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VC, Entrepreneur Says Basic Income Would Work Even If 90% People 'Smoked Pot' and Didn't Work (techinsider.io)
An anonymous reader cites a story on TI: The chief complaint people lodge at universal basic income -- a form of income distribution that gives people money to cover basic needs regardless of whether they work or not -- is that it'll make them lazy. Sam Altman doesn't buy it. In a recent episode of the Freakonomics podcast, entitled "Is the World Ready for a Guaranteed Basic Income?" Altman argued basic income could support huge amounts of productivity loss and still carry the economy on its shoulders. "Maybe 90% of people will go smoke pot and play video games, but if 10% of the people go create incredible new products and services and new wealth, that's still a huge net-win," Altman says. "And the American puritanical ideal that hard work for its own sake is valuable -- period -- and that you can't question that, I think that's just wrong." [...] The complaint Altman addressed on the Freakonomics podcast is a common one. Study after study, however, has shown that giving people extra money makes them feel financially secure. That security ends up leading to empowerment, not de-motivation.
This is the capitalist version of "let them eat cake." Because god help them if the proles feel like they deserve some of the money they're making capitalists.
That security ends up leading to empowerment, not de-motivation.
The powers that be don't want us plebes being empowered.
I strongly suspect that my level of "basic needs" I'm willing to "give" to someone who smokes pot and plays video games all day is much lower than they will demand.
just not with my money. We could end crime by embedding a chip into everyone so we could track everyone's movements and know exactly were everyone is at every second. I don't see anyone jumping at that idea.
Peace, or Not?
The entire American capitalist system is predicated on the idea that workers don't have the freedom to just leave their jobs, no matter how bad the conditions.
And yet I see plenty of people quitting their jobs. I quit my last job and spent four months deciding what I'd like to do next. My local economy didn't collapse.
Breakfast served all day!
In the war between facts and dogma, facts have a habit of coming second. Facts are hard to think through and analyse properly, and proper analyses are detailed and tough to understand. Dogma doesn't have any of these drawbacks.
John_Chalisque
The Capitalist system has created more jobs, more wealth, more prosperity, and higher income mobility than any other system in the history of mankind.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Been there, done that. Now paying for at least 9:1 on useless potheads.
The only way this could be sustainable long term is either that you have to get castrated before getting the free income or to abandon democracy, because once we get past 50% of the voting population on welfare, they'll steal what's left. This was predicted in the 18th century and demonstrated in the 19th and 20th and 21st.
Yeah all socialist countries seem to create is happiness for the citizens. Who needs THAT.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Ask the people in East Germany before they were set free from your idea of utopia if they think their lifestyles - as empowered by mandatory collectivist wonderfulness - was more or less corrupt, or polluted, or impoverished than was the lifestyle in West Germany.
You're deliberately pretending that history didn't happen so you can insist that having other people provide for you is somehow not only fair to them, but preferable. No. We don't want to be your slaves, slacker-boy. Trying to re-tell the history of prosperity so you can avoid looking at reality is just your juvenile way of wishing you could slack your way through life while other people work and create and make the things you want to be handed simply because you're breathing.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The article in general is wrong, and ignores completely that UBI is replacing a failing expensive welfare systems.
I have a suggestion, rather than everyone sitting around drawing conclusions out of their asses, lets see what actually happens when someone tries it. Let them prove or disprove it and then we will have some results to examine and criticize.
There's nothing 'puritanical' about that idea, either. People wither away when they don't have a purpose in life. Sadly most people aren't too driven to find a purpose, they would just sit around, get fat, and do nothing -- except maybe get into some sort of trouble or other, or worse, keep reproducing out of sheer boredom. Work is good for people whether they themselves believe it or not, and that's my totally unscientific opinion on the subject, based on 50+ years of observations of people in general -- and note that this is also coming from someone who would benefit greatly from not having to work, yet be provided for the rest of his life. I'd just as soon not have to bother with some stupid job or other, and I'd spend my time going back to school, and riding my bikes, which is much more than I think the average person would end up doing.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Corruption exists in all economic systems.
More pollution and more trash are by products of people using more resources. Not all choices will be good choices
Capitalism is basically resource allocation based not on need but ability to cover the expenses of gathering those resources. It is flexible by letting people set their own lower bounds. Socialism tries to make it capitalism more efficient which It can do in limited grouping but not on the whole system. Some systems especially those dealing with people will always been horribly inefficient. That won't ever change. So the most flexible system will grow the most and that is capitalism.
