
Universal Basic Income and the threat of tyranny - empath75
http://quillette.com/2017/10/09/universal-basic-income-threat-tyranny/
======
clavalle
UBI isn't meant to be a full replacement for an individual's economic
activity. It is /basic/, which is to say, it will cover the basic necessities.

The whole article is based on the assumption that once basic necessities are
covered, huge numbers of people are going to call it a day and cease
economically profitable activity.

I think the opposite will happen: once people have the basics taken care of
they will become more economically active. They will take risks they couldn't
before because of the overhanging risk of complete destitution. They will
negotiate for better wages because everyone will know they have a perfectly
viable alternative. They will invest time in themselves because they won't
have to worry about how they will live if they don't have a job while they
study or launch a business.

Further, there will be more money sloshing around and creating broad-based
demand for goods and services that these self-same people can try to capture
through their own industriousness.

I strongly believe that we have as many on welfare right now because we have a
huge sector of our population that have the following choice: live in poverty
on welfare with lots of free time or live in poverty while working your ass
off treading water. And the reason they remain in poverty is that their
employers know that there isn't a great alternative for those marginal
employees so they pay just enough to keep their employees afloat but not
enough that they can get ahead. UBI or negative income tax (my personal
preference) would deeply change this calculus. People could spend their time
and energy to truly better their situation rather than merely not lose
everything.

We're not going to turn into a banana republic where only the economically
elite and the political class keep each other happy and everyone else are kept
just happy enough to avoid revolution. There isn't a lot of democratizing of
economic power in those regimes.

~~~
RestlessMind
> The whole article is based on the assumption that once basic necessities are
> covered, huge numbers of people are going to call it a day and cease
> economically profitable activity. I think the opposite will happen...

I would assume the burden of proof to be on you (and supporters of UBI) to
prove that opposite will happen and people won't just slack off once their
basic necessities are covered.

~~~
dmwallin
It's already extremely well established that people will work far beyond what
they need to maintain basic necessities. There are all sorts of strong
motivations for humans outside of basic survival. In addition if you look at
groups with steady income streams and no perverse incentives (ex. retirees,
trust funders) the vast majority remains productive in some capacity. If you
are making the claim that UBI would so drastically change human behavior as to
invalidate all this observed behavior than the burden of proof should be on
you.

~~~
RestlessMind
Burden of proof belongs to those who want to change the system. So if you want
to convince fellow citizens to vote for UBI, you will have to convince them
that people won't slack off once on UBI.

So again, can you please provide objective evidence for your assertions? Eg.
"vast majority remains productive in some capacity." \- I have no idea whether
its true or not. Why should I trust you when you haven't provided any data to
support that claim?

~~~
smithsmith
> Burden of proof belongs to those who want to change the system.

This is only true if the existing system does not keep on worsening. As the
technology progresses human working hours has become more and more. How is
this even fair when the whole point of technology is to make human life
easier. So the Burden is on the people who want the current system not to
change.

~~~
imartin2k
"Burden of proof belongs to those who want to change the system. "

What if it is impossible to bring the proof before the change has been tried?
There is essentially no test scenario which can replicate, accurately simulate
and predict the behaviour of people when millions of them suddenly receive a
UBI.

At least if one agrees with the claim I just made, then following your logic,
the change could never happen, for the simple reason as advanced proof of the
effects is impossible to provide. So you would simply never find out if the
proposed system would be better or worse than the current one.

Having said that, I do think the article makes a point worth considering.

~~~
RestlessMind
> At least if one agrees with the claim I just made, then following your
> logic, the change could never happen...

... _big changes_ could never happen... FTFY!

Which is what we are seeing: non-trivial health care changes happened in 2010
after 1965 (45 year gap), needed massive majorities in Congress and incurred
huge political backlash. i.e. a smaller step was possible only after all the
stars perfectly aligned.

------
2noame
According to the logic used in this, Alaska is an autocratic regime. But when
I look at Alaska, I see a state with the lowest poverty, lowest inequality,
and highest well-being of almost all 50 states. I also see a population who
comes out to vote, especially when anything dividend related is voted on.

