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Hello BTC community!

I am a member of the German Pirate Party and am excited about their promotion of the idea of a Basic income guarantee.
You can read about it here, among other places: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee

The idea is that:
1) People are producing more than they need, and with the further development of technology even less people will be needed to produce even more. Since less people will be working to produce, society as a whole would earn less, and therefore the population will not be able to afford to purchase all the goods being produced, eventually leading to bigger and bigger problems.
2) To overcome that, everyone is given a certain sum by the state every month that should provide for the basic amenities of life. Luxury goods will be available to those who can earn more money in the usual way, thus continuing to encourage private initiative.
3) Since the basic amenities will be covered, people will be free to pursue activities not directly related to their survival - like coding for Bitcoin ;)
4) Financing for this whole venture would be obtained by taxes on products purchased and by abolition of unemployment subsidies (among other methods)

Now, this is definitely a big state solution and I suppose that the multi-headed libertarian hydra on this forum will not like it, but I am ready to defend it :)

Some more arguments already for your critique: the unemployment subsidies + underlying bureaucracy in Germany can be redistributed among the 80 million Germans at the rate of about 12.5k EUR per year. So 1000k EUR of basic income guarantee per month is realistic. This can be further expanded with several different approaches to taxation.

So yeah, I'm curious to see what the community thinks about it.
Thanks for reading,

M

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 - http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/17199295201


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1/It reduces or eliminates incentive to work
2/It diverts money from investment to consumption, reducing long term capital accumulation
3/There are no guarantees in nature, the subsistence of life does not produce itself. Man must adjust himself to the market not the other way around.

That happens now, with welfare.

What a great quote.

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/19856013.jpg

Interventionism never works. I would prefer to not receive any 'free' money from the government in return for zero taxation.

I'm German too, and I actually was at the Grundeinkommenskongress in Munich yesterday (briefly only though). My view on it is divided.

I welcome it in a very pragmatic sense for drastically reducing bureaucracy of our social system (only in theory though... we're in Germany after all  ::)). I furthermore welcome the idea of eliminating existential fears, which I'm confident will create a better and more human standard of living with more care and happiness, and I do believe (unlike most libertarians) that a society with insufficient equality can not realize its full potential.

My main issue with it then is that most models require the "big state" solution which may become corrupt over time (see GEMA - what a great idea in its beginning, democratic and all, but look what it has become  >:(). Unconditional my ass, more and more conditions *will* sneak in through the back door, just watch.

So I'm looking for other ways to achieve something similar to a basic income guarantee. The best would be when people can issue their money themselves (think Ripple etc). Some friends and me, we're working on the concept of some kind of network economy.

About automation and technological unemployment, most libertarians will argue that your point here is a Luddite fallacy (http://duckduckgo.com/?q=luddite+fallacy), and I agree to a degree. New technology opens more possibilities, creates more desires and demand for those possibilities, and thus creates new jobs. For example, we software developers are in huge demand right now in order to achieve this automated society, and we will be the working class of the 21st century. They're already trying to streamline our productivity into industrialization-like schemes with all those agile/scrum/kanban (Toyota!) methodologies. The problem with technology is rather always structural. People lose old obsolete jobs and cannot learn new things fast enough, hence these phases of recession. In 200 years, everyone will want their own spaceship, then soon after everybody will actually *need* their own spaceship in order to be able to get a job at all somewhere in our solar system. And you'll be there then demanding an unconditional spaceship for everyone. In 500 years, maybe there'll be interstellar travel, and the new working class will be, I don't know, maybe space-time curvature architects.

Make sure your plan details what happens to people who refuse (rape, murder and imprisonment generally get decent compliance rates). And don't forget to budget for that too, institutionalized rape costs a lot even if you do it in a bare concrete room and serve animal food with it.

I think crowd funding is not reliable - if you are going to support a whole population, you need a strict and reliable way to redistribute the money.

Hah, thanks for the links. I'd look into that, but it is a bit different in its concept, as it penalizes saving, which I am definitely not against.

1) the incentive is still there - you want a bigger house, a nicer car and the opportunity to vacation in Maiorca? Get a job and make more money.
2) The Vienna school will disagree with you; they'd claim that you need to encourage consumption and investment comes only when you create that consumption need
3) The argument whether something is "natural" strikes me as bizarre. Society is not natural by definition, on the contrary, by creating the social contract it defies the violence inherent in nature in order to ensure a happier life for people. The market is a tool, not a living being, and as a tool it can be modified when need be.


Danke für den langen Post :)
For conditions being added over time - if you have a transparent state mechanism and popular participation through technologies (another of the Pirates' goals), chances are this will not happen. A bit idealistic, but hey, new technologies are a game changer, right?
I would be interested in looking into your concept if you want to share some info on that.
One thing that the Luddites did not reckon is the fact that Earth resources are close to being exhausted. If we continue to develop technologically, there might not be enough rare earth metals to build all those shiny spaceships. Even disregarding that, the BIG system does not only focus on consumption, but rather on the freedom of an individual to pursue their goals without fear of starving to death. But that is the part you agree with, so I will not argue further.

Now to a practical concern of mine:
One thing which I acknowledge as a problem is the inflationary pressure on prices. If everyone suddenly got 1000 EUR richer, the rent for flats would increase accordingly, as well as goods prices. So then you either have to have the state regulate such things (not a good idea?) or somehow circumvent that. I'm still looking for a practical way to do that, suggestions are welcome ;)

People who refuse what? To take the money? Then they are free to not do it, and it can be donated to needy stand-up comedians on the Bitcoin Forum ;)
Or perhaps you are talking about people who refuse to pay taxes - then they are free to move to another country, of course. One that has ghettos, higher infant mortality and low societal stability because of the income inequality.

My tought is you'll create a lazy nation with way too much free time on its hands and no incentive to move forward.
Most people will not go to school anymore and the nation will split in a learned upper class doing all the work and an unlearned lower class that will play computer games all day long.
It's a great way of ruining a perfectly good country.

I personally think a basic income is the wrong way to go.

I see only 2 Ends to this:

1. Prices adapt to the higher income to a level where the basic income is just enough not to starve.

2. The lazy nation argument.

This is IMO the wrong direction to handle the problem.

Making Germany more attractive for low income jobs would be way to handle unemployment problems in the long term.

For example:

The company I work for is currently shutting down its complete production in Germany an reallocating it to Hungary, Romania, Mexico and China (don't worry I work in development so I'm not affected, ...yet).

Our assembly workers earn 1.400 to 2.200 € a month, you see this is only slight more than the proposed basic income. If the state would have used the money it now pays all this workers for their current unemployment instead to make production in Germany more attractive, these people would still have a job and therefore paying taxes. A way I could think of would to pay companies a bonus or a tax reduction for newly created jobs (a way to prove this is really a new job that wasn't there before must still be thought of).

Kind Regards

+1

What you describe is basically welfare. And it's a demonstrably horrible idea. No debate necessary.

There is only one basic income guarantee.... work.

Get off your ass and trade your time, blood, sweat, and tears for food, shelter, and clothing.

Otherwise you die, and rightfully so, unless you lived a life of charity and good will that allows you to be helped voluntarily by others of like minds.

No one has a right to life without doing whats necessary for survival.

I can think of many examples... take someone that relies on the state stealing my labor transfer under penalty of death should we resist this theft, in order to survive.

Society tells us that MY money is not as important as THEIR life, and they agree... right up to and until the time where someone elses life is more important that their ability to survive and thrive.

is a bad idea because of 2 main very bad consequences

1. human population, like other species, is multiplying as much as possible depending on resources. Give a basic income for each person and you will see overpopulation until consumption reach the level of production helped by technology. After that upgrade technology or produce even more if possible. If the resources are enough for greater number of people and you have no problem there, pollution is a fact and is related to that increased number, affecting all citizens.

2. stupid people will make more children easier. idiocracy in making.

So what happens when you are unable to do work that pays enough to survive?

you become a burglar and rob people until someone puts you out of your misery with his hunting rifle. ancap takes care of its own  :D

Sounds a bit simplistic to me. You'll have people who want to earn for the sake of earning - the upper capitalist class, you'll have people who earn to get some luxury in their life, which is more or less the middle, and of course you'll have people slacking off. But at least they won't be selling drugs, prostituting themselves and stealing care stereos to get by, since they will have the survival basics covered. Of course, crime will still be an issue, just not out of need, but out of greed. That won't change, ever :)


If you hold a statement to be unarguable, then I won't argue with you. However, be careful - thinking in dogmatic terms and not questioning ideas leads down a very dark road.


What would happen if there is no work for you at the moment, and you get laid off because of market fluctuations closing down your place of work? Would you still think you deserve to starve? I can twist the argument in another way. Say that for some reason I can't get a job at the moment and my landlord is knocking on the door. If there is no social net to help me, I would break the law to make money. I would just be doing it to survive.
Doesn't make me a very productive member of society, does it? And anyway, we have to be pragmatic - many people, even in developed countries, are kept from realizing their potential because they have to stick to low-paying jobs to support their families. If they had the freedom to pursue higher education or their true interests, then we might end up with a valuable piece of art, or a new book, or the code for a great alternative online currency.


For the lazy nation argument, I'm not sure that that holds. People will still have the incentive to earn, since perceived value is not absolute, but relative. Low-income jobs will continue to decline in the future no matter what we do. And as for keeping companies here, with BIG you could actually afford to pay less, since people would have basics covered.

Your comment on the prices is regrettably true and the biggest problem I can see with BIG.

Very true! Less educated (not stupid) people tend to have much more children! If you give people the opportunity to learn and develop, then you see populations decrease. People in low-income jobs and crime-ridden areas do not tend to get this opportunity nowadays.

I live in an area with very poor populations in terms of money, but rich in terms of heritage, culture, resources, and morality and work ethic.

If you need fruit, you harvest from the orchard. If you need veggies, you harvest from the garden. If you need meat, you harvest through hunting or livestock slaughtering. If you need anything else, you process your harvests into usable materials for trade and barter or monetary sales.

In other words, you produce or you die.

By being employed by someone else, you are relying on that someone else for your survival. It comes down to personal responsibility. Youmade the choice. Live (or die) with it.

It is my belief that anyone making the claim they cant survive hasnt done whats required TO survive in the first place, and they should die, unless someone else VOLUNTARILY helps them. We are no different than an insect, mammal, or fish in this regard. We just THINK we are.

It is my belief that people are being intellectually dishonest about this, especially when they claim poverty through no fault of their own while trying to pick the pockets of the rest of us, all after previously spending money on cell phones, cosmetics, hdtvs, games, consoles, computer, fast food, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, fancy clothes, gambling, and/or thousands of other useless items or services that do nothing to help them survive. They do not deserve ANY of my time, blood, sweat, and tears when they have done absolutely nothing to help themselves first.

