Universal Basic Income and the threat of tyranny

http://quillette.com/2017/10/09/universal-basic-income-threat-tyranny/

by empath75 • 9 years ago

141 144 9 years ago

dontreact• 9 years ago

So which way is it? Non-workers will be disenfranchised politically, or tyrannously use democracy to assert their power over people who do work?

The fact that even in this article both sides are argued points to the fact that there will be some counteracting forces that will stabilize things for at least a while if basic income is implemented. I think that getting concerned about what will happen 10 steps down the line when things could really go either way is a type of premature optimization.

I believe it's pretty clear that people _with_ money will have that power, but at some point that money will have to make its way into the hands of more citizens in order to avoid societal collapse. Then when political power needs rebalancing, there will still be a massive amount of people fighting for political power if things go too far one way, and people with a massive amount of wealth to counterbalance them.

DanielBMarkham4• 9 years ago

Interesting observation. Societies where large numbers of people participate economically in the structure of government have lots of freedoms. Societies in which small numbers of people participate economically in the structure of government have fewer freedoms. UBI, by definition, takes more and more people out of active participation and makes them just consumers of the economic "product" of government.

...And this is the real danger of a universal basic income – it makes the citizens unnecessary to the government....

The conclusion, if I understand the author, is that UBI postulates that a few really rich and successful people need to worry about the money and how to get it to the masses. The masses are there for consumption, to find their true meaning in life, and so on. Not to create economic value for others, which is a critical part of a healthy state.

Beats me. I'm looking forward to more data from the experiments YC and others have going. I'm also looking to narrow down exactly what UBI is. So far it looks far more like a slogan to me than an actual policy. The experiments should help with that.

jjawssd3• 9 years ago

UBI is a technique the state can use to entrench its influence by encouraging the people to become increasingly dependent on the government for basic needs.

platz7• 9 years ago

Instead of basic income, which has the danger of creating a tribal, polarizing division between working and non-working people, economist richard d wolff suggested (since he is an avowed socalist, amusingly, appearing in a Fox Business interview) that instead of basic income, we put everyone to work, while at the same time reducing everyone's hours. Work, but work less (adjust according to demand as needed, adjust compensation as necessary).

chrisco255• 9 years ago

This is not practical. Many folks are salaried. And many jobs take being on the job a certain number of hours to build up to maximum productivity.

platz7• 9 years ago

In a world where all the current solutions are impractical, we'll have to find a way to make one of them practical.

Also, no need to be overly categorical—certain jobs should stay the same as they are and of course be paid more. What we're talking about here is the bulk majority.

Less hours could simply mean less days.

thriftwy4• 9 years ago

creating a tribal, polarizing division between working and non-working people

I can't imagine how you would arrive at this idea.

Unemployment benefits create a tribal, polarizing division between working and non-working people.

Basic Income creates a continuum. You can have BI + leisure, BI + freelance, BI + 10 hr workweek, BI + regular load, BI + burning out. Whatever works for you.

platz7• 9 years ago

When we sell "BI + burning out" to mainstream, who currently despise "Unemployment benefits", i'll be on board. Until then i'm skeptical that narrowing to just "Unemployment benefits" is the true underlying psych phenomenon at work here.

c.f. quote from article which provides example of divisions that could from between working and non-working people which has nothing to do with unemployment benefits:

"How many working people would vote against taking universal basic income rights away from Nazis and terrorists? And once that is done, can we be sure they will not get an appetite to take them away from more and more people they dislike?"

KekDemaga• 9 years ago

we put everyone to work
Work, but work less (adjust according to demand as needed, adjust compensation as necessary).

"Hey Kek you are a programmer right?"

"I am indeed"

"We need you to work 80 hour weeks because we don't have many programmers, don't worry though we will give you another half ration to make up for it"

"No, i'm only going to work 20 hours like the street cleaners"

What does this fictional UBI government do then? Put a gun to my head and force me to work seems to be the most common solution to this problem historically. The problem is all human work can't be divided evenly among all humans, we need doctors more than we need fast food workers thus doctors typically work longer hours. For the system to be "fair" we can't pay doctors all that much more than fast food workers, maybe 10% - 15% or even 100% more but not the 1000% more they see currently. What if doctors decide that isn't enough and all become fast food workers instead? What do we do then? That is the problem UBI and Communism has yet to solve.

platz7• 9 years ago

I didn't say anything about everyone getting the _same_ rate of pay, or that is it managed by a central planning government. please do not put words in my mouth

ared38• 9 years ago

UBI has an incredibly simple solution (that you already quoted): The programmer gets paid way way more than the basic income, because she also has a real job (vs a government subsidized basic job). If her current employer is demanding 80-hour weeks, she's free to quit and find another.

Unless you're imagining a post-scarcity utopia, UBI isn't supposed to provide anything close to a luxurious life. For example, GiveDirectly has been experimenting with giving just enough money for food in Kenya. A first implementation in the US might be even less (relatively speaking), perhaps enough to make a minimum wage job livable.

Practically speaking Communist countries also incentivize important work. Do you really think the NK scientists working on their missile just get "another half ration" more than farm workers?

hammock• 9 years ago

That's pretty much communism. Everyone forced to work and compensated according to a centrally planned ("adjusted") economy.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" - Karl Marx

platz7• 9 years ago

I did not say anything about there needing being a government entity that centrally does things to people. The "adjust accordingly" part could simply be market forces that "adjust" wages. Also, I didn't say anything about everyone getting the same rate of pay. What I said was reduce total work hours (or blocks if req'd), pay them more, put more people to work. That's it. I agree I don't think this should be realized though communism.

