Comment by cpursley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cpursley | Hacker News Reader

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Money and business moves to where it's most welcome for the same reason people move to neighborhoods with low rates of theft (after all, taxation and inflationary monetary policy is theft no matter which way it's painted).

The reason people can't find work now is due to the failures of central planning, not the lack of it. Communist and hard-socialist countries all have tried the basic income idea and failed. The only exceptions are where the basic income is funded through resources, not confiscation of wealth - and even this takes wise, benevolent leadership.

When you confiscate wealth to provide a basic income, you create a disincentive to create wealth and an incentive to not work in exchange for basic income. This creates a rapid increase in both, which backfires because you have more people to support with basic income and less revenue because business owners scale back.

It all sounds good in theory, but in practice...

Edit: Interesting on the downvotes without the explanations. Do any of you live in the real world?

> Communist and hard-socialist countries all have tried the basic income idea and failed.

I know of a few short lived experiments, but I'm not aware of any country that has implemented a basic income, let alone failed at it. Could you let me know where you're thinking of?

> It all sounds good in theory, but in practice...

... where has it failed in practice?

You're looking at the effect, and not the cause. What caused the global banking crisis?

1.) Cheap money via gov't Fed Policy (created the artificial boom) 2.) Government mandates in mortgage lending (caused a lot of people to buy homes when they weren't in a realistic position to do so)

You completely ignored their direct question. Which communist countries implemented basic income?

So sorry I didn't address all your points.

I need to get back to work so that others don't have to.

If you knew the answer, it would have taken you less time to type it than it would have to make yet another meaningless platitude.

I'll bite. What I mean is people were paid a basic wage to do very unproductive (even counter-productive) work. So I suppose that's a little different than getting a basic wage without working at all.

At least that's what my USSR-born wife explains.

Right, that's a completely different concept, with a completely different implementation.

I seem to have edited my post while you were answering a point I later took out because it didn't seem relevant to the main point (which is that I don't think anyone has introduced basic income yet).

However, I don't believe in your analysis of the banking crisis, either. You seem to have missed out a lot of other reasons. From wikipedia:

> In its "Declaration of the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy," dated 15 November 2008, leaders of the Group of 20 cited the following causes:

During a period of strong global growth, growing capital flows, and prolonged stability earlier this decade, market participants sought higher yields without an adequate appreciation of the risks and failed to exercise proper due diligence. At the same time, weak underwriting standards, unsound risk management practices, increasingly complex and opaque financial products, and consequent excessive leverage combined to create vulnerabilities in the system. Policy-makers, regulators and supervisors, in some advanced countries, did not adequately appreciate and address the risks building up in financial markets, keep pace with financial innovation, or take into account the systemic ramifications of domestic regulatory actions.

i.e. Though it was also a failure of other things, it was by large part a failure of corporate risk assessment and lack of regulation.

3) overleveraged banks with colossal principal-agent problems and insufficient transparency or supervision

You sir, are mistaken.

Communism didn't offer a basic income. People were paid for doing works at jobs. Which everyone had. The constituion of communist Poland even listed having a job as a citizens duty.

I suppose that's what I meant. A lot of people were paid to do very unproductive work.

The reason people can't find work now is due to the failures of central planning, not the lack of it.

How can you ignore globalization and automation? Even if you think those things have had no impact to date, they undoubtedly will in the future, right? Particularly the latter.

Also, keep in mind that nobody is proposing communism. Milton Friedman advocated a basic income.

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