Try breaking into a house in a wheelchair.  :o

http://joinutopia.org/ - very early stage  ;)


Well, for spaceships, there'll be but enough rare moon metals and rare asteroid metals then. Plus, recycling technologies will be optimized. We'd probably not need our cars anymore.


Valid concern that we unfortunately cannot test empirically. What we do know is that technological progress in a sufficiently functioning economy obviously does increase over-all wealth and thus mass purchasing power. The basic income might achieve a similar effect if it actually can raise the standard of living, as some hope it will, liberating resources to work on more interesting projects (like crypto-currencies), and opening new possibilities and markets by that.

You probably won't need to torture the recipients.

So it'll be like, "Please leave your house and other assets behind or we'll fight you to the death." or more like "Sorry you missed your chance to leave, locking/killing you to proceed immediately."

But don't you know that there is not enough room for everyone to have a personal (even communal) orchard?
Or that there is not enough game in the woods to feed humanity for one week?
Or that people started settling in cities where there are no orchards thousands of years ago?
Or that there would be no computers or internet if everyone lived only off their land?
And the part that produces all these nice technology for you is driven by cities with workers.
And the socio economic environment in cities is completely different from 'living off the land' and people can realy be dependant on someone providing work or even welfare.

Really?

Then why am I paying for them under penalty of death and land confiscation should I resist?


Remember where those basics are coming from?

The only people allowing the man to produce for 1000 are the 1000 who chose to buy from him. Sounds like an agreement to me.

You can sell quality all day long if there are buyers.

Show me your sources for these claims that there is not enough land for every community to have land to farm and raise livestock (with a communal orchard).

You are speaking about personal choice and personal responsibility. Go take a look at available land. Its plentiful.

A Man grows up and sets out to scratch and dig an existence out of this earth. Those who do this survive and thrive. Those who expect others to do it barely survives, certainly doesnt thrive, and usually dies... and rightfully so.

I have no problem with anyone wanting to live in a city, but dont expect us hard working, critical thinking, rugged individualists who dont even live near it nor benefit from it to pay for it.

Thanks for the increased support of and for my position.

Good land is pretty scarse.
It would barely be enough to give everyone a place to grow their own food, so no space for any other development.
According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arable_land (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arable_land)) there is about 48,836,976 km² of land where you can grow food on.
That means that there is 48836976 km² / 7000000000 people which comes down to 0.007 km² per person.
That is a patch of about 83 by 83 meters per person.
That's barely enough to support that and it's getting less.
So if you know a way for everyone to live off of 83 by 83 meters then please enlight us.
And i bet your own yard is bigger than this.

Also, if everyone would have to live off the land then there would be noone to create the technology you use right now.
Or did you think that newton or einstein farmed their own food?
Or that the guys at intel go out sowing their crops in the afternoon?

So it seems you are a bit misguided as to the real situation in the world and just blabber away from your priviledged position...

Lol, your benefiting from it by using the internet and using a computer.
And cars and tractors etc.
All that would not have existed if it worked like you say.
So please shut off your computer and cancel your internet and your mobile because you can't have those things if everyone lived like you imagine they should.

TL;DR - Nice strawman. To bad its not accurate when viewed within the context of REALITY.

There is exponentially more suitable land available for sale than buyers for land, otherwise there would be waiting lists for land. At any time I can go buy any amount of land I wish. Right now I can buy a rural AZ building lot for $2650, a $800k city townhouse, or a ranch for $18 million ... so long as I have WORKED and EARNED what is required to obtain it.

Quite obviously, many choose the stack-em and pack-em housing of our population centers. Great. For them. Let them stand on their own.

...but you dont want to work to earn anything, do you?

You want to deflect blame from yourself onto those of us who planned, prepared, and didnt waste our money of lifes frivolities, dont you?

Why else would there be the vitreole of accusing me of being from a "privilaged position"?

Privilaged position .... unreal.

Let me ask you a question ... do you have cell phones, vehicles, hdtvs, cable, internet, hobbies, a woman/man, eat out alot, games, consoles, computers, devices, or anything else you dont need to survive?

I had few of those before I WORKED and EARNED my property.

I didnt eat out. I made meals at home and made my work lunches.

I drank mostly water instead of costy premade beverages, except for special occasions and meals.

I worked multiple jobs and slept in between them.

I rolled my own cigarettes instead of buying them.

I reloaded my firearms casings and shells instead of buying new.

I preserved food.

I grew a small box garden in the back yard of the house I rented a room out of, then on the roof of the apartment building I rented before buying the property. Saved money and was fun.

I didnt waste money by laying in bars or clubs.

I didnt abuse drugs or alchohol.

I didnt "cruise around" wasting valuable production/sleep/eating time and gasoline costs.

I didnt go on vacation, except deer hunting, which decreases my external food dependencies and food costs, as well as being fun.

If you want land, go get it. EARN it and its yours.... earn your privilege.

I benefit from the MONEY I PAY for the PRIVATE products and services, NOT the PUBLIC money stolen from me for the lazy and weak through proxy, under penalty of death should I resist the theft. It's called a contract. Same goes for my telephone service, cars, trucks, tractors, computers, etc.

Stop listening to the propaganda.

Your water and sewage payments pay for water and sewage infrastructure.

Your electric bill pays for electric grid infrastructure.

Your cable bill pays for tv, internet, and phone infrastructure.

Gas tax pays for roads. I get to select when I want to help improve thge roads by my choice to buy gas.

You pay for the things you need many times over.

This makes no sense. If society produces more, why would society earn less?

Aren't you the Global Warming denier? Anyway, your theories are a few cards short of a full deck. From your point of view, it all works the way you see it. In truth, the dynamics work a little bit differently. Assuming everyone was equal in ability, knowledge and tools, it still doesn't work the way you think it does.

Each additional person on this planet requires more land than the last.

Think about that. Think very hard about that.

Each parcel of land on this planet has a maximum productivity level. Those parcels with the most potential productivity typically get used first. The next parcel of land needs to be slightly larger than the last to equal the productivity of the last. And so on. True, you can be silly and point to specific examples, but that hardly changes the scenario in aggregate. Anyway, after you confessed your views on Global Warming, I realized you don't look at facts, but rather propaganda which fits how you think the world should operate. Nature doesn't need to agree with your ideology, nor does it.

I will not deny there may come a time that land will be to expensive to own, but there will always be a need to harvest its resources. I consider myself an early adopter in this regard.

I do not deny global warming. I deny Man having anything at all to do with it. If I have ever spoken differently it was by mistake.

The earth has had constant temp and co2 fluctuations since its beginning, and certainly so before humans ever existed, at much higher rates and degrees than exist now. That is science. That is fact.

this

Bureaucracy is growing like cancer in Germany and is already suffocating the country. Like many things the welfare system is just too bureaucratic. There does not have to be a difference in the financial result for anyone compared to the current situation, basic income would just make things much easier and probably also have some positive psychological side effects.

Of course there needs to be something (majority vote?? ??) to keep the basic income from ever increasing.

In case you think I am exaggerating: I took this picture last Saturday evening.
http://bitcoinx.com/pics/bikes.jpg

Receiving money doing nothing??  Sure, what's not to like?    :D

Actually I've been doing it for some time now.  I use something amazing:  it's called "shares" or "stocks".  Basically it's a part of a company and when you have some, you can get a portion of the profit of the company, even if you don't actually work in this company.  Ain't that cool?  8)

Go buy some and join the club!

Dude, again, turn off your computer and go away because you're using the output of these people that you don't want.
You can't have it both ways and be serious about it.
Nothing you say will NOT make you look as an incredible hypocrite with double standards.
Go live in your farm with your orchad but stay the hell away from modern society because you have denounced thousands of years of development.
Show some character.

I once purchased a 99 cent zine at an "anarchist" cafe in north carolina that was entitled "Peer to Peer Theory" (something like that), by a fellow named Michel Bauwens: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Bauwens .

I remember being fairly interested as I read through its insights, which generally mirrored many insights discussed on this forum, until I got to the end where a similar "subsistence wage" was proposed as a way to finance a new post-corporate paradigm of open source programming and development. For all the problems America has, its interesting that the mainland European intelligentsia is still hung up on these old statist vocabularies and ideals that continue to plague their economies and policymaking. What more evidence does one need, what more of an argument as to the power and impetus of purely free market conformity to Nature, and to the artificiality and systemic weakness of central planning, than the incredible success of Bitcoin so far, amidst aborted alternatives, all semi-statist and laughably ill conceived?

The European academic elite need to extinguish their queasiness for the notion of natural, spontaneous order, action through inaction, wu-wei, and all the other articulations of this fundamental principle. I think it may reduce to a general fear of the ethical foundations for such a system, where actors achieve harmony by helping themselves. But really this is not the case. Any proper understanding of modern day hacker/open-source development culture, for example, will show that these people don't act directly for their own benefit, or for the benefit of others, but rather for the fulfillment of a creative objective, of which all actors benefit indirectly.

It seems like a lots of money, who is going pay for it? (taxpayers? banks? you tax bad language? you print money? ...)
Libertarian hydra still approves it - as a replacement of the current overly complicated social system.

To quote myself from the OP:  "the unemployment subsidies + underlying bureaucracy in Germany can be redistributed among the 80 million Germans at the rate of about 12.5k EUR per year. So 1000k EUR of basic income guarantee per month is realistic. This can be further expanded with several different approaches to taxation." I have to declare that I lifted this quote from a politician's mouth, so its veracity is not certain. But I'm sure there's at least a grain of truth in it.
Other ideas are to have a larger income tax, or a larger VAT tax.

Don't forget that we are working as hard as we can to continue desertification and minimize that arable land area.  Go Monsanto!

1/ It reduces the incentive to work for food, medical bills and what the bureaucracy deem the economy can already easily provide for all. It doesn't reduce the incentive to work to be better than one's peers, which is also a huge human motivator. There was a study somewhere that found that most of the people against minimum wage increases are those who are close to the minimum wage, where an increase would actually mean they're on the minimum wage themselves. Silly ideas of social status and position among peers.

2/ Yes it does, but this decision is made with the intention to raise the standard of living on the very bottom. It's a social decision, really, at the expense of utilizing important resources like food and healthcare now instead of saving them for later.

3/ Do you refer to the possibility of drought in this statement? That is, natural disasters might mean there isn't enough food to go around anyway, so no many how much money people are given for free, they'll never be able to buy it? I'm sure there could be clauses to cater for this (some national emergency storage or whatever)


Incentive to move forward where? Where are we "going" so adventurously as a species that it requires us to have no free time? If a society can completely feed, shelter, clothe, commune and entertain itself easily, as well as allow the opportunity for outstanding individual achievements and recognition, what more is there to ask for? Isn't that the win scenario for civilization?

