
‘Utopia for Realists?’ – a review - llovan
https://www.opendemocracy.net/neil-howard/utopia-for-realists-review
======
mc32
I vote for testing this out in Canada or Mexico first (let them have first
dibs on these fantastic ideas.) Have them open their borders give everyone
local and newcomer a basic income a fifteen hour workweek and if it all works
out after a trial period, we can join their enviable party --they'll let us
in, right?

Addendum. There seems to be a contradiction in the message, on the one hand
people in developed economies make too much money (traded in time for more
money to buy things they don't need nor actually want -they claim) but at the
same time it's "unfair" they make 3-times what a comparable Bolivian makes
(but cut our hours by two thirds) So it kind of reads as if they'd like to
turn Bolivians into a consumerist society too, but they kind of trash
consumerism ("neither need nor want").

~~~
fiatmoney
Much like communism, it will turn out never to have been tried after all.

~~~
rjeli
"After globalization and basic income, is this it? Have we achieved full
utopia?"

"Oh no, things are gonna get a lot worse."

~~~
vinay427
I'm really not sure what point you're making here. Could you elaborate?

~~~
GauntletWizard
It's a joke, famously told by Reagan.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8EstTUq0lo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8EstTUq0lo)

------
Animats
It's encouraging that people are thinking about this. We have way too much
zero-sum economic effort going on. Most of Wall Street trading and most of
advertising are zero-sum.

In the near term, there are some obvious moves. The $15 minimum wage. The 8
hour day and 40 hour week. (That means everybody below the 1% gets paid time
and a half for overtime, and wage theft is a crime.)

~~~
MrTonyD
Thanks for bringing up the coexistence of zero-sum and non-zero-sum. Too many
people talk about them without any real understanding. Just as a time-series
can be infinite, it can also be non-infinite at any point in time. People who
dismiss things as non-zero-sum don't understand this. Suffering is real - and
it is immoral to dismiss it.

------
vlehto
"if we’re going to organise for a better world, we need to know who we’re
organising against"

Most vehemently against UBI are the trade unions. Their existence depends on
unemployment being nasty ordeal. If unemployment was OKish, employees would
vote with their feet. No unions needed. Next worst is McJobs companies.

Minimum wage making unemployment more prevalent and the employed more
comfortable is furthering trade union goals like nothing else. These ideas may
look the same, but they are completely opposed.

"how, for example, can we can open all the borders without eventually
replacing countries with a global government?"

Nobody can, nor should. Currently somewhat open borders and somewhat good
social security is already causing big problems in my country. The easy
solution would be UBI for citizens, easy visas for everybody else. Everybody
would be better off, except for the people who migrate only to get government
benefits. Companies could hire foreign workforce easy, total incoming numbers
would stay relatively low, people actually coming from war zones and escaping
bullets would find safety.

The immigration fear mongers are against this, because solving this problem
would end the justification for their existence. Also the left are against
this, because they could not run around calling people "fascist" anymore. And
the do-gooders would implode, as small numbers of poor third world citizens
would keep on being poor, but now they would do it here! It's so nice to have
them out of sight.

~~~
specialist
_" Most vehemently against UBI are the trade unions."_

Huh. I'll poll my union friends. This would surprise me.

(FWIW, apropos of nothing, union halls are temp agencies with collective
bargaining.)

 _" The immigration fear mongers are against this..."_

I assume nowadays economic immigrants mostly want to make their fortune and
then go home to retire. I read a study that tracked immigration to/from Puerto
Rico. Many (the majority) return home or plan to. Asking all my immigrate
coworkers, I get mostly the same answers.

