Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

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Not everyone is good at coming up with a productive purpose on their own. A job lets those people adopt a purpose that gives their life some structure and meaning. Without it, people often waste away... all the people who die shortly after retirement, as an example. Add money into the mix, and that money can fund a drug habit as an escape for a lack of purpose. Drug overdoses spiked when the covid checks were sent out. Giving someone without purpose, and a drug habit, a bunch of free money can kill them.

I'm not opposed to the idea of UBI, I think we should at least set up the framework, so we can turn the dial up or down, depending on how things go with AI and robotics. The issues mentioned are some downsides I do think about and why I don't think it's as straightforward as "give everyone money and they'll start doing art."

I think universal healthcare alone would let a lot of people choose the job they want, instead of the job they feel they need.

I'm opposed to the idea of UBI entirely. I think we should take care of the poor and needy, but UBI, imo, isn't the way to get there. There are infinite jobs out there, the problem is paying for them. Go plant trees, build housing, teach children. If money happened that people could do whatever things and get paid for it, would be a better solution than free money from the sky for nothing.

I'd only really entertain the idea if these AI optimists are correct about AI and robots doing literally everything. I assume they are wrong, but having a system in place before it becomes a crisis seems wise. That's why I like the idea of being able to turn it up or down. Start with it way down, basically off (during this period, maybe the funds collected go toward shoring up social security). If things get bad, turn it up, and if the market starts to adjust and new types of jobs are created, turn it down again... so it can serve the purpose of bridging the crisis, rather than having congress issue checks randomly like we say 5 years ago.

To your point, how funds get distributed could be up for debate. Maybe instead of sending them to everyone, some kind of productive work that benefits society is required, and the fund would provide a way to get paid for work that normally pays little to nothing. The problem with this, is that the administration of such a program is expensive, error-prone, and full of bureaucracy, just like most other welfare programs. I'd like to think something like UBI would replace most of the other programs, to dramatically cut administration overhead for the countless programs that exist today.

Administration overhead is people having jobs and coworkers and interacting with other people. If the point is to give people jobs, why would we want to get rid of jobs?

All those jobs create the bureaucracy that makes it harder for people to get access, lead to fights over who "deserves" what, and may create more problems than they solve.

There’s always Universal Basic Capital (owning stuff that makes more stuff) and you turn it up or down by allocating or deallocating stuff to making more stuff that makes stuff.

You utterly missed the possibility that if everyone had their basic needs covered, people just might go out and plant trees, teach, and build housing with their free time. Because people already do all those things as volunteers. Imagine how much more it could happen it people did not have to go burn all their energy working, sometimes two jobs, just to get food and pay rent.

They might, but my read on human psychology over civilization is that there needs to be a system in place to incentivize it. Fortunately I'm not in charge of anything, all I can do is blather about things on the Internet.

UBI doesn’t mean a money-less society; it just means you won’t just die or go into debt if you lose your job. I imagine most jobs would still exist and continue providing the same incentives for those who want to pursue them.

A lot of people will want to do the same thing. People generally won’t line up for the hard, dirty, and thankless jobs when working for free.

There are some people that will do hazmat cleanup for the love of the game, but probably not enough, for example.

> I think we should take care of the poor and needy, but UBI, imo, isn't the way to get there.

UBI is a better way to accomplish that! The alternative, and what we currently do, is to means test people to determine if they are worthy of getting assistance. The problem with that is:

1. someone has to do the means testing, so you have to run an expensive bureaucracy to administer that testing

2. people might be needy in different ways, so you create multiple of these bureaucratic programs to cater to different types of need

3. now, in order to get help, people have to navigate multiple bureaucratic programs to prove their need. This ends up missing people who need help the most

Think of UBI like a tax credit for people who work and an assistance program for people who are unable to prove their need -- all wrapped into a single efficient program with minimal administrative overhead and minimal paperwork.

Yes but the bureaucracy is the point. It gives people jobs and a mission in life and with AI to help, it doesn't have to suck. With UBI you end up reinventing government to decide what to do anyway. Should we build that dam or that bridge? Who gets to decide? It all comes down to conflict resolution.

Yes, there are plenty of government functions that still need to be done other than means testing the unfortunate. Benefit programs are a tiny part of what our government does... and don't really have anything to do with public works programs, which we still obviously would need.

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