What makes you think people won't go to school any more? Even if they don't, what does it matter? If there is no pressing need as a society to produce unnecessary farmers or doctors or manufacturers, why waste the energy?

The film Idiocracy was not about people not going to school, it was about smart people not having children and dumb people having them because the focus of society was on money, not silly things like going to Mars or Alpha Centauri.


By saying "Since less people will be working to produce, society as a whole would earn less", I think he meant "more people will be on zero income vs some income", not that the total amount earned by society is less.

To elaborate, if there are only 50 possible jobs to sustainably produce everything imaginable that 100 people need every year, what will the 50 unemployed people do to earn those things off the ones working? Innovation is really quite difficult, as is leadership in business, and people *like* working 5 days a week. If there's nothing that the 50 employed want from the unemployed, the unemployed will have a most common choice of taking by force or starving. He's proposing an agreement within society to force upon itself the total distribution of certain things, providing they are plentiful anyway. Getting everyone to work half the time would also do the job, if you can convince people already with the jobs to sit around and not work for more than half the week. If they insist on working more, then those people who aren't good at innovating or leading or stealing will starve, and each society can make it's own choices on whether they're fine with that or not.

As for the actual OP; We're doomed by the lack of phosphorus, as far I know, to continue this massive ramp up of population on easy food. If technology can keep it going, and population itself can be forced onto a globally sustainable level somehow (it will anyway, I suppose), I think this is easily achievable. Australia is actually pretty close to this right now. The only difference is here you can't get welfare unless you're actively seeking employment. It's barely enough to survive on, though, so either not enough is being produced (it is), or the culture's sentiment isn't enough to go the next step, which is huge barrier.

I think basic income guarantee is a must for all societies in the future. Imagine if all of our production/research is handled by robots, and even the maintenance of the robots are handled by other robots. Basically imagine there will be zero need for human labor in the society, how would humans enjoy the fruit of these advance of technology? You would need some kind of basic income guarantee, otherwise everyone would be unemployed and starve.

People would starve because the robots were keeping all the food for themselves? What would they do with it? Or because the starving people wouldn't command the robots to make food? Or because the robots would rebel? In this unrealistic scenario, what would you need a basic income for? Why would the robots even want money in exchange for the food they make? What would they do with it?

Again, the Luddite fallacy. There'll always be things that humans can do better than machines. Even if robots build other robots, do you want to let them decide what we want, where we would want to be heading to as a human race? So there'll still be high demand for people who can do the meta-programming necessary to make robots building robots do what would be in our best interest.

Also, again, market economy and automated society are not at all incompatible. No central planning to collect and distribute basic income needed. In a reasonably functioning economy, things will become ridiculously cheap in such a scenario, so you probably can restrict your work time to merely a few hours a month if you want to.

Production, and even a large amount of maintenance, can be handled by robots. Not research. There are a great many jobs, even labor-intensive ones, which require a degree of judgment well beyond the capability of anything short of AI. Until we get at least human-level AI, there will still need to be humans in the decision loop, if only to answer the question, "Where do I put this?"

If all jobs that require repetitive, dangerous, or distasteful labor are automated, there will be no need for human laborers to do those jobs, but there will be plenty of other jobs to do... if nothing else, it frees people up for artistic endeavors. Remember that farming is one of those industries which has always been at the forefront of technology, and would therefor be heavily automated. Food would be cheap, plentiful, and may never touch a human hand until you pick it up. Starvation would be low on the list of worries. All a basic income guarantee would do is subsidize the lazy at the cost of the creative.

This is silly.  Even in such a society where robots can produce all wealth, a basic income would make no sense since everything would be basically free.

Also, if you think such a basic income would make sense in such a society (and it wouldn't), why would you like to create one in the current society, where robots do obviously not produce all wealth??

I wrote in an other thread that even in a post-scarcity, robot driven economy, a basic income would not solve anything because people would buy and sell their "income right".

I was wrong.

Now that I think about it, a post-scarcity economy is possible if and only if robots are capable of producing themselves, so that robots can own to everyone.  Post-scarcity economy must also mean that there is no scarcity of whatever provides post-scarcity, i.e. robots.  A bit like what we are starting to see with 3D-printers.

But when this happens, price of everything will drop like a rock and your idea of a basic income is just futile.

Well, I have to say it would be a lot better then our current welfare system. Since people would spend "their" money better then the goverment. So no need for public Operas, culture houses, kindergardens, hospitals, school etc.

My main concern would be how high the basic income would be, and how to stop it from increasing too much.

Right now, we could reduce our taxes by half, from 60-70% to 35% and still give every single citizen, including childrens. 100 000 NOK (17500$) a year. People who live from social support gets 85 000 now.

We actualy have a party here in Norway proposing the idea, but very small about 4-5% off the votes.

The only way I would find a minimum income even partially workable is if the minimum was paid to everyone, working or not.  And here's why:

Most people (at least in the US) start out their working life at minimum wage jobs.  You know, scooping ice cream or something.  Minimum wage in Oregon, for example, even full time, would only net $1,412.66/month.  1,000 Euros is currently worth $1,310 USD, so we'll go with that.  So, a person new to the workforce can work a full time, 40 hour work week and only be paid an additional $102/month?  Not worth it, so they elect to just not work at all.  And they live their entire life not working, because the increased $102/month isn't worth spending so much time in the workplace.

So, this minimum income of $1,310/month must be paid to everyone in order to at least partially uphold the incentive to work in the first place.  Even still, the incentive to work for wants is much lower than the incentive to work for needs, so society would end up with fewer workers.  Especially on the lower-end of the payscale, where the added benefit is smaller as a percentage of overall income than at the higher-end of the payscale.

I can definitely see the case for a minimum income far into the future, when we truly do have very little need for non-specialized workers.  When retail stores are as automated as a vending machine, farms can farm themselves, cars are produced with hardly any human labor involved and drive themselves autonomously, and packages are delivered to and from your residence without human involvement.  I can see all of this being technologically viable in the future, and all of it puts tens of millions of workers out of a job.

You could argue that those people need to better themselves to survive, but I think the expectations for betterment and innovation can only go so far.  The world would only need so many robot programmers.  But, I think we are still far from achieving such an autonomous society, so I think Germany is trying this too soon.

Another problem is, once the majority begins taking money from the minority, when does it stop?  If the majority of a society is living off this minimum income, why not vote to increase it?  Etc, etc.

You have misunderstood, in this scenario he would get the basic income + what he earns by working, netting 1310$ + 1412$ = 2722 $ a month. Minus a little taxes on the earned 1412 $ money. So no matter what, working always is benefactory.

On paper, yes.

Thing is:  I very much doubt this basic income would really replace the current welfare.  First they say it will, but soon they'll add exceptions.  For instance, disabled people will receive a special treatment.  Then, pregnant women, and so on and on.  Soon you'll have basic income +  current welfare system.

Of course there is no way to prove that this is what would happen, but it is so easy to guess.

The OP didn't specify, which is why I included both scenarios in my post.  Often, real income tends to nullify government-given benefits.

No it probably wouldn't be free, who determines how much "free" you get versus me? there will most definitely still be currency. In current society, robots(automated machines) already produce significant portion of wealth, why not start now? you think the switch would happen suddenly?

Ah I'm getting confused.   This subject is really tough, honestly.   No irony here.

On one hand I told you that there is no point to start now, since robot do not currently do all the work.

On the other hand I'm going to tell you that it's already started.  Robot do indeed do a lot of work, and some people do receive money doing nothing thanks to that.  I do.  I own shares and I get money by doing nothing.  So the system you are advocating has already begun.

The key point, imho, is whether or not robots create not just wealth, but also copies of themselves as well.  In that case, everybody can own robots, and there is no point having a system of shares that would be unevenly distributed.  But then again in that case price of things would really be almost zero.  Because everybody could create whatever he needs when he needs it. So there would be no point in buying something.  Hence a price of zero for everything.

Honestly I'm not sure anyone here gets how complicated this is.

You're missing out on one very important point:  Resources are not infinite.

Sure, robots could conceivably be built that could create anything.  But the materials to build those robots have to come from somewhere.  You might say that the materials to build those robots come from mines operated by robots, but those mines can't last forever.

Land is a finite resource.  Land cannot be free.  Gold cannot be free, as it is a finite resource.  Etc, etc.

Basically, nothing can be free, as nothing is an infinite resource.

True.  Indeed I forgot about that.

About material resources, again, recycling technologies will be optimized, and if it's going to be at the molecular level.

Such an automated world will create demand again for human interaction. Some will prefer human barkeepers and human care at the spa, and will look for a new quality of in the fields of arts, culture, music, and more we can't foresee yet.

If you want to push the science-fiction hypothesis to the extreme, you have to consider a world where robots can be indistinguishable from humans.

http://blog.bretagne-balades.com/public/images/octobre2010/Actroid-F.png (http://youtu.be/cFVlzUAZkHY)

And there is nothing, at least theoretically, preventing AI to perform as well as a human in art, culture, music and all.

Even in such a world, there would still be demand for "real" humans. It's just the nature of the beast.

Well, you can just build a clone with an artificial uterus or something   ;D

The entire Universe is a resource. Sure, resources are finite. But it will be billions of years before we run up against that limit. Until then, it's just a cost/benefit kind of thing.

Speed of light is limited.  So even in a infinite universe, you'll have to wait a bit to get the desired amount of the thing you want if you have to fetch it by yourself.  So people might have to buy some to their neighbors if they don't want to wait.

Also, heavy elements in the universe are pretty scarce.

Are MRIs a basic amenity of life? What about indoor plumbing? The problem with this scheme is that it will actually do the reverse of what it is intended to do -- by discouraging productivity, it will delay the rate at which the economy is capable of developing new things that become basic amenities of life. That is, it will in practice deny people the basic amenities of life.

True, but time is also a nearly unlimited resource. I suppose the Universe may eventually suffer heat death. But again, these fundamental limits won't matter for billions of years.

No matter how big the buffet, there's still no such thing as a free lunch.

Absolutely. As technology advances, the cost to extract resources decreases and the value we can get out of them increases. So the quantity of resources that are usable for practical purposes increases as technology advances. That's why we've had a "20 to 25 year supply of oil" for almost 100 years now. (No joke, the first "imminent" oil crisis was predicted in 1918!)

If you're particularly worried about resource shortages, you should be pushing for greater development and exploitation of technologies that make resources cheaper to extract or allow us to get more value out of them. You should definitely oppose things like a basic income guarantee that discourage technological advances while reducing pressures that hold down population.

Jeez, this discussion is silly but what the heck.

