Hacker News Reader

Comment by Slartie | Hacker News Reader

Yep, most wealth is ultimately dependent on some kind of ability to scrape off tiny bits of practical accomplishments of value achieved by large numbers of people. In some cases, such as your housing example, this is a very direct dependency. In other cases the dependency is indirect and less visible.

The smarter ones among the rich have realized this and are open for something like a universal basic income precisely for that reason: to protect their wealth and the position in the food chain this wealth affords them.

View on HN

UBI will never happen. I don’t understand why it’s even brought up anymore. Social security isn’t even solvent, health care is a disaster, and people still trumpet UBI like all of the enormous glaring funding holes don’t exist.

It’s embarrassing at this point. Give it up.

we just need to break the second law of thermodynamics, no big deal

And what's your solution to mass unemployment due to AI?

If you play this out, UBI or some near variant is inevitable.

Why are you correct even though the early Marxists (who posited that capitalism would inevitably lead to socialism) were wrong? We have had mass production for a hundred years without any hint of socialism.

And I would like you to be right, by the way. But why should I believe you?

Doesn’t most of the developed world already have various forms of socialism? The U.S. is an outlier here, which is due a number of factors unique to this country.

Fair, but as an American I’m still interested in this more limited question. Why were the early American Marxists wrong and why are the new Americans saying similar things right this time?

There will be a form of UBI, because of the need for it, eventually. It will probably never be a 'fair' system (there probly will still be 1000xUBI people) but it will be necessary to prevent a lot of problems.

Think of it this way. The percentage of the population that will not have enough skills, 'smartness' and or knowledge to serve the community in a profitable way, increases over time. Today the group includes mostly the very young, the elderly (which in a way already have a 'kind of UBI', but not the complete lifespan) and people with a severe illness. Tomorrow new groups of people will be included, like people who stopped going to school at 17,18yo or so, and so on.

Suppose society provides those people with only the very minimal money to survive and no entertainment, traveling, proper housing, life choices etc. In that case not only those people, but the society as a whole will suffer because of unrest, riots etc. At a certain point in time, UBI can easily paid for by the wealth that automation will bring. Today probably as well, but the pressure of unevenly spread wealth is still able to keep it from happening, rich people still need enough poor people to work for them directly (house/boat personnel) or indirectly (mine coffee, chocolate, soy, battery minerals, ...)

Why are you so sure UBI is the most efficient solution to those problems? Another solution is for the wealthy to let the poor live miserable lives and to use technology to oppress them. A protest can be put down with drones, robots, and chatbots.

OWS showed that you don't even need drones and robots.

I'd suggest we already have a some UBI, but in the form of education, health care, disaster relief, food stamps, and so on.

We have state supported pension plans in most developed countries, unemplyment insurance, these large welfare states with extensive public education, national health and so on, so while the means of production mostly haven't been socialized, the fruits often have, through taxation. Now, some of this existed before the Industrial Revolution -- I wasn't aware how much until I read Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation, which is a more important book now than ever, I humbly propose, but the scale is dwarfed by what we have now. And as Polanyi points out, we did get socialism as a response, as well as fascism, which was often btw called corporatism (as in the nation as a single body, not having to do with companies). Liberal democratic capitalism won out, for a while, and in large part because it became social democracy, or so goes a claim to which I subscribe. Without the social welfare aspects of modern democracy, the system would likely have broken politically.

> without any hint of socialism.

You don't seem to know your history.

The US was on track to enact UBI. The US was socialist directly after the great depression.

Some of the most successful capitalist societies (the Nordic countries) have socialist elements.

I do know that history actually. The UK went for it and we did not.

The US currently has over 100 million people over the age of 16 who are unemployed.

What point do you think you’re making about mass unemployment, exactly? It’s been here for half a decade already.

Now imagine 200 million unemployed people over the age of 16.

That’s mostly normal and fine though. For example my parents are retired and spouse takes care of our kid.