Where capitalism fails is in providing minimum base level. If you want people to have healthcare capitalism will always fail at that. If you want everyone to get a minimum amount of food daily. Capitalism fails. Otherwise you get homeless hungry people dying on your streets.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
You people categorically against this do realize we are rapidly approaching a point where large parts of the population don't really have to work to support our basic societal infrastructure? So what happens then? Do we actually reevaluate our economic system or just proceed as we've been going with increasing economic inequality and subsequent societal unrest? Are you people so selfish that you would deny basic support for all if our society could afford it? There will always be an incentive for work because you'll be able to make more money and have more things.
If you have lots of money, but have trouble with the idea of a basic income think of it as guillotine insurance!
-Some meme I saw somewhere
If by "happiness" you mean "millions of dead and suffering people" then yes indeed, all socialist countries produce is "happiness". Just look at how "happy" Venezuela is these days!
Doesn't matter though if you manage to get in good with the rulers, and can bask in the reflected opulence. Sucking-up to the overseers is on hell of a retirement plan.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
East Germany was capitalist, run by the state as the sole beneficiary, but still capitalist. *You really think they spend their tine in the politburo philosophizing the fine points of Marxism? Please! They read spreadsheets and write budgets and predict gains and losses just like everyone else.*
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Exactly. I'm very surprised we haven't used statistical information to cut down on rent seeking behavior. Useless middlemen must wield far more power than those that desire an efficient, equitable market.
The problem with that theory is that we are essentially replacing the existing private middlemen with government middlemen. Any time the government offers a service or benefit it comes with strings attach. The government can't resist doing so. Engaging in some sort of social engineering for "your own good". Want government housing, then your behavior must conform to these government requirements. There will still be middlemen, there will still be management, they will merely be government ones looking not for a profit but to enforce compliance with whatever the social engineering "its good for you" idea of the day is. Actually that's a bad metaphor, it implies one idea is replaced with another, this is government we're talking about ... the ideas don't get replaced, they just stack new on top of old, they rarely go away.
It will most likely just give government new avenues of control with inevitably lead to new avenues of government corruption. Congress can not resist meddling with these avenues of control, either for their well intended social engineering or political payback to friends and enemies, as we see in today's tax code. The tax code probably being the greatest delivery vehicle with respect to influence buying and corruption.
Good grief I'm tired of you people attempting to blame the system for human nature. Human nature is why we have corruption, and have had corruption in every system of power since the beginning of civilization. A Capitalist Republic is the best system humanity has ever implemented to reduce and control the impact of human nature. The US was not a half ass Republic like we saw in other countries which still hold/held Monarchies and and Noble classes/families. It was fully implemented from ground up as a Capitalist Republic. The fact that it took well over 200 years for the system to become so noticeably corrupt speaks volumes for how well it works. Name one communist country that has been clean for more than a week. Name a Socialist country that has been clean for more than a year.
To GP, I call complete and utter horse shit. There is no expectation of a stagnant worker in Capitalism, in fact that view defies any writing by Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and countless Economists in between. Economic mobility is one of the keys of Capitalist theory. If workers don't believe they should work for X dollars at Employer-A they try to work for Employer-B at Y dollars. People being stuck means that competition is lacking, not that workers are intentionally stuck. Workers who are "stuck" should be able to start their own businesses to compete. Competition exists at each of the 3 legs of capitalism, or at least it should.
What you may be attempting to claim is that "starter" jobs should pay as much as "professional" jobs, which is horse shit. Who would want to work hard when there is no payoff or benefit? Oh yeah! That doesn't work very well, which is why worldwide innovation is relatively flat. The US innovation bubble is a fluke of Capitalism.
I realize that it's trendy and cool to say the US is bad. I fully admit that corruption is a huge problem that I don't know we can fix without a reset. I am a US Citizen who denounces the corruption and entrenched politicians all the time. That does not make Canada a "better" Government.
In a do-over would you choose another Capitalist Republic or go Communism? If you say Socialist I implore you to determine how you are going to be different than communism to succeed. The Socialist governments in the EU are really not doing as well as many are being led to believe.
