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Comment by Matumio | Hacker News Reader

In this century we should stop worrying so much about job safety and workers and instead care more about humans (regardless of their employment status). We will never run out of useful work. But we should get used to the idea that work is no longer a necessity for bare survival. And that useful work is not always paid for. It's a political problem, and I'm thinking UBI here (unconditional basic income). Don't let existential fears stop anyone from working on the real problems of our time.

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Unfortunately it's not as simple as a UBI. Give the average person money without structure, instruction or necessity and they cease to be productive in any sense of the word. We'd ironically have less equality, with a minority of motivated individuals at the top doing meaningful work, and a large majority of entitled "dolists" with little dignity at the bottom.

Instead I'd propose guaranteed civil service that paid a basic livable salary, such as publicly funded infrastructure projects. But whatever the method, resources should be tied to productivity in some manner. Otherwise we just create a bunch of lottery winners, and many lottery winners sadly don't have the wherewithal to keep their winnings for long.

> Give the average person money without structure, instruction or necessity and they cease to be productive in any sense of the word.

Is there research that backs this assertion? It doesn't match my (anecdotal) observations.

Give the average person money without structure, instruction or necessity and they cease to be productive in any sense of the word

I don't think you have evidence to make a statement this strong. We have no idea what would happen because it's never been done before. I think you're projecting an idea you have of people on the margins of productive society onto society as a whole, and I think this is a fundamental mistake.

People are status-seeking - that's what people in groups do. Capitalist consumer society measures status in a large part based on how much money you can spend. Remove money from the equation and a substitute marker for status will be found. It could be power, art, popularity, charity, science - anything. What it is we don't know, but it will certainly be something.

Perhaps. I'll admit most of my "evidence" is anecdotal, and I've read the studies about giving free money to tribes in Kenya and the Cherokee and how it greatly elevated them in general, although both studies come with serious caveats. My concern is what a long-term infusion would do, and I'm not aware of any research that's even approached that.

Give someone who was desperately poor more money and sure it will elevate them, for a time, in large part IMO because they are aware the infusion is temporary and they try to make the most of it (whatever that means to them). Make the infusion constant enough to be taken for granted, and IMO there's be a lot less drive to be productive. When you have food, water, shelter, reasonable comfort and entertainment, what's the drive?

Sure some will be motivated by personal passion, fascination, sense of exploration, etc just as they are today. In fact that probably describes most of the posters on this board, and I'd argue that more likely projective argument here is that the AVERAGE person would care about things like art, charity, science, even power and popularity. I don't know where you went to school, and I'm certain this varies from culture to culture, but in my experience the vast majority of students below the post-grad level are in school for two reasons: 1. Someone told them to go and 2. They want a job with a snowball's chance in hell of earning decent money. Those strongly motivated by something other than necessity are few and far between.

I think the continued claim that this has "never been done before" is often ignoring interesting situations that might provide some caution against blindly pursuing basic income.

One could look to Saudi Arabia, flush in oil income, and unable to staff many of its important industries without importing foreign labor and expertise. It can be argued that maybe the culture there has been problematic, where young men grow up viewing it as beneath them to work.

I think there's a large chance that basic income is implemented in some form, but it's not guaranteed as a successful policy. I would also like examples like these to inform any discussion and eventual policy that becomes implemented.

There are other economic tools and levers that should be exercised today that could make basic income unnecessary or buy us some time to get it implemented correctly, but prevailing politics don't allow this.

> We have no idea what would happen because it's never been done before.

Untrue. Granted not on the scale that we should try, but it has been tried at least twice at small town scale in the US and once in Canada. The Canadian study was re-analysed relatively recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

Source? If anything, the substitution effect is much stronger than the income effect. People will still work because work gives you purpose, engages you with people around you and can even be fun. They might do work that would go unpaid today.

Subsidizing people into unprofitable civil service is in my opinion less dignified and more paternalizing than just giving them money and telling them to do what they want to do. UBI means you don't have to prove your worthiness of existence through wage slavery. If resources should be tied to productivity, maybe we should start with the people who grew up with trust funds.

You base your assumption on your very smart and educated friends. Unfortunately, smart and drive people are a tiny minority in the world. You cannot make policy based on how the top 10 would react

I think you're a bit confused. If someone isn't working, an UBI is, by definition, giving money to someone who has necessity; they have no other income.

If someone -is- working, an UBI will just be in addition to their salary; they'd readily recognize "I can keep doing this job and have this extra money, or I can stop working and suddenly be making far less, though perhaps enough to live on".

The only people that would 'stop working' would be the ones who currently hate their jobs, and who would happily stop the misery, even in lieu of extra income, if only they knew their basic needs would be met. I'm...pretty okay with those people leaving their jobs, and forcing the working conditions to improve to attract anyone back.

