[coopsmgoops]

The thing I don't really see accounted for in these experiments is that UBI is not really "universal". It's a group, or a town who or are not isolated from the outside economy, and the participants are usually aware/suspect that this bonus income probably won't last forever, so they know they need to keep working to maintain their careers etc.

I'm not sure there's any way to account for it unfortunately, it is such a compelling idea though I think we kind of all want it to be real.

[imtringued]

Isn't this going to happen to a real UBI anyway? The grand idea behind a UBI is in its simplicity. Everyone gets it no exclusion but nobody thinks about the fact that a non distorted UBI is impossible to implement. There are going to be "concessions".

It reminds me of the EU CO2 cap and trade system. In theory it would be a highly effective tool. In practice lots of sectors are excluded, a lot of free CO2 certificates are given away and many to the biggest polluters because they may become uneconomical, which is the entire point of the system in the first place. Basically, the system gets distorted so that the status quo remains. This doesn't mean that the system is not doing something but my point is that you'll have to tone down your expectations.

If we ever see a widespread UBI it will probably be means tested and with a limited duration which is exactly what this experiment is doing. It will probably be more effective and less costly but it won't bring wonders. It'll just be an incremental update to the conventional welfare system many countries have.

[donw]

I maintain that I would like to see UBE -- Universal Basic Employment.

If you can work, we have a job for you.

Part-time, full-time, your choice. We'll even train you up.

Especially in the US -- there is tons of work to be done on infrastructure, plenty of research to be sponsored with results placed in the public domain, etc.

We derive a large chunk of our personal value, out of what we contribute to our tribes -- our community, our friends, our company, etc. If somebody is willing to contribute to society, we should encourage and enable that.

[wiether]

What would be the goal of UBE ?

"we have a job for you". Great, but I'm certain that it means most of the people doing those jobs would not like them and would no work great. Because being forced to do something you don't like/don't want to it not a good idea. For the ones being forced and for the ones working with them but liking what they do.

What is the point of all those inovations if it's not being able to tell to people : you don't wan't to work ? Great, you don't have to !

Today we have smart people doing jobs that give them enough wealth but they hate their jobs and instead they could be artists doing "nothing" but at they end they could be happy and maybe bring to society with their art. We have no so smart people that do shitty jobs they hate because society needs someone to do it but the salary is shit, and those people are miserable. Instead they could do "nothing" and be happy, while we give real money to people deciding to do shitty jobs, or people creating solutions to avoid other people doing those shitty jobs.

Why having as much people as possible being able to do "nothing" isn't the ultimate goal of humanity ? I mean, it's exactly what wealthy people want for themselves so...

[donw]

> It means most of the people doing those jobs would not like them.

There are a lot of jobs that need doing if you want to enjoy things like "running water" and "food".

Many of those jobs are unpleasant. That's why you get money for doing them.

And any job worth doing is worth doing well.

If sewage workers -- people who literally have shit jobs -- can do this, then unemployed people given a job cleaning up local parks or canning food can do the same.

I have done manual labor. And worked in fast food. The work sucked, but I took pride in being good at my job.

I could crack eggs onto that griddle like a machine.

(As an aside, I have very little patience with people that are rude to fast-food workers, janitors, and the like. Those people make your life possible. You can be polite to them and treat them with respect.)

> Because being forced to do something you don't like

Who is forcing anybody?

Take a different job. Or start a business. Or don't work.

> Why having as much people as possible being able to do "nothing" isn't the ultimate goal of humanity?

No.

> I mean, it's exactly what wealthy people want for themselves so...

Also no.

[leereeves]

It's the nature of our existence that work has to be done. At minimum, we die if we don't gather food and water, find and maintain shelter, and prepare to defend ourselves against a variety of dangers.

Social advances and technological progress haven't eliminated that burden, they've increased it. Now we also need to maintain complex infrastructure, educate the young, care for the elderly and disabled, and create entertainment to ease the psychological stress of a life so far removed from our basic instincts.

And at this time, very little of that work is done by robots and AI. Asking not to work is just expecting other people to provide all that for you.

[wiether]

Sorry but I don't see how a software engineer (as me) is doing any work that is in the nature of human beings.