DonaldFisk5• 9 years ago

Under communism, you pretend to work and the Government pretends to pay you.

mikeash4• 9 years ago

I don't buy it. In a democracy, the government cares about votes, not people refusing to pay their taxes. The government has a lot of ways to compel you to pay taxes, but not your vote.

The massive political power of retirees in the US seems like a perfect example. They aren't very productive economically and they receive lots of benefits from the government, but they wield political power out of proportion to their numbers, and politicians won't dare cross them.

DanielBMarkham4• 9 years ago

I don't believe you understand what he's saying.

His point, as I understand it, is if you participate economically in a social structure, your vote represents economic activity in that structure. So if the nation was full of fast-food workers, the democratic structure that would come out of it would be something that favored fast-food workers and took their economic needs into account. In your example of retired people, a world full of retired people would create a governmental structure that understood and favored the economic activity of retired folks, which is basic consumption.

In a world where most people simply consume, such as those retired people, either you wouldn't get participation at all or you'd get participation that was structured economically around what retired folks do. In either case, it's a tyrannical and dysfunctional government. The only way to "fix" it is to have a de facto oligarchy where a small number of rich people control everything and deliver it to the masses. And that's as bad or worse than the other scenarios.

jjawssd3• 9 years ago

Is it possible that the USA already has a de facto oligarchy where a small number of rich people control everything and deliver it to the masses?

mikeash4• 9 years ago

You're right, I don't understand it. Why does a government structured around the economic activity of its voters suddenly become tyrannical and dysfunctional when when most of them are no longer productive?

dfabulich• 9 years ago

That's true in a democracy, but the question is why would the democracy remain a democracy if the productive, governing elite doesn't need the citizens for their economic activity?

From time to time, governing elites have asked themselves a question: is now the time to overthrow democracy?

When the wealth of a nation comes from the productivity of its citizens, you can't overthrow a stable democracy without destroying the wealth you intended to capture. But when the wealth of a nation comes from its natural resources, say gold or oil, the calculus changes. You can run a gold mine with dying slaves and still extract great wealth.

We see this worldwide as the resource curse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

"The resource curse, also known as the paradox of plenty, refers to the paradox that countries with an abundance of natural resources (like fossil fuels and certain minerals), tend to have less economic growth, less democracy, and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources."

Some economists refer to human labor as "the ultimate resource," a resource of value beyond gold, beyond oil. As automation becomes more and more useful, as the value of capital relative to human labor increases, the more we're cursing ourselves with the ultimate resource curse.

I recommend this video to every one (watch it at double speed; he talks slowly). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

crdoconnor• 9 years ago

The massive political power of retirees in the US seems like a perfect example.

The political system isn't structured around them, they just manage to get their way a lot of the time.

Political systems tend to center around who has economic power (where to quote Dune "power over a thing is the power to destroy it").

I think this explains the principle he was trying to get across better than he did: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/09/how-coal-brought-us-...

thriftwy4• 9 years ago

We already have tyranny without any income :(

2noame• 9 years ago

According to the logic used in this, Alaska is an autocratic regime. But when I look at Alaska, I see a state with the lowest poverty, lowest inequality, and highest well-being of almost all 50 states. I also see a population who comes out to vote, especially when anything dividend related is voted on.

It's stuff like this that really annoys me, and I feel gives academics a bad name. It's coming up with what-ifs and not applying any applicable evidence to it. Take this for another example:

"Will the working minority agree to support non-workers with ten or twenty children per family? Will that be sustainable?"

Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone really honestly think that there's a high percentage of women out there wanting to give birth 10 to 20 times? Is that theoretically possible? Sure, but that doesn't make it in any way probable. In fact the evidence we have again points in the opposite direction.

I really don't see any value in writing shit like this. Why not next write something about the concerns of universal health care, and how people might use it to drink so much they just replace liver after liver? Or maybe people will feel they could then rob banks because if they got shot, they'd have free health care. Are these things theoretically possible? Yes. But that doesn't make them not stupid to express.

Look, in general, democracies all over the world, in addition to UBI, need to be strengthened through dropping ideas like first-past-the-post, and adopting ideas like single-transferable-vote that feature more proportional representation and lack spoiler effects.

With that said, I only see those changes as more possible through UBI because people with their basic needs met have more time and mental space to engage in being more informed and more involved as citizens.

Look at how involved seniors are and how much power they have. Government answers to them. It's not the other way around. They don't lose the right to vote because they are no longer part of the labor market. Instead they vote in even greater numbers. And guess what happens when that happens? You get represented.

Articles like this are written by those who don't bother to look at the evidence around them and instead choose to use imaginary thinking in the hopes of influencing others.

Basic income is freedom FROM tyranny, not the threat of it.

stretchwithme• 9 years ago

Alaska is a state, not country.

The highest the Alaska oil royalty has ever been was $2,072 in 2015. I think they are now capping it at $1000.

The median household income in 2015 was $73,355, the third highest in the country. Certainly the royalty was enough to move it from number 5 to number 3.

I suspect the royalty does not have much to do with this high income. And this is EXTRA money, not money taken from the populace and then given back to them as UBI would be.

Interestingly, "Alaska has more residents on welfare, per capita, than any other state in the nation" according to the Alaska Dispatch News.

And, yes, not many rich people live in Alaska. Maybe the climate is a reason. Maybe it's the lack of big cities.

ashark2• 9 years ago

It's stuff like this that really annoys me, and I feel gives academics a bad name.

TFA's author bio: "Shai Shapira is a computer programmer and writer."

