Universal Basic Income and the Threat of Tyranny

[argatoga]

I've tended to lean towards having a universal basic income, but this argument has made me reconsider it. If someone's absolute survival depends on the government, how would they affect change in it? Would only those "elite" with jobs become the ruling class (as the government would rely on them) or would they simply integrate into it?

Universal Basic Income and the Threat of Tyranny
http://quillette.com/2017/10/09/universal-basic-income-threat-tyranny/

 

[prizrak]

There is a good chance that something like this is simply unavoidable. Population is growing but job market is shrinking due to automation

 

[Interrobang]

[...] If someone's absolute survival depends on the government, how would they affect change in it?

As long as one vote still counts as one vote, their power would be still there on principle. The problems start where there are efforts made to take said votes away ...

[...] Would only those "elite" with jobs become the ruling class (as the government would rely on them) or would they simply integrate into it?

A lot of people would say that is already the case (especially in the US), without a universal basic income. Just replace those "with jobs" with "having wealth" and how those already use their money to gain and further their influence.

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There is a good chance that something like this is simply unavoidable. Population is growing but job market is shrinking due to automation

I also think that way. If we wanna avoid civil war and not relive the times of revolution of the early 20th century, that is.

 

[argatoga]

As long as one vote still counts as one vote, their power would be still there on principle. The problems start where there are efforts made to take said votes away ...

That's the problem, if someone dependent on the government loses their right to vote would they risk losing their income to protest?

A lot of people would say that is already the case (especially in the US), without a universal basic income. Just replace those "with jobs" with "having wealth" and how those already use their money to gain and further their influence.

Those with more wealth do have more influence (success breeds success), but not enough to control the government. Last year we saw a populist beat an establishment candidate in the presidential elections. Local elections are even more volatile.

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I also think that way. If we wanna avoid civil war and not relive the times of revolution of the early 20th century, that is.

This is biggest issue we have coming up. Hobby industries can't absorb so many people, and make work programs led to the same government control. The best outcome I can foresee is a retardation of the electorate to just an elite class. Something like Republican Rome. Like Republican Rome, this would lead to uprisings among the non-voting class (Romans vs. Italians).

Perhaps games can pick up the slack. Whether in real life or virtually it gives people a purpose, but the outcome needs to be tangible and rewarding.

 

[narf]

Those with more wealth do have more influence (success breeds success), but not enough to control the government. Last year we saw a populist beat an establishment candidate in the presidential elections. Local elections are even more volatile.

And yet, it's still a wealthy elite in control(ish)... isn't the current US cabinet the wealthiest in history?

 

[argatoga]

And yet, it's still a wealthy elite in control(ish)... isn't the current US cabinet the wealthiest in history?

He is wealthy, but not an "elite", nor was he a preferred candidate by those established in power. He is hardly an Abraham Lincoln figure, but Trump was chosen by the populace against the plutocrats' preferred candidate.

 

[93Flareside]

I don?t see this working in the USA because, this doesn?t make those in charge money.

 

[argatoga]

I don?t see this working in the USA because, this doesn?t make those in charge money.

Those with wealth, in general, want stability. This is why Henry Ford opposed the the US entering WW2. Wealth looses much of its worth in an unstable country.

 

[narf]

He is wealthy, but not an "elite", nor was he a preferred candidate by those established in power. He is hardly an Abraham Lincoln figure, but Trump was chosen by the populace against the plutocrats' preferred candidate.

It's not just Trump. Here's his cabinet: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasew...inet-see-what-each-top-trump-advisor-is-worth ... and Congress is pretty much what it always was, regardless of the head of hair at the top.

 

[SirEdward]

Very nice article indeed.

A universal basic income seems to me a lot less like an enlightened way to raise the living standard of everyone as it is a try to keep spinning an economy based on overconsumption.

The problem today is that automation ia driving people out of the production processes and wealth generation, so it is leaving them with less and less power and income, while the system itself is based upon masses of people consuming loads of goods and increasing the need for production, thus increasing the status of those who get the biggest share of the wealth.

But because of automation, less people are needed, so less people are payed, and this is eroding the amount of money they can spend to buy products. Plus, the difference between their lifestyle and the richest ones, in a world where the mantra is "you deserve it, you are worth it, you should buy it", the impossibility of fulfilling the perceived and well-taught destiny of buyers in a world of dwindling opportunities for the masses, is making people angry and prone to try changing. Which is something the richest people do not want in the least.

To counter both the instabiliy due to the unrest of the masses and the reduction of power due to the masses being less and less able to buy things, the idea of a universal basic income has grown.

Which may stabilize things for a bit, but surely not change the trend. Given the trend, inflation will eat up the basic income until it is worth nothing, or the idea will be unsustainable and dropped.

Because, in the end, the great flaw of the Universal Basic Income is who is going to pay for it? If the burden will be on the State, on the masses, on their taxes, it will shrink to value zero or implode following the loss in power and wealth of the masses, if the burden will be put on those who do indeed have power, it will be eaten up by inflation as soon as possible.

From the start I can't see big companies willing of self-tax themselves to give people what they need to buy products, for a long period of time. They should be smarter than what I figure them to be.