It's stuff like this that really annoys me, and I feel gives academics a bad
name. It's coming up with what-ifs and not applying any applicable evidence to
it. Take this for another example:

> "Will the working minority agree to support non-workers with ten or twenty
> children per family? Will that be sustainable?"

Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone really honestly think that there's a
high percentage of women out there wanting to give birth 10 to 20 times? Is
that theoretically possible? Sure, but that doesn't make it in any way
probable. In fact the evidence we have again points in the opposite direction.

I really don't see any value in writing shit like this. Why not next write
something about the concerns of universal health care, and how people might
use it to drink so much they just replace liver after liver? Or maybe people
will feel they could then rob banks because if they got shot, they'd have free
health care. Are these things theoretically possible? Yes. But that doesn't
make them not stupid to express.

Look, in general, democracies all over the world, in addition to UBI, need to
be strengthened through dropping ideas like first-past-the-post, and adopting
ideas like single-transferable-vote that feature more proportional
representation and lack spoiler effects.

With that said, I only see those changes as more possible through UBI because
people with their basic needs met have more time and mental space to engage in
being more informed and more involved as citizens.

Look at how involved seniors are and how much power they have. Government
answers to them. It's not the other way around. They don't lose the right to
vote because they are no longer part of the labor market. Instead they vote in
even greater numbers. And guess what happens when that happens? You get
represented.

Articles like this are written by those who don't bother to look at the
evidence around them and instead choose to use imaginary thinking in the hopes
of influencing others.

Basic income is freedom FROM tyranny, not the threat of it.

~~~
usrusr
> Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone really honestly think that there's a
> high percentage of women out there wanting to give birth 10 to 20 times?

The numbers are overblown, but I see this as a real issue with utopian
interpretations of UBI. I.e. those where, to quote the article, proponents
expect "a majority of non-workers to live off the fruits of the labour of a
small minority", as opposed to a more realistic UBI where the working poor use
that free money to maybe cut one or two of their multiple jobs from their
tight schedule.

But in the "utopian" version, a huge group would be left without anything to
strive for. If the payout would be too generous, adding an entry level work
income would not make a noticeable difference. When people are depraved of all
other kinds of achievement, they are likely to use breeding as a substitute.
If you can't climb or defend any ranks, you can still move up one level by
spawning "subordinates". Instant status.

I feel bad just for thinking thoughts that cynical, but I can't help expecting
that kind of outcome if it isn't openly addressed. A "nonutopian UBI" that
just creates a smooth, regulation-free ramp (I almost want to say
"interpolation") between welfare and full self-support would leave the cynic
in me much more at ease.

(Edited: my writing is terrible)

~~~
aaroninsf
Humans will strive to rise to the top in any game we choose to play together.

Competitiveness like this does not require that people are competing for basic
needs.

Free people from the Puritan conceit that the majority should struggle and
suffer, and observe what happens.

Independent of how you feel about it in other respects, Burning Man offers a
fine large scale experimental environment into which observe the social
organization that occurs in circumstances of plenty rather than scarcity.
(Because it operates on a strictly enforced gift economy. Not barter. Not
sale. Never mind people who don't play by the rules for now; as a 25 year
attendee I have seen first hand the reality behind the cant.)

Humans will "strive" plenty whether they are fed or not. There are more needs
than the ones we can and should provide for all (housing, food, education).

Humans will always find a way to self segregate and award status, whether it's
in terms of karma or dollars.

At a social level, dollars too are a consensual fiction and useful primarily
as a crude proxy for status and success and desirability. (Not talking about
utility, talking about social status.)

~~~
usrusr
Thought experiment: lock people up in a permanent Burning Man and measure the
time it takes until it resembles a refugee camp more than the Burning Man of a
handful of days per year. I do not share your optimism that it would last, and
that's already factoring in the very self-selected group of Burning Man
participants. Now imagine the same with a random selection of those who don't
make up the "working caste" of utopian-UBI. (I do not think any of this would
apply to a "regulation free interpolated unemployment benefit" kind of UBI)

~~~
aaroninsf
I don't think BM itself would last, for sure; the scale of the vent is already
greater than many people can hold up to.

