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Comment by hypertele-Xii | Hacker News Reader

Imagine living in a society where basic income is guaranteed no matter what, and even its worst places - its prison cells - compare favorably to the finest hotels of other countries. You have so many options you feel constantly overwhelmed, stressing about making bad choices because everything your primitive heart could ever desire is not merely available, but plentiful and cheap. And it'll recruit you if you're not careful. Money fails to motivate when you have enough of it regardless. Life wants meaning.

Imagine having all the time in the world, just thinking about everything. Your whole life.

What would you do?

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"Imagine living in a society where basic income is guaranteed no matter what, and even its worst places - its prison cells - compare favorably to the finest hotels of other countries."

What I see are bored young males hanging out and getting in fights, not a whole generation of people learning cuneiform in their newfound free time.

Absolutely. There is no free lunch. UBI comes on the backs of the value adding class of society. Some people actually LIKE to work, hard as it is for some to believe.

The Value Adding Class will have privilege thrust upon them in the form of paying for those young males to hang out and get in fights.

Ive had the dubious honor of knowing more than one kid who was never going to have to work a single day in life owing to who their parents and grandparents were. They tend to end up chemical addicted for the most part.

Idle hands do the devils work.

> The Value Adding Class will have privilege thrust upon them in the form of paying for those young males to hang out and get in fights.

If anything existing basic income experiments have revealed the opposite:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/stockton-ca-gave-residents...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-05/what-did-...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/richmond-califo...

Those experiments are worse than useless for predicting what would actually happen in a "true UBI" environment. I say "worse than useless" as opposed to just "useless" since they make people think they have some insight into what a UBI world would look like, but they really don't.

Giving a small number of people an amount of money below what they'd need to actually survive, with them knowing perfectly well it won't last forever has effectively zero in common with UBI. Give an entire contained population of people enough money that they can have all their basic needs met just with that money, and guarantee them it will continue for the rest of their lives, and I'd bet quite a lot that the results would be drastically different.

Also, not a big deal since you also provided two reasonable links, but many people will see that you linked motherjones and likely discount your comment entirely. It's on the same tier as OANN and breitbart.

Nah, empiricism is not bad. And attacking a single link in one isolated post that took me two minutes to search up links for hardly discredits an entire field of interest. Thanks for the concern though but this is hardly a thesis.

Sure whatever, but the rest of my post is more pertinent. These experiments have no value. Measuring the wavelength of the color of the sky is empirical and offers roughly the same insight into the impact of UBI on society. Empiricism on its own is nothing.

Okay, then sounds like the only way to know whether UBI is good or not is to go ahead with it and try it out. Good to know you fundamentally disagree with the ancestral post that claimed that it would empower idleness and drug addiction, like a puritan decrying alcohol, or dancing.

Yes, that would be the only way, but basic arithmetic yields the conclusion that it is not possible at present, even ignoring the political impossibility of it. And no, I very much agree with the ancestral post. I think it would empower a significant amount of addiction and other lazy and wasteful behavior. Which doesn't necessarily mean it would be a net negative for the world on the whole, but to deny that that would happen is to be disconnected from reality. I frankly don't trust the judgement or diversity of life experience of anyone who doesn't recognize that.

Any form of welfare or public benefit can be abused, obviously. But to claim that it would lead to significantly detrimental and widespread abuse is a serious criticism that requires serious study and analysis to back up. Without it, both your post and the ancestral post are simply posting polemics based on your own specific subjective viewpoint.

By your own measure, basic arithmetic has roughly the same insight into the impact of UBI on society. As is judgement and diversity of life experience. As you say, empiricism on its own is nothing.

I've not seen any serious proposals to implement ubi before automation has substantially increased unemployment. In that case, not only are people idle, but also desperate.

Fwiw, I don't mind working at all, but in an ideal world, my work would be varied and my hours would be of my choosing. Sure, you can get that if you freelance, but most corporate jobs want 8h/d 40h/w, at least, and is that how anyone wants to spend their time on earth?

Read the results of actual basic income pilot programs and you'll see that people are far from idle.

This is a side effect of society overly focusing on money instead of knowledge as the primary success metric.