Time is not an unlimited resource.   At all.  Especially if you travel interstellar space at relativistic speed.  Your proper time will tell you that you've spent a year, but the solar system you left may have seen centuries pass away.

Cosmologists now think the future of the universe will be a deep freeze.   So if you spend too much time gathering stuff in the universe, you'll end up in an almost empty, deadly cold universe.

Basically it boils down to this:

Do you want to have people motivated out of fear for their own survival so that they produce enough (& continue the GDP train)?

Or do you want to have people driven by their desire to build something new, beautiful, amazing?

In the first example, you will continue as we are - with all of the issues surrounding this.
In the second example, you provide the possibility for people to make something amazing. YEs, that means that for the first few months/years people will probably just fuck off and party. But then as it always does, it gets boring. People will put their creative drive into something that they want to bring about. This isn't just some wishful thinking BS, there are studies/ books written about our conception of human motivations & output and the realities.

No.  It is really much more complicated than that.

Money is really not just some tool invented to motivate people.  This basic income concept is not just some moral issue.

To answer your question, I do want people to be driven by their desire to build amazing stuff.  I just don't think a basic income is a way to realize that.  In a nutshell, I think it would just not work and that the corresponding currency would quickly get no value whatsoever.

If we can avoid destroying ourselves to get robots reproducing, and benevolent, smarter AI than what we are, tech should have advanced to the point where: Energy = whatever you want. The Sun is spewing out a massive amount of radiation energy in all directions all the time...what a waste! Eventually we should be able to effectively black out the sun on all vectors apart from inhabited planets via perfect absorption. It's not infinite, but it's a lot more than what the Earth could ever hope to contain, and could easily support a certain figure of humans until it dies. The stars and laws of physics will be doing all of the work, so humans don't have to - in that sense, it's so cheap as to basically be free, but never technically. The cost may be as little as asking an AI to do something, and keeping the knowledge around of how it all works.

The point of the OP is not that everything should be free, it's that certain things that are necessary for life but very easy to now produce can be paid for by those who are motivated by peer pressure, if the land/manufacturing is productive enough. If only 10 people in a whole country are motivated by peer pressure and can't produce enough for everyone, then people will still be forced to work anyway and this is largely irrelevant. This is, incidentally, a major reason of why I believe communism failed (along with all the crazy). On the other hand, if 10 people working and 10 in training is all it takes to produce all the food/shelter/clothing/entertainment/all the wants of an entire planet, the OP is just a simpler system of organizing what's going to happen anyway.

The scale of energy production is probably the same as the scale of energy demand.   All civilizations on the Kardashev scale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) probably have the same energy issues.  Otherwise they would not develop such elaborated devices to extract energy.

To determine price, what matters is the ratio between offer/demand, not the absolute value of the offer.

Edit.  I just realize this contradicts what I wrote earlier.   Oh well.


Please explain what you mean by "peer pressure".

Well, to motivate someone you can give him a reward.  It doesn't have to be money.  It's basically anything that has value.  The thing is, in a highly interpenetrated economy, money is the most efficient way to transfer value, so it did indeed become the simplest way to reward a human being.   But as you say it only has been turned as such.

To me, more important is that it's a way to measure value in a decentralized way.  If I exchange a commodity against money and I notice that suddenly I need more money to get a certain amount of this commodity, then, because I know the global amount of money in existence is globally stable, it has to mean that somehow the availability of the commodity has decreased.  The price of the commodity is therefore a measure of its availability.  This price signal is an economic information that I can use to induce some changes in my economic behavior.

India has big problems with its cheap food distribution.  There is more than enough food for everyone in India, but due to poor incentives the subsidized food does not make it to starving people.

/endofthread

I used to think shit like this, but I came to understand that, sadly, without the threat of starvation most people will not do a god dammed thing.

Now that is the /endofthread

Make it all voluntary and libertarians will love it

I'm a direct witness to something simlilar

There's probably a better word for it, maybe social conscience, but by peer pressure I mean: the presence or influence of any human(s), causing someone to act without a necessary reward save recognition or acceptance by the peer(s).

This includes doing what your parents say, what your friends are doing, what your town is doing (e.g. saving water in a drought), as well as getting a job to have a bigger TV than your neighbour only to invite him over to show it off.

If a society has a minimum income for all, how many will actually stop working completely, if 70% of people ostracize them for doing so? At the moment, it seems only those that don't care what others think of them do it...I very seriously doubt it will grow that much, but I'm sure studies can be done for a better prediction. There's only a major risk of collapse if the prevailing thought is that everyone is better off doing nothing, which I just don't see happening. I could be wrong, but people will still want to show off their bigger houses, cars, etc. If these people outnumber those who want to sit on the beach all day, and enough basic stuff is still made, then who cares if they get it imo.


I don't know about most people, but certainly a lot of people...but even then, so what? What amazing thing are these people doing with their lives such that them working menial jobs to pay for basic things achieve the dreams of humanity? Is the threat of starvation going to cause someone to decide to become a nuclear physicist?

You might say they could work in a car factory so the nuclear physicist can drive to work, but this discussion is about there no longer being a requirement for humans to do these menial tasks.

No, but the lack thereof might make him decide against it.

Oh... you meant "charity".

It's ok.  I'm fine with working for other people and buying them stuff, as long as I don't have to.

How is what I described charity?

It was already established in the OP that this is a big state solution, not libertarian castle state one.



That would depend on what motivates him. Einstein worked as an IP clerk to pay for food. He changed the world in his spare time.

Ok, ok...   Group behavior then?  You mean that I would accept to work for others mainly because that's what people around me do?

too much to read but adding another useless opinion

OP sounds like the views or purpose of Nancy Pelosi

Possibly a combination of group behavior and peer pressure would describe it adequately.

But yes, monkey see, monkey do for the majority of people.

What would you do if this happened tomorrow? Would you continue working or quit your job? Why?

That's a funny question, since I did actually quit my job four years ago.

Once I gathered enough money so I would not need to work in the next ten years, I just stopped working.

So I can actually answer your question without any "if".

In a sense, I'm a living proof that this basic income is not a good idea.

You should not underestimate people's laziness.

Fair enough, I don't think I do, as it seems you were anything but lazy in earning those 10 years off. What do you generally do with your time now? Is there anything you do that would otherwise be considered productive? You don't have to be, of course, I'm just curious what your plan was for 10 years (if there was one), and whether you were sticking to it.

You earned that time off yourself, but would you have been getting this income while you were working, you'd still be getting it now and would been able to achieve the same thing you're doing now anyway with a slightly higher quality of life. If the economy was that awesome anyway, then the same should happen provided you're needed for something.

I'm sorry I can't answer your questions.  It's just too personal.   What I can tell you is that I think I'd probably not be aware of bitcoin right now, had I been keeping on doing that job.  Sometimes I happy I did quit, just because of that.  


I'm not sure you get my point.  Right now I don't do much but at least I don't cost society anything.  Were your proposal to be implemented, I wonder how many people would immediately quit their job and start leaving on other people's work and money.

The one show stopper for you, been mentioned already but again now for posterity:

Security.  <===   

If you can find a way to make a verifiable and uncorruptible per-person payment scheme, please let us know.  Until then this will sadly be a joke and thieves as well as your "state regulators"  will find a way to get themselves the income of 1000 people by declaring themselves as 1000 individuals.  Take a look at how hopelessly corrupt state voting systems are, and put some extra money on the line for individuals in addition to the usual theatrics and you will get some idea what would happen if you tried to implement such a system without getting some kind of basic security in order first.     

Some kind of biometrics will be necessary, but it's not obvious to me how exactly this can work.  Sure I can add a hash of an iris scan to a database but what guarantees this is a hash of an iris scan and not a number I made up to collect some extra cash?  "Honest regulators" is a reasonable answer if you happen to live in fairyland.

Your idea is fantastic, but to implement it you need some way to securely identify unique humans, a nontrivial problem. 
Until we have this down, we will be wasting our time.

good luck!!!!!

Ok, I'm sorry if my question intruded into your personal space. That was unintentional.


I understand what you meant, but the proposal is that if the basics are so cheap that it costs society very little, what's the big deal? Australia spends 2% of it's national budget on "I can't find a job but I need to eat" welfare...hardly back breaking for society to support this right now, and there's a pervading view here that all welfare recipients are permanent "dole bludgers" too, so at most, all the people who absolutely will not work under any circumstances costs 2% of tax revenue.

If the cost of giving everyone a basic life, factoring in all of the people who simply wouldn't work at all, managed to fit into that 2% of budget, purely because productivity was so incredible, wouldn't it be nice to have? Of course this probably isn't possible right now, but it's potentially foreseeable within 50 years. The other question to answer is what % is acceptable - how cheap must it be to feed/clothe/house/healthify a population compared to all other productivity for a society to implement it? 0.1%? 10%?

Sure a lot of people would quit jobs they hated, and people would only ever do "work" that they enjoy...but I see that as a positive end goal for our species. The ultimate fulfillment in the mastery of our environment, if you will. Working for food is so...cave man.

Well, in my country you CAN do exactly that. There is no demands that you have to work at all, and if you choose not to, you get support money from the state for basic needs.(Place to live, money for food, entertainment etc.) Still I don't personaly know a single person who does. And the statistics show only 2.3 % live off it(2007), and that is probaly mostly people who need it cause they are psyical or mentaly ill, criminals and/or drug addicts.

I can agree that number could increase thought if it was seen more "legitimate" to live only off basic income.

That is of course an interesting problem to solve. It would require keeping a national database with biometric data (actually the EU kind of has one - most of the passports nowadays are biometric). Of course, hackers could pose a problem, but with sufficiently strong encryption and a transparent mechanism open for public auditing, I think it should be ok. Just think the bitcoin system, which is relatively immune to tampering attempts because of its open source structure.

If a country can produce enough resources without taxing anyone - sure, but just to distribute wealth through taxation - no way.

Yes, encryption and open system could help, but I don't see the solution.  Until there is a secure implementation, there isn't one yet :) 

This is indeed related to the bitcoin system.  However, Proof-of-work, or one CPU one income, works because you can prove you did some hashing.  However proving you are a human I have a feeling will be a trickier one and will wind up as a game of whack-a-mole as Gavin would say. 

The idea of a "national database" would of course have to be replaced by something public like a block chain data structure so to avoid regulatory capture phenomenon and the blatant security hole of letting some folks change the database at will.  I have no idea how an "OP_ADD_HUMAN" transaction would be verified.  It might need to wait for some kind of universally trusted AI to come along and welcome us all to the human polity :)   

IMHO other economic arguments for or against are rendered moot if there is no secure implementation with which to implement the system.   

 

Don't you find this idea a bit repulsing?   Can't you see it basically consist in treating humans as cattle?

That's a big "if".  An even worse is "if not".

