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by dragonwriter 1042 days ago
> The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government in a way that does not threaten the integrity of UBI

If you can, categorically, overthrow it without threatening the integrity of UBI in its territory, it was never actually the government in the first place.
2 comments
JumpCrisscross 1042 days ago
> can, categorically, overthrow it without threatening the integrity of UBI in its territory, it was never actually the government in the first place

Which underlines the ridiculousness of the thought experiment. The solution to wars being destructive is...a blockchain?

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littlestymaar 1042 days ago
there's a civil war ongoing but your income is still at its pre-war level (without any devaluation, meaning you keep your pre-war purchasing power) thanks to the magic of the blockchain.
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ben_w 1042 days ago
> without any devaluation, meaning you keep your pre-war purchasing power

That's not how economics works.

The purchasing power of any currency, for example USD, isn't the same everywhere even at a fixed point in time, because we don't have negligible-cost transportation in war zones (amongst other places).

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__MatrixMan__ 1042 days ago
It would come down to devaluation by whom right? If everybody wants the war to end and both sides see you as somebody that is working towards a reasonable plan of ending it, then I expect your tokens would go pretty far.

And even if you're not the magical mediator who ends the war, what matters is not some global market evaluation, what matters is your tokens' evaluation by the people who grow the food that you eat and your evaluation of their tokens as well. Reciprocal exchange and utility, not market value.

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JumpCrisscross 1042 days ago
> devaluation by whom right

This isn't how currencies lose value in wars. If the amount of money doesn't change, but half the factories are bombed, the output of the remaining factories rises in value relative to that currency. (Ceteris paribus.) The only way around this is to backstop production with unbombed factories. Something a blockchain does jack squat about.

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__MatrixMan__ 1042 days ago
Sure, but that's somewhat orthogonal to the matter of how you does your accounting or who issues your tokens. That's just scarcity.

I suppose you could burn tokens when the factories are bombed (or you know, when whatever other resources that back them expire), but that seems like a lot of extra bookkeeping just to keep two numbers equal.

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JumpCrisscross 1042 days ago
> that's somewhat orthogonal to the matter of how you does your accounting or who issues your tokens. That's just scarcity.

It's always scarcity. That's economics. The currency will fundamentally, potentially permanently, devalue in purchasing power in that context without external support.

> you could burn tokens when the factories are bombed

How many tokens do you burn for a textile versus semiconductor factory? Keep in mind, you are in a war zone, which means no guarantee of safe imports or exports. (Also, whose tokens?)

Managing an economy on a war footing is old business. There is nothing Worldcoin does to even remotely approach giving a semblance of an indication that anyone on their team has actually thought about this, like, once.

> that seems like a lot of extra bookkeeping just to keep two numbers equal

This is, in a nutshell, the problem with anything that purports to maintain its value over long durations of time. Value keeping takes work. We can't meaningfully convert ancient currencies to modern ones because it makes no sense to ask how many days' labour a Roman peasant would trade for an iPhone. These problems are fundamental to the notions of value. They don't have a technical solution. Value is inherently, fundamentally, subjective.

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littlestymaar 1042 days ago
Yes, and not only the factories, but the entierty of the supply chain, combined with war profiteers driving prices artificially even higher.

Contrary to the freshwater meme Inflation is rarely primarily a monetary phenomenon, but it's even less the case during a war.

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__MatrixMan__ 1042 days ago
I'm not sure about that. There's more to being a government than preventing people from using media of exchange that you haven't blessed.

Besides, if borders had anything to do with it, it was never UBI in the first place.

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dragonwriter 1042 days ago
> Besides, if borders had anything to do with it, it was never UBI in the first place.

Yes, it would; neither form of the “U” in UBI includes free of borders in the sense used in the term, and reinterpreting that way and pretending its what the term means is just lazy equivocation.

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__MatrixMan__ 1042 days ago
I don't know what you mean. If you're denying people access to the system based on where they happen to be, it's not universal.
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dragonwriter 1042 days ago
> If you're denying people access to the system based on where they happen to be, it's not universal.

“Universal” seems to be a later construction, it was originally “unconditional”, and in both cases the writings on it for many years under either name made it clear that the reference was principally freedom from means- and behavior-testing, contrary to status-quo welfare programs, but that it would target a population based on (exact scope differs in particular proposals) residency, citizenship, and/or age. Not surprised that the “no borders” crowd has seen it differently, and their version certainly is a valid instance of the general idea, but they don’t get to rewrite history and narrow the scope of the broader concept to their new version.

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__MatrixMan__ 1042 days ago
That's fair. The "no borders" crowd was my introduction to the topic, so I guess I'm ignorant of the other side.

Is there a book or something you'd recommend?

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