There is more and more people doing less than needed jobs while there is less and less people doing useful jobs.

The Covid crisis showed this to us (at least in Europe) : the people doing the real work are the people with the lowest incone and the lowest social protections.

So instead of giving good incomes to guys like me faking being useful to society, I'd prefer we give real incomes to useful people and let other doing "nothing" instead of having jobs with no "natural" purpose.

If we were in a society like that, I would have never chose being a software engineer, I'd rather be in the fields, growing food. But I'm a coward so I picked the salary instead of the meaning.

[leereeves]

Some jobs are further removed from the end product, and therefore less visible, but society depends on them. The people doing what you call the "real" work depend on a lot of support (including software) to do their jobs.

What use is a grocery store cashier without the whole supply chain that brings products to the stores? What would happen to that supply chain without modern infrastructure and the government that maintains and defends the infrastructure? What becomes of that government without elections and the information infrastructure that keeps voters informed?

Presumably someone pays for the work you do, so they find it useful. Even if you can't see it's ultimate purpose, it probably does contribute to society.

[luckylion]

> Sorry but I don't see how a software engineer (as me) is doing any work that is in the nature of human beings.

The simplistic answer is: you do work that is required (in some form, on some level) for "everything" or nobody would pay you to do it. You might be a few hops away from "putting food on the tables of people", but your work is somewhere in the network that supports society. Yes, there are some exceptions, some negative side-effects of the market approach, but they seem to be too small to make the whole system less effective than a carefully planned non-market system.

> The Covid crisis showed this to us (at least in Europe) : the people doing the real work are the people with the lowest incone and the lowest social protections.

That's mostly because that "real work" is usually work that you can easily train for. I still think we should pay better (and pay more people) to work e.g. in health care, but the reason why we don't is that it's easier to train a software developer to work in nursing than training a nurse to work in software development.

> So instead of giving good incomes to guys like me faking being useful to society, I'd prefer we give real incomes to useful people and let other doing "nothing" instead of having jobs with no "natural" purpose.

I know the feeling, but I don't think it's accurate or helpful. If you hate your job, find another one. Especially in software, there are plenty of jobs where you can very directly see the positive impact of your work on people.

> If we were in a society like that, I would have never chose being a software engineer, I'd rather be in the fields, growing food.

Who did more for society, the person growing food or the person developing a tractor?

[hellisothers]

Sidebar: Don’t be so hard on yourself, not a day goes by that I don’t think to myself “Man, I could walk away from all of this and my family and I could be happier, more fulfilled doing X” where X is a grab bag of moving to smaller towns and picking up baking/farming/local business’ing. It might be true, but it also might not be and picking a known quantity of good/bad over an unknown is not cowardly, it can be your gut telling you “this probably isn’t the right thing”.

[0-_-0]

This was already done under socialism in the eastern side of Europe after the Second World War. Jobs had to be created that were unnecessary, or a single job was split between 2-3 people. Keyword is "full employment" if you want to google it, for example:

https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-achieving-full-employmen...

Resulted in overmanning (a sort-of "hidden unemployment") and lead to work shortages for new projects.

[luckylion]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_guarantee is closer to what was mentioned here, I believe. Essentially, it's just saying "we don't want people to sit around and get used to it and we also have things that need to get done but aren't crucial to survival, so we can do them when we have lots of people who aren't needed elsewhere, and we can stop doing them when we don't".

[timonoko]

The record was made in Nasser's Egypt however. All government jobs were shared with dozens or even hundreds of people. Some worked only few hours once a month and earned reasonable wages.

[donw]

Looking at history, Socialist economies have a lot of other characteristics, though:

- Starting a business is illegal.

- You are required to work. Not working is illegal.

- Growing and eating your own food is illegal.

Illegal meaning you either go to a forced-labor camp, and are later killed after the State has extracted every last ounce of value, or the State executes you outright to send a message.

I am not proposing full employment. Consent and choice matter. If you don't want to work, don't work. Or start a business. Or be homeless. Your call.

But if you want to work, and can't find a job... let's fix that problem, and in doing so rebuild our infrastructure.