If your 2% taxation is NOT enough to fund basic income, what will happen?  People will complain and ask for more.  So it will be 3%.

So basically since your "big state" can raise this level as high as it wants, it will always make sure that the rate is high enough to finance your basic income, even if it does not make economic sense.  In other words, even if it will crash the economy.  That does very much look like an elaborate, quantified version of communism.

Basic income is implemented in the current system with shares and stock market.  Why don't you guys just buy shares?  You would get some part of the excess of production you are talking about.

But no, you want your share of the cake, without putting any fucking effort about it, not even spending a penny.  Seriously, this is despicable.

That's not what I meant when I talked about cattle.  This biometrics thing makes me think of cattle tagging.

http://www.mcanamibia.org/files/images/IMG_3128(1).JPG

That's what I meant.  Maybe it's irrational, but yeah, the whole idea stinks.

I wish I could just answer you "well, I don't want to be part of this system", but I guess I can't, can I?

I mean, let's assume your basic income system is based on some consumption tax.

Can I be exempted from this tax if I decide not to be included in the national database and not to receive your basic income?

I'd like to go back to my question about whether or not people could buy or sell this thing.

Let's call Basic Income Share (BIS) one entry in the database.  It's basically the name of one person, some bitcoin address or something, along with some proof that this person does exist and a way to identify him (with biometrics).

Let's give a different name to the amount one person actually receives each month.  Let's call it BIR (Basic Income Right).

Ok so one person "owns" a BIS and that allows him to receive one BIR each month.

Question:  do I have the right to sell my BIS?

I mean, can we allow people to give an order such as:  "I'm the owner of BIS n°XXXXX.  Here is cryptographic proof of this assertion.  From now on, all my BIR will go to the owner of BIS n°YYYYY"  ?

I don't see why it should not be allowed.  If people have the right to own things, they should have the right to give them away (and in particular, to sell them).   Plus, if you forbid this, a black market will probably emerge.

So assuming I do have the right to sell my BIS, I also have the right to buy some.  In effect, it is just as if the State was turned into an anonymous society (not sure of the english term.  Corporation maybe).

Some people would have a lot of BIS, some people would have very few.   So we'll be very far away from your initial project.

Your system would look like capitalism, but it would be much worse.  Because this "big state" would be a giant company whose income does not come from free trade, but taxation.   This should be a nightmare to everyone.

States generally make money only through taxation, with the exception of some nationalized industries.
You won't be able to share your BIR. Of course, you will be able to give the money to someone if you want to. Why you'd do that without something worthwhile in exchange is beyond me. I don't see how you'd end up with people getting other people's money outside of criminal coercion, which can be defended by the courts.

I know there's a lot of opposition to the idea of identifying yourself, and personally I can't understand it. Even now you willingly take a nickname on this forums to identify yourself, therefore branding your online persona in some way. Would it be better if we let you choose the code that would be on your eartag? :) I'm joking, of course, but a public database holding your fingerprints and your name on record is hardly a large breach of privacy. And I guess if you want to opt out, then you should be able to, but no state support would be given then.


Now, stocks and shares are quite an interesting animal. First of all, to buy them, you have to have some capital. Money makes more money. If you don't have the starting capital and your living expenses keep eating up your minimum-wage job earnings, you'll never make it to the stockmarket. And not for lack of trying.
Second, I believe an argument can be made that relying on income from stocks is an unproductive life. You are not helping the community in an way, you are not producing something, your are not providing a service. The only thing you are doing is moving money from one place to another, and making more money in the process. A counter-argument is that you provide starter capital for companies that could better society if given a chance... but do you? Or do you just buy low, sell high with random stocks, or even worse, survive on dividents from the already established companies?
Some things to think about :)

I think it will always be possible to sell your BIS, even if it's not supported by the state.  I can always sign a contract saying "from now on I swear I'll give all my BIR to XXXX".   It's basically a eternal debt contract, but your proposal makes this idea not so ridiculous.

"Worthwhile" is very relative.  It all depends on your time preference regarding consumption.

Some people might prefer having 100 BIR right now rather than waiting 100 months.  So they might accept to sell their BIS against 100 BIR.

More generally, some people might be more "carpe diem" oriented, so they'll just sell their BIS to people who think they'll live two hundred years (I'm exaggerating).

Private contracts do exist.  And even if courts decided not to defend them, reality would, as screwed people would get angry and would use violence.


Ok, that's one thing.  But can I be exempted from tax then?

You can buy stocks with no more than a few dollars.  That's a start.  Maybe the OP has spent much more in contributions to the pirate party.  Which to me is ironic.

Money makes more money indeed, but your system does not change that.  People could buy BIS, and with the money they get from these BIS, they'd buy even more BIS.


I do not trade.  I receive only dividends indeed.

Some guy indeed at some point had a company grow.  He made it florish and he produced some wealth.  I now own the shares he used to own.   So according to you he's a good guy and I'm a parasit, right?

Well, consider this:  I did not steal those shares from this guy.  I bought them.  So in a sense, I rewarded him for the good work he's been doing.  Without people like me, his job would have had much more difficulty to find a correct price in the market.  I hope you can understand that.

Are you going to tell me that receiving money from doing nothing is fine as long as you don't pay to do that, but if you do it without stealing anyone, by investing wisely, it becomes morally wrong?

Interesting argument. I can't deny the possibility, but then things are not so different from nowadays, where people apply for a credit and then pay it back almost eternally, relative to their lifespan (30-years to repay your education loans, anyone?) So that's one way the system won't change at all :)
So, again like today, I guess. Sorry my system is not perfect ;)

You will be completely free to vote against any proposals for tax increase, campaign against them on blogs, and if you still run against a majority, then emigrate. Not so different than nowadays.


LOL, I am the OP, and I've spent 50 EUR to pay my yearly membership fee. That's as much as I can give them.

I didn't mean to morally judge you, just wanted to mention the existence of the argument against stocks. I do understand that the stock market provides a useful service (with the exception of high-frequency traders, them I do hold to be parasites on a system)
 
Still, to live on dividends, you do need a significant capital. What would 10 USD invested in stock bring your yearly as a ROI? A cent? ten, maybe? To survive on dividends you do need a substantial capital. I'm not going to ask you how much yours is, but you do agree with me that it must be at least a 5 digit figure with today's dividend rates. Such a sum would be unachievable for a lower-middle class person, even with hard work.

That was not my point.  If your system is like today, then people will be able to sell their BIS.  They would basically endebt for life.  They would not care much since it's the State that would repay this debt.  I'm pretty sure bankers will be very happy with your system.

Yeah, great.  Vote like majority, obey or get the fuck out.  Wonderful.

Well, you could have spent those 50 EUR to buy a share and you would have received about 1 EUR a year by doing nothing.  That would have been much more of a actual step towards your project of basic income.


It very much depend on your lifestyle.  Also, I do not only live on dividends.  I have other financial assets.  That's not the issue anyway.

Thing is, the way I see it, share and stock markets are the only thing that could fulfill the function you are promoting.  It is basically designed for that:  allowing people to share the excess of wealth produced by companies.  The only feature that does not fit your concept, is that shares and stocks are not evenly distributed.  So most people can not live on dividends because they just do not own enough shares.  And yet, globally if the wealth is somewhere, it is there.

So what's the way to make this distribution more even?  Do you have to steal to people who have some, in order to give to people who do not have any?   It won't work:  you're a living proof of that.  If you don't have shares, it's not because you can't, it's because you don't want to.  You prefer giving money to political organizations.

Instead of using force and stealing people to give shares to people who do not even want to own shares, you should promote the idea of owning shares.  Eventually, if more people get convinced that it's ok to invest and receive money from doing nothing, the distribution of shares will be more even.

«
- Mr Smith!  Good afternoon!  I'm so glad you could come visit me.  Please sit down and tell me:  how did it go?
- Well, it went fine.  I went to the town hall, I signed a few papers, they took a DNA sample, my fingerprints and a photograph.  Did not take long, and when it was finished I was kind of happy.   That's great, I'm now assured that I will receive 100 bucks every month, no matter what happens.  This new basic income law is really wonderful.  I can't wait to receive my first payment: it will help for our project of holidays with the kids in a few weeks.
- Mr Smith, what if I told you that you do not have to wait?  That you can go on holidays with your kids right now, and with an even better budget that what you were planning?
- What do you mean?
- How old are you Mr Smith?
- 54, why?
- Let me check my computer...  Ok, what if I told you that you can leave this room with precisely 23,134 new bucks on your account?
- Twenty thousand bucks?  You're kidding?
- Not at all.  That's several years of basic income.  And you won't even have to pay us anything, since we'll just transfer automatically the amount every month.  You'll have nothing to worry about, just enjoy your holidays with your kids.  You'll be able to do this several years without spending a penny.
- Yes, but when it run out, I won't receive anything more.
- Well, you do have a job, and it gives you your real income, right?  I'll help you with that:  we'll make some investments and soon enough you'll receive pretty much as much money as if you were still entitled to basic income.  Plus, when your 23,134 bucks do run out, statistically, you'll be dead.   You know Mr Smith, we live in a great time, but humans are still mortals.    I am too and actually statistically I should die before you do.  So you see I don't tell you this to scare you or anything  ;)
- Well, I guess this makes sense.  And twenty thousand bucks is a nice amount of money.
- Isn't it?  So let's do that, shall we?  Here is the document.  Please sign here.
- Ok.  Done.  When is it that we'll talk about those investments to replace my basic income?
- We'll have plenty of time to do that.  Right now my schedule is quite busy.  You see, we now have a lot of cash entries coming from the state.  Next month for instance, we'll receive your first payment and we'll use it with others to buy other basic income from other people.  Mathematically, it's complicated, but it works.  Just do not worry and enjoy your holidays with your kids.  It will be the first of a long series, and the State pays it all!
- That's great indeed.  Thanks so much.  I'm so glad I have such a good banking adviser.
»

Thank you for the well-illustrated example. This indeed proves another problem with the system. Now I know you'll hate to read this because it smells of socialism, but since BIG is supposed to cover amenities, this can be achieved with a system, similar to the coupon one. You have essentially two currencies, with one covering basic amenities (food, shelter) and the other which we all know and love and which can buy vacations, nice cars, coke and women. Then you can be certain that the income from the state would go only towards amenities and what you earn extra goes to the pleasures in life.

