[romanr]

This is another argument in favor of universal income. Bullshit jobs is one of consequences of progress, low cost goods, food and comfort. With increasing automation it’s going to be get incrementally harder to find bullshit jobs for people. until society understands that not everyone can and have to be employed.

[lucas_membrane]

Do-nothing jobs may be a problem, but do they outnumber jobs that exist to support, sustain and inflict a system that is not user-friendly? For example:

How big is the 'security' industry (include 'national security')?

What percent of the workers at the health clinic you visit are there to control, limit, and ration the access to medical care?

Isn't the entire legal system there to sustain the power of the powerful?

Isn't the educational establishment designed to support a hierarchical society in which the highly-educated are few, highly-paid and comfortable, and the rest are not?

[AstralStorm]

1) Very big, because it includes the whole military intelligence complex in your definition.

2) About 20 hired specifically for this purpose. Admins, doctor and nurse managers, a few receptionists, a few ministers.

3) Not all, not even most of it. Plenty of civil, criminal and driving cases. These are very common. The patent and copyright lawyers are the minority...

4) Not in principle. In practice there are such pathologies, especially in countries without good public higher education. In principle the education system is to supply a source of educated and intelligent workers for complex jobs, including lower levels for less demanding ones. The trouble begins when rich and powerful segregate themselves into educational sinecures.

[foamflower]

The opposite is true. At some point in the past, elevator operators served a useful function, since elevators were hard to operate. Today, even the existence of automation (i.e. accessible elevator UI) has not completely driven the elevator operator extinct, but has transmuted his job into bullshit. Same goes for gas pump improvements (I suppose we can thank New Jersey and until recently Oregon). The entire "Flunkies" category seems to exist only because of the existence of automation.

[zanny]

Whats the opposite? He said progress beget bullshit jobs, you just stated the same thing.

[mrfusion]

Why until recently for Oregon?

[lkbm]

Until a few months ago, it was illegal to pump your own gas in Oregon--they had to have an attendant at every station to do it for you. They recently made it optional, at least for rural stations.

[aristocles]

UBI will lead to societal degeneration. Prices of essential services and goods would skyrocket; people would lose direction and the small amount of meaning they had.

I call UBI gay-space-communism because it suggests that all human beings are capable of handling themselves outside of employment and daily routine. They are not. The market creates this drive in people, and if you remove it, people will degenerate fast.

Opioids, UBI, and free-love for everyone. Yikes.

[dalore]

If goods and services skyrocketed, then those on UBI would start offering goods and services (aka working). I don't think it would degenerate at all.

Why would you lose direction and meaning? That's such a cultural thing to say, to think your job is your direction and meaning.

[egypturnash]

> Prices of essential services and goods would skyrocket

Base the UBI on multiple economic indicators such as the prices of essential services and goods, add more money to the money supply as needed.

> Opioids, UBI, and free-love for everyone. Yikes.

So a lot of people live a simple life on the basic income and hang out getting stoned and screwing. Oh no!

What's your hobby? What would you be doing if you didn't have to work for a living? Would you spend all your time getting stoned and doing the social maneuvering necessary to get laid on a regular basis? Or would you do something else with your time? Work on that programming project that's been on the back burner while you paid the bills, draw comics, join a comedy troupe, brew mead, figure out a way to automate something that drives you crazy, pick up the guitar you put down in favor of a sensible day job and start making music again... or whatever.

Personally, when I had a few years free from needing to work for someone else, I mostly spent them drawing a weird sci-fi comic using the skills I'd developed while training for the animation industry.

(The usual phrase, by the way, is "fully automated gay luxury space communism".)

[dragonwriter]

> UBI will lead to societal degeneration

No, it won't.

> Prices of essential services and goods would skyrocket

If you do a constant-value UBI and set the value too high, yes, that would happen in a positive feedback loop, but that's why UBI should be tied to a revenue stream with a value set by splitting the revenue stream with a reserve cushion to build a fund to allow preserving benefits in short-term revenue decline.

> people would lose direction

I don't see a credible argument for that replacing status quo means-tested social support with UBI would cause this, and indeed much of the motivation for UBI is to remove adverse incentives in present benefit programs that manifestly do produce this effect.

> I call UBI gay-space-communism

Which is dumb, because it has nothing to do with homosexuality or outer space or, as it retains private property, Communism.

> suggests that all human beings are capable of handling themselves outside of employment and daily routine.

No, it doesn't, not that that would justify your ludicrous label even if that was true.

[mamon]

Any value of UBI higher than 0 creates positive feedback loop:

1. government announces UBI

2. retailers, in anticipation of higher demand raise prices.

3. UBI beneficiaries see that they cannot buy as many goods as they want/need so they start demanding more money.

4. government see that they have more tax revenue due to higher retail sales (and the price raise from step 2) so it easily agrees to increase UBI amount.

5. go to step 2.

[fulafel]

Do you think other financial aid formsfunded with tax money have this effect too? Or do you think UBI is qualitatively different because all taxpayers get it?

I think you can be cured of the latter if you consider the fact that it's exactly equivalent to a negative income tax system.

[twoquestions]

What is it about freedom that is so terrifying for you?

[Latteland]

Because freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

There are tons of people who think like the poster above, that we need to control people by not letting them have enough earnings or whatever to be free and making choices for themselves. That belief is what is really scary to me.

[Eric_WVGG]

It’s the same sort of logic that claims religion — specifically, the threat of hell— is necessary to prevent civilization from falling into savagery... ignoring the fact that most religions don’t have a concept of hell, and many predominately secular societies do just fine.