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Comment by ctdonath | Hacker News Reader

1: Motivation. A lot of people will decide that their "minimum" income is sufficient and will try to live on that without contributing to society.

2: Entitlement. A lot of people will decide that they are entitled to that money, that it is not enough for whatever arbitrary minimum lifestyle they decide they are entitled to, and that the police power of the state should/will/must be used to confiscate the difference from taxpayers.

In fairness, all should contribute to society at least as much value as they derive from society (at least insofar as they are physically & mentally capable). Giving people enough to live on while requiring nothing of them screws up the human psychology of self-worth: they can exert $X of effort/skill and get $X, or do nothing at all and get $X ... meaning their effort/skill is worth nothing.

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"A lot of people will decide that they are entitled to that money"

If you use the franchise fee model to talk about a basic income, that is the point. A crony capitalist business screws up everyone's environment, screws up everyone's health, screws up everyone's economic situation, screws up everyone's government, screws up everyone's wealth and income distribution by population graph and all the social issues that result from it, therefore everyone is equally entitled to a small cut of the action because they're already involuntarily getting a cut of the degradation. Seems fair enough.

There's an American tradition of privatize all the profits and socialize all the losses, this could be interpreted as socialize some of the profits and I'm sure we'll continue to socialize all the losses. Some worry about it, but it wouldn't really change that much.

One common argument against a basic income is assuming it can only be implemented with means testing. I see some of that at the end of your comment. Especially in the underground economy, which is already big and growing.

they can exert $X of effort/skill and get $X, or do nothing at all and get $X ... meaning their effort/skill is worth nothing.

That's only with current welfare systems, not with basic income, where you receive it regardless of your income.

So under the regime being proposed, by not working you'd get $X, and by working $Y you'd get $X+$Y (less taxes).

> A lot of people will decide that they are entitled to that money

Well, that's the point, isn't it?

How do you determine that a "lot" of people will prefer not to work? That assumes that they take no joy in labor, have no desire for the luxury and enjoyment that an increased income would bring, and are uninterested in the social advantages of being employed and financially comfortable.

The small set of people who are only motivated to work by the threat of destitution, and who would be satisfied by a pittance and choose not to pursue further labor, are people whose labor was likely never worth much in the first place.

How much is having your office trash can emptied worth to you? floors swept? toilets cleaned? ...and other labors which aren't worth much, labors which have little joy therein, yet cannot be abandoned completely? Offer those current workers (of whom there are a lot) the option of doing nothing yet getting paid the same pittance they are satisfied with (and many are), heck yeah they're gonna quit and you're gonna start wondering who's gonna empty the trash and clean the toilets while you're enjoying your labor.

Their labor may not be worth much. It still needs doing, and you're compelling others to take away any incentive to do it.

Well, maybe people will clean their own toilets and empty their own trash then. I do those at home (as do my housemates) because I like having a moderately clean home. If nobody else was cleaning the office I worked in, I'd clean it too, because it's basically a home.

So go calculate your "fair share" of office trash cans, toilets, and etc., work out how much laborers are being paid to do your "fair share", give them their cut out of your wallet, tell them to enjoy the money while you do the work, and proceed to clean those things yourself unpaid. If you're not actually going to do those things (but they still need doing), then re-hire & pay those laborers to do the work after all on top of the amount you're paying them to not do it.

Remember: they're hired to do that work because your time as a professional thinker is much more valuable than you spending hours doing mundane tasks. Better you spend an hour writing software for $X and paying someone else to empty the trash & clean toilets & etc. for 0.1x$X, than for you to spend that hour doing those mundane tasks for $0 while being compelled to still pay that someone 0.1x$X.

So yeah, because you're not really going to do all those little things you rely on low-wage laborers to do, you're going to DOUBLE their pay (giving them that "minimum" amount for not doing anything, plus giving them that amount to do that work after all) with no increase in output, and a likely decrease in work done because by definition that minimum guaranteed income is enough to live on.

This will open up the jobs to teenagers- those not eligible by age to receive the basic income. They learn value of work, value of money and will be better off then many teenagers that can't get gas money/college savings since those jobs are taken by those that can't find any other work or have no more ambition to live more than to survive.

It isn't worth so much to me that I would prefer people be compelled to clean up after me under threat of destitution, no. I want them to be paid what their work is worth, which is the amount a person free of the threat of poverty is willing to accept to do the work. That might be a lot more than it is now. It might not be much more at all.

If it's uneconomical to employ people solely to do those jobs, then the jobs can be automated, or fixtures and processes can be changed to reduce the need for that labor.

1 & 2 are already problems, and huge ones, and not just with the poor. Lots of people get handouts from the government and you can bet that most of them think they are entitled to it. The problem is making sure the system is setup with appropriate feedback mechanisms to keep things at an appropriate level.

What do you mean by "entitled"? Yes, they are entitled to claim benefits from the government due to meeting certain criteria. This is value-neutral language, and yet it seems like you're suggesting there's something wrong with it.

"Entitled" meaning that they believe they are owed or deserving of those benefits due to some underlying fundamental principles. This doesn't just apply to social security beneficiaries or welfare recipients, there are millionaires who receive handouts from the government because they happen to have a ranch or a farm which falls under some criteria. I'm sure many of them think they deserve those benefits even if a more objective, unbiased appraisal of the situation would disagree.

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