Interesting. Perhaps we are kind of already at that point? Isn't that what video games like MMORPGs or Fortnite are for? Where the bored young males get to accomplish great adventures , build and show off their skills for status, compete and crush their enemies, and fulfill a sense of accomplishment.. all virtually?

I disagree, I've been learning Krav Maga in my newfound free time. Want to fight about it?

your skills are weak, old man.

> Imagine living in a society where basic income is guaranteed no matter what

Realistic UBI proposals wouldn’t exactly provide a comfortable wage. They’d provide just enough to get by on the basics, if that. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be helpful, but it does mean that it won’t be an attractive alternative to work for anyone who isn’t comfortable staying poor forever.

UBI would still be a safety net, not an attractive alternative to working. The idea that UBI would enable people to become free of work and follow their dreams for free has been greatly exaggerated. It’s just not possible to tax enough to pay everyone high UBI wages. Safety net wages, maybe, but it won’t be a fun living situation to depend entirely on UBI.

Personally I think that even if UBI wouldn’t provide a living wage in today’s economy, that it will fundamentally change market dynamics in interesting ways. Companies constantly adjust prices up in the US because of increased buying power, aka “they can afford to give us more profit”. There’s an entire industry of cheap smartphones that don’t release in the US, only in India, China, and third world countries, and they’re plenty profitable, but they deliberately only release even more profitable models in the US.

I think creating a significant class of people with reduced buying power in the US will actually lower prices here, as at least some companies decide they don’t want to miss out on that portion of the market just to soak the rest of the Americans for even more money.

Of course that’s expressing a lot of faith in capitalism so it’s entirely possible, even likely, that it would somehow make the entire situation even worse.

Exactly 3 things: smoke weed, jerk off and play games on my Xbox. In that exact order.

Sorry for my honesty, I have no filter.

I'm more of a PC guy, but yeah, pretty much. For a while. But even that gets boring at some point. Human brains are weird, man.

I really wonder dude, I really wonder. The older I get the harder I find to be excited by shit. I do believe that if I was in the iPhone team I would've been like "another f-ing phone, why should I care?".

The paycheck is pretty much all that is getting me out of bed in the morning, even if at this point I can't say I really need it anymore.

Part of that might be that you lack the time or energy to properly explore new things though, and that lack of time or energy probably has something to do with getting that pay check.

I mean also maybe not, but I find it hard to devote time to things I know I am interested in because I work 9-5, 5 days a week. I spend time with my partner of an evening and have housework and exercise to take care of and after all that it feels like there is very little time and like I don't have a lot of energy to learn new skills or pursue hobbies, so what I end up doing is the things I know I like but that are not draining. Ultimately I spend a lot of time reading or playing video games or goofing off on reddit.

Even taking a week or two off isn't necessarily a good indicator, because you won't say, go and buy a bunch of paints and an easel and go "right I'm finally going to get stuck into painting" when you only have two weeks off and know you won't have time for it once they are up

I feel the absolute same way. I’ve learned to be satisfied rather than passionate/excited about work. It’s much more sustainable in the long run.

Guess its a normal part of aging, but maybe its not normal to not get excited by stuff you used to like

>maybe its not normal to not get excited by stuff you used to like

People absolutely fall in and out of interest in different types of activities. This is especially true of people who really jump into things with both feet.

That gets boring pretty damn quickly. You'd feel sick of yourself in a couple of weeks. Humans surprisingly want to feel meaningful. Tickling your pleasure neurons for day after day just doesn't feel good, it doesn't make you happy. Pleasure != happiness.

It reminds me of this meme: https://i.imgur.com/dRvwSsI.jpg

I don't know, I did it for a whole sabbatical once and some stretches in the Pandemic - it did not make returning to work any easier.

Now I agree about needing some variety, so I would probably get a PlayStation too.

Spend every waking hour out with my camera exploring every corner of every small town around me and writing about it.

Like this: https://viewfinderfox.com/first-post-vaccination-excursion-i...

But all the time.

Oh pretty cool. We've been doing that with my fiance for a few years. Her English isn't quite as good as mine but I proof-read it once.

https://hypertele.fi/fbd0998dd2834f08

Write crappy programs, make crappy art and music, and write crappy stories. I'm low in talent, high in motivation.

Most people are probably low in talent and motivation (because lacking talent is demotivating).

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