Ask HN: Why not voluntarily start UBI on a small scale? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why not voluntarily start UBI on a small scale?

2 pointsa008t4 comments

Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? Every one advocating for/supporting UBI could go to a poor neighbourhood / country, pick a poor person (or several), and start transferring them a portion of their income every month, in exchange for periodic check-ups on how they are doing. The collected data could be beneficial for studying the impact of UBI on people's behavior.

If anything, a small number of people will start to benefit from UBI right away. That number will grow as more people join the effort. Who knows - voluntary UBI might be enough to the point where we do not need any government action for a pretty good approximation to "Universal" in UBI.

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I'm not sure that really approximates UBI. You're only giving money to some of the people involved, and there's a definite transfer from a specific person to another specific person involved. For a closer approximation, you'd need everyone to join a group, periodically funded by those members of the group who can afford to do so at the time funding is needed, almost like a kind of insurance.

Let's say you have 20 people in a group. At a given point in time, you might have ten people each funding one "share" in the system, two more people funding two shares each, two more funding three shares each, and six who cannot fund any shares. When the time comes to pay out, all 20 people get one share each: the ten "neutrals" get back essentially what they paid in, the four "over-funders" get less than what they paid in but still get a share each, and the six "under-funders" get more.

The following month (or whatever pay period you use), one of the people who had been funding three shares loses a lucrative job and can no longer fund any shares, but three of the former under-funders find jobs and can now fund a share each. The group still has funding for 20 shares, so everyone still gets a share when the time comes. It also demonstrates the importance of neutrals in the system: several people going neutral can make up for an over-funder who finds themselves in a bad spot.

where is money coming from if its all voluntary. Not sure I follow what you are suggesting.

Where any UBI funds would have to come from - from individuals with high incomes. But instead of enforcing it through law, supporters of UBI (many of who on HN certainly would fall into the high-income category) start voluntarily supporting individuals that they think would benefit from BI most. The benefits are:

1. This starts creating positive effects of BI right away, just not for all.

2. It gives a practical example of the beneficial effects BI might have.

> from individuals with high incomes.

So basically like recurrent charity? Interesting idea.

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