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Comment by ziggyzecat | Hacker News Reader

just make it conditional: 21 hours of study and/or social work/field work per week.

- high school style tests, milestones and road maps to test study progress, good for citizen science but can be any subject, fugees start easy with the ABC

- social work including agriculture & farms, where the first year or two can count towards apprenticeship if combined with studies

solves low wages short-, mid-, long-term, increases buying power, creates jobs and tons of admin, org, bureaucracy work for those who dig it :)

make it enough to afford rent and healthy food and some culture per week. in Germany, that would be 1350 - 1500 per month, which is covered already, but the conditions are nonsense and lax.

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Conditional social benefits are always a nightmare in practice. Look at the rules to qualify for that high school style test or prove that you actually achieve the milestone.

Assume they will be implemented by the most incompetent of bureaucrats (eg. months to get an appointment, buggy Oracle software).

Assume they will be implemented by the most nightmarish of your political opponents. Look for instance on rules for identification for voters in the southern USA. In theory that makes sense! In practice it's cynically implemented to systematically prevent certain demographics from voting.

The main advantage of UBI in practice is that it's no questions asked. Anything else about it can be replicated by fiddling with tax and welfare bracket numbers.

I agree, but a proper model and structure can be created. And voting for the right people won't be done if the voters aren't properly involved in increasing brain power and participating in social work/life.

Maybe you should read the definition of Universal Basic Income first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income - although it's actually already contained in the name. The proposal is to have less or no bureaucratic hurdles before being able to receive it, and here you are proposing even more bureaucracy...

I know. The point is that for the biggest part of people receiving money without conditions, does not result in a favorable outcome for society, themselves and only a moderately good outcome for the economy

> does not result in a favorable outcome for society

That's your respectable opinion, but the truth is: we don't know!

You may be right, you may be wrong, but this is the crux of the discussion and you cannot swipe it off by stating an opinion as a fact.

Agreed. Thnks for pointing that out. I still didn't get around studying all those fallacies and how to argue logically. I should learn about one per day and find an example when the fallacy becomes a non-fallacy.

But isn't it a measurable factor? ... people get free stuff, people don't question their benefactor, people agree to rely on him, people become dependent beyond the extent of constructive codependence

That is a very bad idea, implementing this would result in a massive state apparatus that would be insanely expensive to run and most inefficient.

People down on their luck would have to go through months of tribulations to prove they have the right to not starve, losing time not actually trying to climb out of their hole.

Also the point of UBI is that it is unconditional (The U stands for Univeral). It is supposed to be a simpler, fairer welfare system that allows everyone to focus on improving their lives instead of trying to survive.

the state apparatus dealing with unemployment is already massive and it's resources can be reallocated. with hundreds of millions of refugees and immigrants from zones that will get fried by climate change, you really have no chance if you don't increase the efforts, capacity and variety of approaches of all state institutions.

What problem are you trying to solve with those conditions?

- increase of brain power

- smarter future voters

- increasing participation in productive and constructive society

- more voices and more discussion

- eliminating the bias and discrimination against people who receive basic income

- eliminating small scale opportunities to lazycheat

- eliminate the continued rise of the currently too easily abused right leaning parts of the population

- ...

it will take time, of course

Ok great. So every single minimum wage worker quits their job and decides to study for three hours per day for an hourly wage of over 2x the previous minimum.

Sounds to me like you've just created a massive labor shortage. What's next?

The same thing as any other labor shortage? Employers offer more money, and people who want that money apply for those jobs?

How is society supposed to function without an underclass of poor and unhealthy wage slaves?

that's exactly how! self-interest. being lazy is always up there as an option. some people button-mash that shit the minute they wake up. and not all of them are poor, unhappy, unhealthy. it's usually only when other people feel the need to remind them that they can press pause and the check the list of available commands to which they usually answer something like: "no shit, sherlock", that they suddenly feel inadequate and stressed.

Yeah! Who's gonna deliver my groceries?!