That said, I think the gift economy element itself can be separated from all
the rest and would stand up.

Maybe the TLDR for my optimism is,

Give humans a competition they can take seriously, e.g. because the social
status accrued wins real rewards of various kinds–and we will be happy
productive and competitive.

The part of the UBI skepticism I am eager to see tested pragmatically is that
this competition must necessarily be for "that amount of money needed to lead
a dignified healthy productive life worth living."

IMO the value proposition of the UBI is that we can do have it both ways. Free
people from _fear_ first and foremost; then give them a motivation as well.

Maybe another way to put this is: keep the carrot, remove the stick. We've
learned from evolutions in parenting that sparing the rod leads to better
emotionally adjusted [and productive] kids.

------
mikeash
I don't buy it. In a democracy, the government cares about votes, not people
refusing to pay their taxes. The government has a lot of ways to compel you to
pay taxes, but not your vote.

The massive political power of retirees in the US seems like a perfect
example. They aren't very productive economically and they receive lots of
benefits from the government, but they wield political power out of proportion
to their numbers, and politicians won't dare cross them.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I don't believe you understand what he's saying.

His point, as I understand it, is if you participate economically in a social
structure, your vote represents economic activity in that structure. So if the
nation was full of fast-food workers, the democratic structure that would come
out of it would be something that favored fast-food workers and took their
economic needs into account. In your example of retired people, a world full
of retired people would create a governmental structure that understood and
favored the economic activity of retired folks, which is basic consumption.

In a world where most people simply consume, such as those retired people,
either you wouldn't get participation at all or you'd get participation that
was structured economically around what retired folks do. In either case, it's
a tyrannical and dysfunctional government. The only way to "fix" it is to have
a de facto oligarchy where a small number of rich people control everything
and deliver it to the masses. And that's as bad or worse than the other
scenarios.

~~~
mikeash
You're right, I don't understand it. Why does a government structured around
the economic activity of its voters suddenly become tyrannical and
dysfunctional when when most of them are no longer productive?

~~~
Kadin
> Why does a government structured around the economic activity of its voters
> suddenly become tyrannical and dysfunctional when when most of them are no
> longer productive?

Because those people wield the power in the relationship, by virtue of the
fact that they can stop working and disrupt the system economically.

This is, I believe, the author's point: political power follows economic
power, over time. The two can diverge temporarily, but over the long run this
tends not to be stable, or has to be maintained by force with much attendant
unpleasantness.

Historically, I think this checks out. The combination of market(ish)
economies and representative(ish) democracy that exist in most Western states
evolved alongside the increased economic power of industrial workers, starting
in the 18th century. Marxist theory takes the same ideas and runs with them
further, hypothesizing inevitable conflict when worker-labor is alienated from
the economic gains it produces. Neither of these two systems, which basically
dominated the 20th century, would have emerged under conditions of agrarian
peasantry. (And in the early Soviet Union, which basically blundered into
Communism by mistake -- Marx had always thought it would emerge in more-
industrialized Germany first! -- the peasantry was largely either forcibly
transitioned into industrial laborers or exterminated, since they had no place
in that political-economic system.)