Poli-sci academics usually don't construct their premises so obviously poorly and proceed to build a castle on sand like this article does. Typically they're at least good enough that any, "wait, what?"s aren't apparent at first glance.

tu7001• 9 years ago

Calm down mate:) author done great job analysing dangerous cases. Prepare for the worst, that it never happen.

ng123• 9 years ago

Does anyone really honestly think that there's a high percentage of women out there wanting to give birth 10 to 20 times?

I think 10-20 is hyperbole but the inverse relationship between GDP and birth rates is well documented -- a chief argument being unemployed people have time to make babies.

With that said, I only see those changes as more possible through UBI because people with their basic needs met have more time and mental space to engage in being more informed and more involved as citizens.

This is where UBI loses me. So many of it's advocates are convinced people freed from labor will become scholar poets. Proles will be proles whether you call it Marxism or UBI.

matt4077• 9 years ago

a chief argument being unemployed people have time to make babies.

That is an incredibly stupid argument, and I've never heard anybody make it, chief or not.

It's easily proven by comparing across time: being a peasant in the middle ages didn't come with a lot of leisure time, yet they had plenty of children.

Reproductive rates are driven by education, health care (esp child mortality), women's agency, and alternative methods of ensuring one's welfare in old age.

jpindar6• 9 years ago

So what if they're not poets, or whatever you consider worthy? If we don't need their labor (we might now, but someday we probably won't), what difference does it make what they do with their time?

The one exception to this is that children might not finish school if they think they won't need to get a job. To avoid this, we might limit UBI to those who have at least made an effort to get a high school education.

dragonwriter7• 9 years ago

I think 10-20 is hyperbole but the inverse relationship between GDP and birth rates is well documented

The observed inverse relationship is between birth rate and strength of social support systems; this roughly tracks GDP, but it also explains the outliers, like the US which (among developed countries) has both a high birthrate and a weak social support system.

UBI strengthens the social support system (it also removes bureaucratic drag on the economy and replaces systems which disincentivize certain economic exchanges, which should also increase GDP.)

usrusr5• 9 years ago

Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone really honestly think that there's a high percentage of women out there wanting to give birth 10 to 20 times?

The numbers are overblown, but I see this as a real issue with utopian interpretations of UBI. I.e. those where, to quote the article, proponents expect "a majority of non-workers to live off the fruits of the labour of a small minority", as opposed to a more realistic UBI where the working poor use that free money to maybe cut one or two of their multiple jobs from their tight schedule.

But in the "utopian" version, a huge group would be left without anything to strive for. If the payout would be too generous, adding an entry level work income would not make a noticeable difference. When people are depraved of all other kinds of achievement, they are likely to use breeding as a substitute. If you can't climb or defend any ranks, you can still move up one level by spawning "subordinates". Instant status.

I feel bad just for thinking thoughts that cynical, but I can't help expecting that kind of outcome if it isn't openly addressed. A "nonutopian UBI" that just creates a smooth, regulation-free ramp (I almost want to say "interpolation") between welfare and full self-support would leave the cynic in me much more at ease.

(Edited: my writing is terrible)

aaroninsf2• 9 years ago

Humans will strive to rise to the top in any game we choose to play together.

Competitiveness like this does not require that people are competing for basic needs.

Free people from the Puritan conceit that the majority should struggle and suffer, and observe what happens.

Independent of how you feel about it in other respects, Burning Man offers a fine large scale experimental environment into which observe the social organization that occurs in circumstances of plenty rather than scarcity. (Because it operates on a strictly enforced gift economy. Not barter. Not sale. Never mind people who don't play by the rules for now; as a 25 year attendee I have seen first hand the reality behind the cant.)

Humans will "strive" plenty whether they are fed or not. There are more needs than the ones we can and should provide for all (housing, food, education).

Humans will always find a way to self segregate and award status, whether it's in terms of karma or dollars.

At a social level, dollars too are a consensual fiction and useful primarily as a crude proxy for status and success and desirability. (Not talking about utility, talking about social status.)

jpindar6• 9 years ago

Why would people be 'deprived of all achievement' just because they're not broke?

Karrot_Kream• 9 years ago

When people are depraved of all other kinds of achievement, they are likely to use breeding as a substitute.

What? How does this follow? This makes no sense.

dnautics3• 9 years ago

alaska is typically in the top 10 of most corrupt state indices.

http://fortune.com/2014/06/10/most-corrupt-states-in-america...

I also see a population who comes out to vote, especially when anything dividend related is voted on.

that's exactly part of the point of the aricle.

md2be• 9 years ago

UBI is freedom ? Tell that to the the generational families of the projects of Chicago.

solatic• 9 years ago

Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone really honestly think that there's a high percentage of women out there wanting to give birth 10 to 20 times? Is that theoretically possible?

Religious extremists.

In the early days of the State of Israel, the largest secular party needed the support of the parties of religious extremists, in order to form a majority in parliament and create a government. Those parties set a price: they would support the government, but only if the government exempted their young men from military service, and pay them a living stipend, so that they could spend their days engrossed in religious studies. All told, about 400 men would be granted such an exemption and stipend.

At the time, the secular party's leader thought that religiosity in Israel was going the way of the dodo anyway. He didn't have a problem with setting up a kind of living museum for religious study, so he accepted.

The official birthrate for those religious-extremist families is around eight, but it is not uncommon to find families with a dozen or even more children. Because of how Israeli parliamentary politics works, the religious extremist parties often served as kingmakers for parties which sought to form governments, and they kept that price as the price for support. Today there are more than 10,000 such people receiving such exemptions and stipends, and more than 25% of all children in Israeli elementary schools come from ultra-religious families, in spite of such measures being almost universally unpopular outside that sector and continually struck down by the Israeli Supreme Court every few years.

