
Guaranteed Minimum Agriculture: Why Basic Jobs Might Fare Better Than UBI - simonsarris
https://medium.com/p/guaranteed-minimum-agriculture-f93a5aa38c97
======
bryanlarsen
You're essentially paying people to dig holes and fill them back in again.
Modern agriculture is a highly skilled job done with millions of dollars of
capital equipment. Unskilled laborers are more hindrance than help, and will
be sent off to the "back 40" to indulge in mindless busywork.

And you expect people to get "Social responsibility, sense of purpose,
community, meaningful ways to spend their time" from that?

Meaningless jobs invariably turn into that special sort of hell you get when
your ability to do politics and to step on the guys below you are much more
important than any actual skill or ability.

~~~
nopinsight
How about necessary and meaningful jobs, like taking care of the elderly who
do need help in their household, or building accommodations for and helping
the homeless?

The number of elders will only increase in most of the world over the next few
decades and no automation could replace the human touch, or even physical
dexterity, in the near term. Granted the people performing the job would need
training and perhaps some supervision from professionals, but much of the work
requires the skills like empathy and physical agility that most humans are
endowed with (despite being left dormant from lack of practice by some).

The same sorts of skills are needed as part of a program that would be useful
for mitigating the homeless problem as well.

~~~
quantumofmalice
_> How about necessary and meaningful jobs, like taking care of the elderly
who do need help in their household, or building accommodations for and
helping the homeless?_

I would prefer that families provide these services (and, therefore, the state
focus on the formation of strong families). The market is too brutal for most
of this work and the state, in addition to general incompetence, lacks the
moral authority to do so, especially when hard decisions must be made (e.g.
when homelessness is driven by mental illness.)

Pay a stable, living wage to build strong families, allowing one person to
stay at home and provide for the domestic economy in a sphere they have
natural authority in.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
_I would prefer that families provide these services (and, therefore, the
state focus on the formation of strong families)._ So, under your plan, I
should dread getting old.

I have no children. I have never wanted them, and it is a relief that I
shouldn't have any (medical wise). Besides, it'd be risky at my age anyway. I
have a spouse, but otherwise have no family on this side of the Atlantic. My
father died, my mother is getting older, and my siblings both have families
that include children. I'm supposed to burden my family with my care? I'm not
sure immigration would let them come over here and if I go there, I have no
health coverage. Sure, my spouse would take care of me. But at what cost? Quit
his job and actually make less money, right when medical expenses go up? What
if he's already died or disabled? Well... I'm screwed.

I'll add this: I did a lot of care for my ex. It was mental illness, but
still. And I felt freaking trapped, and it took longer to leave. My
grandmother married a man who had a stroke a year later. He became abusive,
but she was scared to leave due to getting in trouble for abandonment (this
was in the late 90's). She was stuck for a while. Your plan does nothing to
help the folks that are in bad situations. Sure, you might want strong
families, but the reality is that not every family is going to be that way.

 _The market is too brutal for most of this work and the state, in addition to
general incompetence, lacks the moral authority to do so, especially when hard
decisions must be made (e.g. when homelessness is driven by mental illness.)_

Sorry you live in such a country, and glad I no longer do. The country I live
in tries to do these things for folks, provides healthcare and elder care. It
isn't perfect or anything, but they are doing more than the states did and
they are trying to improve things slowly. The state doesn't have to be like
that, and you can change it. Vote for different people. And if they don't do
the stuff, vote them out of office.

------
gaius
What happens if you don’t show up to your UBJ? Do you starve... or do you
get... UBI anyway?

The point of the U in UBI is that you can discard the expensive bureaucracy.
The article proposes keeping it as well as UBJs! Literally missing the entire
point. But providing lots more jobs for bureaucrats to administer both...

~~~
lr4444lr
There's an argument made by some psychologists that human satisfaction from
earning a wage rather confers irreplaceable benefits and would result in
better outcomes of self-sufficiency over living on handouts at an even higher
monetary value. I'm not saying your point isn't valid, or that I even disagree
with it, but the article does raise this issue, and claims there is data to
back it up.

