Comment by mike_hearn

Comment by mike_hearn 6 months ago

Productivity levels don't matter! UBI isn't just a more generous welfare scheme, with conditions on who gets it and where the rich lose wealth because it's being transferred to the poor. UBI says everyone can receive wealth unconditionally. In other words, that it would be possible for 100% of the population to stop working and still receive a spendable income that buys some meaningful standard of living.

UBI taken literally is a demand for an economic perpetual motion machine: it's not merely hard, it's an impossibility.

That's why if you apply even a little bit of pressure to UBI arguments they collapse and a mass retreat to the bailey begins, e.g.

• In reality most people would work even if they didn't have to. Doesn't matter: the claim is still wrong, and hoping people don't call your bluff is no strategy.

• People in high tax brackets will pay more into the scheme than they take out. Doesn't matter: if some people lose wealth net it's not a UBI as by definition they wouldn't be receiving an income (wealth has to come in to be an income).

• The near future will be a hard sci-fi scenario in which self-repairing robots and AI do every imaginable job both now and into the future. In other words: UBI is a utopian fantasy from a children's book, not something governments should be wasting time and money trying to implement. Arguably, people who propose UBI should be seen as very dangerous, given the long history of utopians who became tyrants when their dreams hit the rocks of reality.

There are no real-world scenarios in which UBI makes sense as a concept, sorry. It's just /r/antiwork rebranded.

dns_snek 6 months ago

Is this the first time you realized that human ideas tend to fall apart if you conveniently ignore how people collectively behave like it doesn't matter, make up a scenario in the logical extreme and pretend it's the obvious outcome? In the same reductionist spirit I'm sure you would agree that:

Fractional reserve banking can't possibly work because what happens when everyone withdraws at the same time?

Capitalism can't possibly work because what happens when a single corporation owns everything in the world?

Insurance can't possibly work because what happens when a natural disaster affects the entire world?

Maternity and paternity leave can't possibly work because what if 3/4 of the working age population just keep having children every year and never go to work?

Disability benefits can't possibly work because what if everyone just harms themselves so they don't have to work?

Bridges can't possibly work because what happens when every lane is filled bumper to bumper with fully loaded semis?

Power grids can't possibly work because what happens when everyone uses 100% of their capacity at once?

> Doesn't matter: if some people lose wealth net it's not a UBI as by definition they wouldn't be receiving an income

That's an argument over what we're calling the system, not an argument addressing its viability.

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mike_hearn 6 months ago

> That's an argument over what we're calling the system, not an argument addressing its viability.
What you call it is everything in these debates. You accuse me of taking something to a logical extreme, but UBI is a logical extreme by definition. It takes welfare and then extrapolates it to an extreme in which nobody has to work at all.
If you're imagining a system in which most people do work, and are forced via taxes to pay more taxes to people who don't, that's fine and viable even though it's a bad idea. But that's just welfare. No new names or trials needed, we know how that works out already.
If you're imagining UBI as the system actually presented in these trials, and aren't merely playing word games, then everything I laid out isn't some reductio ad absurdum but rather a direct consequence of the actual definition you're using. That's why UBI proponents have to make arguments of the form "we offer that nobody has to work, but it doesn't matter we're lying because in reality nobody will take us up on it".

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