[zozbot234]

Which of course ignores the obvious point that UBI is all about taking existing resource redistribution and making it less costly and more efficient. Practically all Western countries redistribute income on a massive scale (compared to the default outcomes of a completely free market capitalism) in order to ensure everyone can provide for their basic needs, and that could all be gradually replaced by UBI.

This is broadly in line with OP's suggested ethic "create value for others, don't play zero sum games" since capitalism is based on rewarding those who create the most value, whereas zero-sum games are largely political in nature.

[card_zero]

The inefficiency of the bureaucracy of limiting welfare (or charity) to the poor and needy. I don't know, though, maybe giving everybody's money to everybody cancels itself out.

[zozbot234]

You're giving money to everybody but then anyone who isn't poor and needy has to pay taxes on their income that more than offset the money. It's taking "the bureaucracy of limiting welfare (or charity)" and folding it in with the IRS and the local Department of Revenue.

[rfwhyte]

Capitalism rewards those who CAPTURE the most value, not those who create it. Capitalism at its core is a system of expropriating the value of labor by those with capital who themselves create absolutely nothing.

[zozbot234]

Capital allocation is a serious job with very real consequences. The decision of how many AI datacenters should be built, to take an an unusually topical example, is one of capital allocation. Central planning is not a viable solution, it has failed everywhere it's been tried.

[swed420]

> Central planning is not a viable solution, it has failed everywhere it's been tried.

Laughs in chinese

(and yes I'm aware they use instances of capitalism. The difference is they have hard checks in place)

[DeepSeaTortoise]

You can never just use existing resources as long as those end up in places they're no longer accessible to the market anymore.

Cash just about never sits just around as long as whoever holds onto it has no current need for extremely liquid assets. Like insurances.

I doubt that the ratio of cash that ends up bound up that way to the one that doesn't changes a lot overall.

The real problem to UBI is governments creating income via debt, IMO.

[zozbot234]

> The real problem to UBI is governments creating income via debt, IMO.

The national debt is just a hidden tax on future generations. You're stealing resources from the future (by selling claims to them in advance, that's what national debt is) and spending them in the present. It's justifiable in extreme cases like a war (or perhaps for massive public investments that can't be funded within the existing budget - which is actually not that common), but really not otherwise.

[ncruces]

It's fine if you're leaving something to those future generations. Like a bridge or a dam built to last 100 years.

[imtringued]

That's not how that works, because for each unit of debt (loans or negative balances) there is a corresponding unit of credit (bonds or positive balances) in the economy. Hence, mathematically speaking, all debts could be paid off instantly at any point in time.

The reason why the debt keeps growing endlessly is that there is a 0% lower bound on the interest rate, which if you think logically about it, means that debt can only grow, mathematically speaking. This creates the impression that debt is always a future burden that is eternally carried forward as if it was nuclear waste.

If the market interest rate is below zero, either the government and the central bank must intervene to maintain the state of the money system above zero, because that is the only representable state. The government can subsidize the difference between the market interest rate and the money system interest rate clamp by taking on private debt and turning it private. This is particularly evident once private corporations refuse to take on further debt.

However, even if the government stopped the subsidization, you still don't get out of the conundrum. The government is patching the symptom with its cause, which stalls the problem into the future, which is "good" if the cause is considered good and only the symptom is considered bad.

The same way housing is needed for living, money is needed for trading. Similar to housing becoming an investment and therefore no longer being able to be used for its intended purpose, money can face the same fate. When people use money as an investment, it can't be used for trading. Houses sit empty and money sits idle.

It turns out that money is such an integral part of the economy that if there is no money, people can't acquire the goods they need to survive and since there is a monopoly on money systems, you can't just switch to a private provider to perform the trading you need in case the government one fails.

In other words, you either choose between a fully formalized money based economy or subsistence lifestyle with nothing in-between. The difference between the two is so stark, that a failure in the money system might as well be the collapse of all elements of society. From that perspective, it is quite smart to keep kicking the debt can down the road. Meanwhile the person who refuses to kick the can will doom society unless they implement the possibility of negative interest in their money system.

[zozbot234]

The zero bound on nominal interest rates is not relevant today. (It may be relevant in a deflationary environment where debt or 'safe assets' are essentially needed as a liquidity instrument akin to money, but that all gets hoovered up when interest rates rise.) The U.S. government is paying a whole lot of interest on its national debt bonds not because of a formal constraint, but rather because its bonds would go unsold otherwise, it would be unable to roll over the existing bonds as they expire, and the whole house of cards would collapse. IOW, it's the chickens coming home to roost, and the American taxpayer is paying for it. The alternative is to inflate the debt away by debasing the currency, which is even worse.

