to work, that is, are guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance With its quantity and quality."

https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons04....

The problem, of course, being that they weren't using anything like market pricing to allocate the rewards, so in practice they went to people based on corruption and politics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com