Me, I'd do another Capitalist Republic.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
And if that is the way modern capitalism worked, you might have a point. But when you consider the amount of corporate welfare in most industrialized countries, and couple that with the fact that, as the Panama Papers show, the very wealthy are so powerful that they can actually manipulate, if not outright force the political system to make sure not only profits are guaranteed, but large amounts of cash is protected in tax shelters. There's nothing wrong with being wealthy, but when being wealthy effectively creates a whole new political class, capable of overawing politicians to guarantee compliance and leniency, then i'd say we've left behind the idealized capitalism and are well on the way to kleptocracy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
At that point, I think we need to let them starve or die. As harsh as that may sound, if someone is so much of a fuck up that they can't survive when given the resources to get by with no requirements on your end other than being alive, it's time to let nature run its course. If someone's too mentally diminished to make decisions like that for themselves, they already belong in a separate care facility, not out in society.
However, the argument also ignores another facet of human nature: man is a creature of infinite want. A UBI is about satisfying human needs, but people are still going to want things. What you'd likely see is a lot of people working part time jobs (10 hours / week) or joining the so-called gig economy to generate a small amount of supplemental income to cover those wants.
East Germany was saddled with all of the personal and political oppression, confiscation, corruption, pollution, and misery that Marxism could place upon it and everything else it touches. When you are gunned down on the spot for trying to leave, it's no capitalist/market economy or society. Stop pretending otherwise.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It's plenty clear. East Germany was a misery of relative poverty, industrial pollution and ruination, political oppression, and good old fashioned tyranny compared to the West. Was it another shock to the people in the East to have their prison rattled once again, as the USSR collapsed? Yes. That doesn't change the fact that the GP who tried to portray life under Soviets as better than life in the west was either completely ignorant (unlikely) or deliberately lying (likely) in order to score lazy Bernie Sanders-esque points among what he was hoping would be a low-information audience.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
First, the basic income replaces a lot of other programs, so it isn't as expensive as it looks. It's far cheaper to administer than welfare programs. Second, we raise taxes to cover the rest. Everybody's taxable income goes up.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
But almost certainly at levels of income that will not be satisfactory to them.
I don't think anyone should starve, so I would be happy to provide funds for as much beans, rice, and vitamins as would be necessary to prevent starvation. But I'm not happy about being asked to provide lobster, filet mignon, or even fast food.
"Basic needs" at this point though seems to be something like "a nice 2br apartment with all amenities and easy access to all the nice services, in a good school district, 400 channels on 50" 4k TV, 100Mbit internet, smart phone, game console" and "free pot". IOW, they expect my lifestyle without working for it (although I don't smoke pot), and demand instead that I reduce my lifestyle to fund theirs.
I write software and smoke Pot, I make over $200K/year, maybe this view that if you smoke Pot, then you're a a slacker should be thrown out. Also, I live in Southern California, I don't think of myself as "Rich". I kinda of laugh when I see people get upset over $15/hour basic wage since you're definitely way below the poverty line in Southern California at $30K/year.
I have lived and worked in the Netherlands, you have no idea what you are talking about if you think the Dutch mindset is in any way socialist in nature. They were the original capitalists, which made them wealthy beyond measure.
The mindset of people in the Netherlands is very far from that of the socialist...
Mainly you can tell they are not socialist by the fact they are (a) permissive, and (b) happy - neither the sign of socialism at work (as well know all too well from countless historical examples, socialism and totalitarianism go hand in hand).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Exactly. I'm very surprised we haven't used statistical information to cut down on rent seeking behavior. Useless middlemen must wield far more power than those that desire an efficient, equitable market.
Speak of rent, I'm wondering how advocates of basic income intend to deal with people outbidding one another for property. The reason that places like New York or San Francisco are so expensive is because lots of people are essentially outbidding one another on rent or property, putting upward pressure on the prices. Now, think about how adding that much more income to their spending power is going to impact that. What happens when the rent then exceeds what somebody on this basic income can afford?
I know what you're thinking: Price controls, or maybe even go Karl Marx and just seize their property in the name of humanity and give it away. You still haven't solved the ultimate problem that an economy ultimately sorts out: How you allocate scarce resources. Land, and by extension, real estate, is a finite resource. There's only so many people that you can squeeze into New York City. So how do you decide who gets to live there and who doesn't? Some people talk about how they have a right to live in New York City, no matter how much rent costs. That's fine, but what are you going to do when people who think they have the right to live there exceeds the population capacity of the city? Something, somewhere has to give. The problem is even worse in San Francisco, because they (through the democratic process) won't allow anybody to build any additional housing.
"This is unprecedented in history."
Only if you disregard all of history. Every invention that increased productivity got rid of jobs, but it hasn't ended humanity. The industrial revolution especially was supposed to have a massive unemployment problem as machines did all the work. Yet unemployment actually went DOWN. Difference is that the average standard of living went up.
