heydaralon wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:57 pm
Speaker to Animals wrote: ↑Sat Jun 24, 2017 6:24 pm
On top of that, the only other alternative we have suggested is expanding the welfare state. That's fucking scary enough.
If UBI was implemented, would you want it to replace the other forms of welfare we give out? Here's the thing, I've heard that proposed for UBI, just do that and get rid of the other programs but much of these welfare programs are basically protecting people from being their own worst enemy. You mentioned single mothers earlier. Lets say we gave a single mother 2 grand per month in UBI to pay her bills and for groceries, and instead she just spends it on vodka and clothes. Now she is broke and about to be evicted. What would happen is that she would tell some sob story and get politicians to keep increasing the amount of UBI she got monthly. A lack of money is usually a symptom of a bigger problem: Stupidity and poor judgment. I say this with extensive personal experience. I think the UBI would just keep growing like a cancer without fixing the root causes of why people even need it.
(1) Our current economy is not sufficiently developed to have a viable UBI. Any realistic UBI we could distribute is not going to be enough to replace welfare.
(2) I think there is merit in the argument that too many people would do nothing and our society would degenerate.
In any case, I think right here and now, a better solution to the automation creep is a work program that sets out to solve problems that are not profitable to solve through capitalism just yet. Things like alternative energy, space colonization, or just mundane tasks like burying our power grid so that we are not vulnerable to a solar flare or EMP.
Just take the concept from Black Swan and consider the ramifications of a huge pool of labor freed up.. Rank all the big threats to humanity and western civilization 3.0 according to severity of impact rather than what we think are the odds it could happen. Create programs to mitigate those risks. If that contingency never comes to pass, you essentially did the same thing as a UBI for the people who went to work on that program, but you taught them skills and they actually grew as human beings, with something to take pride in. If that contingency does come to pass, then you saved our asses.
Now imagine one of those black swan events a few generations after you implemented a UBI. Take a celestial impact, for instance. It's 2100 and we just realize we have about a year and a half before a giant rock kicks our ass. But 70% of our GDP is UBI-bound. How do we fund a program to build a giant spaceship that can move the orbit of this rock when more than half our GDP is feeding on itself via UBI?? We can't raise taxes without breaking the system. We can't just cancel UBI without societal collapse.
Maybe it would have been nice had we, instead of just handing out our Yangbuck checks, put people to work on various crazy projects, one of those being the construction of a giant rock-moving spaceship out in a Langrange point?