
Ask HN: Are there any alternatives to basic income? - yread
Basic income has some nice properties but quite some disadvantages, too. Is there any research towards alternatives that would help keep the society together once the machines really kick in?
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a-saleh
In my opinion, basic-income, though a general concept, can't really be
generalized. Any actual implementation will be an alternative to any other
actual implementation.

Social policy seems to be hard to get right.

I.e. one thing I heard, that a certain level of universal-basic-income is
being implemented in the US, by generous disability benefits. If you then feel
that you no longer have ability to do meaningful work (especially in the rural
areas), you can collude with your doctor to make yourself a diagnosis that you
would qualify for and would qualify you for disability benefits. As they say,
these days there are no healthy people, just insufficiently diagnosed ;) Then
you can survive doing odd-jobs to supplement your now-almost-basic income.

But I get that making something like this general might just cost too much.
And there might be unwanted sideffects.

I.e. in my country, you can apply for housing subsidy. This was supposed to
help low-income households. In reality, it mostly helped people providing
housing for of certain segment of almost-homeless people, where they no longer
have stable address, and they barely scrape by to pay ther rent, mostly one-
bed in a how income hostel. So, when the subsidies came, owners just raised
the price of a bed by the ammount of subsidy. This created an interesting
poverty-trap, and several cities are trying to fight back to untangle this.
What doesn't help is that many of the trapped people are ethnic minorities,
which then can be used by less savoury politicians in their municipal politc
campaigns.

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keiferski
The concept of basic income seems kind of absurd to me, honestly.
Infrastructure is crumbling, the educational system is slowly falling apart,
urban areas in certain cities are becoming less and less maintained, etc. I
see no reason why basic income would be preferable to a Public Works
Administration-style program that pays people to do these tasks.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I see no reason why basic income would be preferable to a Public Works
> Administration-style program that pays people to do these tasks.

Basic income naturally scales up with improvements in productivity driven by
automation and reduces labor market friction and enables adjustment to
changing conditions.

PWA beginners increasingly obviously pointless, wasteful soul-crushing make-
work with progressive automation and increases labor-market friction
obstructing adjustment.

The latter works as a short-term collapse in demand for a kind of work that is
expected to recover, the former is a long-term alternative to means-tested
else programs that mitigates adverse incentives and other inefficiencies.

Both are potentially useful but don't address remotely the same set of
problems.

~~~
keiferski
> PWA beginners increasingly obviously pointless, wasteful soul-crushing make-
> work with progressive automation and increases labor-market friction
> obstructing adjustment.

I don't know what this sentence is supposed to mean. Can you clarify?

------
FreeWater
Hello, my startup Free Essentials is going to solve universal income privately
by paying our members to consume our already free products and services. Since
our products will be free, all our revenue will come from advertising,
transaction fees, and data. Initially, we are going to establish ourselves
with water and then we will expand from there. Please take a look at the
commercial for our first product FreeWater and you'll get the big picture.
Best, Josh
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd748KfMnLY&t=7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd748KfMnLY&t=7s)

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api
One alternative would be an economy that spends surplus on large goals:
infrastructure mega-projects, big science, interplanetary colonization,
technological moon shots, etc. That would "soak up" a lot of employment,
especially at the top, and have effects throughout the entire economy.

A lot of people find that distasteful because it implies a degree of
authoritarianism beyond what basic income would require.

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dasmoth
Some would argue that Job Guarantees could perform a similar function.
Personally find them a rather depressing idea, but you’ll find plenty of
arguments for and against.

~~~
BjoernKW
Guaranteeing work or rather forcing someone to do work even if it doesn't
provide any value or serve any purpose while at the same time you could
provide them with a basic income for no work at all seems downright cruel to
me.

Guaranteeing work ultimately boils down to work for work's sake and arguments
like "idle hands are the devil's workshop".

~~~
dasmoth
Agree 100% (hence my “rather depressing”). The advocates are definitely out
there, though.

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tonyedgecombe
In the UK we have a constrained housing supply, I'm pretty sure any basic
income would just inflate property prices and end up in the pockets of
landlords and the already wealthy.

I'd prefer a return to the sort of social housing we created post war, where
it wasn't just for the very needy but ordinary people in low paying jobs.

~~~
mrfusion
Or if a lot of people stopped working and lived on basic income it might drive
down the cost of housing to sell to those folks.

~~~
arkryal
No, it would be the exact opposite. If I know you have a guaranteed $200 a
week in your pocket, the floor for negotiations rises to that level, because
in a high-demand market, if you won't tap into that money to pay me more,
someone else will.