[prerok]

I grew up in socialism and can tell you that things weren't half as bad as you describe them. Sure, everybody had a job (it was the state's responsibility to provide you with one) and people found themselves demotivated because there was little incentive to do a better job. There was a saying "They cannot pay me as little than the little work I can do" (I hope I translated this correctly :) ).

But, being killed for not working? Never. Start your own business? Sure, just pay the taxes and observe worker's rights. Growing your own food? Every rural household had a garden and some had decent sized fields.

I guess you meant communist Russia at some (signifacant but not large) window of history?

[zajio1am]

> Start your own business? Sure, just pay the taxes and observe worker's rights.

Depends on country. I grew up in socialist Czechoslovakia and private businesses were almost unheard of (there were about several hundreds of small private businesses in country of 15M people). Most private tradesmen offered they services unofficially/illegally (in addition to their regular daily job).

From what i heard, regimes in Poland and Hungary were more lenient in this regard.

> But, being killed for not working? Never.

Killed in work camps? At most in 1950s. But regular prison sentences for not having a work still happened in 1970s and 1980s.

[donw]

> I grew up in socialism

Where and when, if I may ask?

> I guess you meant communist Russia at some (signifacant but not large) window of history?

In terms of "no private businesses" and "from each according to his ability" -- e.g. not working was considered stealing from the state, and thus illegal?

Russia from around 1920-1980, East Germany from about 1949-1980... really, you can look at all of the Eastern Bloc: Poland, Romania, etc. China from 1949-1976, North Korea along the same timeframe, Cambodia under Pol Pot...

To be fair, the executions ramped down a bit after the first 40 years or so, and you'd just be fined and/or imprisoned.

[thesz]

>Starting a business is illegal.

No, it wasn't. Артели and кооперативы (look them up) in USSR were quite popular up to middle of 1950-s and after about 1985. They were supported by government and given preferential treatment.

[donw]

My Russian is super-weak, but for people here, those are "Artisanal Collectives" and "Cooperatives", respectively (yes?)

Reading through [1] and [2] seems to indicate that you could form state-sponsored groups and engage in labor, but not for profit... which is the point of starting a business.

What am I missing?

[1] https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кооперативы_в_СССР [2] https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Артель

[rgblambda]

Done in the west as well, in order to counter the popularity of socialism with the working class. Had similar results. Was gradually wound down in the past few decades.

[thesz]

What you are asking was implemented in USSR.

And it was great, if you have my opinion.

[drran]

Yeah, it was like poison for dragon: cheap, but super effective. Very nice.

[Lammy]

Your first paragraph is exactly how I would word a defense of a UBI trial that had a bad outcome. Let’s talk about the good things that happened and were measured instead of speculating about the hypothetical bad things that are out of scope for this trial. A successful small trial will lead to larger future trials that might answer your question in a more satisfying way.

[Planktonne]

Focusing solely on positive outcomes of a study and ignoring criticisms of/flaws in its premise is not really in keeping with scientific rigour.

[Lammy]

Read my comment again but read the entire thing this time ;)

[luckylion]

It's not a UBI study if it only studies whether people like getting money they don't have to do anything for.

I'm repeating it every time: these kinds of studies are the same as measuring the output of "free energy machines" that supposedly work by breaking physics... while ignoring that they are plugged into a wall-socket. To prove that they work, you'd have to unplug them, otherwise you don't need the sophisticated machine and the fancy theory, an extension cord will do the same much cheaper and more efficiently.

[pwinnski]

Any test that doesn't involve full nationwide UBI is subject to the same criticism, and I predict that even a large-scale three-year-long test that involved every western state will still be dismissed as unworkable for the same reasons: no barrier between eastern and western states, and everyone knew the test would end in three years.

[luckylion]

> Any test that doesn't involve full nationwide UBI is subject to the same criticism

No, not really, unless the money for the experiment comes from outside the region. The problem is that the argument for UBI is either that "it'll pay for itself" or "it doesn't cost more than today's system". So we'll need a test that actually tests that.

