[themacguffinman]

This is not how a market economy works. There's no preordained pool of work that you can run out of. It's practically nonsense to say there's not enough work to go around.

People always want more, and you can always find work fulfilling those wants. There's always demand for stuff. Can you honestly look around you right now and think "there isn't much room for improvement"? Well, people need to work to improve stuff, that's useful and valuable work. Do you really think "welp, my life doesn't have any more problems to solve". Well, people need to work to solve those problems, that's useful and valuable work.

Whether or not people are given what they need to survive is irrelevant to UBI. Welfare does that. What makes UBI worse is that it provides no incentive to work and create value, and that's a tremendous waste of human capital and it worsens inequality.

[Shacklz]

> There's no preordained pool of work that you can run out of.

But this is a point the article somewhat addresses - the graph for marketing-budgets shows that pretty nicely in my opinion.

At some points, its just easier to make more money/profits by trying to increase demand for your product than by improving it (or reducing costs of its production). And I think that's what we're seeing more and more on an ever increasing scale right now: "Actually productive" jobs (e.g. manufacturing) are already outsourced, and the gains from the cost-savings are spent on e.g. marketing.

This might make sense economically (in terms of profits, emplyoment), but arguably less from a "benefit-for-society" point of view.

I think David Graeber adresses this quite nicely (but rather aggressively) with his 'Bullshit Job'-theory.

[themacguffinman]

As you said yourself, UBI's increased demand doesn't really help from a "benefit-for-society" point of view, which is the only point of view that matters. We don't encourage people to maximize profits because money is good, we do it because you usually need to create actual value/benefit in order to do so. When something makes sense economically but doesn't benefit society, that's an economic failure.

I have heard about the Bullshit Jobs theory and I find it unconvincing (I admit I haven't read the whole book). The meaningfulness and value of a job is not determined by the laborer - as suggested by the "do you think your job makes a meaningful contribution to the world" surveys he cites - but by the employer.

The value of something has always been determined by other people who want it. It doesn't matter what David Graeber and his unhappy laborers think or say, something isn't bullshit just because they say it is. Many of the examples he mentions (doormen, content curators, PR) are valuable things that people want enough to pay for, yet his opaque judgment deems them "bullshit" simply because he or someone else thinks they're worthless.

History shows us economies that failed because some people thought they could plan them with isolated judgments of what society should value. UBI as a solution for Bullshit Jobs follows in the same tradition by personally judging whole swaths of jobs to have no value, then proposing a plan to get rid of them.

[waheoo]

Doormen is precisely the definition of bullshit.

Thats why the definition is what it is. He knows it's a subjective phrase that means many different things to many different people. He also admits there will be some people who find value in the same job someone else does not.

I think it's a bit strange to hinge your opinion on this definition though, its really only defined that way so it doesn't piss people off, the book isn't about how you define bullshit jobs, the book is about what we should do now we know they exist.

Which you're sort of ignoring.

What do you think we should do since we do know bullshit jobs exist.

[themacguffinman]

But bullshit jobs don't exist, which is my point that you're ignoring. Jobs that people in society value could never be bullshit. Quite arrogant of you to assume that the work that some do is bullshit and challenge me to do something about it. I don't really care what anyone calls "bullshit", the concept is nonsense because the value of work is determined by the people who want it. I don't plan to get rid of such work.

[waheoo]

I'm sorry but this is simply not true.

Look at a basic case, a single farmer is able to produce enough food for 100 people.

There is no need for 99 people to work for there food in this simplistic case.

Yes, these people may want iPhones, and maybe they need to work for them, but the basic income component is covered by a single farmer.

I'm not saying there is some static pool of work available.

I am saying there is a static pool of life sustaining work available.

This is why ubi works mathematically, and people not working are not a problem, for the maths.

> Whether or not people are given what they need to survive is irrelevant to UBI. Welfare does that.

What are you talking about, this is the point. And no, welfare does not do that adequately. Welfare is an incredibly inefficient means of wealth distribution.

> What makes UBI worse is that it provides no incentive to work and create value, and that's a tremendous waste of human capital

I have zero concerns about the incentive to work, that is a fud argument that doesn't hold up when looking at the studies we've seen. Work is meaningful in and of itself, you don't need to be paid to receive reward from it.

> and it worsens inequality.

This is what I'm afraid of too and have not heard any ubi proponents address this in any meaningful manner.

Ubi would quite likely create a proletarian class.

On the flip side, I'm not really sure how this is very different from what we have with capitalism right now.

At least with ubi welfare is adequately taken care of.

[machiaweliczny]

You simplistic case is too simplistic. Assumes that advanced tech required for such farming comes from nowhere. Now for farmer to produce so much you need GPS (ability to build and maintain one), oil/energy, millitary power, modified grains, etc. to have this you need some people who spend more on thinking rather than being most of waking day the in field, so you need all the support jobs.

From my POV having job as au pair for example is still better than working hard in the field.

IMO we should focus on reducing much duplication od work, so I am happy that OSS, Wikipedia, SciHub, KhanAcademy, MIT, translations services, open hardware design and similar efforts are in progress.

IMO more focus should be shifted into education. I guess education problem isn't solved in western rich countries only because it's easier to brain drain from less developed ones, so people don't feel the pain.

When this will start I hope they start taxing more at very top and shift economy to more valuable stuff than zero-sum Tinder clones.

BTW in my country(Poland) they introduced small version of UBI (like 500$ per child per month for family). It cost 5% of whole country budget. It's quite controversial but IMO it was good move but we still need to see long term impact.