Hacker News Reader

Comment by Consultant32452 | Hacker News Reader

UBI only sounds good if you don’t understand human motivation and game theory.

If 10% of the population doesn’t have to work I can justify I’m helping those in need. If 70% of the population doesn’t have to work there’s zero chance I’m working.

View on HN

I think you are under-estimating the number of people who like having a job. Many retired people report not liking having nothing to do. The challenge will be to create more opportunities for people to learn, socialize, do something creative, find a hobby or some outdoor activity. I think it will be a better world when we transition people away from being wage slaves and enjoy the benefits of the creative activities of newly freed people.

Retirement is instructive as the intention of the retired to stay busy doesn’t match what they, in aggregate, actually do. We should expect similar difficulty with younger ages if we expand retirement to them.

It's not about what the "non-productive" people will do to entertain themselves. They will socialize, pick up a hobby, spend time with their family, etc. There's no concern about them whatsoever. It's the rest of the population, the minority that is the most competent. These people, by definition laid out in the premise, cannot be replaced by one of the non-productive people because the non-productive cannot outcompete the robots. Let's imagine that robots get so good that only the most competent 30% of the population must work, in the traditional sense of the word work, to maintain the infrastructure, keep the robots going, whatever that looks like.

Why would anyone in the most competent 30% of the population be willing to accept a deal where they must work because they are the most competent, but the less competent people get to spend all their time traveling, socializing, enjoying romantic relationships, etc? And remember, they must ALL accept this deal because if any significant percentage of them drops out the infrastructure isn't maintained.

Maybe they could live in Elysium.

Once you get down to 30 percent, you have an inner party/outer party situation within the 30 percent itself, in which society (as far as they are concerned) is mostly limited to those two groups, and their interplay. I mean: The 30 percent aren't really aware of the 70 percent, even when their upkeep comes out of every paycheck.

When you add up everyone on social security, disability, government make-work jobs (which includes 95 percent of the military) and the assemblage of programs (section 8, EBT, medicaid) that constitute modern welfare, you are pretty much at 30/70 now. So...to answer your question, why are you accepting the deal as we speak?

You answered your own question. Most of the unproductive still have to show up and pretend to be net inputs.

Sure, some will accept a system where the less productive stop pretending and just brazenly take. But most won’t. The fairness/justice system is ingrained in primate dna. It would take an evolutionary time scale to remove it and the productive would kill the nonproductive either directly or indirectly long before that happens.

Depends on your definition of work.

Culturally it tends to lean in a direction I’d call “make some richer person happy for a portion of nation-state scrip.”

If you take a more scientific, physical, definition, raising kids is work. Learning anything is work.

I feel it only makes sense to stick to the definition implied in the original post. If you change the definition, you’re having a completely different discussion.

Then why are you bringing up game theory?

The point is to apply game theory to the given premise, not change the premise in some way. Once you consider, even for a moment, how all the players in the proposed system would respond to their situation it obviously would not work.

I get what you mean, but you would expect people to import game theory yet importing anything yourself just confuses the whole thing?

Politics aren’t manipulated and how things work are organic. So we should just be happy since look at this math, cause behavior and statistics aren’t game-able.

That's the 'B' in the UBI. If people want more than the basic, they'll work. Just like today, most people don't stop building a career once they have a basic salary.

You’ve broken the premise. We instituted UBI because robots are so good nobody can justify paying you for your work. You don’t get to come behind that and say you’ll work for additional compensation.

And the place it falls apart is the other side. Why would the 10% most competent people work a traditional job when everyone else can leisure travel, take up hobbies, spend time with family, or focus on romantic relationships?

> We instituted UBI because robots are so good nobody can justify paying you for your work

Not nobody. There's enough work for some people. Just not enough for everyone, working 45 hours a week.

> Why would the 10% most competent people work a traditional job when everyone else can leisure travel, take up hobbies, spend time with family, or focus on romantic relationships?

Because they want a bigger house/car/yacht

Looking at what drives pretty much everybody I know, there is about a zero percent chance that any sizable portion of the population will chose to not work.

Then there’s no need for UBI.

If everybody wants to work but nobody will employ them then UBI is still needed.

Sure. Now let's imagine you're in the top 10% of competence that has to work and I'm in the 15th percentile so I don't have to work because the robots outcompete me. Why would you work all day at a traditional job knowing that I get to do whatever I want all day? I get to travel, spend time with my family, enjoy my hobbies, focus on romantic relationships, all while you're working. And not just me, 90% of everyone on the planet gets to just do whatever we want while you must work. Would you accept that deal? Do you think the majority of the most competent people on the planet would accept that kind of deal?

Looking at people I know, they'd just sit around and smoke weed all day if they didn't have to work. I'd be interested to know what portion of the population is which.

I struggle to understand the problem you’re trying to describe. So what if you don’t feel like working?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com