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Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

UBI desperately needs to be tried out on a semi-large scale as a social experiment. We can't even form a useful moral argument about it until we know its effects. Will it start shaping local and regional policy or is it just going to quietly get discarded as a idea before its time?

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   We can't even form a useful moral argument about it until we know its effects

Of course we can. It's ok for people to donate their money and time for this kind of experiment. It's not ok for governments to tax citizens for a new social giveaway unless others social benefits are reduced accordingly (which will never happen).

The most popular UBI proposals that I've seen all contain some level of social safety net reduction (some more than others). None of the proposals I've seen suggest that social services remain at their current level and we give everyone $N on top of that.

But, will it happen ? Are laws implemented according to the proposals ? Of course the most urgent thing will be to implement UBI. And then to raise it. No one will think about deleting previous welfare benefits

Where do you live that politicians aren't constantly trying to remove welfare benefits?

This is why UBI will never become law. Once you start talking about taking away benefits (Social Security, Medicare, SNAP, Food Stamps, HUD Housing Subsidies), people will freak out. The backlash will be very loud.

Look at the tax reform debate now: When they proposed taking away deductibility of mortgage interest or state and local taxes deductions, I started seeing headlines from the New York Times and Washington Post about how this a “Middle Class Tax Hike”...

I would compare UBI to the "second system syndrome" with software developers: If only we can start over with an entirely new platform rather than addressing the technical debt in the current system, all would be well.

Look up the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. And with UBI you'd be replacing benefits, not removing them.

France. How are politicians incentivized to reduce welfare ?

Voters and donors, same as everything else. Even if there's no voter resistance to increased spending, implementing UBI without raising taxes or decreasing welfare would destroy the economy before your next election, so there's a clear incentive to not do it.

Every single proposal of UBI has included it replacing all other welfare benefits. That simplification, and the resulting reduction in administrative overhead, is among the top arguments for UBI. Also: spaces before question marks look strange.

  Every single proposal of UBI has included it replacing all other welfare benefits

Only so that their cost calculations don't go crazy and seem sustainable. No one in the UBI side is even remotely interested in deleting previous welfare

Now you're just making stuff up to sustain your apparent hatred of everyone "in the UBI side".

I think you're working from some wrong assumption who these UBI proponents are, and what their motivation is. Just to give you an idea, Wikipedia lists Elon Musk, Tim Berners-Lee, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Bill Gross, and Tim Draper, among others. These aren't lazy know-nothings trying to get you to finance their lazy Tuesdays.

I'm more concerned about people in governments, not rich millionaires. The only way it could work would be to create a UBI of 0 at the beginning and publicly say to increase it only every time a social welfare is deleted. I have huge doubts about the doability of this solution.

I don't have any issue with billionaires believing into UBI and sending cash to Kenyans. I don't know their true agenda, but they might gain some political influence / power when they'll try to implement this into western countries (and it will be with our money this time of course, not theirs).

It's completely ok to spend citizens' money on benefits both old and new, if that's what society decides.

It might not always be smart, or sustainable. Just as it wouldn't be smart not to do it at all. But there's no first principle of morality to reduce to. And if there were, there'd be you'd still need agreement on it for it to be meaningful.

   if that's what society decides

So if 50 percent of people are ok with it, then "that's what society decides" so it's ok for everybody ?

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