To finally answer your question: it's not just theoretically possible, it's a guarantee. And demography is one hell of a time bomb.

walterstucco7• 9 years ago

I like to think you're right, but given the cheaty nature of men, most would trick the system by having a large number of children, even with different women, it doesn't matter.

That's what they already do where children are subsidized by the state welfare, imagine what they would do if it would mean another salary in the house.

It's only basic logic.

jlebrech• 9 years ago

Instead of giving people money, why not have bare minimum shelter, food and education that's available for everyone.

make it a universal parachute.

free money will just raise the prices of essentials.

at-fates-hands2• 9 years ago

Instead of giving people money, why not have bare minimum shelter, food and education that's available for everyone.

There's already a myriad of government programs and safety nets that provide all of these and more.

_jal• 9 years ago

...Which, in the US, are fragmented, varyingly difficult to access, varyingly generous, and nowhere nearly universal.

In other words, a 'universal basic shelter' program would look very different.

WalterSear2• 9 years ago

In a way that buying essentials and handing them out does not?

ashark2• 9 years ago

Why would directly paying for those essentials have a smaller effect on their prices than giving people money to pay for the same?

dragonwriter7• 9 years ago

Instead of giving people money, why not have bare minimum shelter, food and education that's available for everyone.

Because that traps people in he bare minimum, since improvements are often necessarily replacements rather than supplements.

UBI lets small amounts of outside income provide tangible improvement.

rad88• 9 years ago

The whole point is to eliminate social programs.

at-fates-hands2• 9 years ago

The major issue with basic income is what to do with all the government programs that provide safety nets for low income folks.

Will a basic income supplant those programs or be another addition to those programs?

zlynx• 9 years ago

The only way universal basic income even approaches making sense is if it replaces _everything_ else. No housing benefits, education benefits, welfare, unemployment or social security. Dump it all.

Yes, instead of living in large urban centers, unemployed poor people would have to move to smaller places with low costs of living. This is a good thing, really.

And without price supports through unlimited government loans, schools will have to become cheaper. Those associate professors of English lit who are so abused by the current system can live on BI plus cheap tuition in addition to online classes.

But of course it's all politics and I'm sure it will be impossible to pass a reasonable, cost neutral plan. Instead people will find ways to pile on the bureaucracy until it is less annoying to just go to work and get paid than it is to fill out all of the BI paperwork and file it with six different agencies.

The easy idea of just creating a virtual bank account at birth linked to a SS number or equivalent is so simple it's just a non-starter. And I've tried to convince people that means-testing and such is a waste of money and time but no, plenty of people see BI as welfare and want drug testing and means testing for it. Bah! Give Bill Gates his $20K per year. Who cares if he doesn't need it!?

usrusr5• 9 years ago

I'd say "almost everything", since UBI would never pay for serious disability care and the like. But there should be heavy, even unfair consequences for relying on that kind of extra support, so that people self-select instead of being admitted or rejected by some authority. Replacing some or all of the UBI stipend with goods and services might be a way. I think that a similar programme could also be necessary for people who can absolutely not trust themselves with money, and strong rules against abusing future UBI as collateral in loans (as in "if you lend to a non-earner you are out of luck", not as in "if you promise someone your future UBI you not only owe them, but also a hefty fine to the state").

WalterSear2• 9 years ago

It replaces all the other financial safety nets, but not all social services, such as universal health care.

The savings involved in dismantling the corpulent bureaucracy currently managing and adjudicating benefits will actually go a significant way towards paying for UBI.

IMHO, ideally, UBI would be sacrosanct, and could not be legally garnished to service any debt. This would prevent if from being used as collateral, and ensure that it would remain available to support the individual - people would not be able to ever get themselves into such debt that they became a burden on society, since they could never borrow against it.

Moreover, it may be better method for managing inflation than our current setup of anointed central banks making themselves money out of thin air: Instead of passing out money to the banks, in order to generate velocity, deliver it to the citizens in the form of a deposit into some form of money market account, thereby immediately putting it into circulation in the economy.

dragonwriter7• 9 years ago

The simple solution (and the one that allows smooth transition with a ramp up of universal income) is that the universal income counts as income for existing income-qualified programs. As it ramps up, it displaces them and, eventually, they can be folded entirely, some much sooner than others.

skrebbel• 9 years ago

I love articles like these.

That said, I think they miss a core point: there is very little precedent of functional democracies, which have been functional democracies for more than a few decades, turning into autocracies [0]. In the grand scheme of things decent democracies are a pretty new idea and we simply lack the data.

The author's list of awful fuel-exporting countries has a nice exception in it: Norway. Apart from a WWII hiccup, Norway was pretty much a functional democracy for a long time when they started exporting oil in the sixties. And they did not turn into an autocracy, even though Norway's government does not need its people to stay financed.

I feel like this single case undermines the author's entire argument. I'm willing to buy that an autocracy turning to universal basic income won't make it any less autocratic. But a functioning democracy (for a sufficiently great value of "functioning") has no incentive to turn into an autocracy merely because its median citizen increasingly depends on the government. That needs a much stronger argument and I haven't read it in the article.

[0] Some people might point to Turkey, Hungary and the US right now, but a) those stories haven't played out yet and b) none of those countries fit the author's bill.

geofft• 9 years ago

This would be a much better argument if it had data and citations instead of just references to things that of course everybody knows (and, in practice, not everybody knows).

