
Finland's basic income trial falls flat - aresant
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-europe-43866700
======
hliyan
I'm reading the article and it seems to say that the government decided to not
fund it further. But the headline "trial falls flat" seems to imply that
somehow the trial returned a negative result. Am I missing something?

~~~
lovich
It seems that the article is drawing a conclusion without evidence. It states
further down in the article that the full results will not be released until
2019.

The trial could easily have not had positive, but its also just as possible
that the program died due to political reasons.

I'd like to see the statistics on the program as it'd be good to know if
universal income is something that has no plausible chance of working, needs
to be rolled out to more people to work, or if this is just basic politics
killing a program

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freedomben
The article really doesn't address _why_ the program wasn't continued. That
seems like really important information. Perhaps it is unknown at this time
why support is dropping, at which case it is good journalism not to speculate.
However it would be great to know the why.

~~~
majewsky
AFAIK the program was explicitly set up as a trial run to produce insight into
how basic income affects people and communities. It's not wildly surprising
that it ends without immediate replacement: When a clinical trial ends,
patients don't get to keep the drugs either, even if they help them.

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Glyptodon
My biggest fear with basic income on a national scale is that it might get
soaked up in bidding wars for limited rental housing and just end up being
inflation soaked up by landlords.

~~~
chime
I know livelihood after automation needs to be solved but I'm worried about
how a guaranteed fixed income for a large section of young population might be
exploited.

If you are 70 and get $1500/mo social security, nobody is going to sell you a
$200k Ferrari. But if you are young, there is tremendous incentive for
businesses to carve out that $1500/mo into life long revenue streams. Student
loans cannot be easily discharged in bankruptcy. Pass a few laws and suddenly,
contracts you signed as an 18yr old cannot be discharged through any means.
This means an 18yr old could buy a $200k car if they agree to $750/mo for 600
months (50 years) at 4% fixed rate. A little bit of collusion in the insurance
industry and suddenly anyone could be liable for $200k damages from healthcare
to auto claims. No problem, just pay it off over the next 50-60 years of your
life while you live in destitution.

In a Star-Trek post-scarcity world, cars don't cost $200k so this problem
doesn't exist. But as long as we live in a world where money exists, I think
giving everyone a fixed minimum income will absolutely result in unexpected
exploitation on a mass scale. Right now, nobody is going to give an 18yr old
with no credit a 200k car because there is no guarantee they can pay it off.
They give them 30yr fixed mortgages today because property historically
appreciates in value and can be repossessed. But in a post-credit rating
world, instead of repossessing a 15yr old car, it is better to just put a lien
on 50 yrs of somebody's income, bundle it up, and sell a million of these
liens to a bank.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
It's interesting to consider Star Trek. I mean in our society today you can
easily blame capitalism for our woes. But I think more aptly, you should blame
us. Consumerism is something you personally have to choose to become involved
in. People buy overpriced phones offering marginal benefits over vastly more
affordable alternatives, fancy cars that in the end do nothing but get from
point A to point B, pay a massive markup on a Unix based PC so they can have a
fruity label and a slightly thinner screen, etc, etc. And they do this all of
their own will.

In Star Trek people always look to us as the humans, because we are humans.
But the biggest gag in Star Trek is that we're not the humans - we're the the
Ferengi. Seriously, that was the intent. [1] The first paragraph there is
irrelevant, the second is from the actual screenwriters and producers for the
show.

Society is a product of its people. The Ferengi live as they do because of the
Ferengi. And the humans too live as they do because of the humans. If you
thrust the Ferengi into the society of the humans it's not like they'd
suddenly become as the humans. In short order it'd revert to Ferengi
standards. And so too for us. Our society is a reflection of us. You need not
change society - you need to change the people that makeup society. So long as
there is somebody willing to buy something far outside their means for
whatever reason, there will be people lining up to sell it to them. Something
that is actually also still reflected in the show, even among humanity.
Society is not something in isolation. Society is little more than the product
of the people that comprise it.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi#Interpretation_as_a_pa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi#Interpretation_as_a_parody_of_Judaism)

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joe_the_user
It doesn't sound like they picked people are random but rather unemployed
people. So it doesn't seem a reasonable test of just giving some random group
of people money but rather just something looked to everyone involved as a
kind of welfare. Thus it doesn't seem like a fair.

That's not saying I think this could work but that it's different from the
experiment in India I remember where everyone in a village was given an
income.

One problem with universal income I would imagine is it would give landlord a
strong incentive to immediate raise rents - IE, how could it not create
inflation?