With the loss of power, comes the loss of power to make decisions, so the fading of democracy; this is already happening, as national States have less and less power compared to multinational companies worth in some cases several times their GDP, and writing legislation the way they want it to be (see Philip Morris against Uruguay on the basis of a commercial treaty).

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The way out of this, to me, is not paying everyone as if they were doing something, but paying each one what their work is really worth and giving them more time to do other things. We have automation, we don't need people working the same amount of hours to earn less money because of competition, we need people earning the same money for working less of the time, so everyone can work, and produce, and be rewarded, and be willing to play the social game instead of rebelling.

That would require people who owns the power to renounce part of their useless excess wealth to generate stability and live better. Will they be able to accept this?

 

[93Flareside]

And, what I?ve seen with blue collar jobs, the more automation, the less people which equals to paying those that are left very little.

Example.

I have a company near my office that makes boxes for people like Amazon and ULine. It requires some office people, a couple operators of the corrugater and maintenance personal to ensure things are kept running smooth. Trouble is, from what I?ve seen, the maintenance people aren?t paid so well and therefore, don?t learn the equipment they?re in charge of. Instead, they call outside people for every little issue and want it fixed yesterday. Really exciting when the calls come in at 4AM.

Like SirEdward is saying, you need to have the employer pay what the position is worth and not what you can legally get away with. I don?t see that happening right now unless a there?s a change of heart and the bad habits of old don?t continue. This is not a story for one company, it extends to commercial laundry facilities, food plants, and third party manufacturers contracted by bigger OEMs.

 

[prizrak]

The way out of this, to me, is not paying everyone as if they were doing something, but paying each one what their work is really worth and giving them more time to do other things. We have automation, we don't need people working the same amount of hours to earn less money because of competition, we need people earning the same money for working less of the time, so everyone can work, and produce, and be rewarded, and be willing to play the social game instead of rebelling.

That would require people who owns the power to renounce part of their useless excess wealth to generate stability and live better. Will they be able to accept this?

If I am understanding your suggestion correctly, you mean that people should be paid what the worth of their labor would be sans automation? That makes very little sense, the whole point of automation is to make things goods and services cheaper and create a better standard of living
across the board. If you go back to paying same wages you are going to end up with same prices, that's just going to make everything so expensive that only the rich will be able to afford most things.

As things stands UBI could work only if we are talking the barest of minimums, anything better will require working and therefore being marketable. The other side will be having a bunch of MMO type games that would absorb a lot of people. The only realistic way forward though would be interplanetary expansion, space stations, lunar, martian, io stations, etc...

 

[CraigB]

I've always thought that a UBI would allow more people to follow their passion. Spend more time painting, making music, cycling, playing with cars, wood working, etc. Etsy would be a whole lot busier... :lol: Think about it, if all your basic needs were met and you weren't tied to job five days a week (7 for me!) what would you do with your time?

I'm not naive enough to think all would do something constructive with this time, but I think those that would might just have a richer life experience.

 

[argatoga]

The way out of this, to me, is not paying everyone as if they were doing something, but paying each one what their work is really worth and giving them more time to do other things. We have automation, we don't need people working the same amount of hours to earn less money because of competition, we need people earning the same money for working less of the time, so everyone can work, and produce, and be rewarded, and be willing to play the social game instead of rebelling.

That would require people who owns the power to renounce part of their useless excess wealth to generate stability and live better. Will they be able to accept this?

How do you determine what a person's labor time is worth? As things stand now, consumers determine the worth of labor time. The cost of a Miata would go up quite a bit if Mazda decided to pay their factory workers the same as if there were no assembly line robots. If the cost went up substantially consumers would buy less sports cars from them, and the car would no longer be on the market.

While I am for capitalism, I won't deny that its greatest strength is becoming its fetal flaw. Capitalism over time increases efficiency to serve the consumer. That innate drive for efficiency is beginning to destroy the very consumers it serves.

I've always thought that a UBI would allow more people to follow their passion. Spend more time painting, making music, cycling, playing with cars, wood working, etc. Etsy would be a whole lot busier... :lol: Think about it, if all your basic needs were met and you weren't tied to job five days a week (7 for me!) what would you do with your time?

I'm not naive enough to think all would do something constructive with this time, but I think those that would might just have a richer life experience.

Some people would pursue their hobbies, but Etsy won't be absorbing hundreds of millions of people. Humans are goal oriented animals, if we remove people's jobs they will no longer have a life goal. Many people depend on the school->work->retire track to keep themselves in order. Without work many people would become lost, bitter, and later riot.

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The only realistic way forward though would be interplanetary expansion, space stations, lunar, martian, io stations, etc...

I've thought about that too. But robots are already surpassing humans here. Those humans we do send to space are scientists and other highly skilled humans. What need of we of a human with average intelligence on Jupiter's moons?

 

[RdKetchup]

What need of we of a human with average intelligence on Jupiter's moons?

Flesh?

 

[SirEdward]

If I am understanding your suggestion correctly, you mean that people should be paid what the worth of their labor would be sans automation?

