Basic income guarantee - opinions&criticism welcome

[JoelKatz]

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.

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.

[grondilu]

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.

[JoelKatz]

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.

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.

[JoelKatz]

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.

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.

[myrkul]

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.

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

[JoelKatz]

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.

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.

[grondilu]

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.

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.

[lebing]

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.

[grondilu]

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?

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.

[Hunterbunter]

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

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

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.

[grondilu]

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 scale of energy production is probably the same as the scale of energy demand.   All civilizations on the 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.

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.

Please explain what you mean by "peer pressure".

[grondilu]

...
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.
...

Sorry but imho money is exactly that or, at the very least, has been turned into just that.

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.

[axus]

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.

[lebing]

...
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.
...

Sorry but imho money is exactly that or, at the very least, has been turned into just that. The protestant work ethic has ground that in for generations and many folks believe work it's the whole point of life.

Don't get me wrong, this is one of the things that built the foundations of the modern world. We're not at the foundations any more though, the walls are up, the roof is on and a fully automated vacuum cleaner pops around once a day to scare the shit out of the cat. We don't need the work ethic any more and keeping it is tying up a huge amount of work in doing pointless tasks just to keep the system it ran on running.

We're only getting started, the Victorians where changing the world a lot quicker than we're doing now. Our labour force isn't producing, new ways of pushing around bits of paper are being invented to tie it up because everything would collapse if people didn't have jobs, right? All these forms, taxes, regulations, hoops to jump through, they create prosperity, right?

Our hands and feet are tied, our new phone has a little blue light the last model didn't have so we think we're making progress. The reality is we haven't made anything much new in the last half century, we've just improved the stuff we already had. The Victorians had countless crazy ideas and investors crazy enough to back them, the second world war brought another huge leap in technology from another deranged set of investors. Free up the minds to have crazy ideas and free up the money to back them, a bevelled rectangle with a shiny front face is not innovation.

/endofthread

[jojo69]

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.

[myrkul]

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

[420]

Make it all voluntary and libertarians will love it

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

I'm a direct witness to something simlilar

[Hunterbunter]

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.

Please explain what you mean by "peer pressure".

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 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.

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.

[myrkul]

Is the threat of starvation going to cause someone to decide to become a nuclear physicist?

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

[grondilu]

Please explain what you mean by "peer pressure".

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

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.