~~~
gwern
I'm not familiar with this trial specifically, but my guess is that the reason
for limiting it that way is to focus on the most plausible kind of welfare
program in the group most likely to benefit in a large way (the unemployed)
and get as much certainty out of the data as possible. They had limited money
(only enough for 2000 people, apparently), so if they split it across a random
set of people, or a specific village, they would get a much less precise
answer (eg n=200 unemployed, n=1800 employed; or arguably, n=1, at the village
level). And if you don't get a clear good result in the unemployed, why would
you expect clear or good results in the employed?

Clinical trials do a lot of screening of enrolled participants for similar
reasons: you want the sickest or most likely to benefit, so you can see
effects clearly, and you want to avoid participants with conditions that might
override or obscure the benefits, like old age (a couple dropping dead on you
at random might cover up a real benefit).

~~~
majewsky
But once you actually roll out UBI, everyone gets it. If you only concentrate
on UBI's effects on _unemployed_ people, you're missing a huge part of the
picture.

~~~
lucozade
Well yes, but Finland wasn't experimenting with basic income for philosophical
reasons. They were experimenting because they have high unemployment and a
complex, and expensive, welfare system. So what they wanted to understand was
the effect a basic income had on those factors.

The next stage of the experiment, that wasn't funded, was to extend the
experiment to include the employed. Even there, I would expect they would
still focus on low incomes as that's where you would expect to see an effect.

To go beyond that, it's not clear what you'd learn without having a very large
scale experiment i.e. one that materially affects the level of taxation. I
can't imagine they'd be interested in that without seeing a significant,
positive effect on the first two categories.

And as a side point, I don't believe the idea was ever to test a UBI just a
basic income. Unless you're intending to do away with all differentiated
welfare, highly unlikely in a social democratic country, the universal bit is
probably more harmful than beneficial.

------
Illotus
Basically it was a political decision to not continue. Researchers would have
liked to continue with more resources:
[https://translate.google.fi/translate?sl=fi&tl=en&js=y&prev=...](https://translate.google.fi/translate?sl=fi&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=fi&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fyle.fi%2Fuutiset%2F3-10020346&edit-
text=)

~~~
tbrock
Every researcher wants to continue with more resources.

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Asturaz
Everyone should read about how Finland is governance the country with new
ideas and concepts, other countries do is just stupid and based on different
bias, political views or just idiocy in some cases.

[https://www.demoshelsinki.fi/en/julkaisut/design-for-
governm...](https://www.demoshelsinki.fi/en/julkaisut/design-for-government-
humancentric-governance-through-experiments/)

The experiment of basic income was not intended to expand to the whole country
it was a study, to gather data.

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vortico
What post is this a [dupe] of?

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sp527
I wonder what the least fortunate people in villages in Africa and Asia would
think about our desperate push to figure out UBI.

A looming threat of declining living standards (and a decline that will still
never leave us anywhere close to where they are now) has us so terrified,
quaking in our privilege boots. Meanwhile easily 3B+ people have been left out
in the cold and hardly anyone gives a shit.

Every so often, I still find myself surprised by how unapologetically shameful
humans can manage to be.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
So you are implicitly stating that you should not have substantial concern for
yourself unless you're the least well off of a society?

~~~
sp527
No, it's a lot simpler. It can be reduced down to a question: How is humanity
deciding who gets left behind?

