[FRIAM] The case for universal basic income UBI

[Prof David West]

*Diamond Age: Or, A Young Woman's Illustrated Primer* by Neal Stephenson

Required reading for any discussion of economics when the robots produce abundance, or things are too cheap to meter.

Nick won'ty read, pretty sure Steve and other already have.

davew


On Tue, May 4, 2021, at 3:31 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> I'm glad I held back from throwing in my own $.002 on this topic
> earlier... I like the general arc it is on and is being articulated much
> more gesturally than I think I am capable of.   I can't say I *fully*
> follow Glen's use of reduction and reconstruction in technical detail
> well, but it suggests an abstraction that rings hopeful if not
> (necessarily) true for me.
> 
> Given that my trite belief that "when the road hazards are coming at us
> faster than we can see much less avoid, that we should pump the brakes
> and downshift" is based in an inapt (inept?) metaphor, and that in any
> case we aren't going to do a whole lot of self-limiting under the
> current aesthetic we (mostly) share (pedal to the metal and let 'er
> roar!).  
> 
> The Prepper/Survivalist community is mostly about trying to gather up
> the resources they think will help them survive a crash or more
> importantly the aftermath.   The post/transhumanists seem to be trying
> to figure out how to strapon (or grow out of their own bodies') wings
> and jet packs and road armor to escape or survive the inevitable crash.
> 
> Careening vehicle metaphors aside, I'm pleased to hear more and more
> discussion that frames the economic aspect of "the culture war" as
> *post* rather than *anti* capitalism.  Whether technology makes
> *everything* too cheap to meter or not, I think the relative abundance
> of manufactured goods as well as commodities for the top 50% of the
> first world is confronting the *scarcity* model that was (maybe?)
> necessary to keep the engine (oops, vehicles made it back in) of
> consumerist markets accelerating.  
> 
> I am not sure that Yang has all (or even many) of the answers but I do
> give him great credit for having promoted the question on the national
> (and world?) stage with his run for President.   I had thought about UBI
> and similar mechanisms before but somehow his presentation or affect or
> maybe just timing brought it to me in a much more compelling way than
> before.
> 
> I very much appreciate Glen's point about UBI being an intrinsically
> capitalist proposal to try to keep their system going as long as
> possible, I just hope we will use whatever time that buys us without
> significant disruption to plan out what things might/could look like on
> the other side of a revolution in (socioeconomic?) thinking that now
> seem inevitable to me.    When I used to ski (poorly), on any given run,
> there was likely a brief period of time when I realized I as absolutely
> going to crash and burn, and if I had any choice in the matter it was
> whether I was going to do it earlier rather than later and whether I was
> going to take a big bite of ice-slicked mogul, some off-run powder, or
> maybe a tree.    Maybe I'll just leap off a mogul and evaporate in the
> sunlight mid-air (Kurzweil's Singularity)?
> 
> - Steve
> 
> On 5/4/21 12:52 PM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
> > Reduction. All things in moderation, including moderation. Reduction is a triumph, if it captures what you're looking for. And fiat currency has done great things for the world, a cultural technology that allows us to explore possibilities we wouldn't have otherwise explored. Financial instruments have allowed us to spread ownership across demographics that would never have been allowed based on real property.
> >
> > But those instruments are a reconstruction of the space that currency reduced out. And I think we're seeing that the reconstruction is trending dysfunctional. So, it's time to reconsider the initial reduction and, importantly, why the reconstruction isn't a cover for the original (full) space.
> >
> > We are doing that in both ad-hoc ways (e.g. the Psychology today article, finding other dimensions by which to bolster the reduction) and fundamental ways (e.g. transhumanist experimentation of "what are we"). UBI is a reasonable suggestion to reduce suffering. But, ultimately, it's a capitalist suggestion, proposed by *conservatives* who want to prolong the status quo, to milk the current system for as long as they can. That's OK, of course. We try to balance exploitation with exploration and nobody knows crisply when to emphasize which.
> >
> >
> > On 5/4/21 11:16 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2%40gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Ah, now THIS is the Glen I know and love. Your 10:00 post rekindled old rage concerning the incentive-value of money.  Here I go.  Up on my high horse.  Hi, Ho, Silver. Budda bump, budda bump, budda bump, bump, bump.
> >>
> >> The very little Marxism I know tells me that it is the "triumph" of capitalism to reduce all relationships to money.  This seems right to rich people because the richer you get, the truer it becomes.  I can imagine Besos, Gates, and Musk falling asleep at night, musing about which of them will first reach a trillion.  If you've lost your soul and you've lost your wife, what else could they possibly want.  Such people even turn women into a kind of coinage.  (Cue Waspish Moral Outrage).   But isn't that the point of UBI; that it frees people to think about something else?  And yes, what IS this so-called "productivity"?  The "happy ditch digger" and the "carefree slave" are all part of the same self-serving capitalist iconography.  I am sure there are people who love to dig ditches, but if that's what they love to do, give them a thousand dollars a month for free and let them dig ditches for Habitat for Humanity in Peru, if that's what they feel like doing.  
> >>
> >> Glen, keeping your ad hominem firmly in mind, I am again going to use your post as opportunity to flog my old work which argues that it is capitalism's reduction of all ambition to coinage that makes it so toxic.  
> 
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