Maybe it doesn't work and we'll see "okay, it'll be 10% more expensive than today's systems". That can be achieved by raising taxes, and the result of doing that can be seen in the experiment as well: do people leave the region because they don't want to pay an extra 10%, or do they find UBI's benefits to society at large to be so large that they don't mind?

Maybe we'll see that UBI does what the proponents promise: free human innovation and productivity and easily more than pay for itself. Once that result is proven, you'll have no issue to convince anyone.

Not trying to test that at all and then saying "well, even if we would, nobody would accept that" isn't the right approach in my opinion. And it feels like there's something left unsaid: that the proponents also don't believe that it would work and therefore don't want to actually test it, because they're convinced the test will prove that it doesn't work. And as long as it's not tested, they can claim that it totally would work (in theory) without having to prove it.

[pwinnski]

So how do you propose a better test? It seems like you slid easily past that point. To determine whether or not it requires 10% higher taxes, as you suggest, we would have to conduct a test large enough to have an appreciable impact on tax allocation, which seems like it would need to be a really wide test, like state-wide, that lasts for a at least a few years, no?

I guess that's what I'm not seeing: any tests done so far are too small and not long enough and are known ahead of time to be a test. Okay, fine, let's conduct a test that's larger and long-term, with an eye toward permanence. How large, though?How do we avoid the criticism seen on this very page that limiting the number of people involved distorts things? How do we avoid the converse, which is that unless you're Alaska, letting it be known that everyone in a certain area gets free money means an artificial boom in that area?

[luckylion]

I don't think it's fair to ask those that are skeptical of a claim to provide a test that proves it doesn't work, the duty to prove is on those making the claim.

But still: yes, you'll need a larger unit. It won't necessarily have to be a state, though that depends on the country and the tax-setup within. It would have to be something that can set their own taxes. A village would likely be too small, but a medium sized city of 20-50k should certainly see the benefits if they exist. And it wouldn't need to be limited to a few years: convince the inhabitants and you can democratically vote it in, it'll run in perpetuity, or until the money's gone in the case that it doesn't work.

> How do we avoid the criticism seen on this very page that limiting the number of people involved distorts things?

That's not really what's criticized. The issue lots of people have with these tests is that they're only testing the distribution of money, but not the funding. You don't need to have millions of people. I'm pretty sure if you can get 10000 people that are broadly representative of the population at large and get them to fund their own UBI, collectively, and play it out, that'll be a good test in most people's eyes. I'll certainly pay attention, because it'll actually test UBI, not just "if we take money from the national taxes and give it to 500 people, what will happen?"

> How do we avoid the converse, which is that unless you're Alaska, letting it be known that everyone in a certain area gets free money means an artificial boom in that area?

An artificial boom would still be a boom. Would people invest in an area if they knew that they'd have to pay high taxes? If so: great, let them do it, that's not so bad. The problem arises when the number of people asking for UBI grows faster than those investing & funding the UBI. But that's exactly what has to be tested, because it's pretty obvious that the same would happen on a state or national level - unless we're talking about closed borders, which sounds anachronistic.

[AnthonyMouse]

So let's unplug them then?

If the theory says that it works and the small scale trial says that it works, it's time for the large scale trial.

[luckylion]

Let's unplug them and test it before rolling it out on a large scale. We don't want to order a billion free energy machines before we know that they actually work without being plugged in.

Will tax payers in the UBI community accept their increased taxes? Will those paying taxes move out of the community, leaving only those on UBI behind (who will then not be able to fund the UBI)? Will we see an influx of unproductive citizens into the community to gain the UBI benefits?

Once that's answered, we'll have a better idea of the feasibility and requirements. If people want to avoid the increased taxes so much that they'll move, we'll know that we need to close the borders to force them to stay, for example.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Will tax payers in the UBI community accept their increased taxes? Will those paying taxes move out of the community, leaving only those on UBI behind (who will then not be able to fund the UBI)? Will we see an influx of unproductive citizens into the community to gain the UBI benefits?

But then you have exactly the same problem -- a small scale experiment doesn't tell you that.

If you did a UBI experiment that applied to a single street in a single neighborhood then of course people would do that, because moving across the street would net you $10,000/year while still effectively living in the same community.