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Ah, and so you are arguing that peoples success and failure is decided by
other people? Who exactly are these other people? America went from a
completely undeveloped and isolated backwoods to the most powerful nation in
the world in just a couple of centuries because of these people? How about
China? 60 years ago people were literally starving to death by the tens of
millions in China and today they are one of the most powerful and rapidly
growing nations in the world. Japan was obliterated in a war yet in a period
of some 40 years reshaped itself into what was at one time the technological
leader of the world. Is it because of those people again?

~~~
sp527
Well now you're getting historical/philosophical.

I subscribe to what the Durants argued in 'The Lessons of History'. There is
an apparently irresolvable trade-off between freedom and equality and,
historically speaking, the world has tended to vacillate between the two
extremes, with inflection points typically demarcated by violent revolution.

In order to get closer to a stable equilibrium, we would need to achieve a
more progressive wealth redistribution paradigm than we have at present.

A tremendous amount of wealth is being locked up by the global 0.1% in S&I.
Yes it flows through the economy as capital, but we now know enough to
appreciate that it mostly doesn't furthermore trickle down into increased
wellbeing for probably anyone at or below the 90th percentile, at best. In
other words, this system is highly inefficient when you measure it against one
of the most meaningful criteria that we should (but do not) evaluate:
statistical distribution of human wellbeing.

I have a lot more thoughts on this. But, in short, an unqualified belief in
the virtues of capitalism is certainly misguided.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
I'm not being philosophical but simply pointing out that the fate of a nation
is largely determined by the people of that nation. And the driving force
there is typically seeking better things for themselves. There have been
extensive efforts at externally driven nation building and, to my knowledge,
it has yet to meet with significant success.

I actually am currently voluntarily residing in a "developing nation." I enjoy
it for a variety reasons. Regardless, everywhere around me the reasons that
this country is a "developing nation" are clear as day, and it is of the
nation's own doing. Corruption and cronyism are rampant. And, much like the US
is becoming, politics is more about 'us versus them' as opposed to 'how can we
best solve our problems'. There's also a complete lack of accountability.
Failure is tolerated at all levels (which is something we're also starting to
see in the US to some degree). When the electricity goes out for hours because
of a glorified sprinkle people just shrug instead of striving for better. And
this starts all the way at the school level - children, mostly, are not
allowed to fail, which again seems to be the path the US is started down. They
get passed along. Next thing you know you have a tenth grader that can't tell
you what 9 * 7 is. But that's okay. Since has the right last name, he'll have
no problem getting a job, perhaps as an administrator at the electric company.

Capitalism or whatever else is a red herring. Live in both a "developing
nation" and a "developed nation" for some time, and you'll see the sharp and
surprisingly clear contrasts emerge. And the problems lay primarily with the
people themselves. However, focusing on the actions of people is something
touchier than just philosophizing about political or economic systems, so it's
no wonder our 'aid' generally fails to do much beyond sustain the status quo,
if that.

And one quick note on rebellion. Rebellion is driven, beyond anything else, by
a lack of complacency. The US is full on Algiers 1954 on internet forums. But
in real life people are extremely content. Electronic devices and the internet
are like pacifiers for adults.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward)

~~~
sp527
> And one quick note on rebellion. Rebellion is driven, beyond anything else,
> by a lack of complacency. The US is full on Algiers 1954 on internet forums.
> But in real life people are extremely content. Electronic devices and the
> internet are like pacifiers for adults.

I'm absolutely aligned on this point and it strikes me, oddly enough, as one
of the more insidious deficits of modernity.

The potential for corrective retaliation by suppressed classes has been eroded
by some combination of (depending on where you are in the world): highly
sophisticated surveillance and censorship apparatuses, advanced military
technology, scalable propaganda dissemination and behavioral manipulation,
corruption (institutionalized like lobbying and campaign contributions or
otherwise), complacency as you noted, the invisibility/impenetrability of
global wealth distribution, etc.

That is exactly the problem. The ancient Romans and Greeks could and did
literally stab the elite to death to shift the balance back towards equality.
There is no similarly effective recourse available to societies in the modern
age, and thus wealth inequality has degraded to unconscionable levels.

But it's a bigger problem now than at any other point in human history. Thanks
to technological innovation, we are rapidly approaching a reality in which
capital holders will be able to sustain themselves in protected enclaves and
the rest of us will be relegated to savagery, which is the end state of the
most extreme possible shift towards freedom.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
This is literally the entire point of the second amendment.

