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Comment by jsnk | Hacker News Reader

I am rather frustrated with this kind of analysis that makes no effort to think about the "unseen" consequences as Bastiat puts it. Where is the money for UBI going to come from? Will this make South Korean economy less competitive? How does South Korean economy going to compete against giants like China and Japan, and its smaller but nimble Taiwan?

The fact is South Korea is stronger, richer, more humane than it has ever been in its long history, and we know why this happened. Don't ruin this with UBI.

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> Will this make South Korean economy less competitive?

Your comment almost reads like satire. The whole point of the article was to show the dystopian insanity of what a society hell-bent on competition at all costs looks like. High school kids in school 14 hours/day competing against each other for limited slots at top schools, and then competing against each other for limited slots at companies where they work 14 hours/day for low wages. Life satisfaction ranked among the worst and suicide rates the highest in the world. Blatant discrimination on physical attractiveness (hence highest rates of plastic surgery) and parental occupations is icing on the cake.

And you're concerned that addressing these issues might make the economy less competitive? That mindset is exactly the problem this article is trying to highlight.

We completely neglect happiness, and maybe we're all competing for the wrong things.

Open to alternative solutions than UBI, but I don't see anything else that's going to have a significant impact on fixing South Korea's situation.

Social ills exist because we live in a real world where things are not perfect. South Korea is far from perfect but I can speak confidently when I say, things are better than ever in thousands of years of Korean history.

Not sure if your background is Korean or not, but Koreans don't need to look very far to see how amazing things have gotten in South Korea. People used to literally starve to death in South Korea in less than a couple of decades ago. There was a time, when North Korea was the wealthier part of Korea and North Korea was always doing terribly. I pray that Koreans never become amnesiac to his history and never give into temptations of UBI.

According to Korean history, you actually had a millennia of much more peaceful time (along with relatively high literacy rates) back in the day. Lately your country has been embroiled in war, military coups, and political strife, with a society so hell-bent on improving itself that people are killing themselves more than almost anywhere else in the world.

You're right, people aren't starving to death. But suicide is a form of desperation that's on par with starving to death, if not worse. I pray that South Koreans realize they don't have to go along with what's expected of them.

> things are better than ever in thousands of years of Korean history.

This has to be the weakest and most ridiculous argument commonly used to justify the status quo. Are you implying that all of the suffering outlined in this article is necessary in order for citizens to not be starving and society to advance?

Same logic could be applied to 17th century conquistadors exterminating Native American populations and American plantation owners whipping their slaves. Sure there are some downsides like the whole human rights issue of genocide and slavery, but things are so much better now than they were hundreds of years ago!

I'm not here to rebuke what you've said, as I can see you are speaking about this personally but I want to provide my two cents and say that a stronger and richer China is the same rationale the Chinese Communist Party tells its people and how it justifies its way of government and repression.

People are clearly suffering in Korea and I think that mean certain things need to change, especially with major chaebols affecting politics, corruption and constraining people. Stronger and richer does not equate to happiness.

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