[knorker]

Where do I sign against this?

This is just FIRE without the money. Did you read the actual proposal? They explicitly want to give a middle class life to everyone, with zero obligation from the individual.

This is complete insanity.

Kids will make zero plans to use school to make themselves useful. Kids are idiots (past me included), and if they knew they had the option to do nothing productive, then that's what a very significant proportion would do: nothing.

So you'll have a population that is incapable of doing anything useful, demanding a middle class lifestyle, for free.

You know what, why NOT be a teenage parent and never do anything productive? There's no downside.

Or if you're one of the ones being productive, when you hit 30 and get a child, suddenly why bother going back to work ever?

Do you know how many people would be "artists" or "authors" if they could? They really believe in themselves, and write poems their whole life, publish books, paint stuff. But it's all shit. Literally nobody wanted what 99% of them did. But they had no obligation to produce anything anybody else wanted.

I'm for a strong social safety net and reducing inequality, but UBI is insanity until we actually have achieved Star Trek level of abundance.

UBI assumes that everything that people want that gives them fulfilment is actually useful to anybody else.

Neil Breen is funny because there's only one of him. Europe has what, 800M people? There would easily be 5M Neil Breens, but even missing the mark on unintentionally funny.

And NONE of them would be forced to "get their life together". Their life IS together, they're "film makers".

So we would have like 25% otherwise productive people dropping out completely, and another 50% switching to something that makes them fulfilled, but contributes nothing.

And we can't keep the world running on the backs of the 25%.

Another problem is that UBI becomes a level of power. People start planning their life after not needing it, and then politicians decide to not make it grow by inflation. Or they bump it up and make future generations pay for it. C.f. pension systems, medicare, and BBC funding for some unintended political side effects.

UBI is absolutely bananas.

[colechristensen]

You end up with people doing things because they want to.

Lots of people do lots of things for reasons other than money and we’re heading towards an economy where living a middle class life doesn’t require everyone to work.

People will run factories and do science and make art without just needing to do it to eat.

Humans before civilization didn’t work anywhere near so hard to survive as people today.

Go look at github and tell me about how money is necessary to get everything done.

We’re not in a post scarcity economy but it’s nearby.

[foogazi]

What I don’t get is how can anyone else decide how much UBI I need to do what I want to do, art/science/sports?

Currently people decide how much work they are willing to do - want more stuff, earn more money to buy more stuff

We are already seeing the disaster of Social Security benefits not being enough to fund retirement - how will this work when people don’t even work to save for retirement

[colechristensen]

B is for Basic, not funding your passion projects. Enough for simple food and housing somewhere relatively cheap. You want more? You work. Work not working out? You can fall back to the basics without being afraid for your survival.

If it's enough to enable you to do what you want without working, then it's enough. If it's not you find a way to get more.

There are a lot of problems with people in tough situations where their outcomes are made worse by having to make bad choices. People accept abusive living or working situations, suffer through anxieties and trauma because it's a choice between an awful situation and going hungry and homeless. A whole lot of people are wage slaves. The "option" of working, where to work, and to accept situations is only an illusion because the alternative is much worse.

Give people UBI instead of difficult to navigate social programs which don't guarantee support and you have to be an expert to navigate well and you solve a lot of problems.

People living on the street are expensive to society and not in some abstract way. People have less lifetime value to society because they are forced to accept their current situation and don't have the resources to have job mobility or can't afford to put themselves in a better living situation. People also treat jobs like they are forced to do them. A workforce that is there by choice performs a lot better, gets treated a lot better, and has better outcomes for customers, employees, and in general everyone.

Social security wasn't meant to fund retirement, it's a safety net to prevent the elderly who can no longer reasonably work from pushing way past their limits or starving. It wasn't meant to fund your expensive suburb lifestyle. It isn't luxury, but indeed you can live off of social security but it requires choices that lots of people don't want to make.

[knorker]

> B is for Basic, not funding your passion projects.

This petition is explicitly about giving everyone a middle class lifestyle for no contributions.

People are quite content at middle class lifestyle.

