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this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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Showerthoughts
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Oh nooooo, people won't be as strongly bound to corporations anymore! Whatever will we do?
Starve?
That’s what the UBI is for. Keep up.
Ok, who will grow food? Who will truck it to grocery stores? Who will work at the store?
People will still work. UBI is enough that you're not on the street, not enough that you're living the high life.
Some people will go to school instead of working, and that's good. They'll get even better jobs than they would have otherwise, and give back way more to society in productivity and taxes.
Some people might be fine living the basic life that UBI affords, and who cares. Let them live their basic life. We can afford it.
Man Im glad you're not making decisions.
You criticize but offer nothing of value except “no, you’re stupid”
Man I’m glad you’re not making decisions.
Imagine supporting ideas and policies that help others which in turn helps you. Would be so crazy .
I don't know man, I like having food. Keeps me from dying. Water too now that I mention it.
Yeah? Do you like them enough that you’d word to get them even while receiving UBI?
Well when the store loses its workers, itll close. When the trucker stops trucking, food won't make it to the store. When the farmer doesn't farm, there will be no food.
This is not star trek, we are not post scarcity.
Who suggested the store should close or that truckers should stop?
The guy suggesting suggesting we should pay them to do nothing
Lmao you have zero idea how humans work. If you think it's even plausible for all of society to sit and do nothing, you have no business being in this conversation - its clearly above your level.
People are motivated by boredom, creativity, duty and care for society, more than they are by money. This is evidenced by... all of history. People worked before money was invented. Crazy, huh?
Oh my goodness you’re one of those people. Go read about UBI and then come back and talk.
I have, with a critical mind. If no one works, people starve.
You clearly haven’t. People don’t just sit at home and collect UBI. People are clearly addicted to consumerism, and that requires having a job. People also enjoy working.
You don’t have a critical mind and you aren’t discussing this in good faith because you clearly think if UBI was enacted that people would all become lazy and sit and home and do nothing. That you think this way shows everyone that you HAVENT done any research or reading on UBI.
Most wouldnt, but a significant percentage would. I think enough that you cant discount those people from any discussion on UBI.
In Australia we have social security and I know people who are 3rd generation jobless and they dont usually supplement their social security with a casual job, its usually drug dealing or other crime.
Im all for a realistic discussion on UBI but you have to examine how its going to impact all strata of society. Including the ones who will use the lack of any meaningful motivation to do better or be better people.
I promise you that if it comes down to having to sacrifice some work getting done as a result of there being UBI, the market is not going to trim “food production” from the set of projects getting done. It’ll be more like “pumpkin spice ASMR videos” that get the axe.
Like, you agree the market is a medium that transmits needs between people allowing them to negotiate effort ratios for different projects, no?
So given a market and a bunch of people who need to eat, how does that result in food not getting produced? It doesn’t make sense. Hunger is a motivating force. Hunger is an incentive.
Receiving UBI doesn’t remove the incentive to eat. And if there’s a food shortage then there’s profit to be made off producing food. The market still operates with UBI involved.
Sigh. Read up on the programs already studied.
"Do your research"
I'm not going to waste my time jumping on google and citing stufies that have showed that it isnt some magical cure all for the worlds Ills because you arent going to read them, or take my opinion onboard because its easier to claim that my sources are biased, I'm wrong and you're still right.
Nah you just can’t take the blow to your ego that you’re wrong. But that’s fine. You’re only human.
Wait. So you're going to develop an opinion entirely on feelings, while the guy you're replying to developed an opinion based onr research? That is WILD
This video goes over multiple studies and meta analyses that show that, in every single case where it's been tried, social spending, including UBI, always pays for itself in the long run, and UBI specifically never leads to people just not working. It leads to people finding jobs more their style. And y'know something? The "undesirable" jobs still get done, because there are genuinely people that want to do them.
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Have you met people? Get out of your bubble. Fucking hell, thats the daftest thing Ive ever heard, and I got an A in gender studies. (It was an elective, and I wanted to challenge my view that gender studies was bullshit, sue me)
There you go showing the class that you DIDNT do your homework.
There has been UBI implemented for studies in multiple countries around the world and overwhelmingly they show that people still choose to work.
Fuck off back your conservative bubble.
But he got an A in gender studies….. can’t be on a conservative bubble….. ya know…. cause he made friends there. /s (just in case)
No, Im conservative. Ubi is just dumber than gender studies.
It works every time.
Yeah. Most that I've met work hard to improve their lot, even the few I know who were born rich enough that they don't have to. Just because you'd be a lazy sack of shit if you could get away with it doesn't mean everyone else would.
I mean, the fact we have the modern world at all is evidence motivation doesn’t stop just because basic needs are met.
If that were all the human drive had in it, that is where we would be.
You’re right. If no one works, people starve.
There’s no reason to assume nobody would work under UBI though.
A critical lack of mind
UBI desn't mean that you stop working, it's just that everyone receives a share of money, at least enough so that you don't end up on the street if you end up without a job. Easier to bounce back. The rest is additional income on top of UBI.
Personally I'd get bored shitless if I didn't work, I need some fulfillment, a purpose. If having UBI gives more people a fair chance at achieving their life goals then I'm all for it.
The people you're thinking of, in terms of laziness are always going to exist no matter what. You know who else doesn't work and leeches of society? The oligarchs. The exact same people that are scared of UBI and will lobby as hard as possible to stop that from happening.
Also like, our society already does provide free food and shelter to people. All it asks is some basic niceties like “quiet after 11pm” or “don’t poop in the shower”.
