[michaelmrose]

Maybe as the true wealth of the world grows massively due to productivity provided by automation the check we cut people shouldn't be what current people consider a pittance enough to live a waste of a life.

We are either feel a moral duty to keep those who don't contribute in poverty or believe we need to incentivize the rest of the slackers to keep their noses to the useless grindstone.

We can either keep both the useless moralizing and the social carrot long after they cease to make sense or we can recognize that sharing the wealth of the world makes increasing sense and lift each other up in lives where we make the meaning rather than finding it in doing pointless work.

[Mz]

Let me briefly restate the gist of my point above:

UBI or no UBI, we need to preserve access to paid work for everyone to the best of our ability. We need to recognize a right to work that is not being discussed by most people who are pro UBI.

The value of the benefits granted by welfare programs are always eroded over time by inflation. What sounds like a lot of money today will become a pittance over time. These feel good, idealistic ideas touted by so many people seem to never recognize that if you have a UBI and no means whatsoever to improve your income beyond that because the tech giants have no plans to redistribute work, then you are pretty well fucked and your life is hopeless.

People like you seem to be big on the idea that people should not be compelled to work. I am not talking about compelling people to work. I am talking about not actively denying them the right to access paid work. There is a difference between the two, and it is actually quite large.

[vkou]

> UBI or no UBI, we need to preserve access to paid work for everyone to the best of our ability.

No - we don't need to preserve access to paid work.

We want to enable people to work to benefit themselves, rather then their employer.

> The value of the benefits granted by welfare programs are always eroded over time by inflation

Governments can set both inflation, and benefits. Not increasing the latter to keep pace with the former is a deliberate political choice, primarily for the benefit of the rich.

[Mz]

My phrasing does not presume the individual is an employee per se. Paid work also includes contract work, freelance work and owning your own small business.

[PeterisP]

Can you elaborate on what exactly do you mean by "right to paid work" in a world where a true market price for the work of many people will be approximately zero?

UBI is a solution for the problem where for a large part of society a honest full day's work is economically worthless, the society has no real need for their labor. If this wouldn't be expected to happen, then we wouldn't have to discuss UBI as much, but that's where we're heading.

I can even imagine a not-so-far future where the value of most work would be negative; i.e. we might involve people in producing some item, but it would be cheaper and more effective if they stayed away and didn't try to help; so all such work would be in essence a glorified crafts hobby with no practical purpose, and it would result in costs instead of payment.

[Mz]

I probably cannot do it justice in a comment here, but, in a nutshell, there is a lot of unpaid work in the world. As one example, women's work is often unpaid. When it is turned into a paid job, it often pays really poorly.

Historically, women's work was compensated by a strong sense of family obligation. Men were expected to marry and/or support women they had sex with, especially if they got them pregnant. There is less and less expectation that a man is obligated to support a woman. There is more expectation that she can also go out and get a job, which sort of works if there are no children, except that very often due to social expectations, a lot of her time and energy still goes into traditional women's work. The social contract has become broken in a one-sided manner.

On Hacker News, you see people routinely say that content creators on the web are not entitled to be paid for their work, yet they expect there to be good, high level content readily available. And they expect fresh content to be constantly produced. A very high percentage of people on HN use adblockers and then say 'Not my problem" about how that is destroying the income of not just small time operators, but even long standing, established and respected publications. They often say things like "get a real job" when I comment on "So, how are writers supposed to get paid?" They expect writing to be done for free on a regular basis, basically.

There is plenty of work happening right now that isn't getting compensated and that people who make a far better than average hourly wage don't seem to think deserves compensation. So, I see a future in which people with UBI are doing valuable work like content creation while not being paid for it. I would much rather we figure out a better means to monetize work being done right here, right now instead of acting like "work is simply going the way of the dinosaur." No, it isn't. But many people simply don't want to pay the people doing the work.

In a tribal culture, if the tribe makes a big kill, everyone eats. The high ranking people may get the better cuts of meat, but no one goes hungry. They are considered part of the extended family in some sense. This sense of obligation has eroded and an awful lot of people simply seem blind to the many things that must happen that are needed in this world and are valuable, but that they don't want to pay for.

There was a discussion on HN recently in which someone said that the US has 5% of the world population, but 22% of the world's prisoners (IIRC). And it is not illegal in this country to treat prisoners as slave labor. So there is apparently a vast prison industrial complex churning out cheap products using slave labor where the workers are not paid. There is insufficient hue and cry over this situation.

We need very much to design a world in which more people have access to the means to create wealth for themselves. If we are going to displace our historical practice of feeling familial or tribal obligation to take some minimum level of care and provisioning of everyone, then, no, just giving money is not enough. We need to give the means to make money.

Most wealthy people who get called millionaires or billionaires do not actually have a checking account with a million or a billion dollars in it. They have assets like stocks and bonds and land. These constitute a means to make money. When you give poor people money, but you deny them the means to make money, you are in no way giving them the life that rich people have. Rich people can get more if they want it or need it. UBI would be a fixed amount. And if it wasn't enough, well, fuck you.

[PeterisP]

The type of work that you list is work where it won't be paid work - I mean, whatever system you create so that people get paid for it is in some way UBI in disguise; the market value for that work is near zero (as you say, people simply don't want to pay the people doing that work), so you may get paid "for" that work, but de facto you'll get paid just because. No matter if you frame such transfer payments as charity or as forced redistribution, it's not payment for the work, it's paid because the society decided to pay you despite the work having no economic value - as in the principle you mention, that the tribe gets a big kill and everyone eats; just because they're part of the tribe and not because of the work they do.

I understand your arguments of going above and beyond that, having much more than UBI - however, as you can see in this thread, even that level is quite contentious, a large jump from the current situation and not guaranteed to happen. Going beyond that is, obviously, even less likely to happen. If/when we'll see a realistic support for UBI, then we may start discussing about maybe implementing what you state, right now it's just wishful thinking.

[Mz]

Currently, UBI is also wishful thinking. So why not wish for something that doesn't disempower the masses instead of something that does?

The world does not have to bend to my will. But I also do not have to bend to its. I can continue to desire a better system for how we treat people, no matter how ridiculous that seems to so many people.