The problem is "people who currently hate their jobs" are the vast majority (70%), at least in the US.

http://www.ryot.org/gallup-poll-70-americans-disengaged-jobs...

Sure we can talk about making jobs better for workers, but for 70% of all jobs? And how many of those jobs would still be unpleasant, even if bosses were perfect and conditions were prime? The poll mentions that benefits like vacation time and flexible hours seem to have little effect on employee engagement.

From that very article, "most of the discontent stemmed from "bosses from hell".

If the quality of life is better leaving (and only having enough for necessities) than staying, than as I said before, -better the person leaves-. Not just for the individual, but for society at large. Because then the company, if it actually needs that job filled, will recognize "this manager is shit". Right now, the need to provide food, shelter, etc, for oneself, will keep disgruntled employees working, and the company may not realize (or may not care about) the working conditions. A UBI inverts that power balance.

Now, you say the job may still be unpleasant even if the bosses were perfect and the conditions were prime? Unpleasant to whom? There are janitors, roadkill cleaners, undertakers, etc, who legitimately enjoy their jobs; just because you or I don't find the job enjoyable enough to take to move our lot from "barely gets by" to "has extra money to spend on luxury", doesn't mean others won't.

The dignity of work is a Protestant myth.

There's something to it, though. For one, creating consumer surplus for others is almost inarguably good moral math, for another, it's often a base layer for satisfaction with your life. It's nice to have an "I did that" moment now and again.

The problem comes in when it's work of low integrity, phony work, make work.

All things being equal, you'll nearly never convince me that simply owning things is morally superior to labor.

I'm not arguing that Capitalism is okay, either. The dignity of work is how the "Owners" morally justify their use of wage-slavery to capitalize.

> Give the average person money without structure, instruction or necessity and they cease to be productive in any sense of the word.

Citation required.

Saudi Arabia. Kuwait.

You only need to open your eyes for the truth and you won't be searching too long.

Human behavior is reliant on feedback loops. Remove the incentive and you remove the drive. Not going forward means falling downward.

In the South from the end of Reconstruction to .. oh, call it 1932, one crime was "vagrancy" - not having visible means of support. You'd be put on road work. Dunno that they got paid, but they got three hots and a cot.

A Paul Muni movie ended that.

Actually I have been thinking that I wouldn't mind doing some kind of civil service from time to time (at least). I often have some sort of 'next big idea' and enjoy spending time thinking about it while doing chores. If I could do it more often (even whole days/weeks) and if it was a more common thing to do, I think I would done more of it. On the other hand there's nothing really stopping me right now so maybe it just some hipster/hippie/retro wannabe fantasy I am tricking myself with :)

Edit: clarity

> Give the average person money without structure, instruction or necessity and they cease to be productive in any sense of the word.

We know they'll be (re)productive in one sense of the word :P

But in all seriousness, everything we know presumes a world where people are expected to work and a good deal of self esteem is tied to work. In a future where machines are primarily responsible for the majority of the things that people do today, that won't be the case. Some people might lack the drive to occupy themselves with something useful, but that's okay...we wouldn't be relying on them for anything anyways. But many others would occupy themselves with some sort of creative activity. Whereas many people tend to focus on all those freeloaders receiving UBI and not giving anything substantial back to society, I choose to focus on the freedom that UBI provides to those that do want to be productive.

When YC gave a call for research on UBI, everyone assumed it was an assuagement of guilt thing where they wanted to prepare for a world where they've disrupted everyone out of their jobs. But I don't think that's why YC is interested in UBI, or at least it shouldn't be. I think they want UBI because of how much easier it would then be to become a founder. Ramen profitable would suddenly mean the business actually being able to lose money each month. A break-even business where founders took no salary would have an infinite runway. First hires could be compensated solely in equity and YC could seed with lesser amounts of money since the amount of money spent on employees would go down significantly. Paying rent rent and buying food for the founders of a company increases the challenges that need to be overcome and means that starting something becomes unthinkable to many people with family obligations. Imagine if that challenge and that fear over supporting one's family disappeared. How many world-changing startups are we missing out on because someone with a killer idea is too afraid of failure to try?

In short, I see UBI helping creative members of society create so much more easily than they do today that I have no problem believing they'd more than make up for people that simply took their UBI and did nothing.

The problem is peoples perception and they think that jobs can be created and that this will solve all their problems. See Trump vs Sanders.

Totally agreed. The really nice thing about being the first generation to implement UBI is that we'll be able to reap some excellent one-time benefits by being able to dismantle so many specialized programs rendered redundant by UBI. The net effect would be a discount on the UBI -- e.g. people would get $20k but it would only cost $5k more than what the USG currently spends on entitlements.

I'd like to see a flat-tax too, but that's just me. :)

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