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Comment by kingsuper20 | 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."

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.

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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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

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