Comment by gettodachoppa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gettodachoppa | Hacker News Reader

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None of the solutions ever presented (communism, UBI) are realistic, they're college student "let X pay for it" fantasy, where X cannot actually pay for it for more than a year or two before we're worse off than before.

UBI? Immediate huge drop in economic input from working people who won't have to work anymore. And within a couple of years, not enough productive people left for UBI. Don't bother linking those studies on UBI boosting the economy, I've read them, and I think they're typical soft-science nonsense. I have a lifetime of observed experiences that tell me what happens when people don't have to make any effort to get by: from children, to friends, to animals, to entire populations like Kuwait (where anyone with a job is gifted $3000/month by the government on top of their salary. This resulted in the laziest, least competent people I have met, who just hire foreigners to do their jobs for them. It reminded me of Wall-E.)

Communism? It has never and never will work. As soon as you remove private wealth, whoever is in charge becomes a perpetual dictator within months, since any objectors depend on him for their survival. Nearly instant dystopia.

I'm really curious, is there ANY scenario where someone like yourself will demand that a homeless person become a productive citizen? Let's say you offer them magical housing and a magical job. They trash the house, don't go to work, and stay at home taking drugs. What then? Do you continue supporting them? Endless counseling? Let's say it doesn't work, no matter how patient you are, they refuse to work. Is there any breaking point where you are able to tell them "if you don't clean up and get to work, I'm not paying for your house and meals anymore"? Or are productive people expected to foot the bill for them forever, even in a fantasy scenario?

You can remove physical capital inheritance, and distribute it across the entire population, it's not communism, it's not UBI, it remove the 'landlord' mentality from otherwise good/capable people. Also it allows removal of a lot of regulations (hence even right-wing ancap, Aren't-style, can support the idea), notably rent, by naturally pushing limited equity housing co-op (since your kids won't inherit your house directly), and freeing a lot of buildings that currently are under inheritance conflicts (I've heard 1/3 to 1/2 of Paris currently vacant houses). The redistribution should be enough to handle a lot of issues.

Also it does nothing to social, cultural and symbolic inheritance, so rich heir will probably still be rich at the end of the day, but at least they would have to work for it.

Parents work hard because their #1 priority is to secure their children's future, which includes giving them any morally-acceptable leg up in an increasingly uncertain, overpopulated, and competitive world. The main way of doing this for millenia has been to leave them what you saved up.

Now you're saying I can't leave my kids anything, not even our family home? Because it has to be shared asset with the other 100 million people (or 7 billion, if you're one of those open border types)? That's completely unacceptable to me. It also removes my incentive to work hard. Are my children to become equal to everyone else (which given overpopulation drives them down to a bad comfort and safety level) if I get hit by a car?

You don't seem to think anyone would mind, "Oh, you'll be dead, why would you care" , right? What you're missing is that I care more about my children and their future than about myself. Every good parent thinks like this. A suggestion like yours likely comes from the moralism of detached, childless, too-online rationalists. To put it as a trolley problem, if I have to choose between my kid and 5 other kids, the other 5 kids are getting a train in their face without a moment's hesitation. I'm saving my kid even if 50k other kids are on the other end.

Seriously, talk about this to your parents (as I'm certain you have no children of your own), see what they think.

Wars do what the parent post, u r replying to, suggests.

But i will be 60 when my father hit 80, and my child would be 30 (actually 29).

The life expectancy of men is 79.4 yo, and while he's a woodworker, he actually is healthy for someone in his 50 (and he's doing a lot more painting and tapestry now, which is easier on the body), so i hope he won't die until his late 80s, but let's say he only last until 80.

At 60 year old, i would expect to retire two years later (might be 4, but let's wait and see). Anything that he leaves me, i wouldn't really need. I would rent his house (maybe, i think i would just lend it to a non-market housing coop), but hopefully i would have one at that age. My child at 30 would hopefully have found his path, since i have enough resources for him to fail a dozen time.

Even if i die at 60, i really hope my child doesn't need my money, because that would mean i had failed him a dozen time over, don't you agree?

But let's say we just put a small limit, let's say 20k in 1970s dollars (to adjust for inflation), that would still remove the need for income and housing taxes in my country. tax collection would be more efficient, that would pay for the most basic social nets + free education (and police, and military), and the only taxes you would pay on income wouldn't be taxes but cotisations (health, unemployment).

Also, not only education basically free, i have family that is nice and helpful, and even if i die tomorrow i don't care if all my money had to go to the state.

And for those who do not have this family, i would hope that if inheritance tax is the only tax, each orphan would get the same treatment as nations'pupils (orphan from military or police, i worked with them 3 summers a lifetime ago) and taken care of better than they are right now.

[edit] And because i don't want to be too obtuse (i honestly didn't understand you until now): of course if you live in a low-trust society, it's a bad idea. If i were Indian or from an emmerging country, i wouldn't think this. To me, capitalism and the pursuit of individual wealth is the best vessel to reach a high-trust society (basically what marx said), and once we're there, we can shed id, we do not need it anymore. That also mean that, unlike Marx's Internationale, i do not believe each society can get there at the same time, and high-trust societies have to enforce immigration quotas from low-trust ones (to respond to your "no border" comment).

You missed out the point that UBI will just go to the landlords. Once the landlords see u getting a cheque they will up the rent accordingly. Hence taxpayers will be subsidising landlords.

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