UBI Is the Wrong Answer to the Right Problem | Hacker News Reader

UBI Is the Wrong Answer to the Right Problem

simontlbt.substack.com

26 pointssimontlbt17 comments

The article's central premise is based on a false assumption, which is that people taking UBI will be idle. There is no significant evidence to support that claim. The scant evidence we have so far on UBI is largely limited to relatively small numbers of people in poverty given small amounts of money insufficient to provide any opportunity for savings, and even that evidence is at best mixed. On the other hand, there are many people who receive an inheritance large enough that they never need to work again, yet the vast majority of those people are not idle but actively create new businesses and take on other projects or hobbies.

And the reason that our infrastructure is crumbling is not some social problem, nor some intrinsic "undervaluing of the future," but something simpler and more pragmatic: our taxation has not kept up with our necessary spending, particularly taxation of the wealthy as wealth has concentrated at the top. Everyone's talking about abundance as if it is something that is yet to come, but we've had rapidly increasing abundance for 50 years, as technology has made the individual worker more productive. And the vast majority of that increase in productivity has been turned into increased wealth for the top 10%. UBI would be the first reversal of that trend, requiring a massive tax on the productivity of AI and robotic infrastructure that in all likelihood will be 90% owned by the wealthiest top 10%. Naturally, they are concerned about that prospect, and so we see articles like this one.

> The article's central premise is based on a false assumption, which is that people taking UBI will be idle. There is no significant evidence to support that claim.

Absolutely true. Even meta-analyses of all UBI experiments to date - encompassing tens of thousands of adults - shows an increase in labour participation, not a decrease.

And if formal, capitalistic, profit-based jobs are no longer available, what barrier do we have against creating social jobs that need doing? Just because the Parasite Class cannot extract obscene amounts of wealth from those jobs doesn’t mean they don’t need doing. It just means there is no profit angle to have in doing them.

If I had no worries about my needs, I would love to work on open-source projects. Failing that, it would be ecosystem restoration or bioremediation. All jobs that can be free of government and capitalism, but which desperately needs bodies to yeet ant the issues at hand.

There is much work to be done in society that needs doing.

Some of it can be new jobs, and some of it can be done by making the existing jobs have less hours freeing people up to do more meaningful things.

Being less efficient is also a problem, because if majority becomes less efficient (lower productivity), the overall wealth and economic growth of that society are going to decline significantly.

We do have evidence that when money is not a problem, we become less efficient. For example, monopolies or state run companies.

Just the first result from google: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/11/3/657

Another problem with UBI is that, if we want for UBI to cover basic costs of living, these expenses are actually quite big as UBI essentially would need to cover things like rent, food and health services. Otherwise we will still have plenty of homeless people with UBI.

> The article's central premise is based on a false assumption, which is that people taking UBI will be idle. There is no significant evidence to support that claim.

You really think there would not be a massive increase in the number of coach potatoes, watching netflix and doomscrolling tiktok all day long? Where do they make such optimists? It's almost as if this very website has a strong selection bias, congregating people with higher than average drive, who would never, who just can't imagine not having it. And even if they won't be technically idle, you can bet your ass that the total supply of labor would drop like a rock, and many jobs that are generally beneficial to the society but not glamorous wouldn't be done. You also completely ignore the massive problem which is the shift in the society's collective psychology in regards to work, which the article did mention. Quote:

The problems are significant, however. First, all existing pilots are small in scale, temporary in duration, and limited to populations already experiencing poverty or precarity. None of them test the psychology of a society in which nobody is economically compelled to contribute. Temporary income relief and permanent unconditional income are fundamentally different phenomena — the first is a cushion, the second is a permanent reorientation of the relationship between individuals and economic necessity. The pilots tell us nothing useful about the second.

Currently we collectively derive personal worth from work etc, and the society applies significant pressure on individuals "incentivizing" them to work even if they can't have a dream job, increasing the aggregate amount of work done. We just don't know and can't really imagine what it's like to live in a world where you are entitled to money for existing, no strings attached, pretty much from cradle to grave. Imagine being a kid who grows up in such a world with no real responsibilities, playing vidya all day long, who knows that once he formally reaches adulthood, he can just continue doing nothing. The model of family life is falling apart as we speak, so why bother chasing it? Just lower your expectations and desires - and you are set for life.

>We just don't know and can't really imagine what it's like to live in a world where you are entitled to money for existing, no strings attached, pretty much from cradle to grave.

Sure we can. As I noted, wealthy people live in this world already. And we don't see all of them turning into couch potatoes once they have passive income equal to UBI. Sure, there's a human tendency to enjoy leisure. But there's also a human tendency to enjoy work. And a human tendency to project negative attributes onto others we don't know. ;-)

Exactly - when UBI is tried people tend to be busy.

The super rich are often idle and project that onto everyone else we should not take the idle richs word as gospel.