Today, we all have many gadgets that nobody had a decade or two ago. we're incredibly more productive by letting machines do some of the work.
To have 90% of the population unemployed, you have to accept that our productivity as a society will severely decrease, our advancement as a society will slow dramatically.
I htink we were collectively distracted by the poor term "the 1%". The actual 1%, the moderately wealthy, the successful doctors and dentists and lawyers and small business owners, they aren't the issue here. The 1% aren't the people in the Panama Papers.
We should instead be upset at "the richest 100 families", who IMO have been causing so many problems. In some ways, the difference between "ideal capitalism" and "capitalism as practiced in the US" is the difference between the 1% and the richest 100 families.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I think the VC's claim is a little strange also:
Maybe 90% of people will go smoke pot and play video games, but if 10% of the people go create incredible new products and services and new wealth, that's still a huge net-win,
Yes, people will continue to invent, they will create new products and services, music, art, etc. But who is going to decide that instead of sitting home and watching TV, they're going to wait tables, or flip burgers, or enforce laws, or collect trash, or be a retail cashier?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
If 90% aren't doing anything except sitting at home on their basic income, what kind of domestic market are those 10% going to have for their products?
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Yeah, kleptocracy, over the years we drastically reduced the progressiveness of taxation because it would supposedly help the economy by motivating the wealthy to be more economically productive (as if that were true), but of course it didn't, and the wealthy's take didn't trickle down -- it just gushed off-shore.
That doesn't happen a lot today, so why would it happen under the new regime? People who cannot afford to live where they do now rarely just up and move; they prefer to sit and whine about how the cost of living is too high and there needs to be a higher minimum wage.
They can't afford to move now because they're wage slaves: they can't afford to lose their job because they're living paycheck-to-paycheck and have no money to do anything differently. Of course, you have no comprehension of this because you've never had to live it.
The guy who goes to work at Mickey D's to be able to afford better pot isn't creating incredible new products or wealth.
Nice strawman. It only takes a small minority of people creating hugely successful enterprises (like Harry Potter, written by a woman on welfare) to make the system work for everyone. And Mickey D's isn't going to need many workers in the future because their jobs are being automated, so how exactly do you propose to handle that?
And it isn't going to get rid of the rich people; they'll just stop working and take the free money.
Wow, you anti-BI people are an incredibly stupid lot. I'm sure rich people will be perfectly happy to live on $1k a month in a tiny apartment with roommates...
This sounds nice on paper, except you still haven't dealt with the problem of those who feel they have the "right" to live there.
Sure I have: they don't have any such right. They have a guaranteed monthly income, and they can spend it how they like. If they can't afford the rent in Manhattan on that, then they'll have to move.
Remember also that New York was one of those states that wanted to justify having unemployment for longer than 99 weeks.
You don't need unemployment with BI, just like you don't need "disability", SNAP, etc. All these social programs are band-aid attempts to fix the problems caused by poverty. Eliminate poverty with a basic income and you don't need them any more.
Exactly.
Now one problem I do see is that a bunch of people are going to whine that the BI isn't enough to pay for their Manhattan apartment, and that they don't want to move because their family is there or whatever, and a bunch of bleeding hearts are going to try to "fix" this somehow. That needs to be fought against. The system won't work if they try to do some BS like giving people in Manhattan some huge BI (too many people will just want to move where the BI is higher, and the cost will be unaffordable, plus it'd drive up rents even more, bringing demands for even-higher BI in high-rent districts).
Yes, it is immoral to keep people from starving in the streets with your ideology and BI is not just like a Soviet system, it pretty much is it. In the USSR people didn't pay taxes, there entire idea would have been preposterous, people simply made their pay levels across the country. For a specific stretch of the time you would have seen these pay levels: 19 rubles, 25 rubles, 40 rubles, 60 rubles, 80 rubles, 100 rubles, 120 rubles. 180 rubles, 200 rubles, 360 rubles. That was reality for some time, what did it actually mean? It meant that it doesn't matter, you could be a director, a teacher, a doctor, a factory worker, a construction worker. You had a set salary and you didn't know any other way.
Obviously the reality is that while everybody's productivity was comparatively tiny, everybody's salaries had nothing to do with their productivity. That WAS 'basic income'.
The joke went: we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.
You don't understand anything, you are the idiot, and yes, it is immoral to enslave even one person to keep thousands alive.
You can't handle the truth.