[notarobot123]

I've often thought of state debt as an accruing tax collection deficit. Selling bonds (creating more of this debt) is more politically convenient than raising taxes but it digs a deeper hole and obliges the state to pay interest largely to the same class of people they have failed to tax.

[Obscurity4340]

Sounds like a win-win. Rich people win then they double dip and win again

[crimsoneer]

This is like suggesting no business should ever borrow to invest.

[zozbot234]

If your business can't self-fund the investment, borrowing is justified. But if you're earning revenue that allows you to self-fund, why borrow? You're just incurring extra costs.

[coffeebeqn]

I feel like government borrowing sometimes and government borrowing more and more every year and never paying it down until the end of time or more likely bankruptcy are two different things

[tonyedgecombe]

As long as you keep new borrowing below growth then you can do that indefinitely. The problem is when the next pandemic (or war) comes along you don't have much room to deal with it.

[bombcar]

You can do the same with printing money, as long as you do it below growth you can do it indefinitely.

The problem always is that you can't stop and get off the tiger. No country can withstand the shock of a major cut in spending, because the population can't absorb the hit.

[mike_hearn]

Forget UBI and AI. They are distractions. Today it's very unclear that even just existing welfare schemes are sustainable. Political parties can buy votes with welfare and they do, so it's an unstable configuration. Europe is full of countries with this problem.

A good example of a country in a downward spiral towards UBI hell is the UK. Around 25% of the working-age population now claim to be disabled, and around 10% receive disability benefits. Labour have a genius idea for how to fix this: let disabled people try out employment for a bit to see if they like it, whilst keeping their welfare payments. So they're turning disability benefits into UBI by the back door.

The UK can't afford anything even close to this. It can't even afford the theoretically non-universal benefits schemes it has: it has massive government debt and deficits because its economy doesn't generate enough wealth, and its health welfare system (the NHS) experiences Soviet-style shortages all the time.

This has happened despite that we've been mass automating jobs with computers and robots for decades. Chips aren't magic wands that make communism suddenly work. The problems with wealth redistribution are fundamental and will never go away regardless of your level of technology.

If you disagree, fine, but please for the love of God focus on walking before you can run. Drive government deficits to zero whilst keeping growth at US levels, and then talk about more generous welfare schemes.

(you can't magic new money by eliminating means testing either, see my other comment on this thread).

[deaux]

> The UK can't afford anything even close to this. It can't even afford the theoretically non-universal benefits schemes it has: it has massive government debt and deficits because its economy doesn't generate enough wealth,

I'm fairly certain its economy generates more wealth per capita than at any point in the past, and this is the general consensus. If you believe it doesn't, please explain how, as it goes against the commonly held belief.

[zozbot234]

Much of that wealth is wasted by excess government spending. Same pattern as India, which actually used to be ruled by the UK as a colony - then they became independent but kept all the excess bureaucracy and red tape from their former oppressors.

[mike_hearn]

I didn't say otherwise. It generates more wealth now than in the past and that is still far from sufficient for its government to afford its current levels of welfare spending.

[deaux]

You did imply it, that in the past the same welfare was affordable that now no longer is, because its economy apparently doesn't generate enough wealth.

[mike_hearn]

The UK doesn't have the same welfare as in the past. It's gives out vastly more money for more reasons than it did when the system was new, and it has a far greater proportion of the population receiving it.

Also, the UK's economy stopped growing in 2008.

[mlrtime]

My family household generates more wealth per capita than any time in it's history, but yet net savings is down. Do you know why? We spend it all on junk that we thin we'll make us happy but actually we become dependent on it.

[bombcar]

This is the underlying malaise and no UBI or minimum wage or guaranteed employment will solve it.

The closest we could get would probably be to execute anyone involved in advertising, but that won't go over really well.

[gottheUIblues]

Money is a social construct, not some kind of physical quantity subject to conservation laws, and can be and is introduced into the economic system all the time. The real question is really would introducing more money or a UBI cause social disruption by e.g. disrupting price signalling by high inflation or changing incentives to work so less goods and services that people actually value are produced.

[hollerith]

One important function of money is allocation of resources, and if a society is bad at allocating resources, it declines.

[nc]

It is a social construct but if you just print money you get ... inflation. You can't just increase money supply to redistribute wealth without consequences.