About the nativists: hater's are gonna hate. Just route around them.

~~~
vlehto
Economic immigrants who work are completely different breed than economic
immigrants who come for unemployment benefits.

Currently in Finland if you can ~800e/month from the government if you get
asylum. That's not "rich", but it's lot better than most things available in
Iraq right now.

The fear mongers (perussuomalaiset) won the last election and got to the
government. Their performance controlling the situation has been very
lackluster so far.

------
ZeroGravitas
Open borders is interesting because I suspect the vast majority of people do
not wish to leave their current vicinity. They only do so to masively improve
their lives, but if they could improve their current location that would
usually be far preferable. Is there a short catchphrase like "open borders"
for "making more places on the globe better places to live”? I feel we spend
more time and effort making them worse (fighting wars in them, propping up
dictators, bribing local official for access to resources, selling them guns,
web filters and other tools of oppression etc

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Is there a short catchphrase like "open borders" for "making more places on
the globe better places to live”?_

The word is "colonialism" and it was moderately successful. But lets not kid
ourselves - there were lots of abuses and it was very far from the utopia that
I think you wish for.

Due to nationalism and a desire to oppress their neighbors, most people would
oppose this even if it makes their current vicinity better. Unfortunately this
leaves the oppressed locals with no place to go.

------
james-watson
What a hodgepodge of ideas. This is a perfect example of Douglas Hofstadter's
chocolate/excrement milkshake.

The idea behind Basic Income is to remove government intervention in the
economy. Coupled with a flat tax, it massively reduces government overhead and
bureaucracy, and leaves government to it's main role as the arbiter of
society.

Governments' main role is to enforce the rules a society is based upon via the
social contract. Collect taxes, enforce laws, and invest in the unprofitable
but necessary foundations of civilization (infrastructure, healthcare,
research, conservation, etc.)

In societies, as in design, less is often more. The more lifelong government
bureaucrats we create, the more perverse incentives exist for them to
parasitize the government for their own gains.

So why do we need to legislate for minimum work hours if we have a sufficient
BI? And in what fictional universe does open borders make sense?

Human beings are competitive, and we form tribes to compete against one
another. This is healthy, and leads to great achievements when properly
channeled. The Cold War, for example, caused an era of unprecedented
technological innovation. As we enter the post-war era, we already see the
downfalls of globalization. When there is no need to compete, decadence sets
in. The rich hoard money, and governments refuse to invest in their people's
future in the form of infrastructure, research, etc.

We need borders, and we need a competitive immigration system that behaves
like a sports team manager who is constantly on the lookout to poach talented
individuals from competitors.

Competition is the quintessential human trait which has brought us to where we
are today. Setting it aside has always lead to decadence and downfall.

~~~
dragonwriter
You start with a premise that is not universally accepted, even among
proponents of the UBI: that the UBI exists to reduce government intervention
in the economy (the UBI _is_ a government intervention in the economy, and
many UBI proponents support it because it's such an intervention that replaces
current interventions premised on a certain labor market model with one that
they see as working in a different labor market model they see as emerging
with automation, or because they see it as simply more effective than existing
and other alternative interventions.)

That's not to defend the article, of course.

------
gburt
How do supporters of the UBI deal with the real estate valuation problem? It
seems that assets that are highly immobile and have elasticity that is
directly proportional to income would eat up all or almost all of the
transfer.

It is possible that there is a counterbalancing effect of people being able to
live outside of the big city, but I still suspect a form of "minimum rent"
would arise in the case there was a UBI and the whole transfer would end up
consolidating with a few landlords.

~~~
mc32
Maybe you make UBI an income guarantee rather than a right to live in a given
place guarantee. In such a structure the state could incentivize moving to
areas which are losing population, such as Midwestern rustbelt cities and
towns in the US, or any place not the MDF in MX or the Ruhr valley in DE, etc.

~~~
kylebgorman
I don't think we should incentivize moving to such places unless we plan to
also (somehow) massively increase the opportunities available in such places.

~~~
mc32
Isn't the whole idea of UBI that it's subsidizing the lack of good jobs for
people who for one reason or another can't land decent jobs? I don't see why
someone who isn't being overly productive also needs to live in a location
where one could use more productive people.

In other words if a mill worker's site shutdown and this person now depends
solely on UBI I don't see why they should feel like they should afford some
place in the closest big city if they don't get a job since their active
addition to productivity is nil. If they get a job then they may or may not
afford a place in that city. Still, it's not "owed" anyone.

------
DigitalJack
Ideas aren't the motor for people. Desire is the motor.

~~~
Natanael_L
Relevant:

[https://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc](https://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc) \- "RSA Animate:
Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us"

Short version: internal motivation is much stronger than external motivation.

~~~
amelius
What I'm wondering about is what motivates extremely smart people to work on
social media apps and iGadgets, when they know that most people care much more
about: food, health, a fair economy, energy, and safety. Why are these smart
people not working in fundamental physics, or medicine, or why aren't they
thinking up new models for the economy?

~~~
NoGravitas
Social media apps and iGadgets are more profitable. It's almost impossible to
get paid for thinking up new models for the economy.

~~~
amelius
I suspect that autonomy plays an important role here.

For writing apps, you need only your computer. You don't have to interact with
other people a lot.

For medicine, fundamental physics, you need a huge amount of resources, and
you need to cooperate with lots of people.

It seems that smart people prefer complete independence.

------
intrasight
UBI has plenty of adherents among sophisticated economists. The 15 hour work
week - not so much.

~~~
panic
What are the arguments against it?

~~~
damptowel
Personally, I worry about overal state productivity and its geopolitical
ramifications. Productivity per capita would seem a big determinant in the
power a nation has, though this is purely speculation on my part. :)

~~~
MawNicker
Productivity waxes and wanes. I've experienced hour-long periods in which I
accomplished as much as a typical day or week. I suspect a shorter work week
would increase the frequency of these occurrences. The perceived relationship
between productivity and time needs to die. The true relation is between
productivity and "energy." An internal store of productive capacity. The focus
on time leads to the continual (and largely wasteful) depletion of energy and
eventually to burnout. This state is far more common than you might think.
It's rare that an individual experiences the alternative and realizes
something is wrong. Most people, rather than complaining or quitting, simply
work hard enough not to be fired.

~~~
varjag
That might be true with your line of work, but certainly doesn't hold for a
plumber, teacher or an accountant. You just don't get the week worth of
teaching students in an one hour burst. Most of the jobs out there have well
defined expected workloads.