Here are a couple of my objections, that could be answered by data or references to serious studies:

In the suggested world of universal basic income, what puts pressure on the government to maintain democracy and political rights? Will they be afraid of a popular uprising? The people have nothing to threaten them with. A person who does not pay taxes cannot threaten to stop paying them. Violent revolution? History shows that governments tend to be significantly better than common people in using violence.

Who puts pressure on the government now to maintain democracy and political rights? For example, are the governments of the US or Australia really feeling today that if they fail to allow gay couples to marry, the people might stop paying taxes or engage in violence?

There is, certainly, a mechanism whereby the sentiment of the people puts pressure on democratic and even sorta-democratic governments. But the assumption that that mechanism is tax is a huge and undefended one, and seems pretty central to the argument.

It has often been taken for granted that as societies advance, fertility drops, but this has only been happening for a short time and in societies where having children requires hard work to provide for them.

Isn't the main factor here the availability of birth control (which depends on scientific advancement/knowledge and industrial practice in mass manufacture of birth control, not on hard work)? I'm surprised not to see birth control mentioned at all in this argument. The strawman pleasure-seekers would be motivated to spend their free time figuring out better forms of birth control, because (again as a strawman) sex is fun and childbirth isn't.

The World Bank gives us a list of countries ordered by what percentage of their merchandise exports comes from fuels. At 50% or more we find, in this order: Iraq, Angola, Algeria, Brunei, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Oman, Norway, Colombia, Bolivia and Bahrain. Can we notice a trend? How many of these countries provide a good set of political rights for their citizens?

A huge number of those countries have been ravaged by external political interference, in part because of the fuels in those countries. I don't think it's honest to can leave that out of the analysis and make a direct correlation between natural resources and despotism. We know that warlords and strongmen rise in politically unstable places, and we know in several cases that warlords and strongmen are propped up by other countries who are trying to gain favorable exports, to the extent of populist revolutions being suppressed.

(To be clear, I am not an unreserved proponent of UBI. I just think that this argument is a bad argument against it, and in particular I worry that this argument leads in short order to positions I actually disagree with "Economic inequality is inherently good" or "Lazy people shouldn't eat.")

otakucode• 9 years ago

Similar to the ethical and philosophical basis of things like universal health care, a universal basic income could not work if done partially. If you adopt universal health care without enshrining in your society the utter importance of taking care of everyone because of their fundamental value as human beings absent all other factors - the outcome will be tyranny. If there is an ability for someone to say 'oh, but perhaps we shouldn't take care of person X because they made bad choices and it would save us money to do so' then you will rapidly see the definition of various health-related regulations created with the goal of reducing the cost burden of health care.

While one might be tempted to say 'that would just result in people living healthier lives', that would be a very superficial and unstudied evaluation. Behavior modification on a society-wide scale like that is radically dangerous. It might actually be the most dangerous thing in history, I'm not sure. I'd need to run some numbers, but I think there is a good chance that the unintended consequences of well-intentioned behavior modification like that has killed more than all wars combined.

Basic income is an interesting idea, but requires social support. It cannot succeed in a society which has been accustomed to seeing other people suffering less than themselves as the worst thing possible. This is a necessary legacy of the Protestant Work Ethic which dictates that a persons virtue is measured by the degree of suffering they endure for the benefit "of society" (in truth only for employers, not society at large). In that mindset, asking for reward is itself immoral and can only reduce a persons virtue. Either to receive or provide such rewards is an act of immorality, and though many can not actually recognize or admit it, this underlies how they see the world. The poor deserve their lot because they contribute little. The rich must be moral because they are rich (this is predicated on a fantastical delusion that riches are awarded only when a person has benefitted many). This is why so many people hate punitive damage judgements. They're not concerned with the well-being of the corporation being fined tens or hundreds of millions of dollars for acting harmfully. They are obsessed, to the point of willful self-destruction, with ensuring that some individual does not get a "payday" legal settlement.

Without a philosophical backing that justifies a universal basic income, it would continuously be under threat, with people from all sides attempting to reduce the income to the point that few could survive on it alone, attempting to push people to 'be productive' in a world that doesn't need productive people. It's not a situation you can simply ignore and hope people wake up to. It has to be discussed and justified and explained. Why should society at large provide for those who do not produce material products? At what level should they be supported? Should drug addicts and criminals be supported? When someone feels slighted that someone who has not suffered as much as they gets the same amount, how will you answer them?

clavalle10• 9 years ago

UBI isn't meant to be a full replacement for an individual's economic activity. It is /basic/, which is to say, it will cover the basic necessities.

The whole article is based on the assumption that once basic necessities are covered, huge numbers of people are going to call it a day and cease economically profitable activity.

I think the opposite will happen: once people have the basics taken care of they will become more economically active. They will take risks they couldn't before because of the overhanging risk of complete destitution. They will negotiate for better wages because everyone will know they have a perfectly viable alternative. They will invest time in themselves because they won't have to worry about how they will live if they don't have a job while they study or launch a business.

Further, there will be more money sloshing around and creating broad-based demand for goods and services that these self-same people can try to capture through their own industriousness.

I strongly believe that we have as many on welfare right now because we have a huge sector of our population that have the following choice: live in poverty on welfare with lots of free time or live in poverty while working your ass off treading water. And the reason they remain in poverty is that their employers know that there isn't a great alternative for those marginal employees so they pay just enough to keep their employees afloat but not enough that they can get ahead. UBI or negative income tax (my personal preference) would deeply change this calculus. People could spend their time and energy to truly better their situation rather than merely not lose everything.