~~~
dllthomas
Except there's still competition. If renting becomes $200/wk more expensive,
then sharing a room, or living with family, or move out of the area (to
somewhere that still has BI but less constrained housing) becomes $200/wk more
appealing and that'll make the difference for some people. Rents would
probably rise, but not the full $200.

------
brador
There's the old Jubilee system (redistribution of land):
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_(biblical)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_\(biblical\))

------
arkryal
There have been ideas floated that use crypto-currency models. The advantage
of "programmable money" enables a few things which would not be possible with
conventional currency.

I'm not advocating this, but I've heard of several models for a merit-based
economy (which I reject as it's only really viable under authoritarianism),
but it illustrates a way in which this might work.

All individuals receive a fixed number of tokens daily. Everyone gets 100 for
example. However, you're taxed based on merit, as defined by attributes in
your wallet. If you have a bad driving record for example (comparable to
receiving many traffic tickets), what costs me 20 tokens might cost you 21.
You're penalized for misconduct at the point of sale. However someone who
volunteers with a charity for 10 hours a week might only pay 18 for the same
goods. The merchant/service provider is reimbursed the same, regardless of the
cost, as all excess token taxes are pooled and the difference is allocated
from that if the sale price falls under the base price. Merits and demerits
are fixed to be issued at a 1:1 ratio.

Another option would be to simply impose a luxury tax on non-essential goods,
and use that to finance essential goods. Less Universal Income, more Universal
Food Stamps... You might pay 25% more for that new car, but you can always
walk into a store and pick up a bag of food staples or simple pharmaceuticals.
They key here is that's it's not just for the poor or disabled, and everyone
pays the luxury tax. However, naturally those with more disposable income will
likely spend more and thus pay more of the tax. This works in local economies
(a small town for example), but doesn't scale up with population very well
because locality plays a huge role in costs. If kept local however, there's no
cost advantage to centralized administration, and it could end up costing
everyone significantly more to run variants of the same programs on the local
level. And then you might just make your luxury purchases two towns over (or
online) where their tax is lower, lol. This system has been used in the past,
but global economics in place today negate the efficacy of this model.

Another idea eschews the money aspect entirely and instead reduces the
standard work week, freeing people up to pursue supplemental employment if
they choose, start a side business, etc. This actually has more practical
implications. Studies have shown in most office work, companies are
effectively only getting 28 hours of work out of people in a 40 hour work
week, and less in industrial jobs. Reducing the work week to 30 hours (at the
same net salary) made no negative impact on productivity. Companies got the
same amount of measurable work, for the same cost, but gave the employee more
free time. Going from 40 hours to 30 potentially creates 25% more jobs if you
need 24/7 coverage, but also increases the cost to the employer. However, with
25% more jobs available, you can get a part time job to work a full 40 hours
(or more) if you want, ideally in another industry. Then if the industry
you're in takes a dive, there's some resilience to layoffs. You already have
other employment and skills in another field. The idea is rather than give
people a basic income, less money could be used to provide tax exemptions to
companies who adopted this model to offset their increased costs of hiring.
You take less from the company, but that is more than offset by the value
generated by the increase in employment and tax revenues generated from that
productivity. The problem here is with skilled professions that are in high
demand. For example, you can't do this with ER doctors, we don't have enough
of them as it is. Not all professions and industries benefit equally. But this
isn't without precedent, before the establishment of the 40 hour work week,
most people were working 80-90 hours. It's doable and there are advantages,
but it's not universal.To be implemented, it must be voluntary, not
compulsory, but with changes made to the law to extend things like health
benefit eligibility to people working under 40 hours. Then it can be slowly
adopted naturally by those who benefit the most from it, and their experience
and improvements in implementation can inform industries who may want to adopt
it but will have less margin for error.

Keep in mind, universal basic income is already available to everyone. They're
called "dividends". You pay into an investment and receive a portion of the
profits at fixed intervals for assuming a portion of the risk. This is
superior to a UBI, because you have to opt-in, contribute as much or as little
as you want, and you get control over how the money is managed. People get
butt-hurt when you say this, and counter with the same statement:

"Not everyone is an investor, many will lose the money, so it's not
universal".

But that's true of a UBI too. Some people would take the money and invest it
to grow their wealth, some people will buy food and housing to subsist on it,
and some people will piss it away on weed and video games. Those are all valid
choices, but they have consequences in regard to the financial prosperity of
the individual.

There are plenty of good articles about unconventional economics here:
[https://countermarkets.com](https://countermarkets.com)