So if I invested these 50 EUR, I would get 1 per year. Let's scale that. If I invested 50 EUR today, and don't touch it, I will get 134 EUR in 50 years. If I keep investing 50 EUR every year, after 50 years I'll have 4591 EUR. And in 50 years inflation would have diminished that value significantly. I much prefer giving the money for a cause I believe in.
My point is that to live off a seed capital, you need a significant amount to start with. I'm happy for you that you have that, but many people don't and never will, since they have to pay bills while working on a minimum-wage job. I can have shares, but that's not going to help me if I don't inherit a decent amount of money in the first place. Since I am not lucky enough to have rich parents, I will have to work for my living, which is OK, because I definitely won't make minimum wage with my qualifications. So to summarize, a life in which I can live off interest from my savings is not a possibility, no matter if I give some money to a party or not.

That's not the problem its trying to address. Tell me this:

How does a man earn $1 from a wealthy person who wants nothing from him?

So you're basically talking about food stamps.  Like in war time.  I don't know what to answer.   It's just too odd for me.

Yes.  A life in which you can live happily doing nothing all day is not a possibility for everyone.  Does that really surprise you?

I don't know.  I guess you think he should just steal it.  Or ask the government to steal it for him.

It's always fascinated me how some people think they deserve things from other people for doing nothing.

Of course I don't...stealing is not ethically acceptable to me, but I do know that after exhausting all attempts of bartering, he will either steal it, murder him or starve to death. I can't think of any other alternatives myself, can you or anyone else?

Do you think it's more morally outrageous for a person to starve to death or starve to steal? I'm going to assume we both think starving to murder is the absolute worst one.

No one does...we're talking about scraps from the dinner table.

Miln40 is not.

He just explained above that he won't buy shares because it would not allow him to live without working.  So to him it is everything or nothing.

When someone enters the stock market, he usually does NOT intend to become filthy rich by doing so.  Most of the time it just gives some nice complement to other incomes.

There is no magic.

If someone has really no economic value whatsoever, which by itself is quite a harsh hypothesis but that was your hypothesis, then indeed I see no way for him to earn his life other than owning some capital or relying on charity.


To me it's beyond moral.  I'd totally understand if someone tries to steal because he's desperate or something.  But I also totally understand the person who will defend his property.

What seems harsh today becomes less harsh in the future - robots and AI basically feed off stars directly; something humans can never do. If 90% of people are not the owners of said robots (the best capital possible), how will they get what the robots produce? Sure some portion would be able to convince the owners to barter, but ultimately the owners will be satisfied at a particular point, and people will be unemployed longer than it takes for them to starve - this is a far cry from having no economic value whatsoever. We cannot hibernate when energy becomes scarce, like robots can.

The only reason this isn't happening *today* is because of government interference (or stealing, as you put it). Charity doesn't stop death, and you have to decide if you're ok with that. It seems that most people are not.


It may be, but you can still answer the specific question can't you? Or is it too personal to answer?

Which is worse, to you - a person starving to death before stealing, or stealing before starving to death?

As a side note, I agree that people have a right to defend their property, and the more powerful on the day will win. This scenario where there is one absolute winner and one absolute loser can and has been replaced by a compromise to reduce risk (perhaps ironically, created by the one with the food).

Then convince people to buy robots, a.k.a. capital.   Let the market work, the yield of capital will raise, so that having very little capital will be more and more interesting.

The transition to a society where all work comes from non-human capital, if it happens, will be smooth.   So you must let price mechanisms and market adjust to it.  Not an arbitrary system decided by bureaucrats.

If people don't want to buy capital, not even a single share that only costs a few dollars, I don't want to hear them complaining about how poor they are and how I should give them some shares that I did buy.   And please do not tell me they don't have any money to spend for these stuff.  Unless they are completely destitute, they do.



I've just realized something about what you write.  You keep talking about starving people, and yet this whole proposal is about some kind of a universal basic income.  I mean it's for everyone, not just for homeless people, isn’t it?  You don't live in a country where homeless, starving people are at majority, do you?

Therefore, mentioning starving people to promote a basic income sounds pretty sketchy.  I'm sorry to tell you that, but it can very well be understood this way:

« We should take to the rich in order to give to starving people.  And I want my cut. »

Starvation really sounds like an excuse to get a free share of the cake.

That's why I will NOT answer your questions about starving people.  We all have moral issues when we walk in the street and encounter a destitute human being.  Assuming you are not completely poor, you do have too.  You could give a homeless person half of your income to save him.  I guess you do not and I do not ask you why.   So please don't ask me why I don't like the idea of giving away to strangers a capital that I worked to earn.

He doesn't, he earns it from someone who does want something from him. If nobody wants anything, then he's the only person on Earth who doesn't have everything they want. I can live with that problem.

I think the wealthy man can pretty much always come up with something he wants... somebody to mow his lawn, wash his car, produce clever widgets in his factory, mine his uranium, stand guard along his borders, pick up his trash, farm the food that is sold in his grocery store, act in the movies he enjoys watching, be the serviceman that repairs the elevator at the apartment building where he keeps his mistress, heck, be his mistress...

All of these things require a participatory economy, some might even suggest they are a (shudder to speak the word) a JOB. Suggesting that everyone is entitle to have everyone else take care of their needs and wants without contributing back doesn't work. Even Marx saw that there had to be a little "from each according to his ability" to go with the "to each as much as his evil, slimy, lazy ass wants to suck away from other, needs". No society can survive with a non-participating entitlement class. Nor should one. Economic imbalance does not a moral imperative make.

The German example is a very clear one. Reunification brought a huge segment of state-supported entitlement supporters into the German economy, and tore it apart. Germany has long attracted a huge number of immigrants who welcome an opportunity to work at better wages than home, but all too often they end up resented by the native Germans, and are forced onto the dole by Germans who resent those who compete for the jobs, swelling the welfare ranks as it happens. No thanks. Not a desirable or defensible option.

Feel free to ask me why, or you can continue to presume. I'll have to make whatever presumptions I can as you've chosen not to illuminate me.

Starvation only came up because somehow this turned into a welfare debate. You refuse to accept that there is a good reason state welfare exists, even if it is a "lesser evil" solution, and that it is a natural consequence of capitalism without conscience in a human population.

People won't buy robots, and they will starve, and they will either die or destroy. We should just kill them now, right? How much of law is to protect people from their own stupidity?


Yeah fair enough, fuck him, but what are you going to do to convince the society that steals from you to give it to him to stop doing it? Just not pay taxes? Start a revolution? How much power do you have?

I'm not saying it's "right" that people get something for nothing (not that anyone ever actually does - it can all be rationalized somehow), but that it is what's going to happen anyway whether one likes it or not.


Yes, I agree this is mostly the case today, but how long is the list of things that can't be replaced by self-supporting machines? I can only really see the creative arts as being uniquely human. Just how interesting is that?

I'm not talking about people not participating because they're lazy, I'm talking about people not participating because there is nothing to do.

Even if there is a good reason for state welfare (hell saving lives is a good thing, I can agree with that), this is NOT what your proposal is about, as I've mentioned above.

I want your reaction on the paradox I've pointed out:  you claim your proposal is for poor, starving people and yet you want to give the same amount of money to everyone, including people who don't need it.    Doesn't make much sense.

Really it almost seems that you're exploiting poverty for your profit.

Child care. Customer service. Actor. Director. Sex worker. Designer. And that's just a few off the top of my head. If it requires dangerous, dirty, or repetitive labor, it probably will be automated. If it requires thought, decision making, or creativity - or even just a "personal touch" - it will not be automated. As Joel said, If someone cannot find anyone for whom he can do something, then he's the only one on the planet without everything he needs.

I wanted to address this separately, as it deserves it. The starving people are not a primary driving force to advocate a system like this - they just benefit slightly more than others. When I was talking about starving people, I was leading to welfare as an example of social expectations within humans trumping the economic efficiency of capitalism - we care about each other, unfortunately, even when we don't expect to or want to, and it overtakes our normal sense of unemotional rationality.

This scheme (not my scheme although I would like to see it tested) is not an equalizer in the way that communism was, and those who choose to just soak up basic income and do nothing else will likely be worse off than before when they had a job - the price of basics might come down due to subsidization, but the price of everything else would go up to compensate, if I'm not mistaken.

Just being alive is given a particular status by society, and different cultures have different idea of what that level should be, led by prevailing proportions. In some cultures starving to death is ok, in others it isn't. Even though the Germans might grumble about the people immigrating and going on welfare, they're still not taking that food away. It's possible that they believe a higher minimum standard of living is more important than a higher maximum standard of living. This does not mean that a person cannot still personally aim to have the highest standard of living possible for themselves (and family) if they so choose.

So long as there is at least one other person who doesn't have everything they want, there's something to do. I can live with the possibility that one person might not get everything they want.

So by that definition, circle jerking will feed everyone.

I know you said they can earn the $1 off someone else and use that to buy the food from the controller of food, but there's only so much the controllers of food needs (or has time to consume), and that's the problem. Once he has all the $ in circulation, where will the more dollars come from without an army backed inflation currency?

So the farmer just needs money? He has no maintenance costs? He doesn't like to watch movies? He's just going to sell his food, and put all the money gained thereby into the bank, where it sits, doing nothing, right? Yeah, no, It doesn't work that way. He has costs, too, and desires. The money he gets from selling his food will go to pay for those needs, expenses, and desires. That puts the money back out into the market.

Yes, that's how every economy works. Everyone works for everyone else and everyone profits.

If you worry about this scenario, then a guaranteed basic income isn't the solution. If you can't exchange your basic income for food, what good would a basic income do you? I can't imagine any realistic situation in which people would need to worry about this, but if we ever get anywhere close to it, I'm sure the superior technology we'll have in that far distant future will make possible a solution you and I could never even dream of.

Jeez...  For someone who does not take starvation as a primary driving force to advocate your system, you sure talk about it a lot.

But fine, I think I get your point.  Basically it is just an example of how we can make exceptions to capitalism, because of moral considerations, altruism and all.   We care about each other, that's why we might accept to give to a stranger with not much in return.  Cute.

But once again, your system is for EVERYONE.  Including the guy who hates capitalism, who earns his life correctly, and who would never ever spend a penny in order to buy a share.  It doesn't seem to me that I should feel much pity to him.  And yet, you want me to give him some of my capital.

If you give this guy a basic, additional income, this money will come from the "excess of production" as you called it earlier, which otherwise would have gone to people who did actually buy a share:  capitalists people like me.

So you steal capital from people who did a financial effort to acquire this capital, and you give it to people who:
- were not interested in acquiring this capital ;
- do not need it ;
- have nothing but contempt for the capitalist system ;

To me, there is something deeply wrong in this scheme.

No the farm owner doesn't really need money, even though he'll be offered plenty of it; he controls the goods that money is worth anything for, and only 24 hours in a day to enjoy its worth. He might have a use for 50 million people, and gives them grain for their services via money, but if he can feed the total 100 million that exist, what are the other 50 million people to do to get the food he controls?