We're not going to turn into a banana republic where only the economically elite and the political class keep each other happy and everyone else are kept just happy enough to avoid revolution. There isn't a lot of democratizing of economic power in those regimes.

joeblow9999• 9 years ago

"The whole article is based on the assumption that once basic necessities are covered, huge numbers of people are going to call it a day and cease economically profitable activity."

Is there some reason to think otherwise? This is already a prevalent phenomenon in generous welfare states.

clavalle10• 9 years ago

Such as?

kinos2• 9 years ago

Did you know that if you make too much income you will lose your welfare? You can lose disability just for holding onto $2000 for someone. There are a lot of ways to lose welfare, and a lot of disincentives to get off of it. Being on welfare also gives you a large amount of disincentives towards finding a job.

DonaldFisk5• 9 years ago

Would you give up your job to just subsist on Basic Income? I thought not. So why do you assume that huge numbers of other people would?

jpindar6• 9 years ago

Women prefer men who do something with their lives.

dahdum2• 9 years ago

I wonder this too...having grown up in a rural area I can easily envision UBI creating a near permanent class of people who live off it alone. Why bother to go to college or a trade school if you can hang with your friends spending your days in recreation at 18?

I use to be a proponent of UBI, but now I genuinely fear what it would do to society at large.

dagw• 9 years ago

This is already a prevalent phenomenon in generous welfare states.

If you're going to make that argument you have to correct for the fact that many welfare state programs implicitly encourage people to slack off. If you're 'caught' going to school or taking courses, working part time or trying start your own business you can, in many cases, end up kicked off of welfare. Earning an extra dollar while on UBI will leave you with an extra dollar to spend. Earning an extra dollar while on welfare can in many cases leave you a lot worse off.

Also many welfare programs require you to jump through regular bureaucratic hoops that will eat up a lot of your time and energy. We don't really know what will happen if we remove those restrictions.

syshum4• 9 years ago

I agree with your opinions on the current state of the Welfare system, and agree we need something better.

However I do think their is a non-trivial risk that a Basic Income depending on how it is implemented can result in a sever limiting or loss of liberty. We have already seen that with the welfare system today, and in other segments of the legal system where basic human rights are under continual assault to the point that most people do not even recognize properly the level of oppression that exisits in the world as it is today. They have assimilated the general rules and laws into their lives to the point they no longer "miss" the freedom they lost, or the freedom was lost so long ago no one alive even remembers a time where the law or regulation was not in place. The most common manifestation of these can be found in things like Airport Security, Drug Raids, Police Checkpoints, and about 1000 other things I can list.

spiantino• 9 years ago

Completely agree. Basic Income would not only be tremendously stimulative and probably lead to more growth and demand for labor, it would also give many the flexibility to avoid traps of poverty and engage with the economy in a more sustainable and ultimately productive way.

DigitalJack• 9 years ago

I have not spent much time studying basic income, but I'm sure the topic of inflation must be addressed. What's the current thinking on basic income having an effect on inflation?

marcosdumay• 9 years ago

Nobody addresses the topic of inflation because it is not real. It's just some FUD somebody though about and survives due to disinformation.

Government deficits¹ generate inflation, what is a completely orthogonal concept to UBI.

1 - Among a few other factors, but the deficits are the one relevant here.

dragonwriter7• 9 years ago

I have not spent much time studying basic income, but I'm sure the topic of inflation must be addressed. What's the current thinking on basic income having an effect on inflation?

Basic income will certainly (in its initial implementation and with any increases) have some effect on price levels of goods, increasing the prices of goods demanded more by net beneficiaries and reducing those demanded disproportionately by those who are net payers in whatever the funding mechanism is.

But those should be such that the net beneficiaries still have increased buying power and the net payers have decreased buying power.

RestlessMind3• 9 years ago

The whole article is based on the assumption that once basic necessities are covered, huge numbers of people are going to call it a day and cease economically profitable activity. I think the opposite will happen...

I would assume the burden of proof to be on you (and supporters of UBI) to prove that opposite will happen and people won't just slack off once their basic necessities are covered.

clavalle10• 9 years ago

The burden of proof would be on me to prove that people will engage in transactions that will better their financial position? Strange. Seems like almost a given to me.

How many well-off people that have their basic necessities covered just slack off?

dmwallin• 9 years ago

It's already extremely well established that people will work far beyond what they need to maintain basic necessities. There are all sorts of strong motivations for humans outside of basic survival. In addition if you look at groups with steady income streams and no perverse incentives (ex. retirees, trust funders) the vast majority remains productive in some capacity. If you are making the claim that UBI would so drastically change human behavior as to invalidate all this observed behavior than the burden of proof should be on you.

jrs95• 9 years ago

I've always thought both will happen. Some number of people are going to be hurt by this (they'll stop being productive) while others will use UBI in a positive way and benefit from it. What's up in the air is which way it's going to lean, imo. There still ought to be something in place to try and minimize the downsides either way. Personally I'd be a fan of making a work or education requirement to receive all or part of the benefits, so you essentially can't just sit on your ass and collect the money just for breathing.

xelxebar2• 9 years ago

Baye's Theorem doesn't have a term for "burden of proof". If we want to claim that UBI will swing any way in particular, then we gotta pony up the evidence, regardless of the specifics.

Instead of volleying opinions back and forth, I think we would do better by discussing the ins and outs of current problems to which UBI is a single proposed possible solution.

dragonwriter7• 9 years ago

I would assume the burden of proof to be on you (and supporters of UBI) to prove that opposite will happen and people won't just slack off once their basic necessities are covered.