I recommend Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash ... tl;dr: guys with katanas and kids on skateboards with really cool tires and grappling hooks ^^

Yes, that’s a feature. But it’s also discussed in the context of AI creating a massive/total job shortage. The timing is the tricky part, as job shortage grows maybe it would even mean lower minimum wage.

i doubt that min wage workers will all quit, the extra money is what they need to live properly

Right now workers do those jobs, because if they don't, they will die or become destitute. If you change their incentive to be they can work an unpleasant job while rent and food is guaranteed, you're going to find that the marginal value of that 12 euros an hour has plummeted. It's not worth it to work a terrible minimum wage job if your basic needs are satisfied

it's still not enough to raise children, for example, or buy a car, or get more culture. you need that extra money and it will be easier doing that shitty job if you get enough time for variety and your bank account statement doesn't raise your stress levels.

This sounds like an absolute nightmare to implement. The point of UBI is to have a safety net so that you can spread your wings and pursue passion projects and ventures. It's not supposed to be a ball and chain you bear so that you can eat while tech billionaires do everything they can to price you out of the job market. Not everybody has daddy's money to spend while they work on their startup.

your passion projects become paid studies and the implementation can be your social / civic / field work. it's still a guaranteed safety net, except with a growing level of accountability.

not everybody has passion projects, not everybody who had youth when he couldn't handle it, has money or peace of mind to go back to school, and a UBI won't hold you accountable. some people need to learn/ relearn how to take responsibility for themselves and a low end job where they learn the retarded rules of the hoarder-capitalist "we-run-on-magic-math-money" economy obviously isn't constructive or productive. if it was, the right / alt right wouldn't grow their follower base.

but yes, the implementation will need a huge bunch of devs and admin people who are technical, capable and, "under different circumstances, wouldn't work for so much less money than they earned during their previous employments"

Not exactly universal as such.

rebrand it then

I’m going to study fascism instead of working.

you'll learn how it's just a tool for inferior men to abuse people in order to compensate for a very specific but acquirable lack of adaptivity to the real world, a growing world population and eventual colonization of space

So like communism?

nope. communism is when people do what must be done while criticizing each other for fun ... you know, like people who don't feel the need to pseudo-dominate. people rarely get to see communism in action.

what you know as communism is some early access pre-alpha where half the code is duck tape polished with spit.

there is a convention to ignore that communism never organized. it wouldn't have anyway. too many corrupt humans. it's too bad humans didn't learn in time about emotional and cognitive exploits, sabotage of bias and fallacies and pseudo-dominance. only because of that did so many good men die in pointless wars. 'member how the smartest scientist & engineers were all for communism back in the day? that's because they understood machines and wanted to build for eternity. then the magic-money guys, who always lose against honest competition, came around and established their pseudo-dominant financial hierarchies and threatened and scared people and now we have planned obsolescence, "the right to repair", influencers and make-up that will make you look mid-chemo 70 before you are 40. hoarder capitalism, fuck yeah

https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/16/basic-income-not-basic...

As long as it's not busy work I guess. I won't be surprised if those rules are poorly enforced though

I'd be okay with just giving people money, even if it's less than cost of living, since that will push some people back from the edge. It may be used as an excuse to stay in dying rural towns and vote against my freedom but hell that happens anyway...

> As long as it's not busy work I guess

Even digging holes in the ground and filling them up again is exercise.

So... for people who are overweight and out of shape (as measured by standardized fitness tests executed under the gaze of a well-trained A.I.), also require (say) two half-hour exercise sessions (also under the gaze of a well-trained A.I.).

I am begging you to say psych (or sike).

Okay okay. Let's stick to digging ditches and filling them up again. WithOUT robotic assistance. Some sort of character-building exercise that keeps the Protestant Work Ethic -itarians happy.

what? I was referring to this part:

>as measured by standardized fitness tests executed under the gaze of a well-trained A.I.

this is why humanities matter

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