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Comment by jaworrom | Hacker News Reader

UBI is a pipe dream and will never happen. If people would quit spending all of their time dreaming/wishing/hoping UBI becomes a thing, and instead used half that time on building/delivering value to people in the marketplace, they'd never need UBI in the first place.

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

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Some people don't even get the opportunity to create value in the marketplace. You seem to think "but just create a startup" but for some people who earn just enough money to feed their families, they can't take the risk. Don't you think UBI could give them more opportunity to take the risk and try to create more value?

I didn't say "startup." There are literally hundreds of jobs, trades, and skill-sets that will be valuable for years. Create value in someone's life in some way, exchange that value for money, and you have a business.

I see few millenials seeking employment or learning the HVAC/electrician/construction/plumbing trades, and yet, they can be extremely lucrative... especially after you are skilled enough to start a business.

Robots and AI will not be replacing these trades anytime soon.

Automation has put millions out of their jobs, and is growing explosively. They can't all become skilled workers - we don't need another 30 million Engineers even if they could all do that.

So folks work at McD's and the feds pretend its 'employment' but nothing like they used to earn.

Economics isn't solved with platitudes. We're in the middle of a major disruption and it isn't going to be pretty.

I realize this, but if mass unemployment ensues, where will the money for UBI come from? It can't be printed from thin air and it simply isn't fair to take from those who sacrificed their time and efforts to build wealth, only to have it taken away.

My hint at the trades (HVAC/Plumbing/whatever) was that the supply will be incredibly low in the next decade or so, when many of these workers retire, but their demand will be higher than ever.

Automation that makes 50% of people worthless means that the remaining 50% of required labor can produce the same amount of goods and services.

If you ignore money and look at the flow of stuff, there's nothing impossible - we produced enough to feed, clothe and house all those people back when they worked, and we would still produce enough to feed clothe and house all those people even if half of them have no need to work.

It's a distribution issue. And really, if/when technology causes significant permanent unemployability, there are only two options - either the society chooses to simply redistribute that stuff to people who don't work (despite, as you say "it simply isn't fair to take from those who sacrificed their time and efforts to build wealth"), or the society chooses not to do so, in which case they don't get fed, clothed and housed, and die.

There's no third option - they can't not be a drain on society (that's what being permanently unemployable due to tech changes means) while they're living and need resources. Either society provides basic income also to those who aren't sufficiently productive to earn a living, or they will try to take those resources from society (theft, crime, revolution), or they'll die trying. Thankfully mass technological unemployment isn't that close yet, so we have time to fix the social issues, but it's coming.

But it is. The folks who used to be machinists or warehouse workers or assembly line employees, are now working McD's or worse. It looks like employment but in fact the total value of US employment is dropping like a stone. The stats just say "92% employment" and we say "Yay! That's good" but its not good if most of the new employment is a drop in pay and standard of living.

Actually, money is really printed out of thing air. Well, out of paper to be accurate.

But we all know they are talking about wealth, not paper money. You can't create wealth out of thin air. The closest you get is things like stocks, but those are worth what people are willing to pay for them and thus still have real value.

Printing money without adding wealth means each unit of currency is worth less, which tends to ruin the whole "free money" thing.

No, it doesn't. The amount private citizens are paid in a UBI would be very small compared to the economy. Inflation would still be a thing, but this is a small part of it.

We print money now; but its loaned out thru the federal reserve. How is that ok, but not directly distributing it to citizens?

Economics is complicated. A UBI can work.

Its not a zero-sum game. Automation means folks aren't sacrificing their time; printing money is very feasible; currently various housing/welfare programs add up to approximately what a UBI would cost right now. Its much closer to reality than we imagine.

Is your central thesis that poor people are poor because they don't work hard enough?

Or the millions that work in soon-to-be-obsolete jobs should.. create different value?

Yes. It's a sad truth, but nobody is responsible for staying ahead but yourself. Continuous improvement and self-directed learning should be emphasized in schooling, but it isn't. You're merely taught to behave and do as you are told.

Why is it your fault or my fault that someone didn't pay attention to their environment and work on pivoting their career?

I don't think that's necessarily a truth, at least not as you've posited.

A truth would be universal in my mind, and there are plenty of people in this world that succeed without every having to grow or adapt to the times. They just pay someone else to do it for them.

You're disregarding the impact of income on the growth of children. Maybe if we had a creche system like in A Brave New World where everyone got the same start.

Having poor parents and growing up in a poor neighborhood as an oppressed minority will severely hamper your ability to create value.

"A Brave New World" creche system was quite far from giving everyone the same start, the difference between Alphas and Deltas was induced in those creches e.g. oxygen deprivation to ensure a limited intellect to better fit the menial tasks they'll be doing all their life.

Mostly, yes. Opportunity is abound for those who wish to seize it. Regardless of your background/upbringing, you hold the reigns and control your life's destination. This is what needs to be emphasized.

I am one of those who did not come from means of wealth. Much like many of you, I invested my time building skills and learning so that I could get myself out of that situation.

Survivorship bias in full bloom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e68CoE70Mk8

To be fair, a lot of the UBI supporters commenting above are making similar assumptions. They think of the freedom that UBI would create for them as generally well educated, smart, creative people. In reality I'm willing to bet we would end up with Idiocracy after a generation or two, not a creative utopia.

Logical fallacy or not, people still have the ability to make choices the choices in life that lead to success (or failure).

I'd argue that poverty is the result of complacency and contentment more so than any other factor.

You're right. Unemployed people still have lots of experience and talent, so they can use it in the service of community. A people-only currency could create a marketplace for services. Most of the needs of a community can actually be provided with internal resources - construction, repair, food preparation, education, health, farming, energy (solar) - we can do all of these and more by ourselves. So instead of UBI, we need to make it possible for people to be self reliant. We'll be benefitting from automation as well, so self reliant communities need not be back breaking jobs. People have been self reliant even at the level of a farm, since forever - we can be self reliant again, with enough hard work and ingenuity.

Your argument would be way more fun to read if you actually provided some points for WHY it would never happen, instead of just stating "it'll never happen".

Because the only way to create UBI is to take money from other people and redistribute it. Horrible idea. I do not want my hard-earned income and efforts wasted on those who wish to freeload. I'd much rather donate to charities and responsible non-profits, who will do a better job at supporting those who find themselves in tough situations.

Perhaps you should look at this implementation of UBI. While there is more or less practical redistribution through inflation, no money will be taken from you via taxes and the like. One could even conceive of writing incentives against "freeloading" into the protocol.

>spending all of their time

lmao, what? Do you think poor people do nothing but dream about how to steal money from rich people?

>half that time on building/delivering value to people in the marketplace

So, say they spend an hour a day commenting about UBI. At minimum wage, that's a whole $3.63 every day. Don't spend it all in once place.

>Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work

This does a great job of explaining why people work two jobs their entire life and don't make it out of poverty, and why most rich people are descended from rich people.

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