[FRIAM] The case for universal basic income UBI

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

a) How many people need employment for meaning? 10? 1M? How was that data gathered? Where is that data?

Worse yet, in a world defined such that you *die* unless you're employed, it's circular reasoning to argue that employment gives meaning to life. The only way to escape such a vicious circle is by providing other options. What if people didn't die because they can't buy food, pay rent, etc?

b) "The economy" is a diverse rhizome, not a needful entity. The concept of "productive" vs. non-productive work implies an optimization objective. What objective do you propose distinguishes productive from non-productive work? Is art non-productive? Is strip mining productive?

c) In a world where some people live long lives accumulating billions (soon to be trillions - Musk? Bezos?) of US dollars, it's difficult to understand how it might be too expensive. The only way I can make sense of that argument is if you fundamentally believe in the argument that cumulative wealth is *necessary* for some tasks (like colonizing Mars). If you believe that society *must* have cumulative wealth stores (e.g. the government, Musk, Bezos, etc.) in order to achieve [your favorite objectives], then that implies the vast majority will need to be poor or near poverty. So, any attempt to "lift all boats" is "too expensive".

But the constraining argument is that those crystals around which wealth accumulates have to come from somewhere. Efficient governments don't emerge by accident. We don't (yet) know how to engineer the emergence of Musks and Bezoses. That implies that we need a diverse pool of talent, most of which will end up non- or less than optimally productive. But some subset of which will be kernels needed for making progress on [your favorite objectives]. And that diversity includes non-productive people who can't pay rent, buy groceries, etc.

Therefore, UBI is necessary for [your favorite objectives].



p.s. Ben Shapiro is a troll whose shtick is suckering people into "debates" just so he can get air time for his ideology. It's a symptom of our postmodern society that we can't tell good from bad faith arguments. The Five Ws are ancient and still work: https://letterstoayounglibrarian.blogspot.com/2016/12/information-literacy-as-liberation.html

On 5/4/21 1:49 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> a) There are many people who need to be employed to have meaning in life. (please exclude me from this group)
> 
> b) The economy needs to provide incentives for people to do productive work to oil the gears of the economy, UBI removes this incentive.
> 
> c) It will just be too expensive


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