But even in a democratic context, a "vote" is fundamentally meaningless; it is
at best merely a suggestion. Underlying the idea of democracy is always the
question of what the citizenry will do if the government decides to ignore the
vote. Governments that depend on economic activity which citizens can disrupt
through simple nonparticipation have a vested interest in keeping those same
people happy and productive. Governments that only need to worry about armed
insurrection can employ more draconian methods.

~~~
mikeash
Historically, modern representative democracy, with something vaguely close to
universal suffrage, has only been around for 100 years or so. You can look
back farther and draw the conclusion that increasing economic participation
results in increased democracy as you describe with the industrial revolution,
but that doesn't imply that you're bound to reverse course if economic
participation declines.

------
skrebbel
I love articles like these.

That said, I think they miss a core point: there is very little precedent of
functional democracies, which have been functional democracies for more than a
few decades, turning into autocracies [0]. In the grand scheme of things
decent democracies are a pretty new idea and we simply lack the data.

The author's list of awful fuel-exporting countries has a nice exception in
it: Norway. Apart from a WWII hiccup, Norway was pretty much a functional
democracy for a long time when they started exporting oil in the sixties. And
they did not turn into an autocracy, even though Norway's government does not
need its people to stay financed.

I feel like this single case undermines the author's entire argument. I'm
willing to buy that an autocracy turning to universal basic income won't make
it any less autocratic. But a functioning democracy (for a sufficiently great
value of "functioning") has no incentive to turn into an autocracy merely
because its median citizen increasingly depends on the government. That needs
a much stronger argument and I haven't read it in the article.

[0] Some people might point to Turkey, Hungary and the US right now, but a)
those stories haven't played out yet and b) none of those countries fit the
author's bill.

------
platz
Instead of basic income, which has the danger of creating a tribal, polarizing
division between working and non-working people, economist richard d wolff
suggested (since he is an avowed socalist, amusingly, appearing in a Fox
Business interview) that instead of basic income, we put everyone to work,
while at the same time reducing everyone's hours. Work, but work less (adjust
according to demand as needed, adjust compensation as necessary).

~~~
hammock
That's pretty much communism. Everyone forced to work and compensated
according to a centrally planned ("adjusted") economy.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" \- Karl
Marx

~~~
DonaldFisk
Under communism, you pretend to work and the Government pretends to pay you.

------
dontreact
So which way is it? Non-workers will be disenfranchised politically, or
tyrannously use democracy to assert their power over people who do work?

The fact that even in this article both sides are argued points to the fact
that there will be some counteracting forces that will stabilize things for at
least a while if basic income is implemented. I think that getting concerned
about what will happen 10 steps down the line when things could really go
either way is a type of premature optimization.

I believe it's pretty clear that people _with_ money will have that power, but
at some point that money will have to make its way into the hands of more
citizens in order to avoid societal collapse. Then when political power needs
rebalancing, there will still be a massive amount of people fighting for
political power if things go too far one way, and people with a massive amount
of wealth to counterbalance them.

------
jotjotzzz
In my opinion, UBI should be earned not freely given away. Perhaps it is
earned through education coupled with community service. This ensures that
those who are rewarded UBI know that they are expected to produce something of
value (to give back) to society and their communities. In return, we are given
valuable education (it could include entrepreneurship, computer
science/programming, cooking, personal finance, communication -- stuff that
should be taught in schools!). In the end, UBI serves as a reward for
completing this rites of passage to become part of society through education
to better ourselves for our communities.

If given freely -- based on our current society where the poor gets the lowest
amount of education -- it will help in some cases, in most it will not. It is
very hard to wean yourself of a mindset without education.

~~~
daemonk
Isn't that just really standard employment? Or maybe similar to an academic
tenure position?

I think UBI is meant to be "universal", with no prerequisites.

~~~
jotjotzzz
Something freely given becomes less valuable versus something given through
being earned. It is really not a standard employment, because you have no
employer except perhaps your community or city who pays you the UBI. But being
paid means you give something first. What you give is contributing to society,
your tribe.

This is similar to the notion of tribes. If you want to be part of the tribe,
you better contribute, by hunting for food or making something for the tribe.

~~~
mattnewton
One of the key efficiencies that UBI is supposed to bring over welfare is in
cutting out the bureaucracy of determining who is worthy.

------
DanielBMarkham
Interesting observation. Societies where large numbers of people participate
economically in the structure of government have lots of freedoms. Societies
in which small numbers of people participate economically in the structure of
government have fewer freedoms. UBI, by definition, takes more and more people
out of active participation and makes them just consumers of the economic
"product" of government.

 _...And this is the real danger of a universal basic income – it makes the
citizens unnecessary to the government...._

The conclusion, if I understand the author, is that UBI postulates that a few
really rich and successful people need to worry about the money and how to get
it to the masses. The masses are there for consumption, to find their true
meaning in life, and so on. Not to create economic value for others, which is
a critical part of a healthy state.