But are they going to move to another state, leave their job, community, business contacts, family, friends and everything they've ever known? Much less likely.

You also need a certain amount of scale to encompass a realistic level of diversity. If I want to disprove your point I could do a UBI experiment in East LA where there are no rich people to move out, or in Newport Beach where the cost of living is too high for someone to be able to afford to move in just to receive the UBI.

The real question is whether it would work at the state level, which you can only tell by actually implementing it at the state level.

And your concerns wouldn't even apply to doing it at the national level because we do have national borders and citizenship.

[luckylion]

> If you did a UBI experiment that applied to a single street in a single neighborhood then of course people would do that, because moving across the street would net you $10,000/year while still effectively living in the same community.

So it has to be world-wide immediately? Of course, if you only do it in e.g. Denmark, the Danish might escape to Northern Germany or Southern Norway or Sweden, while still living broadly in the same region.

Anything that's "we can't really show how great it will be until all of humanity has been convinced to go all-in, but trust us, it'll be great" has a super high risk: it might not be great at all, but since we've all committed to it, the damage isn't even contained.

> But are they going to move to another state, leave their job, community, business contacts, family, friends and everything they've ever known? Much less likely.

For a 30-50% increase in taxes? I'm not so sure. Given that their peers are usually similar to them and will also look to emigrate, you might see whole communities leave... at which point you'll need the tried & tested barrier of building literal walls with armed guards on top to keep people from escaping the utopia you've created.

It's not like we haven't tried that before, and it's not like it ended with people being shot for trying to leave. And, once the regimes fell, we've generally considered their actions crimes against humanity. Do we really need to repeat that once every other generation?

[salawat]

>Let's unplug them and test it before rolling it out on a large scale.

Not a bad idea, but wouldn't that essentially degenerate into a capital allocation business with a functioning taxation/wealth redistribution system?

Let's be honest here. There's nothing "magic" about UBI. UBI is just what happens when you successfully tax the top of the wealth accumulation frustrum such that overall the distribution of wealth is less a pyramid and more a recognizable trapezoid. Less triangular, more quad.

The main problem is tax havening, Hollywood accounting, and abusable tax loopholes. Fix the international taxation scene/arrangement, cut down on the viability of tax evasion via legal fiction engineering, fund the capability to track down and successfully audit examples of gratuitous tax evasion (or implement bug bounties for those who help flesh out corner cases in tax law) and actually implement decent social safety nets and we could be on to something.

I get it isn't easy, that there is a lot of difficulty in getting things just right, but I dare say that in terms of seeing actual credible attempts at implementing what needs to be implemented to make it work I've seen astonishingly little; especially given that these measures would be largely deleterious to the beneficiaries of the current status quo, and would greatly shift the calculus around capital allocation away from billion/trillionaires funding personal space programs to actually enabling national scale endeavor coordination; which also brings with it the absolutely critical aspect of getting the political operating smoothly again to unlock that newly collected capital potential by keeping it flowing back into the input layers of the economy.

I can't be the only one seeing the economy as a massive NN, in which individual people are the input nodes, legal fictions are hidden layers, and government/taxation are the feedback/error propagation mechanism am I?

[AnthonyMouse]

> The main problem is tax havening, Hollywood accounting, and abusable tax loopholes.

But this is one of the other things that a UBI makes easy.

One of the best taxes in terms of resisting avoidance is a flat rate consumption tax. You can move your headquarters but you can't move your customers. You can't arbitrage the rate because it's uniform. The burden falls disproportionately on uncompetitive industries which have to eat the tax when a cost increase across the industry doesn't allow them to raise prices any further because they were already charging monopoly prices.

The normal problem with a consumption tax is that it's regressive. Everybody pays the same rate. But that's the part that gets fixed by combining it with a UBI. Someone making $50,000 may be paying a 35% marginal rate, and $17,500 in tax, but they get $12,000 of it back. Their effective rate is only 11%, even though everybody is paying the same marginal rate.

You get to have an increasing effective rate with increasing income while still having the fixed marginal rate that makes everything administratively simple, and the complexity was what enabled the avoidance.