~~~
philipkglass
I've often seen that argument in articles about UBI, but the supporting
examples are usually unconvincing. If "people suffer from lack of work, not
lack of money," why are the examples offered e.g. communities full of
impoverished people subsisting on disability, not luxury retirement
communities? Surely the residents of the latter are deprived of weeding a
field all day with hand tools, too. If not-having a boss directing you to
perform tasks is what's ailing the unemployed, and money is secondary, then
Jim Moneybags should be roughly as bad off as Joe Welfare, so long as neither
Jim nor Joe go to work each weekday.

~~~
snowwrestler
I don't think it's true that "people suffer from lack of work, not lack of
money."

I do think it's true that "people suffer from lack of work AND lack of money."
That is, if you just give people enough money to survive, and nothing to do,
they still suffer.

It's not really valid to compare the experiences of old retired people and
working age people (or younger). Age is a major complicating factor. And, at
least in the U.S., we already give money to old people; it's called Social
Security and Medicare.

The question is, what do we do with 22 year olds who can't find work? What
will the rest of their life be like if they go on the equivalent of Social
Security and Medicare at 22? Anecdotally I think we all have a sense of the
potential for problems when young people are too idle.

------
notahacker
There might be a point to "basic jobs" involving people signing on for
community service type things which are (i) usually chronically underfunded or
entirely voluntary and (ii) often in areas where automation _can 't_ eliminate
the need for humans even if it does in other areas. Agriculture, which hasn't
really required large numbers of workers in the West for over a century now,
is a strange choice of "basic job" when you've got millions of old people
suffering from lack of human contact, museums, arts centres and libraries on
the verge of closure and no shortage of proper registered charities that could
use some _sort of_ volunteered time. Latter sectors probably also involve more
in the way of personal development and satisfaction as unskilled, untrained
casual work for subsistence income goes.

------
jacknews
I prefer "Guaranteed basic equity" \- everyone should own shares in the
overall economy, particularly wrt. land and other natural resources and
monopolies, and which pay a UBI-like dividend.

"Fake jobs" have been tried before, and usually end up costing more than the
benefit they provide, and are often mandatory and stigmatized, so don't
necessarily improve the prospects of participants.

~~~
meri_dian
I create a company, I issue shares expecting to get paid in return, but now I
have to give them out for free. So I will not issue them.

I own shares that have already been issued. I've paid a certain price for
them. I will not give my shares to someone else for free, and I will not
tolerate more shares being issued for frre because that will devalue my own
shares.

This idea of freely distributed shared equity ownership is a nonstarter since
equity is only created when people pay for it.

~~~
chongli
_This idea of shared equity ownership is a nonstarter since equity is only
created when people pay for it_

No, this is equity in real things: land, timber, minerals, clean water, road
access, electricity etc. Your company wouldn't owe anybody any shares. Your
land value taxes, however, would be distributed to everybody equally. As would
the proceeds from your utility bills.

Ideally, you would pay back exactly your share of the net externalities your
company benefits from. That may be very hard to calculate in practice, though.

~~~
adventured
You can't distribute most of the recurring revenue systems in question. The
roads & infrastructure systems need that revenue to sustain themselves, to
operate, upgrade, etc. The land/property taxes are a critical revenue source
for most local governments.

This all just takes you right back to where we are today: you have to tax the
top 1/3 heavily to pay for the money you're taking away from utility companies
or infrastructure (and redistributing to everyone).

You could allocate shared ownership into currently non-utilized land, mineral
rights, spectrum, etc. That also simply takes revenue away from government
that would otherwise receive that money, which you then have to tax back away
from the population afterward to replace it.

------
tlb
This article seems to assume a particular archetype of unemployed person, a
sort of romanticized peasant who's good at working with dirt but unsuited to
industry. Most writings about UBI seem to fall into similar traps, where they
pick some particular type of people (struggling musicians, say) and design a
perfect system for them.

But there are lots of different types of people. The system has to work for
all of them. That's why you need large-scale studies, to figure out whom a
given system works for and whom it doesn't. Nobody can do this in a thought
experiment, because nobody can conjure up every type of person and predict how
they will interact with the system.

~~~
simonsarris
This is a good criticism, but this is also why I started with "piloting" and
the ability to try something else if it doesn't work as big plusses over UBI.

It's true some people are unsuited to industry, and some people are unsuited
to child care or elder care. These still are not getting done nearly at the
levels we'd like, though.

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LyndsySimon
I imagine this is probably much like what the initial propaganda for the Khmer
Rouge must have sounded like.

"Let's just send all these people to work on farms!" \- TFA literally says
that this would be an attempt to solve a lack of "Social responsibility, sense
of purpose, community, meaningful ways to spend their time"

------
codingdave
If anyone isn't familiar with the WPA (mentioned in the article), it is worth
reading about it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration)

------
nradov
It doesn't have to be agriculture. I support having the government act as an
employer of last resort for people who have exhausted their unemployment
benefits and can't find a job. But doing productive agricultural work requires
specific skills, there is no shortage of agricultural workers in most areas,
and there are few farms where most unemployed people actually live.

Instead of agriculture we can create part-time minimum wage jobs doing other
productive things like cleaning up litter and graffiti, trail maintenance,
coaching youth activities, etc. This will help to maintain basic employment
skills until they can find something better, and give them a stake in the
community.

------
firmgently
The thing about these ideas is they seem to presuppose starting from a blank
canvas as opposed to starting from the current system of corrupt governments
and corporate influence. Any implementations of Basic Jobs/Basic Income would
be as rotten as the foundations they're built on, it's not going to go all
rainbows and pixie-dust all of a sudden. Lobbying, self-interest, need of a
hierarchy to rise up in and look down from...

Apologies for my cynicism. Workfare in the UK hasn't been very fluffy.

[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jul/06/workfare-
sch...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jul/06/workfare-scheme-must-
end)

[http://www.boycottworkfare.org](http://www.boycottworkfare.org) "Workfare
provides free labour for businesses and charities, enforced by benefit
sanctions."

[http://www.solfed.org.uk/catalyst/the-great-workfare-
scandal](http://www.solfed.org.uk/catalyst/the-great-workfare-scandal) "What
boss would want to employ a worker they have to pay, when the government will
give them someone off the dole to do it for free? The aim of workfare is
simply to drive down wages.”

------
quantumofmalice
Distributism, protectionism on the local level to ensure widely distributed
ownership of capital by labor, advocates for this sort of thinking across the
entire economy:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism)

It's also worth noting that there is a narrative (as with most historical
narratives, difficult to prove or disprove) that the national socialists
created an economic miracle in Germany by guaranteeing pay for any and all
labor.

------
probablybroken
Is there a massive difference between this and having a large public sector? I
guess the guaranteed jobs would need to have low to zero skill requirements..

------
jpao79
Was actually watching this last night on Deep Winter Greenhouses:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRJUUPEKtsI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRJUUPEKtsI)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ6s0mwm2ec](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ6s0mwm2ec)

Some interesting findings. What happens if its just a matter of putting the
technology together to make local produce actually cost competitive for the
consumer, profitable for the producer and more sustainable and secure for
society.

The key is to focus on high value winter crops for high end restaurants (micro
greens, asian greens, arugula, beets etc.).

Some more links:

[https://www.extension.umn.edu/rsdp/statewide/deep-winter-
gre...](https://www.extension.umn.edu/rsdp/statewide/deep-winter-greenhouse/)

[https://www.extension.umn.edu/community/research/reports/doc...](https://www.extension.umn.edu/community/research/reports/docs/Deep-
Winter-greenhouse-enterprise-analysis.pdf)

------
alphonsegaston
How is this different from advocating for feudalism? The wealthy get to
continue with unchecked power and advantage, while the poor are now serfs?