First part; no I mean literally circle jerking, not metaphorically. The farm owner can even be a part of it, but the trade can go on forever without any food entering anyone's bellies.

Second part; Yes you're right about that actually, it's an issue that could exist in either realm, so this point was more in support of it being a big state thing only. Going on that, if one doesn't believe that a big state should ever exist, then there's no reason any of this would make sense either way.


lol ok, I won't mention them again.


There is the small matter of the "What if I somehow fail hard and end up being desperate?" fear driving that caring aspect, but otherwise pretty much: depending on how much you value his life, just for existing, you can agree to a portion of your capital going to sustain them if they are unable to do so (including the mental disorder of laziness). You don't have to pity him to value his life, but that's up to you. Being a big state solution, this isn't really charity, because the amount would presumably be set by some power balance and all would be forced into it - even if it was zero, which it actually is today.

You, working hard and saving and buying shares, will still always have a better life than he will ever have, and in the relative way that humans understand things, there is a way this will find rationalization/justification.

I don't really understand what you mean by "the guy who hates capitalism, earns life correctly and who would never buy a share" - what's earning life correctly? Working -> earning -> consuming -> repeat?


Yes, it would make everything else more expensive. I think anyone who has contempt for the capitalist system is confusing politics with economics, tbh. As for need, by definition everyone needs it, since it is to cover items most certainly used by every human being (food, water, shelter, clothing, healthcare, etc). I guess you must mean "need" as in "can't afford because I take more than I give", but this isn't about welfare really, as put just above it's about how much the aggregate of society values each individual member's life at its most basic level. It may in fact not be very much, but people need to be asked to know.

This is more to do with consumption than capital itself. Your capital is what will of course be consumed, to a degree.

No, I didn't mean that.  I mean that if a guy can earn his life on his own already, he doesn't need your help or your money to afford the things you're talking about.  That's what I meant.  A man who is not poor does not need the basic income you're promoting.

But maybe I had your proposal confused with an other in my country.  You want to give this money to everyone, including people who actually already have a job and no financial difficulties, don't you?

The farmer typically doesn't give a shit who eats his food. All he cares about is that someone buys it. Thus, he seeks the money for the food, and uses that money to buy services and (here's my next point) other consumer goods. Food is not the only consumer good out there, it's just one of the few that everyone needs. He's also not the only farmer, nor does he supply the only type of food.

But let's assume that there is one farmer supplying all the food to everybody. He has enough food for all 100 million people. The people all have enough money to buy the food. They do. Now he has a great deal of money, but, say, only enough food to feed himself. What now? Well, now, he takes that money and buys a TV, a new couch, some booze (likely made from his grain), some fertilizer, new farm equipment, watches movies, gets a blowjob, etc, until he's out of money. By that time, the crops are in, and he has food again, and no money. The people have eaten all their food, and by virtue of providing services and other consumer goods to the farmer (and each other), the people have money. The cycle starts again.

You grievously misunderstood me, sir. You claimed that the BIG model can be replaced with the stock market system we have today, and I wanted to show you that it is not the case. That's all.

I like this paragraph :)

That is inflation, someone must have told you the wrong terms at some point.

Inflation: increase in supply, resulting in loss of value, and increase in prices denominated in that currency.
Deflation: decrease in supply, resulting in increased value, and decreasing prices denominated in that currency.

I'm not the OP, the OP was from Germany, I'm also not from Germany, but I believe that's what the OP was aiming for, yes. I don't really see the difference between what you said and what I said, but ok, "doesn't need help with obtaining". That doesn't remove the fact that he still "needs" it to live, in the other context of need.

Firstly, I very much doubt that person would say no. There might be a few with principles so lofty as that to be the case, but not many.

Secondly, need isn't the issue. To use a metaphor, how important is not needing help to climb stairs if you live in a stairless society? This proposal is about having that stairless society, for things everyone knows the society can easily and sustainably provide.

Those with a job will still fulfill whatever desires their hearts can imagine, including investing in capital and shares and have a life beyond subsistence in retirement, and they will still be far better off than those who only rely on the basic income.


Yes, in the first paragraph you're describing how things currently are, not where they are heading. I'm talking about the assumption you display in the second paragraph that companies are allowed to grow (as they naturally will) to own as much as possible, such that they control the entire food supply of a nation. These companies do not necessarily have to be public companies. So one arable land owner produces the food for 100 million people, and all of it's vested shareholders spend every penny they make as much as possible, and only 50 million people are found to be useful to them.

Since I made those remarks, I've realized it's off topic since its about "necessity control" and not really relevant to this discussion. One way or another that food must be accessible for a flat basic income be calculable.

You're missing the point. I've bolded the parts of my previous statement that might help you get it. A food seller cares about selling his food. The shareholders in a food selling company only care about getting profit from the company. This means that all the company cares about is selling as much of its food as possible, for the best price possible.

The shareholders, employees, farmers, etc. of the food company only find useful 50 million people. So what? Those 50 million people will find the other 50 million people useful in some manner. Money circulates, it does not make one transfer and then stop. Everybody needs something, and the 50 million people can't get the necessary services and products from the food company, it's too busy providing food. Even doctors go to other doctors when they're sick. ;)

The point that you've missed is that the company that gets to the stage where it owns a market completely has no reason to sell 100M @ $2 if it has the power to sell 50M @ $10 over two years. If only 50M are sold into the market, and they're consumed, and it's a food monopoly, 50M have no way of buying that food. Only 1 arable land owner on the planet. The people cannot eat money, no matter how much they have.

This is still off topic, because this problem is irrelevant to how much money those people have.

Only one arable land owner on the planet is never going to happen in real life. So, that has to be assumed, for this model to work. But even assuming that, Why would they sell half their production? Why sell 50M @ $10 per year when they can sell 100M @ $10? The answer, of course, is that no sane monopolist would intentionally limit his profits when the idea behind monopoly is to maximize profits. If the people have the money, they can get the food. You're arguing that first, an impossible situation would arise, and then, that the person able to benefit from that impossible situation would choose not to. And why he chooses not to, that's the best part. You claim it is out of greed.

quite a discussion going on here...

As we all know there are 3 kinds of people in this world: slave, free man, and owner.
Well actually that's not true. Free man don't exist anymore:

A highly evolved society like ours comes with a high degree of interdependence, and that implies that each member is BOTH slave and owner. However, sometimes the proportions are massively skewed. E.g. when people just earn enough to barely live. Then you're effectively a slave. And you are owned by the people who provide the jobs.

The way I see it: the basic income guarantee is an attempt to "free the slaves". But it ignores the other problem, which are the people who provide the jobs.

So, the fundamental question which should be answered is: why do some jobs hardly pay enough to make a living? And if people are freed from the pressure of doing those jobs, would people still do them? What about the people who provide the jobs? Why don't they pay more salary?

The answer - my friends - is greed. Profits from businesses are kept at the high levels and hardly diffuse down to the people who implement the business. It's exploitation of human resources. The only tangible way of dealing with that is taxes on income and profits. However, people who profit the most usually succeed in weaseling their way out of paying large income taxes.

thus my conclusion: if you don't solve the tax problem, you ain't gonna solve the income problem.

Let's say it:

44% of USA budget belongs to social programs...

I meant that it's the only thing that can.  If it actually can't, then nothing can.

You just have to get the wealth from somewhere.  You can't create it out of thin air.  If there is not enough wealth in dividends to allow everyone to live happy doing nothing, then I don't see where exactly you plan on getting the wealth to implement your system.

maybe it'll be possible for most to earn their income with their computers running calculations. Think Bitcoin mining, but many more diverse tasks, via a good infrastructure with a website, client and plugins so that a proper market can flourish. GPUs will be useful again. A distributed high performance grid.

+1. And does that mean if you're 60% slave, you are 40% owner? ;)

Slavery is when you can't leave and you never agreed to stay. You are free to leave the US or wherever you are whenever you want. Your position is like the hippies who demand to be allowed to live in someone else's house without paying.

Guys, slavery has very little to do with the amount of work you're being ripped of, when you are.  Theft is theft.  Slavery is slavery.  Don't mix up everything.

A slave is someone who belongs to another human being.  That's it, that's all, and that's totally off-topic in this thread.

Sorry. I'll just come out and say it, then: Taxation is theft. And slavery.

And if the "social safety net" is what causes the low crime rate in rural communities, why is crime so prevalent in inner city areas, where that selfsame social safety net is most utilized? How, exactly, do welfare and housing projects prevent crime in a farming community that has few recipients of the former, and none of the latter?


No, more like the renter who'd like to stop paying for the other tenants...across the city.

Well, it is indeed.

So let us find out how much they cost!  Just let the market handle those extra services.  Then we'll know their real price.  Why should those services be financed via taxation, anyway??

Sure you would, but that decision is entirely up to the landowner. Your options are to pay up or leave.

Read what myrkul is writing.  He's talking about how absurd it would be to pay the rent for OTHER tenants.

Would you have told that to the man who penned this?

The problem with a land tax is that it promotes highly inefficient land usage. For example, if 100% of taxation were in the form of land taxes, products that required very little land to produce would be much less expensive than products that require a lot of land. A race to use less and less land could result in higher and higher tax rates leading to a vast waste of resources. Funding a sizeable government 100% with a land tax is a very bad idea and would result in massive economic inefficiency and distortion.

Ask yourself this question: If you could pay only half as much in taxes as you pay now, would you be willing to live in half as much space? I think most people would say yes. But as people do that, the tax base would go down, forcing the rate up, making the problem even worse.

The point is that if government is funded primarily on land taxes, then land consumption will be distorted. So some rich guy will live on the land at a loss rather than a factory using it at a profit. That may be revenue neutral for the government, but it's definitely not neutral on its effect on the economy.

An ideal tax wouldn't significantly change how people live or how goods are manufactured. A tax on land alone would cause massive such changes. Huge amounts of innovation would senselessly go to minimizing land use just as it now goes to income tax avoidance strategies. Industrial processes that use less, or cheaper, land would be senselessly favored over superior processes that require more, or more expensive, land. Taxing one single good or type of good is pretty much the worst tax in terms of harm done to the economy per unit of revenue raised.

I may never understand the reasoning behind "Maybe my method for taking money by force isn't the best, but definitely, taking it by force is the way to go."

Which is what I replied to. It's the country that *really* owns the land, and if you think the rules it has are absurd your only real alternative is to try to find a country that gives you a better deal. I'm not even going to bother with the "but I should to be allowed to take parts of other peoples land if they are not currently using it for something I think is useful enough"-argument internet libertarians always comes up with at this point. That's no better than the hippies.

I don't think "libertarian" means what you think it means.

