[FRIAM] The case for universal basic income UBI

Wed May 5 13:23:13 EDT 2021

Nick,

I was bracing myself for you to say "*Yes, it's progress, but at what cost
to the environment?*"

I'm not defending the undefendable, human progress came at a huge cost to
the environment.

On Wed, 5 May 2021 at 17:28, <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, Pieter,
>
>
>
> I am tempted to say:
>
>
>
> *“Yes.  But what have you done for me, LATELY?” *[Joke}
>
>
>
> And
>
>
>
> *I have always been suspicious of Pinker;  too much HAIR.**  [worse joke]*
>
>
>
> *And *
>
>
>
> *“But where’s the PROGRESS?”**  [Even worse joke]*
>
>
>
> *And*
>
>
>
> *But is it sustainable?**  [perhaps not a joke?]*
>
>
>
> But I am stalling.  Your argument is of the form, “Thompson, bugger your
> Jesuitical term splitting.  These things are PROGRESS and you damn well
> know it.”
>
>
>
> I find that argument compelling.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 4, 2021 10:11 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] The case for universal basic income UBI
>
>
>
>   I'd like to address a point Nick made earlier:
>
>
>
> *Well, the first step would be to make a distinction between "progress"
> and "change", with the former being a subset of the latter.  Now, the task
> is to see if there is any way to define "progress" transculturally.  For
> me, culture bound as I am, hand and foot, the wordprocessor program was
> progress because it made it easier to do the things I love to do, and
> facebook was regress because it demanded I do things I did not want to do.*
>
>
>
> I'm quoting from https://rootsofprogress.org/enlightenment-now,
> discussing Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now:
>
>
> " the bulk of the book is devoted to an empirical analysis of human
> progress along several dimensions—practical, intellectual and
> moral—including:
>
> *Life:* Life expectancy is up, from a world average of less than 30 years
> in the mid-18th century to over 70 years today; and the increases are seen
> by all age groups and all continents. Child mortality and maternal
> mortality in particular have been drastically reduced: “for an American
> woman, being pregnant a century ago was almost as dangerous as having
> breast cancer today.”
>
> *Health:* The threat of infectious disease has been greatly reduced via
> sanitization, sterilization, vaccination, antibiotics, and other scientific
> and medical advances, which together have saved billions of lives.
>
> *Sustenance:* Hunger and famine were a normal part of life throughout
> most of history. Today, people have access to, on average, over 2,500
> calories per day (including an average of 2,400 in India, 2,600 in Africa,
> and 3,100 in China). And the extra food isn’t all going to the wealthy;
> measures of stunted growth and undernourishment are declining in some of
> the world’s poorest regions, and worldwide deaths from famine are also
> down. Technology was critical in this achievement: mechanization of
> farming, synthetic fertilizer (thanks especially to the Haber-Bosch
> process <https://rootsofprogress.org/turning-air-into-bread>), better
> crop varieties (thanks to Norman Borlaug and his Green Revolution), and now
> genetic engineering. The fall of Communism was also significant, since “of
> the seventy million people who died in major 20th-century famines, 80
> percent were victims of Communist regimes’ forced collectivization,
> punitive confiscation, and totalitarian central planning.”
>
> *Wealth:* Gross World Product was stagnant or slowly growing for most of
> human history, but it has grown “almost two hundredfold from the start of
> the Enlightenment in the 18th century.” And again, the increases are not
> only seen in a minority of the world. Western countries pulled away from
> the rest first, starting in the 18th century, in what is known as the Great
> Escape (from the Malthusian trap
> <https://rootsofprogress.org/the-malthusian-trap>). Pinker attributes
> this achievement to science; institutions that create open economies by
> protecting rule of law, property rights, and enforceable contracts; and a
> change in values that conferred “dignity and prestige upon merchants and
> inventors rather than just on soldiers, priests, and courtiers.” But the
> Great Escape was followed in the 20th century by the Great Convergence, as
> poor countries around the world catch up in economic progress and close the
> gap. In all, the portion of the world living in “extreme poverty” (using
> the definition of $1.90/day in 2011 international dollars) has fallen from
> almost 90% in 1820 to 10% today.
>
> *Safety:* Deaths from virtually all kinds of accidents have drastically
> fallen. Deaths from motor vehicle accidents alone are down 24 times since
> 1921; pedestrian deaths and plane crashes are also down. Workplaces are
> safer. Deaths have decreased from falls, fire, drowning, you name it. Even
> natural disasters kill fewer people than they used to, as better technology
> and practices make us safer from everything from earthquakes to lightning
> strikes.
>
> *Quality of life:* Work hours have decreased from over 60 hours per week
> in both the US and Western Europe in 1870, to around 40 hours today.
> Housework has decreased from 58 hours per week in 1900 to 15.5 hours in
> 2011, liberating everyone from drudge work, although owing to who
> historically has performed housework, this is in practice a great
> liberation of women. As a result, people report more hours of leisure, and
> more are retiring in old age. Not only our time but our money has been
> liberated: spending on necessities in the US is down from over 60% of
> disposable income in 1929 to about a third in 2016. And as a result of
> economic progress and better technology, people are doing more travel
> (including international travel), eating more varied and interesting diets,
> and have much greater access to the knowledge of the world.
>
> *Peace:* In Pinker’s previous book
> <https://rootsofprogress.org/the-most-peaceful-time-in-history>, *The
> Better Angels of our Nature*, he chronicled the decline of violence and
> its causes. War between great powers has not occurred since World War 2,
> and the wars that rage today cover less of the world than in the past.
> Deaths are down from both battles and genocide. And violent crime has been
> reduced as well. He credits these declines to causes including the
> advancement of reason and education, the spread of global commerce, and
> international forums such as the UN.
>
> *Democracy:* Democracy is taking over the world (that is, democratic
> republics, as opposed to authoritarian regimes). After suffering setbacks
> from socialist regimes in the mid-20th century, it is rebounding, with the
> defeat of Nazism followed by the fall of Communism. Two-thirds of the
> world’s population now lives in “free or relatively free societies”, vs.
> one percent in 1816 (according to projects that track this sort of thing,
> such as the Polity Project).
>
> *Equal rights:* Racist, sexist, and anti-homosexual opinions are on the
> decline; “emancipative values” (such as freedom, autonomy and
> individuality) are growing more popular. Also down: hate crimes, rape /
> domestic violence, and child abuse / bullying.
>
> *Knowledge:* Around the world, children are going to school longer, and
> literacy is on the rise. Women are closing the education gap with men, as
> more cultures decide to educate their girls. Even IQ scores are increasing
> (a phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect), likely as a result of the spread
> of education.
>
> He makes this case with dozens of charts and far more data and analysis
> than a summary can do justice to, much of it sourced from Max Roser’s Our
> World in Data <https://ourworldindata.org/> and similar projects."
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, 5 May 2021 at 05:42, <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dave,
>
>
>
> No you can’t have read it.  Otherwise your life would have been completely
> transformed because you would have come to belief that sex- and mone-
> seeking are pathological distortions of human ambition.
>
>
>
> I pretty sure nobody has read it because, so far as I know, nobody has
> been thus affected.  Ergo, …
>
>
>
> Nick
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Prof David West
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 4, 2021 8:45 PM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] The case for universal basic income UBI
>
>
>
> *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 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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