UBI money needs to come from somewhere. Hence it will and can never happen. Fake money helps nobody. There is no difference between getting 0, 1000 or 10000 fake dollars a month if they value of the dollar will go to zero

It isn't fake it is the wealth created by AI. Think of it like a national dividend.

This frustrates me so much. Where is the money coming from? The middle class _is_ the economy, if they all decide to say “fuck it, UBI is enough” or can’t get a job, who the hell is funding UBI? This is an enormous hole in the UBI discussion that’s just completely ignored.

Again, we can’t even keep social security solvent, which is basically UBI for old people. It won’t work, the math doesn’t math, and everyone who wants UBI to be a thing just completely ignores this fact.

So frustrating.

You don't appear to understand what money is.

Money is a claim on productivity.

In a world where both creation and consumption is by humans, the productivity needs to align with consumption.

Arguably, that is a century since that was the case, so we tax extra productive human beings in order to make sure that everybody can consume.

This trend need to be accelerated as productivity accelerates.

Ubi, negative tax, etc. There are many good ideas on how to fix it.

However,if this discussion annoys you, I would strongly recommend you to learn more about the subject as it is indicative that you have some holes in your knowledge.

"Where is the money coming from? "

Profitable companies. This is incredibly obvious. It is where dividends come from already.

You keep mentioning social security but it isn't comparable as it has a relatively low income cap on payroll taxes and raising this easily makes it solvent.

What is actually frustrating is the wealth of the richest 400 people in the US now equals 20% of GDP. In 1982 it was only 2%. THE MONEY IS THERE!

It’s not. It’s really not. I’m sure you’re familiar with people borrowing against their wealth to avoid taxes. That’s where this fictional money exists.

It isn't anymore fictional than stock dividends just allocated differently.

Wealthy people are wealthy because of their stock portfolios. If they liquidate that, everything collapses.

The money isn’t real, and I think you do understand that.

You don't seem to know what dividends are. Dividends are x dollars for every share you own that the company gives you that come from the company profits. As a worked example Larry Ellison owns 1.16 billion shares of Oracle. Oracle has paid a total of $1.50 per share in dividends so far in 2026. That is $1.74 billion of liquid cash flowing into Ellison's pocket while Oracle fires tens of thousands of people. Please stop talking if you don't understand what you are talking about.

You sincerely think I don’t know what dividends are, given the rest of this discussion? Honestly?

No because you keep insisting stocks aren't real money but dividend payments absolutely are.

All fiat is fiction. I was a bit glib in my other comment, but fundamentally there is only energy interactions, and there is no free energy.

GDP/hour can increase and HAS increased drastically.

GDP isn't real champ, try again.

Then please suggest a meaningful quantitative replacement, champ.

The money is just a gauge of how much food, housing, clothing, energy,... one person can consume versus another. Money is not absolute, it is relative x/y. Ultimately, the real stuff can be produced by machines operated by say 10 percent of the world population. Machines or robots or even AI can pay taxes, their owner hands over xx percent of the income produced by it to the government who gives it as eg ubi to people.

If AI really generates so much wealth UBI becomes much easier to justify and downright irrational to not implement.

Anyone who thinks wealthy people willing part with any amount of wealth en masse hasn't studied history.

One of the reason democracy has tended to be a stable form of government is that it naturally finds a balance between the haves and the have nots -- the boundary where the haves are comfortable parting with that much to live in a stable society where they keep the remainder, and the have nots are afforded some amount of social services for their most accute needs.

That's all predicated on a "or riots / internal military action" alternative though.

We've lived through a pretty stable post-WWII economic bargain period, and historically there's not a ton of certainty that continues through distributive renegotiations, which tend to be bloody.

If AI makes GDP per hour of labor 2 times higher than that makes it very easy to provide UBI.

UBI is an allocation question, not a total question.

If GDP 2x's and labor becomes less scarce (and therefore less powerful), it's as possible that all those gains go to capital as anything else.

It is both, because people fight over allocation a LOT less if there is more to go around.

And yet current state ~5-13% of Americans are food insecure, despite GDP being large enough to support sufficient food for all.

In aggregate, capital is not particularly humane, left to its own devices.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com