Beats me. I'm looking forward to more data from the experiments YC and others
have going. I'm also looking to narrow down exactly what UBI is. So far it
looks far more like a slogan to me than an actual policy. The experiments
should help with that.

~~~
jjawssd
UBI is a technique the state can use to entrench its influence by encouraging
the people to become increasingly dependent on the government for basic needs.

------
forkLding
I've seen this happen in Bahrain in the past, wherein the government relies
heavily on selling oil and uses the profits to subsidize living costs in
Bahrain, making Bahrain bearable so that people don't complain/protest all the
time. I can see the UBI argument of tyranny.

However, I raise another point, wouldn't then these people who are made
jobless due to technology, etc. be again powerless and unable to stop tyranny
or autocracy in a without-UBI scenario yet in a much similar strain of a with-
UBI world, isn't tyranny still inevitable because those that need UBI are
powerless and hold no sway on opinions or even angry and gain enmity against
those who hold power such as in the Tea Party and Alt-right movement?

(Recently, however with oil prices falling, subsidization isn't happening as
much and Arab Spring has brought on protests and govt. repression)

~~~
Kadin
> However, I raise another point, wouldn't then these people who are made
> jobless due to technology, etc. be again powerless and unable to stop
> tyranny or autocracy in a without-UBI scenario [...]

I think this is a pretty good point. It's possible that UBI basically just
delays the inevitable, if you believe that there really is a possible future
in which most people are just economically irrelevant due to mechanization,
etc. With UBI, you get a few more years before the small number of people at
the levers of power harden their attitudes enough to stop the handouts;
without UBI you just starve immediately. Either way, it doesn't look good.

Personally I don't think that the premise, of large-scale, structural
unemployment due to automation, is really likely -- I think that "work" can
expand to fill the available labor pool, with some amount of incentivizing,
and a large pool of unemployed workers is threatening enough to most
governments that they'll pursue economic policies to employ people, even if
it's WPA-type projects, rather than endue the destabilization of having them
just sit around.

As various others have pointed out, if you look at "work" today, it would be
largely unrecognizable to someone from the mid-19th century. The amount of
modern labor necessary to live a reasonable lifestyle by mid-19th century
standards is quite low (it's hard to do this on an individual basis, but if
you were to take a bunch of people and modern technology, particularly
agricultural machines, but reduce expectations for standards of living to that
of the 19th century, you end up with a whole lot of spare time). But yet few
people do this. In fact the only people I know of living 19th century
lifestyles by choice are people who actively reject modern labor-saving
technology (e.g. Amish and other orthodox Mennonite traditions).

Someone from that era might justifiably question why people are still working
40 hours per week, rather than just working, say, 10, and adjusting their
needs downwards accordingly. It's a fair question (and there are a lot of
barriers to doing it, e.g. provisioning of health insurance). I do know a few
people who have done that, in fact, and they seem to like it. But I have
doubts that it will ever be an especially popular choice.

So my guess is that while automation will be disruptive, and if not managed
correctly it may result in some (perhaps many) people finding that what
they've spent a lifetime training themselves to do is no longer necessary --
an outcome that I think government should work to avoid, the economy will
figure out ways to use the surplus human capacity freed up by automation as it
always has.

There are lots of automation-resistant fields where people can essentially pay
each other for services, sloshing money around and keeping everyone employed,
even as a smaller and smaller fraction of people actually work in "primary
industry", extracting resources from the environment or growing food. That's a
transition that's ongoing already in many developed countries, and it doesn't
seem grossly unsustainable except where it runs up against opportunities for
arbitrage against less-developed economies at the expense of both sets of
workers.

~~~
forkLding
I like your response, however I refrain from future arguments because I'm
never right and probably the other side is neither. I guess this is more of a
circumstantial issue, maybe in the future there is no radical change of
employment or maybe UBI gets implemented for a totally other reason.

------
at-fates-hands
The major issue with basic income is what to do with all the government
programs that provide safety nets for low income folks.

Will a basic income supplant those programs or be another addition to those
programs?

~~~
zlynx
The only way universal basic income even approaches making sense is if it
replaces _everything_ else. No housing benefits, education benefits, welfare,
unemployment or social security. Dump it all.

