
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Universal Basic Income - greifswalder
https://futurism.com/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-universal-basic-income/
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anotherbrownguy
If automation will take over certain "jobs", then whatever is needed by humans
will be produced without anyone doing those "jobs" and people will have all
those things without paying for it for very cheap (because if everything is
automated, at some point there is nobody to pay to). What do they need this
"universal basic income" for?

A few hundred years ago, most people's job was agriculture related. Then,
humans discovered fossil fuels and industrial age came about taking away most
agricultural jobs. Did it mean that 5% farmers became rich and everyone else
needed some "basic income" to survive? Or did food become so cheap that more
people started dying of obesity than that of famine?

If all our current needs will be served by automation, we will be free of
these menial jobs and exchange something else for money. People are already
making money by:

\- Playing games live (twitch) \- Drawing a cartoon of someone which looks
like a penis ([https://www.fiverr.com/tampbomb/penisify-your-friends-and-
en...](https://www.fiverr.com/tampbomb/penisify-your-friends-and-enemies)) \-
Rubbing your genitals and streaming it live (chaturbate) \- Filming yourself
watching a video and uploading that (reaction videos on YouTube)

And this is just the beginning.

Besides, one can't eat money. Let's say we agree to give everyone in the world
a million dollars. Does it mean that the amount of food produced and exported
to South Sudan somehow magically increase? Or will money lose it's value and
everything else will remain mostly as it is?

Am I missing something? Is there any literature which addresses the obvious
problems and make reasonable arguments for universal basic income?

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RunningDroid
> If automation will take over certain "jobs", then whatever is needed by
> humans will be produced without anyone doing those "jobs" and people will
> have all those things without paying for it for very cheap (because if
> everything is automated, at some point there is nobody to pay to).

The flaw with this logic is it ignores greed on the part of the
CEO/shareholders/owners of the company that can now manufacture essential
goods for next to nothing and likely has enough money to successfully lobby
against any legislation against it (and possibly lobby for Mickey Mouse law,
patent edition)

~~~
anotherbrownguy
I see. So, if there will be these profitable companies which profit from
building and maintaining automation technologies, will they be so small that
anyone can start their own automation company or be so big that they will
require huge investments and go public?

In the first case, many people will be owners of such businesses and many
people will profit from it... in the second case, people will buy stock of
those companies and will profit from it. So, it seems like the money will be
distributed over many people, basically anyone who is willing to invest. So,
no universal basic income required.

However, that is not even the main problem of the idea of universal basic
income. The main problem is that governments don't have any money to give out
to anyone. Governments rely on people's money to operate. So, if people won't
have any jobs, they will pay no taxes and governments won't have any money to
operate, let alone give it back to people.

If they are going to tax businesses, people won't invest. Also, businesses
don't want to pay taxes, so they would rather spend the money in expanding
themselves than pay taxes on profits.

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jpao79
The issue with universal basic income is that it will basically cause serious
inflation in rental housing and consumer discretionary retail in first tier
cities (NYC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, etc.) as well as time
wasting online entertainment. It will be a massive windfall for owners of
these assets and be counter productive.

Instead of universal basic income, a more optimal approach would be to start
with:

\- Universal Basic Healthcare

\- Universal Basic Food Vouchers (based on median cost of food excluding first
tier cities)

\- Universal Basic Housing Vouchers (based on median rent excluding first tier
land constrained cities)

\- Universal Basic Continuing Online Education (i.e. something like Wikepedia,
Coursera)

Automation/Robotics/AI can and will drive the prices down for all of the above
(with universal healthcare and housing in a first tier land constrained cities
being the exceptions).

SamA, YC, Amazon, Silicon Valley and Wall Street can aggressively compete to
solve these societal problems with maximum efficiency and distribution
capability.

New universal services can be added as Automation/AI/Robotics drives costs
down.