Your metaphor is not complete. In fact, you would be a part-owner of a piece of real estate, along with some other people (the population of a country). Then if the majority of the owners decide to pay for some other tenants (social security approved through national elections), then you have to go with the majority. You are free of course, to try and convince people that all the rent should be kept for yourself. Maybe you will be successful. Until then, you have abide by the wish of the majority and help share the burden through taxation.

If the majority of people decided that slavery was OK again, would that make it OK to enslave the minority they picked?

Why does a government founded on a logical fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum) seem like a good idea to you?

A VAT is the least economically disruptive tax scheme I know of. But it's still pretty awful as a sole means of financing a welfare state. One of the biggest problems is that it dumps the entire compliance cost of the tax system on a fairly narrow subset of people. This is truly hellish on small business owners and makes it very hard for them to compete with larger businesses that have lower tax compliance costs.

I used to own a small retail business and I can tell you sales tax collection horror stories. For example, one month our payment to the State of California just didn't go through. The State said they just didn't get the payment and we must have entered something wrong. Our bank said the State rejected the payment though they processed it correctly. The upshot was that the State charged us various fines, penalties, and interest for not making the sales tax payment on time. It effectively wiped out the profits for that month. Now imagine instead of one of the two taxes that fund State and local government, it was the *only* tax that funded Federal and State governments. Ouchies.

You have constitution, safeguarding basic rights. You could possibly try and change the constitution, but for that you need an overwhelming majority, which just doesn't happen in a democracy. Even landslide victories are like 60%.

Check the exceptions on the wikipedia page you linked to. Income redistribution falls withing the lines of social convention and safety, therefore the fallacy does not apply here.

The section on social convention is about what is polite or proper.  The given example is about russian people kissing each other.  I read nothing about income redistribution.

You say it's a social convention.  It is obviously not as consensual as you suggest.  This very debate proves it.

The constitution was in effect when slavery was happening.  Myrkul you have failed to address the point that was made.

Income distribution can be seen as a discussion on what is "proper" or "safe" in a society. You are absolutely right about it not being consensual, and I actually have no hope in seeing the system implemented in the near future. This forum topic is more of an intellectual debate rather than a call to arms. But people's ideas change over time. If and when a majority thinks that it would be right thing to do, then it becomes a social convention by definition and the Argumentum ad populum logical fallacy would not apply to it.

Ever wonder why fire departments exist and their equipment is so new and well kept? Yea, you pay for it in federal, state, and local taxes, plus their fees for fire fighting and rescue get to be paid by insurance companies whose premiums you have been paying all your life. Most are called volunteer fire companies, but never free fire companies. Some are indeed paid wages by cities and have unions, but they are all corporations and they all charge for their services.

Sewage and water are pretty important infrastructure-wise. I bet you think thats from taxes too, right? Try this. Take how much the average residential resident pays for water and sewer, then multiply that by the number of payments it would take for a years worth, then multiply that by the number of residential properties in your political subdivision. Repeat those steps for commercial, and then again for industrial, then agricultural properties as well. Add them all up. Thats only part how much per year your political subdivision makes off water and sewer, and if they are enterprising like my political subdivision, they would have all sorts of other services to make profits from, one being a commercial spring water supply and distribution network. Still think your taxes pay for your water and sewer?

The next would probably be electric. Taxes again? Hardly. Again, go add up the average electric bill, multiply by 12 months, multiply by the number of properties, then you have your answer.

Roads you say? Gas taxes I say. You get to choose when to improve roads and bridges by your consumption, becasue road funding coems from gas taxes. Go look it up in your state website.

And the same goes for absolutely every one of modern civilizations conveniences. You buy them.

We can certainly get into a semantic debate and split hairs on exceptions the the rules of reality, but I'd really rather not.

The government needs to start backing off and giving The People a whole lot of "leave-alone" or they may find themselves looking for work pretty soon.

You sure that was me? It looks more like miln40 failed to address the point. Slavery was not only not abolished by the constitution, it was written into it. So much for "basic rights." Check the other names for the fallacy. "Democracy" is included in the list.

Yeah, I also think he meant me =D . Slavery was made illegal with the 13th amendment, I believe. So the constitution was modified after the majority of people decided to oppose slavery. Well, there was also this civil war, but it might have been pure coincidence.

But you've still not answered the question. If the majority decided that it was OK again, would that make it OK to enslave the minority they picked? What if that minority includes you?

I hope you realize this is a very subjective interpretation.  You could make the same reasoning with abortion, death penalty or anything.  I'll get a godwin point if I say it, but German people at some point in history considered it was "proper" and "safe" to ostracize jews.

To you it's "proper" and "safe" to redistribute income.  To me it is just theft.  And theft has nothing to do with hygiene (or whatever you mean by "proper") or safety.


A social convention is NOT what the majority thinks.  The "Argumentum ad populum" article does not define it this way.  You need much more than the majority.  Otherwise polemic topics such as abortion could be considered as social conventions, which they are obviously not.

If you say that an idea is true because a majority of people think it is true, you do not say it is true because it is a social convention, you just say it is true because a majority of people think it is true.  That's all.  And this is precisely a Argumentum ad populum.

In the end, all discussion about social standards and policies is a discuss about rights and justice. There are philosophical tools for that: veil of ignorance and the original position.

Usually socialists favor a high degree of collective cooperation, while libertarians favor mutual beneficial cooperation. The problem with the former is to establish consensus about what is acceptable and what not, while the later opens up the door for exploitation, since two partner never have the same bargaining position.

With respect to tax this means that libertarians perceive the state as a third party which doesn't contribute to any two-party agreement. Thus the state is not entitled to benefits.

The reason why socialist societies exists, is that pure libertarianism usually leads to very unjust societies, with powerful individuals and a lot of exploitation.

In any case, there is no such thing as a social convention on this topic.  Social conventions, as mentioned on the article on agumentum ad populum are about rather trivial things such as etiquette and polite manners.  Taxation has nothing to do with polite manners.  That was my point.


Because socialist societies are a model of justice, maybe?  You're either naïve or oversimplifying.

Hmm. No. Read The Production of Security, by Gustave de Molinari (https://mises.org/document/2716/). The reason socialist societies exist is because monopoly leads to unjust societies, with powerful individuals and a lot of exploitation.

The answer, of course, is free markets. Yes, some businessmen are going to have more individual power than their workers. That's what collective bargaining is for.

With justice I mean the agreed price for cooperation.
In a libertarian environment the price for cooperation is determined similar to the free market, supply and demand. However there is no limit on what two parties can agree upon. And if one party achieves monopoly on a certain cooperation item it can exploit its bargaining position (and usually does). This is a self-enforcing loop: a powerful entity becomes more powerful with time.
In socialists environments the price of cooperation is usually determined or enforced through different means, or at least capped. But the problem is that there is no better tool than the free market for price discovery, even for the price of cooperation. That's why any price determined by socialists usually leads to inefficiency.

I find the tax system we have represents a compromise: You need free market mechanisms to implement price discovery for cooperation (products, jobs, etc...) but at the same time you want to prevent the formation of monopolies and extreme bargaining powers.

So you are in favor of labour unions?

Do you really think that the State prevents monopolies?

Also, if the only purpose of taxation is to prevent monopolies, why do I have to pay taxes??  I do not have any monopole on anything whatsoever.

Besides, there is nothing wrong in having power, per se.   If people are free, that means that they can have power.  If a company is large enough and offers such a good service that people goes only to this company, a "monopole" appears, but it was deserved.  It was honnestly gained.   Think Google or Apple as examples.

Of course, this comes with some power in negotiations.  This power is just an acknowledgment of the weight of the actor in the market.  No big deal, really.

A guy who sells 10000 a day is more respected in the market than a guy who sells 10.  Is that really so unfair??

No. And the reason for that is that all the ideals which come out of philosophical discussions eventually stand corrected by reality:
After a while every government is just another cooperation and acts in its self interest. States become corrupt and we have no real way of dealing with big corrupt governments. Do we?

We do.  One way is to evade taxes.  And to affirm clearly that taxation is theft.

Why would I not be? Labor unions provide the individual worker with the bargaining power of the whole group. It's a great way to make sure the workers get fair treatment. As long as this doesn't get out of hand.

Trade unions are an example of it getting out of hand. When a union can restrict entry into a profession, or controls the entire market for that profession, then it has gained too much power, and the end result is the workers in that union start exploiting those who pay their salaries.

You can see this in action by looking at the medical profession and the automotive industry in the US. The UAW damn near strangled Detroit. The AMA is driving healthcare costs through the roof. (There are many other factors, but they're not helping .)

I see. So any practical suggestions for establishing a balance of power for bargaining positions?

Unfortunately they don't make it optional. Voting yes , taxes no.

You have a lack of imagination.

Ok. How do you weasel your way out of income tax if you're employed by a public institute (university)?

Well, that would be a weird idea, since your wage comes precisely from taxation  (???)

The solutions are suggested in the problems. Don't let the union control the entire profession. The AMA's (legislated, btw) stranglehold on the medical profession is limiting entry into the field, which in turn creates a scarcity of medical professionals, which in turn increases the rates they can charge. Open the market, and that problem goes away.

The UAW's control over the entire US automotive industry nearly killed it. It wasn't until foreign companies started opening factories in non-union states that the industry started getting back on it's feet. And, I might add, revitalized the economies in those areas. Scabs (non-union workers), in other words, provide a much needed counter-pressure, to keep the unions from controlling the whole labor market.

A lot of research funds come from private entities. But are funneled through the institute.

This sounds like a regulatory mechanism. Who should enforce it? The government? In that sense I agree - someone needs to watch the market and (re-)establish balances. But to come back to the topic raised by the OP. What do you do if a majority of your labour force thinks that the wage is too low?

How, exactly, does removing the legislated restrictions on a profession, and thus having a completely free market in that profession sound like a regulatory mechanism?

If the majority of the labor force thinks the wage is too low, then they'll be asking for higher wages, won't they? And "a majority" is certainly enough to unionize. But the minority that is willing to work for less is important, too. If the union tries to push wages too high, they'll pull it back down by working when the union members strike. So the union members had best be willing to work for wages that the company owners will accept, or when they strike, they'll be replaced.

Labor is a market product, too. And that means it's governed by the laws of supply and demand, just like any market product.

Any way the constitution is supposed to guarantee habeas corpus.  A piece of paper is doing a poor job at solving problems. 

Times like these, I like to drop this quotation into the discussion:

(It should be noted that this was said almost 150 years ago. How much more true is it now?)

How is what I suggest more of the same?

I like this.

OMG I actually wrote this.  Sometimes some of my old posts pop up and I surprise myself.

That's less than three months ago. Have you really changed so much in so short a time?

You have no idea.

The jobs created by new technology will never be enough to sustain the masses. Plus, only a handful or people will be skilled/intelligent enough to work on this new technology. A universal basic income is needed.