[luckylion]

I agree, it's essentially a large redistribution scheme that requires those that are supposed to be giving not having a chance to just leave.

Tax havens and loopholes are a problem even today, but hard to fix. Germany or France would (ostensibly) love to fix them, but can't make Luxembourg or Switzerland stop offering deals and havens. Introducing UBI (and higher taxes that provide even more incentives to leave) in France or Germany won't change anything on that front.

Anything that requires global cooperation seems outside of current possibilities. Building something on the basis of "that'll work, no worries" sounds like leaving out authentication of a bank system and saying "no worries, we'll convince everyone not to cheat and log into their neighbors' account". Sure, in theory that's a great concept, but practically I'd personally avoid using that bank.

[learnstats2]

>the participants are usually aware/suspect that this bonus income probably won't last forever

If a country fully implemented permanent UBI today, all of this would still be true. Controversial political decisions are likely to face constant challenge, and this especially applies to those decision which do not benefit the most powerful.

Being critical of this as an imperfect experiment is an odd take to me. This is what reality looks like. Having a real-world test like this is an important stage of the process of implementing UBI.

[ahdeanz]

Not to mention the US government recently sent $1,200 to a huge swath of the country and Alaska has had a similarly sized UBI-like fund for years. If we want we can chop it up and give it to ourselves each month and call it a $100 UBI (somewhat means tested). Alongside smaller, more direct comparisons like this study, I think we already have a fairly good sense of what a small to moderate UBI would look like.

Nothing would go crazy. People would have more money. They’d work the same amount except select groups (students, disabled, elderly) and be slightly/moderately happier at least in the short term. We’d either have higher deficits or taxes, probably both.

[NiceWayToDoIT]

It is quite complex subject, but defiantly needs faster progressing and bigger trials. With AI advances on the way destructing jobs, it is our role to reinvent and find our own place in the future society, question who has rights to have resources, should we invent meaningless jobs, should we accept economical model and maximizing our output, or maybe Scandinavian model where we place people in the center and try to maximize creative potential, well being and happiness?

[AdrianB1]

The Scandinavian model is often cited by people in US as an argument for anything they want to support, but it is never understood; it become a buzzword.

For example people almost never mention the ethnic homogeneity (and the big problems when that does not happen, see Malmo), that free selection of jobs makes gender split even more unequal than expected or the chronic alcoholism in most of Norway. Cherry picking some parts and ignoring the big picture is a fail.

[jasondelta]

The reason people almost never mention the ethnic homogeneity is because it comes across incredibly bigoted. Put another way, it's basically saying that a strong social welfare state isn't possible in the US because it happens to have minorities - if only they could just get rid of them, there'd be no more obstacles!

[NiceWayToDoIT]

Classic example of concentrating on wrong part of text. Important bit is question what do we place as important value.

So, big problem is generational and inheritance on its own, giving ability to certain groups of people to gain wealth beyond comprehension.

People in general do not have feeling how big is the gap between 100K income and 1 billion.

Biggest question is if AI does all the work, how will population of 8 billion minus 1000 wealthiest get means to survive? Further in world of smart machines, who should be owner of that AI and the wealth creates? Lastly what will people do, and should they do anything that requires "earning" to survive?

[sedeki]

Exactly. I can't imagine that the Scandinavian model ever working somewhere like in the US. I say this as a native Scandinavian.

I think a more appropriate comparison is with Canada, whose system is also flawed in my opinion (I don't like the Scandinavian model either because it doesn't work anymore nor does it scale.)

[salawat]

how is the ethnic homogeneity a prereq of the model out of curiosity?

[luckylion]

It's not. Cultural similarity is though, that is: almost everybody has to pull at least their own weight. If you have identifiable groups who do not, you're laying the ground work for severe conflict, because those who provide will at some point ask those who take to also provide - and they won't like it when the answer is "why should we?". A successful system doesn't require them all to have identical cultures, but the input/output has to be similar.

Ethnicity just happens to be a good predictor for culture, and culture happens to be a good predictor for the ability to be a net-contributor in a modern society. Ethnic homogeneity predicts cultural homogeneity.

[benhurmarcel]

Also they don't have to finance it themselves.