~~~
simonsarris
This is identical to a person's "present day" options plus one additional
option: New jobs supported by the state.

How is adding one more option feudalism?

~~~
alphonsegaston
Because the modern American economy with its tenuousness and inequality is
already pretty close to feudalism? Without structurally changing anything,
you’re just compounding this problem.

You can get yourself thrown in prison and have guaranteed housing, healthcare,
and a job. That option doesn’t make the dynamics of power in the system any
less feudal.

------
jerkstate
My city is full of trash and graffiti and blight. I think urban renewal is
another huge opportunity for basic jobs.

------
reaperducer
China tried something similar in the 1950's. It sent all the people it
considered surplus out to farm. But they didn't know how to farm. Guess what
happened.

It's the reason parents until recently would tell their fussy kids, "Eat your
food, there are children starving in China."

------
debacle
Having the UBI conversation in the context of the US is frivolous. The US has
no populist or labor presence. We'd need 5-10 years of building that presence
before we could even begin to talk UBI, and even then there'd be a lot of
obstruction.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Having the UBI conversation in the context of the US is frivolous. The US
> has no populist or labor presence. We'd need 5-10 years of building that
> presence before we could even begin to talk UBI, and even then there'd be a
> lot of obstruction.

(1) You are strategically wrong, in that having policy goals (e.g., UBI) and
talking about them front and center has always been instrumental in _building_
labor/populist movements.

(2) You are factually wrong about the current context, in that the US has
substantially and political relevant populist factions (both the energization
of the one on the right and the alienation of the one on the left were key
factors in the 2016 election.)

~~~
s73ver_
There may be populist factions on both sides, but the one on the left is not
very powerful, and the one on the right gave rise to Trumpism, which very
clearly would not be in favor of this at all.

------
dfabulich
If somebody's going to do anything like this, I'd think it should be
"guaranteed minimum education." As long as you're in school and getting good
grades, you get a basic living stipend.

------
quadcore
_Paying people to create value_

You dont _just_ make people create value. Creating value is the hard part -
and the problem is, it becomes harder for humans than for machines.

------
yarrel
Workfare and "bullshit jobs" are not solutions.

------
blueyes
UBJ requires a huge bureaucracy that UBI does not. The real basic jobs will be
the people administering the program, rather than the poor who were initially
targeted.

------
debacle
Isn't this just a variant of the broken window fallacy?

~~~
simonsarris
It's a variant of protectionist policy. At least farm subsidies mimicking the
European way of doing things are.

> like Switzerland, where 55% of farmer income comes from the state

~~~
vidarh
Farm subsidies often have a national security origin.

Norwegian farming subsidies for example to date still is based on a principle
of food security that first gained widespread support in Norway as a result of
the British naval blockade of Denmark-Norway during the Napoleonic wars that
caused occasional famines.

The importance of this was driven home again during World War 2.

So protectionist, yes, but widespread support has largely boiled down to food
security rather than caring particularly much about farmers.

~~~
Aaargh20318
Except that security is total bullshit the way the economy works today. You
don't just need agriculture, you need every other industry that agriculture
depends on.

------
kvnnews
Government should have less power, not more. This is a terrible idea, just
like UBI always was.

