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Comment by blisterpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

I have a proposal. Those who favor basic income should pick one or two recipients who are deserving of assistance, and open their own pockets and provide the money. The recipients will be glad and thankful, the donors will feel they have moved society toward utopia, and the rest of us can just get on with our lives without suffering the burdens that an additional entitlement would impose.

I say this not to incite a flame war or partisan jibes. I just feel that it's the most honest and ethical way to provide basic income; those who believe in this approach are free to contribute, while those who don't are free not to.

Seems fair to me.

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I do this. The main problem I've found is that the individuals are overly grateful and ashamed of having needed the assistance. It frays the friendship more than a little bit; it's not so much that it becomes the breaking point, but it weakens our ability to treat each other as equals, because, and this is the important point:

Because I know they needed the help, and they know I know. This makes a significant difference to how people interact. One of the nice things about basic income is that, if I were depending on it for my livelihood, I would not have to tell anyone.

I would be allowed to keep my dignity.

That would only seem workable if the donors could offset the amount of donation from their tax liabilities. Also, most BI discussions I've seen are about how to replace the existing benefits delivery infrastructure with BI, and not as an additional entitlement.

Blisterpeanutes: "People who support blind charity should put their money where their mouth if they think it's such a great idea."

Yourapostasy: "Hey great idea, even better why don't we give them all the money they give back so they don't actually have to make a sacrifice at all for their beliefs!"

If you want a bifurcated benefits distribution program, where BI and "conventional" taxes exist side-by-side, to see which program is more effective in an open competition, then telling supporters of BI "you not only have to pay the taxes you already pay, but you also then pay beyond that for BI" would handicap the results in favor of the existing "conventional" taxation system. I personally think advocates of BI are committing the Soros reflexivity mistake, which pretty much most of the field of economics sins against as well. Without a near-free energy source, I doubt BI works over the long-haul. But that doesn't mean when someone advocates testing BI by telling supporters to dig into their pockets even deeper after they have paid taxes they currently are liable for, that I will idly stand by and let that pass for a fair challenge. Operationally, unless there is some strong way (like via DNA) to identify benefits recipients of one system over another to avoid double-dipping and similar negative externality behavior, I don't think side-by-side systems are actually feasible.

Macro-economic policies are not accurately represented at a small scale.

What?!? Suggesting people use their own money to support their own beliefs, rather than expecting the rest of society to pay up while they make no sacrifice?? Heretic!!

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