Quoting it verbatim: _" A well regulated militia being necessary to the
security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall
not be infringed."_ One thing that is sometimes misunderstood due to the
phrasing is that the first statement is stated as a purpose, and the second
statement the implementation. In modern common language it would be, _" Since
a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the
people's right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."_

Some random quotes emphasizing their views:

Thomas Jefferson: _" And what country can preserve its liberties, if its
rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit
of resistance? Let them take arms… The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."_

James Madison: _" The ultimate authority … resides in the people alone. … The
advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of
almost every other nation … forms a barrier against the enterprises of
ambition."_

Thomas Paine: _" The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian;
while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and
plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The
same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all
would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside…
Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of
them…"_

\----

That said, I do not really agree with you on the doomsday scenarios. But I
also find the politicization of things like the second amendment quite silly.
I'm probably liberal, at least I've always considered myself as such, yet the
constitution and its intent is extremely clear on this point - and I do tend
to agree with the logic, even if I personally do not think the times of today
are the eras of concern that the founding fathers were alluding to.

~~~
sp527
What they meant back then is quite nearly irrelevant in the modern age. No
group of civilians is mounting a meaningful military resistance against USG
for too many reasons to enumerate (though I did enumerate some of them above).
The 2nd Amendment now arguably does more harm than good on balance and needs
to be reevaluated.

Maybe the closest possible thing that can be managed is some vigilante or
group of vigilantes assassinating provably corrupt politicians and the elite
corrupting them, and publicizing the rationale while promising further
retribution absent reform. But that person(s) would be a suicidal madman and
might succeed only in instilling fear in potential targets and not in swaying
public understanding or opinion. A short term solution that would serve only
to drive corruption further underground and/or in said politicians and elite
increasing their own physical security.

As for the doomsday scenario, you have to wait long enough for reasonably
decent AI and robotics, but it will happen. There's no theoretical impediment
to self-sustaining 'gated' (which will eventually move in meaning towards
'militarized', proportionate to deteriorating public sentiment)
microecosystems. Incentives and rational behavior will almost certainly effect
this outcome for people who happen to be capital owners (above a certain
minimum threshold) in that technological epoch.

On the flip side, as we know, once we reach a certain end state of
technological capability via AI and robotics, the employability deficit of the
vast majority of humans will catalyze a crisis the likes of which our species
has probably never dealt with before.

So now you get back to UBI and other questions of reform. Will humanity fix
its shit in time? I doubt it.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
I think your sentiment about the futility of resistance is reasonable, but not
really well supported. Iraq is probably the best example here. The terrain
there is absolutely awful for the insurgents with urban areas separated by
vast empty flat mostly desert regions. In spite of this, they've managed to
mount an incredibly effective resistance with little more than some rifles
developed in the 50s and some homemade explosives.

This reality is arguably a major reason the current establishment in politics
has been working to agitate against the second amendment. It has very little
to do with harm. For instance the focus is always on "assault style rifles"
yet did you know that of all gun deaths (which make up less than 1% of all
deaths) that < 3% of those are caused by rifles? Even in mass shootings - the
primary weapon is low caliber pistols.

As the UK is experiencing now it's not really weapons that are the problem. It
once again comes back to the same problem of people. London earlier this year
experienced a greater per capita murder rate than NYC, even though none of the
attacks involved guns.

\---

But maybe more generally this division in society is the biggest protection of
the establishment of politics. The 2016 election was an incredibly good
example of this phenomena. How many people voted for Hillary thinking "Yes,
this person accurately represents my views and feelings."? And similarly for
Trump. But now how many people voted for one or the other thinking, "Oh dear
god, this person is scum - but the alternative is unthinkable!"

Societal division in a republic is phenomenally effective at killing peoples'
self interest. You can even make people vote for people they don't like, just
by making sure they hate 'the other side' enough. Divide and conquer is a
strategy as old as they get.

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convery
Cue the "that's not real X, if we did it my way it'd have worked"..

~~~
dguaraglia
They should try the "unbridled capitalism" model, it seems to work great for
the poor in our great US of A /s

~~~
influx
As compared to what?

~~~
dguaraglia
Finland.