We're not talking "struggling artist" here, we're talking "yeah, I'm doing quite well. Haven't quite decided what my book will be about yet, though".

Like the parent comment said, we're already failing at funding social security even with the classical age pyramid (which is disappearing, by the way), and now we want to expand that to not just seniors but EVERYONE?

It's just completely unworkable.

For the other things you mention, yes we do have a bunch of social problems. UBI is not the answer, or at least isn't the answer in the form this petition asks for. Two things are ridiculous: the "U" in UBI stands for zero means-testing, and in this petition made explicit again. The second is that middle-class is just way too high to aim for.

I'm in favour of more spending on the poor and homeless, even when it's not "fair". I'm even for less "punishment" and more "rehabilitation" for crimes, even when it's not "fair". Society is better off if (hyperbole alert here) criminals are rewarded for their crimes by getting education and support, than if they're stomped on.

But the idea of UBI (as proposed here) is broken on every level, with society-ending first and second order effects.

People add value to society because they get "social credits" (aka money), that they can then use to better their own lives or their causes.

If you remove that aspect then people will do what they want, not what needs to be done or is valued.

[knorker]

> Lots of people do lots of things for reasons other than money

Yes, but most do earn some money. Or in other words they provide some service to other people in exchange for others doing things for them. Literally doing their part to be in a society.

But with UBI there is no longer any obligation for even a base level of doing service to anyone else.

> and we’re heading towards an economy where living a middle class life doesn’t require everyone to work.

No, but we are hundreds of years from Star Trek utopia where basically nobody has to work.

I don't think you get my point about just how unproductive society would be if everyone had FU money. Literally anybody could say "Oh, I can't take a month off, starting tomorrow? Ok, then I quit. Bye".

> We’re not in a post scarcity economy but it’s nearby.

Not even remotely close. Nothing in the world is not scarce. Hell, they say water is going to be the next big expensive thing.

With the growth we have, in people and resource consumption, if anything we are further away from post scarcity now than ever.

[barbazoo]

> This is just FIRE without the money.

I love how you framed this as a bad thing. As if FIRE was something one has to earn after years and years of wage slavery.

> Kids will make zero plans to use school to make themselves useful.

> So you'll have a population that is incapable of doing anything useful, demanding a middle class lifestyle, for free.

That assumption has been disproved time and again.

[knorker]

>> This is just FIRE without the money.

> I love how you framed this as a bad thing.

No, not at all. I'm a Star Trek fan.

But for the 21st century it's a complete fantasy to think it's realistic.

You need money to do this. To just skip that step is disconnected from reality.

Or to put another way: You can't just take. In Star Trek you can, because food replicators, and extreme abundance.

In Star Trek people would give away a house because they can just get a new one.

We're hundreds of years away from that.

FIRE is about really intensifying your production (your "giving"), in order to then get back your fair share as others give back to you.

If you create a world where nobody has to "give", but everyone is allowed to "take", what exactly do you think will happen?

> That assumption has been disproved time and again.

Oh? How, where? I don't think we're talking about the same thing.

Yes, some wealthy people in history have used their time to make great things. But the vast VAST majority, like 99.9999%, have not.

Just look at royalty. The only productive thing they do is through their wealth and power. Who actually contributed, as opposed to have their wealth contribute?

[rsj_hn]

Relax, it's a petition. Anyone can sign a petition. The very idea that people think a petition is how to achieve UBI means that it will not be achieved. This is a way of feeding illusions to people who want to live in illusion, of catering to people who think complaining and wishing and imagineering unicorns and money raining down from the sky will bring said unicorns and money to them. And so the petition provides a valuable service of helping people live in their minds. It comforts them. They can pretend UBI is already here, or just over the horizon. It shouldn't upset you at all.

[knorker]

I know it's a petition. But it has some of the same problems that a "like" button has, if there's no "dislike".

But I also like your cynical take on petitions. :-)

[hef19898]

The EU has around 450 million residents. And hey, maybe a portion of your 50 % start hyper disruptive start-ups in, say, Berlin. There they can really contribute.

[knorker]

Contribute what?

Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.