Most people who have the opportunity now don't slack off once their basic needs are covered, though the marginal effort needed to go beyond that is greater than it would be with a UBI. It is UBI opponents who are positing something contrary to all human experience in arguing that people in general would stop seeking improvement in material condition if the marginal cost of that beyond basic survival were reduced by UBI, so I think the burden is on them to, at a minimum, a rationale for believing that to be the case.

Though dealing with concerns like this (which, rational or not, are clearly significant) is among the many reasons why I think a gradual phase-in of universal income, gradually phasing out means-tested safety net programs, is better than trying a radical transition.

ramblerman• 9 years ago

and people won't just slack off once their basic necessities are covered.

Well to some level we can handle that right. If taxis are driving themselves, and other jobs get replaced by tech havent we liberated these folks?

If people want to work to feel useful great, but the point of technological advancement is that not everyone will have to.

xelxebar2• 9 years ago

Wait. Isn't the point that we're trying to gather empirical data on what happens. Without this data "strong belief" one way or another seems a bit irresponsible to me.

clavalle10• 9 years ago

Sure. Call it a hypothesis. But many people are trying to shut down the experiments before they happen.

dragonwriter7• 9 years ago

UBI isn't meant to be a full replacement for an individual's economic activity.

Indeed not.

It is /basic/, which is to say, it will cover the basic necessities.

Honestly, I think this is one of the fundamental mistakes UBI proponents make: proposing the idea that there is some particular level that UBI should reach.

UBI is much more coherent of an idea if the "basic" is recast as representing simply a baseline, rather than targeting basic necessities, which are, critically, not a fixed target anyhow, but a moving baseline determined by social expectations, which UBI itself will affect.

The whole article is based on the assumption that once basic necessities are covered, huge numbers of people are going to call it a day and cease economically profitable activity.

Which is pretty silly for a number of reasons. Mostly, ignores a lot of basic observations of human behavior and the difference between UBI and the systems it displaces:

(1) People strive for more material wealth, so long as that provides perceived marginal utility (there's some evidence that beyond certain very high incomes -- IIRC, studies ~10-20 years ago had this in the neigborhood of $200K/yr in then-current dollars in the US -- but even so people strive for more when they have that much because of perceived utility.)

(2) People's expectations and self-perceived "basic needs" are strongly influenced by comparison to others visible in their society, not merely absolute conditions; UBI improves the absolute condition of those without capital or labor income, but it doesn't remove the incentive to strive for more (in fact, compared to a system with a means-tested safety net, it increases it.)

(3) Capital income is still a thing with UBI: this is perhaps them most significant oversight in UBI criticism. Its true that UBI is often posed as a protection against a world in which an ever increasing share of the population is unable to find work with significant value, reducing (at least, in a relative sense) the income of workers, it is not intended for a situation where there is no opportunity to strive for more. Between UBI and what people can make from work, there are opportunities to acquire capital, which is the route to development which remains open even if labor opportunities become scarce.

(4) But labor opportunities won't disappear in the near term, though many may pay less per hour (especially at the entry level.) But UBI makes lower-pay labor both viable (by providing support which isn't removed with additional labor income) and legal (as it is usually posed as replacing minimum wage -- I personally prefer a phase-out where minimum wage is reduced as UBI ramps up), which increases rather than decreasing work opportunities.

We're not going to turn into a banana republic where only the economically elite and the political class keep each other happy and everyone else are kept just happy enough to avoid revolution.

Well, UBI won't drive that, at any rate, and largely opposes it. There's a very good argument that the first part is largely true, and you could argue that the one thing that's been happening in recent years is the fine tuning of just how little is necessary to hit just the point where the second half is true, too.

DickingAround• 9 years ago

This counter point really didn't address the article; that we risk creating tyrannies when we use the government to support everyone. That is so much money and power it will corrupt any person or organization who wields it.

For example, it's a 'universal' income right? Do people still get it when they're in prison for rape/murder? How about in jail for a few weeks on shoplifting? What if a citizen is living in another country? What if they're here illegally? Do you get one for each kid the moment they're born? What if the kid is born in the US and parents are illegal immigrants? And just how much UBI should everyone get? Your answers to these questions will not agree with your neighbor's answers.

A UBI would become more corrupt than anything else we've seen because there will be even more power in it. The power hungry will seek it and corrupt it because we will never agree on who has a right to that giant pile of money.

clavalle10• 9 years ago

We already use the government to support everyone to some degree. The government already wields enormous power.

In what ways would UBI be different?

walterstucco7• 9 years ago

I think the opposite will happen

Looking at what's already happened, one can only say it's the most probable outcome.

Look at what happened in USSR.

Or what happens right now in Switzerland where pay checks are so high that almost nobody works at 100%, they all have some kind part time job.

Any other assumption is, well, an assumption, and a risky one.

clavalle10• 9 years ago

The USSR tried basic income? News to me.

Doesn't Switzerland have high productivity and wealth? Does it matter that people are just working part time there or is that a Really Good Thing (do we all need to be working 40+ hours?)

lithos• 9 years ago

If landlords know exactly how much a large subset of their renters make, that is how much they will charge. Examples of this in action is looking at rent in military areas and rises in BAH. They follow almost exactly, with rent being in response to BAH change.

Any form of UBI will just be used as a wealth transfer to landlords that rent.

fallingfrog• 9 years ago

This author makes some good points. But I think he's making a crucial mistake.

He posits that political power comes from the ability to withhold something; in this case work. That seems correct to me. But, I think the mistake is in assuming that the majority of people today even in countries like the US do have that power. If you are working a job that doesn't require credentials or a long period of training or education, then you don't really don't have anything to threaten the powers that be with, aside from a massive general strike, which has not happened in a long time. So the danger scenario he posits is really already here, for most people.