Yes, instead of living in large urban centers, unemployed poor people would
have to move to smaller places with low costs of living. This is a good thing,
really.

And without price supports through unlimited government loans, schools will
have to become cheaper. Those associate professors of English lit who are so
abused by the current system can live on BI plus cheap tuition in addition to
online classes.

But of course it's all politics and I'm sure it will be impossible to pass a
reasonable, cost neutral plan. Instead people will find ways to pile on the
bureaucracy until it is less annoying to just go to work and get paid than it
is to fill out all of the BI paperwork and file it with six different
agencies.

The easy idea of just creating a virtual bank account at birth linked to a SS
number or equivalent is so simple it's just a non-starter. And I've tried to
convince people that means-testing and such is a waste of money and time but
no, plenty of people see BI as welfare and want drug testing and means testing
for it. Bah! Give Bill Gates his $20K per year. Who cares if he doesn't need
it!?

~~~
usrusr
I'd say "almost everything", since UBI would never pay for serious disability
care and the like. But there should be heavy, even _unfair_ consequences for
relying on that kind of extra support, so that people self-select instead of
being admitted or rejected by some authority. Replacing some or all of the UBI
stipend with goods and services might be a way. I think that a similar
programme could also be necessary for people who can absolutely not trust
themselves with money, and strong rules against abusing future UBI as
collateral in loans (as in "if you lend to a non-earner you are out of luck",
not as in "if you promise someone your future UBI you not only owe them, but
also a hefty fine to the state").

------
thriftwy
We already have tyranny without any income :(

------
fallingfrog
This author makes some good points. But I think he's making a crucial mistake.

He posits that political power comes from the ability to withhold something;
in this case work. That seems correct to me. But, I think the mistake is in
assuming that the majority of people today even in countries like the US do
have that power. If you are working a job that doesn't require credentials or
a long period of training or education, then you don't really don't have
anything to threaten the powers that be with, aside from a massive general
strike, which has not happened in a long time. So the danger scenario he
posits is really already here, for most people.

UBI wouldn't really change that, _except_ inasmuch as it would make it
plausible for working people to go on strike much more painlessly, which would
really increase their bargaining power, not decrease it.

And that's why we'll never get it.

------
Dirlewanger
Slightly off-topic: only read part of the article, but just want to say thank
to the OP for turning me onto the website. I've already read several of their
other articles and am pleasantly surprised at the balance and clarity with
which the authors approach the issues. These kinds of publications are an
extreme rarity, especially nowadays.

------
pagutierrezn
This has nothing to do with UBI. Fewer and fewer people will be necessary to
cover everybody's needs regardless of the existence of a UBI. The Future here
presented could happen anyway without a basic income.

But what will we do with billions of people without any income?

------
dnautics
> And this is the real danger of a universal basic income – it makes the
> citizens unnecessary to the government.

I'd be more worried that a UBI makes citizens unnecessary _to each other_.

------
otakucode
Similar to the ethical and philosophical basis of things like universal health
care, a universal basic income could not work if done partially. If you adopt
universal health care without enshrining in your society the utter importance
of taking care of everyone because of their fundamental value as human beings
absent all other factors - the outcome will be tyranny. If there is an ability
for someone to say 'oh, but perhaps we shouldn't take care of person X because
they made bad choices and it would save us money to do so' then you will
rapidly see the definition of various health-related regulations created with
the goal of reducing the cost burden of health care.

While one might be tempted to say 'that would just result in people living
healthier lives', that would be a very superficial and unstudied evaluation.
Behavior modification on a society-wide scale like that is radically
dangerous. It might actually be the most dangerous thing in history, I'm not
sure. I'd need to run some numbers, but I think there is a good chance that
the unintended consequences of well-intentioned behavior modification like
that has killed more than all wars combined.

Basic income is an interesting idea, but requires social support. It cannot
succeed in a society which has been accustomed to seeing other people
suffering less than themselves as the worst thing possible. This is a
necessary legacy of the Protestant Work Ethic which dictates that a persons
virtue is measured by the degree of suffering they endure for the benefit "of
society" (in truth only for employers, not society at large). In that mindset,
asking for reward is itself immoral and can only reduce a persons virtue.