Poor understanding of UBI. It's a floor. A foundation. All income is earned on top of it. It does nothing to discourage work, unlike welfare that disappears with work. UBI is activating. It is empowering. People fund the work that's best for them, paid or unpaid. They start their own business. They go to school to learn something. They pursue volunteer work and caring for others.

Over and over again, the evidence shows that UBI is activating not demotivating. No one wants to do nothing. People want to feel like they are contributing to society in some way. And people definitely want to earn as much as they can to spend what they want to spend.

UBI is not the only thing we need to do. It is just a key thing we need to do because it makes other things easier to do. It's the bottom of Maslow's pyramid. It's money to buy boots with straps. It reduces poverty, insecurity, and inequality. That leads to less crime, better health, and more productivity. The spending of UBI creates jobs. It grows the economy due to people with lower incomes spending it mostly locally on local goods and services.

If you don't support UBI, you either don't understand it, refuse to study the mountain of evidence, or simply distrust others and/or want to control them.

UBI is the power to say no. It is power to the People. It is a redistribution of power. People will use that power in so many good ways you can't imagine and aren't giving them credit for.

UBI is the correct answer. It is not the only answer. But it is a very important one.

This is a knocking down a strawman, it’s not supposed to provide a good understanding of UBI but rather scare you that you’re going to be lonely, lazy, and helpless on it. A more nuanced article would provide counterpoints, however this is just promoting the authors opinion

We have no true idea what things will be like with widespread UBI. Current experiments show some good things only in tiny subsets of the economy. Anything can be priced high enough to be out of reach except to a few, and prices will certainly rise to consume as much of available income as possible. The control enabled by depending on direct government assistance in an era of intense surveillance will change many aspects of daily life and discourse. Perhaps the generations that grow up within it will adapt to not expect anything better.

Given the tone of the article, especially its second chapter, I am surprised not to read “Arbeit macht frei” (work sets you free)

Interestingly, this phrase associated with concentration camps, initially was used in programs implemented to combat mass unemployment in Germany.

This attacks the strawman of people living off of UBI alone and choosing not to work. But even with UBI, working affords you a lot more money and thus goods.

As the article eventually concedes, UBI is more of a safety net than a rejection of work. Work and UBI are not mutually exclusive.

> No one wants to do nothing. People want to feel like they are contributing to society in some way.

Speak for yourself. I want to do nothing and have no interest in contributing anything to society. If I won the lottery tomorrow I’d guarantee a net negative for society.

Yeah, for the first few months...

But I bet within less than a year you'd be doing art and coding projects, volunteer to a charity (because you are getting paid regardless!) or going back to school/self teaching yourself stuff.

The closest comparison I can give to this feeling is how teenagers manage to make awesome projects because they have the time and motivation to work on stuff, without worrying with the financial aspect of their lives.

This is terrific work. Thank you for writing and sharing it. It captures the unease I have felt about UBI. It describes the feeling of regret I get about the state of public works. I'm sure I'm going to keep coming back to this.

This resonates with me. I don't see how the underlying "money is exchanged for good and services" foundational concept of civilization as we know it goes away without drastic cultural changes that we're not ready for.

Yes. Initially it was conjectured that, when people have basic security, they often become more politically active, take risks (start businesses, organize, protest) or demand better services. But unfortunate that we have come to this conclusion on UBI/UBS.

Given the current state of affairs, the objective of UBI/UBS seems to be governments (aka representatives elected to office due to funding by those seeking serious ROI) and their political patrons to pacify agitated masses moving out of the workforce due to hyper-automation. At most, UBI plus clear net-zero work like digging and filling back holes in the ground.

Else, more and more useful enterprises are moving toward being handled by private players (political patrons), and governments stay out of it more and more. Not just public education, health, infra, but slowly, even defence and public security. And the roads are to be cleared for private enterprise to pick up because they are supposed to be more efficient at growth than governments. And roads cleared with much more than classical 'laissez faire'. Via policies that spur 'fast and efficient growth', subsidies in natural resource usage, favorable labor laws, tax holidays, and more.

Private players will try to grow, spread, takeover over earth as much as they can, with all the automation that can be used, on the other hand plucking the minimal needed labor from this residual workforce. At terms that are in line with "market demand-supply dynamics".

The remaining ones have will have lost the right (worse, even the will) to complain because they are well fed without needing to do work! It is expected they will not intrude into or complain about the subsidies given to those players running the show. Not complain about the reducing per-capita-resource restrictions they would be slowly cordoned/quarantined to.

They would be expected to patiently wait for development to continue and some of its fruits (mainly numbing entertainment like politics/sports/games/media) to be thrown to them. Occasionally get chances to participate in ceremonies to express gratitude to the generous govt-business society leaders for taking care of them. Otherwise fighting against each other to grab the limited fruits, never organize, continue being vulnerable to society bosses who prefer servile in-fighting masses.

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