UBI wouldn't really change that, except inasmuch as it would make it plausible for working people to go on strike much more painlessly, which would really increase their bargaining power, not decrease it.

And that's why we'll never get it.

Dirlewanger• 9 years ago

Slightly off-topic: only read part of the article, but just want to say thank to the OP for turning me onto the website. I've already read several of their other articles and am pleasantly surprised at the balance and clarity with which the authors approach the issues. These kinds of publications are an extreme rarity, especially nowadays.

forkLding2• 9 years ago

I've seen this happen in Bahrain in the past, wherein the government relies heavily on selling oil and uses the profits to subsidize living costs in Bahrain, making Bahrain bearable so that people don't complain/protest all the time. I can see the UBI argument of tyranny.

However, I raise another point, wouldn't then these people who are made jobless due to technology, etc. be again powerless and unable to stop tyranny or autocracy in a without-UBI scenario yet in a much similar strain of a with-UBI world, isn't tyranny still inevitable because those that need UBI are powerless and hold no sway on opinions or even angry and gain enmity against those who hold power such as in the Tea Party and Alt-right movement?

(Recently, however with oil prices falling, subsidization isn't happening as much and Arab Spring has brought on protests and govt. repression)

Kadin2• 9 years ago

However, I raise another point, wouldn't then these people who are made jobless due to technology, etc. be again powerless and unable to stop tyranny or autocracy in a without-UBI scenario [...]

I think this is a pretty good point. It's possible that UBI basically just delays the inevitable, if you believe that there really is a possible future in which most people are just economically irrelevant due to mechanization, etc. With UBI, you get a few more years before the small number of people at the levers of power harden their attitudes enough to stop the handouts; without UBI you just starve immediately. Either way, it doesn't look good.

Personally I don't think that the premise, of large-scale, structural unemployment due to automation, is really likely -- I think that "work" can expand to fill the available labor pool, with some amount of incentivizing, and a large pool of unemployed workers is threatening enough to most governments that they'll pursue economic policies to employ people, even if it's WPA-type projects, rather than endue the destabilization of having them just sit around.

As various others have pointed out, if you look at "work" today, it would be largely unrecognizable to someone from the mid-19th century. The amount of modern labor necessary to live a reasonable lifestyle by mid-19th century standards is quite low (it's hard to do this on an individual basis, but if you were to take a bunch of people and modern technology, particularly agricultural machines, but reduce expectations for standards of living to that of the 19th century, you end up with a whole lot of spare time). But yet few people do this. In fact the only people I know of living 19th century lifestyles by choice are people who actively reject modern labor-saving technology (e.g. Amish and other orthodox Mennonite traditions).

Someone from that era might justifiably question why people are still working 40 hours per week, rather than just working, say, 10, and adjusting their needs downwards accordingly. It's a fair question (and there are a lot of barriers to doing it, e.g. provisioning of health insurance). I do know a few people who have done that, in fact, and they seem to like it. But I have doubts that it will ever be an especially popular choice.

So my guess is that while automation will be disruptive, and if not managed correctly it may result in some (perhaps many) people finding that what they've spent a lifetime training themselves to do is no longer necessary -- an outcome that I think government should work to avoid, the economy will figure out ways to use the surplus human capacity freed up by automation as it always has.

There are lots of automation-resistant fields where people can essentially pay each other for services, sloshing money around and keeping everyone employed, even as a smaller and smaller fraction of people actually work in "primary industry", extracting resources from the environment or growing food. That's a transition that's ongoing already in many developed countries, and it doesn't seem grossly unsustainable except where it runs up against opportunities for arbitrage against less-developed economies at the expense of both sets of workers.

forkLding2• 9 years ago

I like your response, however I refrain from future arguments because I'm never right and probably the other side is neither. I guess this is more of a circumstantial issue, maybe in the future there is no radical change of employment or maybe UBI gets implemented for a totally other reason.

dnautics3• 9 years ago

And this is the real danger of a universal basic income – it makes the citizens unnecessary to the government.

I'd be more worried that a UBI makes citizens unnecessary to each other.

jotjotzzz2• 9 years ago

In my opinion, UBI should be earned not freely given away. Perhaps it is earned through education coupled with community service. This ensures that those who are rewarded UBI know that they are expected to produce something of value (to give back) to society and their communities. In return, we are given valuable education (it could include entrepreneurship, computer science/programming, cooking, personal finance, communication -- stuff that should be taught in schools!). In the end, UBI serves as a reward for completing this rites of passage to become part of society through education to better ourselves for our communities.

If given freely -- based on our current society where the poor gets the lowest amount of education -- it will help in some cases, in most it will not. It is very hard to wean yourself of a mindset without education.

daemonk• 9 years ago

Isn't that just really standard employment? Or maybe similar to an academic tenure position?

I think UBI is meant to be "universal", with no prerequisites.

jotjotzzz2• 9 years ago

Something freely given becomes less valuable versus something given through being earned. It is really not a standard employment, because you have no employer except perhaps your community or city who pays you the UBI. But being paid means you give something first. What you give is contributing to society, your tribe.

This is similar to the notion of tribes. If you want to be part of the tribe, you better contribute, by hunting for food or making something for the tribe.

pagutierrezn• 9 years ago

This has nothing to do with UBI. Fewer and fewer people will be necessary to cover everybody's needs regardless of the existence of a UBI. The Future here presented could happen anyway without a basic income.

But what will we do with billions of people without any income?

Universal Basic Income and the threat of tyranny

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