I mean that if a man made a quantity "x" of work for "y" money without technology (not just automation), then he should be paid the same to do the same amount of job with technology "x" money for "y" work. If that means he gets to do it in -less- time, I don't see the problem. Aren't all people saying that what counts is the amount of work done, not the amount of time taken? How is it that it is felt as outrageous to earn the same for doing the same, if this doesn't take up all day?

Technology is not there to produce so much more than you don't know where to put things, it means you can use less time to produce the same things, so you can use the time you saved up doing other things, maybe also producing some more things, but maybe not.

Using just one person to produce for hundreds may be fine, if you then have the others doing other things so everybody gets everything he needs, but when you have unemployed people, why on earth asking to just one person to overwork?

How do you determine what a person's labor time is worth?

That's a good question for everybody, since no system until now has answered it in a sound way. The best we have is "whatever people can come up without breaking the system itself" (that is, the "market").

As things stand now, consumers determine the worth of labor time.

That's not a great result, if I have to be honest; you are speaking of people who, to be a bit provocative, are so obliviously hypocrite that they think it's right to ask for a discounts because their car costs too much AND at the same time complain if their salary in the automotive industry gets cut. People want too many things at once: if they have power, they'll get away with it and will become richer than they deserve, if they don't, they won't, and they'll be paid less than they produce. But this is not a -functional- way of doing things, it's just a -functioning- way of doing them.

The cost of a Miata would go up quite a bit if Mazda decided to pay their factory workers the same as if there were no assembly line robots. If the cost went up substantially consumers would buy less sports cars from them, and the car would no longer be on the market.

Things have a cost; from a society's perspective, if the people don't have enough organization, skills (and resources, of course), they won't get them. That is not just a matter of technology, is a matter of -way of thinking and doing things-. You can buy a cheap appearance of wealth by mass producing items, but the price will be so high that you will be forced to stop doing this, in some way or another.

Things require what they require; if you rush them, either they will not work properly, or people will be unhappy because they will be exploited, or you will fill your environment with waste that you'll have to deal with. Or more than one of these things.

While I am for capitalism, I won't deny that its greatest strength is becoming its fetal flaw. Capitalism over time increases efficiency to serve the consumer. That innate drive for efficiency is beginning to destroy the very consumers it serves.

That is indeed a very interesting, and ironic, effect. I, personally, think that this is because while capitalism was sold as a way to made everybody rich and help everyone, what it has always been is a way of making some poeple very rich, while collaterally making life temporarily (sometimes much) better for a nice quantity of people. Its collateral effects were better than other systems, so it sticked on and became a very succesful system; yet it is bound to crash spectacularly. This view cancels out the irony, so it probably is nearer to reality than the "serving the customer" thing.

 

[LeVeL]

What will motivate someone to work if they're going to have income no matter what?

 

[DanRoM]

The idea of having to work to earn a living is already outdated, because working opportunities vanish more and more due to automation. The last few decades saw a continuous trend towards shit jobs with less and less pay. UBE is kind of an obvious idea as to how to give people money when society doesn't have enough jobs for everyone anyway. But I don't think it'll work, because if it's high enough for a decent living (if not, then there's no point in it) there won't be enough people left working for the tasks that you cannot automate.

That said, I'm all for it. Human society is going to shit anyway if we continue on the current path, so why not try something different?

 

[prizrak]

I've thought about that too. But robots are already surpassing humans here.

Not at all, I listen to Star Talk Radio a lot and there was an interview with someone from NASA, forget who and the question did come up why bother sending humans to Mars when robots can be sent? The answer was that what the robot takes a week a human could in minutes.

Those humans we do send to space are scientists and other highly skilled humans. What need of we of a human with average intelligence on Jupiter's moons?

Construction, maintenance, making sure various systems are running correctly, etc... Robots can and do help with a lot of that, but robots always work within set parameters and if these parameters change they are at best stumped at worst doing it wrong. I suspect things like moons of Jupiter will have a lot of non-standard situations.

The only real reason we have to use scientist and trained astronauts to do all the stuff that average intelligence people would be doing is because it's extremely difficult and expensive to send humans into space, as it gets easier and cheaper there will be more "average" jobs.

@SirEdward
Problem with your idea is that you end up with what I lived through in USSR. Standard of living was terrible for the 99% and sorta OK for the 1%*, it didn't even matter what things cost as you straight up couldn't find anything. Capitalism does actually work in general, problem is that capitalist drive for efficiency is in conflict with human drive to over reproduce.

*Aside from having personal drivers and mansions the standard of living for soviet elites was about on par with upper middle class in the US.

 

[SirEdward]

@SirEdward
Problem with your idea is that you end up with what I lived through in USSR. Standard of living was terrible for the 99% and sorta OK for the 1%*, it didn't even matter what things cost as you straight up couldn't find anything.

Why do you say that using technology to shorten working times instead of producing more items would pop-up USSR low standards?
I see more USSRs standards in the UBI system of getting goods without actually doing anything (so you won't get anything done in the end) or not rewarding a job well-done.

Plus, nobody should stop you from producing more items in your spare time, if you want (and be paid accordingly).