Comment by lesuorac | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lesuorac | Hacker News Reader

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> Otherwise researches at that facility where janitor had worked will have to do janitor's work instead of doing their own.

Or facilities optimize to produce less trash so they can handle the newer trash load with less staff instead of paying extra.

> The price of food and of housing everybody would be dirt cheap ... then it will be very very cheap in an ideal free market.

We don't live in an ideal free market.

Food is extremely cheap to the point that the USG (effectively) sets price floors which prevents it from falling further. People do live on $3/day.

SROs not in say NYC are cheap as well. Everybody trying to live in the same major cities will never be cheap.

> Why would we need UBI then?

Activation Energy - Many people have no choice to work a dead-end or low-paying job because they cannot afford to take a break to find higher paying work more suited to their skills.

Opportunity Cost - The geologist example from above where you need to hide information from others so you don't suffer.

Societal unrest - Literally right now there's a president in the US whose base is upset about how the technological progress was not shared with them to the point they want to throw away any current advantages to go backwards in time.

> Or facilities optimize to produce less trash so they can handle the newer trash load with less staff instead of paying extra.

You are breaking the principle of keep all other conditions constant. If it's possible to optimize, why didn't they do it before? They were already motivated to maximize profits. Optimization is also an additional work which you are conveniently ignoring.

> Food is extremely cheap to the point that the USG (effectively) sets price floors which prevents it from falling further. People do live on $3/day.

Food prices sometimes fall below costs because agriculture is volatile. It's not proof that food is inherently "extremely cheap" to produce. Also, absolute prices cannot be easily compared between countries and low quality food has negative health effects.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-expenditure-share-gd...

> Activation Energy - Many people have no choice to work a dead-end or low-paying job because they cannot afford to take a break to find higher paying work more suited to their skills.

If basic needs are so cheap that UBI can cover it, then doing low-paying job part time should also cover these basic needs. Something in your logic is not adding up.

> Opportunity Cost - The geologist example from above where you need to hide information from others so you don't suffer.

Opportunity cost is the loss of other alternatives when one alternative is chosen. Geologists not needing to hide information, because they don't need that money to survive is opportunity cost how? And even with UBI they would still benefit, if they get that additional money.

> Societal unrest - Literally right now there's a president in the US whose base is upset about how the technological progress was not shared with them to the point they want to throw away any current advantages to go backwards in time.

UBI fixes that issue how exactly?

> You are breaking the principle of keep all other conditions constant.

We've added a change; of course the world will change! But yeah sure if we introduce UBI and hold the rest of the world the same then UBI will have an unobservable effect.

> If it's possible to optimize, why didn't they do it before?

I mean people aren't actually rational so there's a million angles there. However, the cost of a janitor is going to go up with UBI as the opportunity cost has increased.

> then doing low-paying job part time should also cover these basic needs. Something in your logic is not adding up.

No, I just don't think you understand the world around you. Have you never heard of remote nomads? Plenty of people work full-time for parts of the year or part-time all of the year.

> Geologists not needing to hide information, because they don't need that money to survive is opportunity cost how?

Giving the information away for free costs you the money that you could've gotten for charging for it. When you need that money to survive then you have to restrict access. When you don't then you're able to volunteer it.

If we want to have any meaningful debate on what effect something has, we need to try to separate what are the reactions/side effects caused by it and to try to avoid additional confounding changes that were not caused by it. Trying to undo the negative side effect you don't like by, for example, introducing new technological innovations, or in your case a new optimization even though there is no increase in anything that would help do develop this new optimization, is making a confounding change.

While speculating what might happen in some particular cases can be fun, the real questions that need to be answered are regarding the macroeconomic effects of UBI. Starting with what % of GDP will be needed for UBI that will cover all the basic needs (food, housing, healthcare, etc.)? And then focus, not just on what few good Samaritans might do, but on how households, firms, and governments would respond at scale: labor supply, wages and prices, inflationary pressure, taxes, effects on productivity, growth, etc.

But I think our discussion has run its course. While we clearly have different opinions, it was still fun and I hope we both learned something. Be well!

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