Either to receive or provide such rewards is an act of immorality, and though
many can not actually recognize or admit it, this underlies how they see the
world. The poor deserve their lot because they contribute little. The rich
must be moral because they are rich (this is predicated on a fantastical
delusion that riches are awarded only when a person has benefitted many). This
is why so many people hate punitive damage judgements. They're not concerned
with the well-being of the corporation being fined tens or hundreds of
millions of dollars for acting harmfully. They are obsessed, to the point of
willful self-destruction, with ensuring that some individual does not get a
"payday" legal settlement.

Without a philosophical backing that justifies a universal basic income, it
would continuously be under threat, with people from all sides attempting to
reduce the income to the point that few could survive on it alone, attempting
to push people to 'be productive' in a world that doesn't need productive
people. It's not a situation you can simply ignore and hope people wake up to.
It has to be discussed and justified and explained. Why should society at
large provide for those who do not produce material products? At what level
should they be supported? Should drug addicts and criminals be supported? When
someone feels slighted that someone who has not suffered as much as they gets
the same amount, how will you answer them?

------
geofft
This would be a much better argument if it had data and citations instead of
just references to things that of course everybody knows (and, in practice,
not everybody knows).

Here are a couple of my objections, that could be answered by data or
references to serious studies:

> _In the suggested world of universal basic income, what puts pressure on the
> government to maintain democracy and political rights? Will they be afraid
> of a popular uprising? The people have nothing to threaten them with. A
> person who does not pay taxes cannot threaten to stop paying them. Violent
> revolution? History shows that governments tend to be significantly better
> than common people in using violence._

Who puts pressure on the government _now_ to maintain democracy and political
rights? For example, are the governments of the US or Australia really feeling
today that if they fail to allow gay couples to marry, the people might stop
paying taxes or engage in violence?

There is, certainly, a mechanism whereby the sentiment of the people puts
pressure on democratic and even sorta-democratic governments. But the
assumption that that mechanism is tax is a huge and undefended one, and seems
pretty central to the argument.

> _It has often been taken for granted that as societies advance, fertility
> drops, but this has only been happening for a short time and in societies
> where having children requires hard work to provide for them._

Isn't the main factor here the availability of birth control (which depends on
scientific advancement/knowledge and industrial practice in mass manufacture
of birth control, not on hard work)? I'm surprised not to see birth control
mentioned at all in this argument. The strawman pleasure-seekers would be
motivated to spend their free time figuring out better forms of birth control,
because (again as a strawman) sex is fun and childbirth isn't.

> _The World Bank gives us a list of countries ordered by what percentage of
> their merchandise exports comes from fuels. At 50% or more we find, in this
> order: Iraq, Angola, Algeria, Brunei, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Saudi
> Arabia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Oman, Norway, Colombia, Bolivia and Bahrain. Can
> we notice a trend? How many of these countries provide a good set of
> political rights for their citizens?_

A _huge_ number of those countries have been ravaged by external political
interference, in part because of the fuels in those countries. I don't think
it's honest to can leave that out of the analysis and make a direct
correlation between natural resources and despotism. We know that warlords and
strongmen rise in politically unstable places, and we know in several cases
that warlords and strongmen are _propped up by_ other countries who are trying
to gain favorable exports, to the extent of populist revolutions being
suppressed.

(To be clear, I am not an unreserved proponent of UBI. I just think that this
argument is a bad argument against it, and in particular I worry that this
argument leads in short order to positions I actually disagree with "Economic
inequality is inherently good" or "Lazy people shouldn't eat.")

------
jlebrech
Instead of giving people money, why not have bare minimum shelter, food and
education that's available for everyone.

make it a universal parachute.

free money will just raise the prices of essentials.

~~~
at-fates-hands
> Instead of giving people money, why not have bare minimum shelter, food and
> education that's available for everyone.

There's already a myriad of government programs and safety nets that provide
all of these and more.

~~~
_jal
...Which, in the US, are fragmented, varyingly difficult to access, varyingly
generous, and nowhere nearly universal.

In other words, a 'universal basic shelter' program would look very different.

