[WalterBright]

Meaning or not, UBI doesn't work because the math doesn't work.

> bizarre

It isn't bizarre at all. Without work people devolve into playing video games and smoking pot in their mom's basement.

I remember summer vacations from school. It was great for a while, but soon I was looking forward to getting back to school.

[olyjohn]

I have been off work for over 6 months now. I have been doing so many projects, and exploring so many places, working out, eating healthy, learning, and spending very little money doing so. I actually even quit smoking pot after doing it daily for 10 years. It's been amazing, and I'd rather never go back to work. I don't get how people can get so bored. There's so much to do and see.

[phil21]

From my lived experience you are an outlier. Potentially an extreme one at that.

Where I grew up the people who didn’t work almost universally turned into consumers of everything and creators of basically nothing. The exceptions were retirees who had a lifetime if work experience prior to their idle years. For those folks it was gardening and other similar hobbies that provided meaning but not much output for society as a whole.

I think if you offered the entire population the ability to do no work other than what they felt like doing, exceedingly few people would be motivated to do the needful. A few more would be motivated to do things like create art and otherwise contribute back to other people but I am thinking along the lines of the 80/20 rule here.

I think our future if we ever figured out automation and UBI looks a lot like Wall-E vs some sort of utopia. In fact I believe that sort of setup is as close to a utopian society as I can imagine being realistic.

I did apartment maintenance for a place where about half the recipients had paid for rent, utilities, and bare necessities provided by the government. It was easy to play the odds and know which apartment was which the moment you stepped foot into one. It’s not a perfect correlation to what UBI would look like for many reasons, but it’s closer than the average upper middle class suburbanite imagines people will act like if given the opportunity.

[mlrtime]

What projects? You are starting from a completely different baseline than the average hypothetical UBI recipient.

I think UBI advocates may have a point once you're 2-3 generations into some sort of UBI system. But bootstrapping that system is not possible, most people will revert to do nothing of value to society, no projects, nothing.

[tayo42]

I generally agree, but I think for some of the most interesting problems in computer science you need resources that only companies can provide and thats basically work.

[fraserphysics]

After free UNIX and Linux became available on affordable home computers, I found it was no longer necessary to be at a company to do interesting projects. That was before 1995.

[WalterBright]

Best wishes to you! I'm retired myself, but I work full time (on D). Yale is hosting a symposium on D in April, and I'll be a speaker at it.

[keybored]

> Best wishes to you! I'm retired myself, but I work full time (on D).

Why aren’t you smoking pot in your basement?

[WalterBright]

I don't like being high.

[keybored]

You know what I mean.

People can find other things to do than work for a wage. I don’t get what your original objection is about when you yourself work even though you don’t have to.

Some local volunteer organizations seem to only have people 60+ years of age.

[rubenflamshep]

> Without work people devolve into playing video games and smoking pot in their mom's basement.

I have no problem finding fulfilling and meaningful projects outside of my work! There are many people like me :)

[WalterBright]

> There are many people like me

I'm sure there are. Doesn't mean most people are like that. Consider retirees. Some find meaningful activities, many just rot away out of not having a purpose.

What percentage of people currently living off of welfare are doing meaningful work?

[danparsonson]

> What percentage of people currently living off of welfare are doing meaningful work?

Do you have that number? Do you have any numbers to back up your claims or are you just talking about what works for you?

[WalterBright]

According to google: "Some reports indicate that 26.8% to 28.6% of households on welfare have earned income, which sometimes reflects a focus on households with no work-eligible adults (elderly, disabled)."

[danparsonson]

So no, then. Got it.

[mlrtime]

This is human nature, most of humans will revert to a baseline of doing the bare minimum to survive. The rest cannot support that system.

[direwolf20]

Do you do the bare minimum to survive, or do you have excess money left after paying rent and groceries?

[WalterBright]

According to google, "approximately 57% to 67% of American adults are living paycheck to paycheck."

This doesn't mean they are poor. As their income goes up, so does their spending.

Also according to google, "Approximately 60% to 80% of professional athletes face severe financial distress or go broke within a few years of retirement, particularly in the NFL and NBA. Data suggests 78% of NFL players experience financial hardship within two years of retirement, while about 60% of NBA players are broke within five years."

and:

"though often debated, statistic suggests that up to 70% of lottery winners go broke or face financial distress within three to five years, more conservative estimates indicate about one-third (roughly 33%) declare bankruptcy."

Personally, I think that high schools should have a required course in finance and accounting.

[eli_gottlieb]

> What percentage of people currently living off of welfare are doing meaningful work?

Most of them, since the vast majority of "welfare" programs exclusively assist people who are in work.

[keybored]

Always such glowing recommendations of human kind from techies.

People devolve like that when they have no purpose or opportunities. Which I’m sure would happen with the real goal of UBI: barely subsistence support in order to grow a larger pool of reserve labor while the rich (who are not degenerate at all[1]) live large.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46929869

[WalterBright]

America offers a free education for all. People are free to move to anyplace in the country. Historically, people migrated to where the opportunities were. Americans are free to start a business any time.

Purpose, though, comes from within.

[devmor]

Your anecdote is not compliant with reality. Every test of UBI so far shows that people continue to work.

[BuyMyBitcoins]

There’s no way to test UBI without implementing it fully. Any experiment that gives people a no-strings-attached stipend isn’t accounting for the fact that the money has a negligible impact on the economy and produces no meaningful change in the workforce. Plus, all of these experiments are time-bound. Participants know the payments will stop.

I also get the feeling that such experiments just prove that giving people money makes them happier. But there’s nothing to account for the fact that prices in the market haven’t changed, the tax structure hasn’t changed, and no goods or services experienced any shortages.

[lII1lIlI11ll]

> Every test of UBI so far shows that people continue to work.

I'm not aware of any realistic UBI tests. Could you point me to any?

The ones I'm aware of were either or both:

1. Time limited, so participants were aware that they needed to still have a job or at least be employable after the experiment has concluded.

2. Were funded externally, so participants only reaped the benefits of UBI but didn't incur the drawbacks (i.e. didn't have to fund the program by much higher income taxes) which could have discourage them from working.

It was basically a supplementary source of income - money for nothing for a limited time period, not an actual UBI program.

[mlrtime]

A test of UBI is not UBI. It's not possible to show how UBI works in a isolated test.

[devmor]

If this is true, why are we supposed to accept anecdotes of how it would fail?

[WalterBright]

I suspect it was because the UBI wasn't enough to live on.

[devmor]

So you believe that the entire driving factor of the consumer goods market would mysteriously disappear if people had enough money to not worry about missing rent?

[direwolf20]

Rent is defined as unearned income attracted by a dominant market position. If we wanted people to afford rent it'd be more efficient to set rent to zero by fiat.

[devmor]

I agree, but UBI is far more likely to come to fruition than eliminating the majority of the US's largest asset-based speculative market.

[Marazan]

> Without work people devolve into playing video games and smoking pot in their mom's basement.

Skill issue

[krapp]

>Without work people devolve into playing video games and smoking pot in their mom's basement.

Some people might, others wouldn't. Not everyone is a pot-smoking teenager.

[WalterBright]

People like ice cream, too. But not everyone.

[mlrtime]

Yup, there are adults and alcohol too.

[direwolf20]

It's universal basic income, not universal extensive income. If someone is a minimal drain on society, so what? We have lots of stuff.

[watwut]

Hard working billionaires famous for succesdully working devolved into abuse island, real saltiness over anyone saying sexual harrasment is wrong and basically conspiracy to end democracy.

UBI guy playing games in moms basement comes accross as harmless in comparison.