~~~
MawNicker
I disagree about teaching. Public school teachers are overworked, tired and do
a crummy job. I'd rather have 7 hours of Khan Academy videos and 1 hour of
solid instruction. You're right about anything involving manual labor. But
even then the notion of an energy tank absolutely applies.

~~~
varjag
There's an upper bound to how efficiently say elementary school kids can learn
unsupervised, and if you discard the outliers it's not very impressive. School
teachers are not just doing busywork sent down by bureaucrats; much of it is
still teaching in the class, checking student's progress, grading the homework
and so on.

As to the working in bursts I used to think of it as a manifestation of
creativity and talent in heroic stunts. Years later I see it differently: if
you do one hour of actual work in a week, you are procrastinating/slacking for
the other 39 hours. Even, predictable pace of work is a hallmark of
professionalism. At least now I try hard to keep my progress steady and
predictable.

~~~
MawNicker
> Even, predictable pace of work is a hallmark of professionalism.

You are making an insestuous appeal to tradition while we discuss the merits
of exactly that tradition.

~~~
varjag
Guess you can view it that way, although I meant that "it's a net positive".
Sure makes estimation easier, and gives you higher overall productivity.
Consider that if your normal, sustained rate hour only 1/20th as productive as
the epic bursts one, you still end up being twice as productive throughout the
40 hour work week.

No point doing marathon as a series of sprints.

------
mehrzad
If we want UBI, why not go full communalism or anarcho-collectivism?

~~~
StanislavPetrov
Because systems based on pure ideology don't work well in reality. Its the
whole idea behind implementing a UBI in our quasi-free-market capitalist
system.

The larger point is that not only is the idea of a UBI decent and moral,
because nobody should worry about being homeless or starving in a rich
society, but because its much cheaper the the alternative! Only someone
completely blinded by ideology (or somehow profiting off of the existing
system) would argue that its better to spend $50,000 dollars a year per
homeless person to manage shelters and run a bureaucracy if simply giving that
homeless person $25,000 a year and achieves a better overall result.

~~~
notahacker
> but because its much cheaper the the alternative

But it isn't. A fifth of the UK working age population, for example, is
neither registered as unemployed or earning money. Most of them aren't
homeless, or entitled to disability benefits and aren't registered as
unemployed because for whatever reason they don't need the money. All of them
would be eligible for basic income.

You can afford to provide much better support for homeless people (many of
whose bigger problems cannot be addressed simply by providing them with a
regular income) if your budget isn't being stretched by the need to subsidise
the perceived basic needs of huge numbers of content people that aren't
actually interested in claiming subsidies.

~~~
vlehto
It's likely they are mostly students or enjoy some kind of disability benefit.

You can tax their parents and give the students UBI. The sick will cost
anyhow. Or you can exclude students from UBI, that's what you are doing now.
I'm not against either.

------
anovikov
That might work but only after curing another evil of our time: the concept of
sovereign nation. There must be effective (i.e. not nukes) policing force
which may regulate things all around the world. Also, elites must become truly
international, not bearing the mentality of any nation.

~~~
vlehto
As citizen of nordic country, I would rather kill some people than accept
someone taking the independence of my nation.

Our politicians are clowns, but they are our clowns. And they care about us
lot more than EU clowns or U.S. clowns. So far it looks like bigger countries
tend to have less efficient and more corrupt governments. If we make some kind
of world government, that might turn incredibly inefficient and corrupt. And
now you have absolutely nowhere to run to.

If you are US citizen, you can small tasting of your new world order by voting
in the next election like some random person over the internet tells you. Are
you willing to do that?

~~~
anovikov
I mean that! That's why it is impossible! Too many people value their
nationhood/independence too much. So it is a double-edged sword: if you value
your independence and sovereighnity of your country and other countries, you
must also accept the fact that most countries are shitty and put their
subjects into conditions little short of genocide, while others (like yes
Nordic countries) are well-off. It's hard to call that unfair, if you don't
allow others to mess with your stuff, nobody can help you avoiding fucking
things up.

~~~
vlehto
If you have just one country, you have to accept that there is big likelihood
that it's going to be shitty. End of the day you have fallible people in
charge.

If you have less cohesion among voters, then you have less cohesion among
leaders. Which leads to corruption and cronyism, as every leader thinks "fuck
this country, I have to secure the benefits of my voters and myself".

I seriously think smaller is better in every respect.

------
bigp3t3
I can't be the only one that cringes when reading this site on a landscape
1080p screen...

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_wo6a
So, formalizing the existing arrangement?

