Comment by RegnisGnaw a day ago
The problem is that no UBI trial reflects how it will work. In all the trials, the people in the trial knows it will end so they won't change their behavior as much as they would if it was permanent. Hence any analysis is flawed.
The best way to combat price gouging isn't price controls and an 'algorithm for greed', it's just increasing supply.
If there are many, many landlords competing with one another for tenants, they won't be able to set high rents.
> To counter other commenters on this issue - we do have price controls on things such as milk, bread etc and it does 'work' to some degree.
My understanding, based in the US, is the commodity price controls set a minimum price to protect the farmers and not the consumers.
To counter your point, look no further than tuition prices at US universities. In the '90s (when I went to university) they were fairly heavily subsidized then the state governments stepped back and federal loans and grants took over. Universities, seeing this new influx of capital, promptly raised their prices well over inflationary rates to capture more and more of these federal funds leading to what we have today. I, admittedly, took the cheap route of community college and state university (along with the GI Bill) and only had something like $6k in student loan debt by the time I got my bachelors in '97 while today's community colleges have higher tuition than what I was paying at university.
Though... I don't doubt AI is going to cause some serious problems when it starts replacing people at high rates across the board.
> they were fairly heavily subsidized then the state governments stepped back and federal loans and grants took over ... Universities, seeing this new influx of capital, promptly raised their prices
wasn't this simply a substitution of income sources (from state government grants to the federal government student loans) rather than an actual increase in capital?
I agree most are flawed. I read one (I think from Sweden perhaps) that had a longer timeline and actually used some better methodology than others which seemed more insightful.
But as others say, at the end of the day if everyone has an extra $1000 a month, there will be groups such as landlords trying to jack up prices.
To counter other commenters on this issue - we do have price controls on things such as milk, bread etc and it does 'work' to some degree. In the landlords example above - a smart gov would implement an algorithm for 'greed' and fine/tax offenders and put that money into the UBI cash reserves.
I think UBI as a real possibility needs to be taken seriously. The level of AI has accelerated in such a short timeframe that (imo) we're starting to see the knock on effects into society. This is just in tech for now - thousands applicants for positions, and no one really needing to hire juniors as Claude et al easily replace the tasks they do.
Once other industries realize that they can replace a lot of tasks with ai, we'll see a gradual shortage of jobs for unskilled admin jobs (not manual labour... Yet)
There's a lot of shouting about AGI but the current LLM landscape effects are slowly happening around us right now. UBI studies should be taken more seriously and at a larger scale.