I know. I’ve been homeless, been very well fed and very well protected from the elements, and well-clothed too, entirely for free.
People act like our society just lets people drop and that’s not true. We’ve got free resources out the wazoo for people.
But there are a lot of people for whom availability of resources isn’t the problem.
This is my way of saying that, even with UBI, there will be homeless people.
And conservatives will say “we give that guy $1000 a month and he sits there and shoots heroin in the park all day … I’m not giving him any more” and liberals will say “You know $1000 a month isn’t that much money and we should be offering free counseling”.
Then a decade later there will be that guy who shits on the park bench and rips smelly farts in his counseling sessions and doesn’t do the work.
As a society we’ve basically solved the problems that can be solved with free food and housing because … well because we have that as a feature of our society already,
One thing that makes UBI better than what we have now, is the fact it’s not a perverse incentive structure.
Right now all the free shit we give people is based on them “demonstrating need”. This means if they want to rise out of poverty, they need to go through a weird, unnatural zone on their work-to-benefit curve that’s flat, They do more work, and see no benefit.
Or if the program is really badly designed, it’s not just level it slopes down. Like you get a $200/mo raise, it puts you over a threshold, and you lose your $500/mo EBT benefits.
That kind of thing is toxic and evil. That’s like pushing crack on kids. Except instead of little identifiable crystals it’s at least easy to conceptualize saying “no” to, the dopamine-ruining substance is ethereal and takes the form of tables showing income thresholds in little pamphlets in government offices. Instead of a 10-second timeframe where you either hit that pipe or not, the game a person has to play with our welfare system has rounds lasting months at a time. It’s insidious and evil.
And if you’re in a position to receive this welfare, everyone on your side is encouraging you to take it.
And UBI doesn’t suffer from that mental-health-destroying, prefrontal-cortex-shrinking pattern. It’s giving with a truly open hand. It’s a ladder that doesn’t extract a price in bone density for each rung you climb.
wow, thanks for sharing your insight
Let's say you're a scummy piece of shit landlord. It's a bit redundant I know but just bear with me.
You're a scummy piece of shit landlord (SPOSL) and you know for a fact that every single one of your tenants suddenly can afford 2000 extra dollars per month. You're probably not going to get away with taking all of that, but you're a SPOSL, you're definitely going to try to get some.
You also know that housing is being treated as a commodity so your tenants don't have anywhere else to go, and that because all landlords are SPOSLs, you know they'll all be doing the same thing.
Suddenly rent goes up across the board. They only people safe are the people in fixed rate mortgages.
But they're only safe from that one particular kind of price gouging.
Unless you're on a very fixed contact, everything you pay monthly for suddenly got more expensive over night. Your Internet will be going up, your phone bill will be going up, maybe not immediately, but when you renew.
Any common household item built down to a price, basically anything that can shrinkflate, when everyone has more money, will inflate instead. Because they know that consumers have more to spend, and won't look at the price as closely as they used to.
Basically everyone, simultaneously, moves up on the doesn't spendability side. And so prices move to adjust accordingly.
UBI works in small scale experiments because small scale experiments don't have this effect. No one knows who's getting more money and the market can't adjust. But the market will adjust where it can.
I know it sounds nice, but it's not the golden ticket it's being made out to be.
Address healthcare, address housing, do it all independently of UBI so that hopefully it never becomes required.
To be clear I have absolutely no problem with guaranteeing basic needs are met, I think that's a great idea. UBI does not do that.
Another issue is that housing is perceived as an investment. There would have to be some policies to be put in place to avoid abuse for sure.
How about this as an alternative. Housing is guaranteed. Full stop. The only way to really do that is to build an assload government housing, and anyone who wants to live there, can. No questions asked. In fact it's assumed everyone will want the free apartment. One per family. Might be a lot of excess apartments going unused but I don't see that as a problem.
Food, also guaranteed. And not just cheese but meals full of good nutrients. You want it, just show up and collect it. Is it good, no maybe not. But it's available and no one is going hungry.
Healthcare, universally covered. No one is going in to debt to get their basic healthcare needs met. Cosmetics aren't but basic healthcare needs are.
No need for cash, because it's all taken care of. It's not going to be enough for most, no. But it's not like work won't still be available to anyone that wants it. Hell, wages probably go up as people who don't want to work no longer have to.
Eh... with how it is now.. people would just start claiming that the birth mark on their face makes them want to kill themselves and now magically it's a medically needed surgery for mental stability. It's the same logic used for gender affirming care in many places. You can't limit by no "cosmetic" surgeries.
Everyone doesn’t have more spending power under UBI; some people would be paying more in taxes than they’re getting back from the pool.
But yeah, if you give everyone in a certain group more money to spend, that’s more demand and hence higher prices assuming fixed supply.
So really, to avoid that issue with housing, you’d need to reduce friction to increasing supply. Maybe that means letting people build higher density housing without having to wait for the government to re-zone from low to high density. Or removing the minimum size on apartments, whatever.
Point is your market will adapt to the newly-super-profitable endeavor of landlording, by providing more housing.
Because as long as there’s any vacant housing, landlords are not free to price fix however they see fit. I mean they could if they were all in cahoots, but they’re not. They’re in competition.
Probably people wanting to make some money.
We only need like a dozen farmers to feed the everyone
You're off a bit, but only by a factor of about 3 million.
One US farmer feeds about 150 people. 300 in absolutely ideal conditions that do not exist.
I was exaggerating.
Less than 1% of the population is pretty good tho
The fuck are you on about? A dozen farmers? Yeah, if there were a dozen people. Wtf are you on?