[HN Gopher] We'll need universal basic income - Geoffrey Hinton
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We'll need universal basic income - Geoffrey Hinton
Author : rntn
Score : 36 points
Date : 2024-05-18 17:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| impossiblefork wrote:
| I don't think it'll work. UBI is a dole. The Romans had that--
| when they acquired enough slaves so that the farmer class were no
| longer running many little farms it turned the core the empire--
| their capable farmers, into clients.
|
| I think however, that UBI may be worse than the Roman bread
| doles. Those were after all only food, but money are every kind
| of resource. There was also still a need for the client class,
| since they were in fact still a source of soldiers of the empire.
|
| The change that UBI makes in modern times is that it changes
| people who are important and who co-operate in order to make
| things and get them to others are turned into just a cost which
| never produces anything. Consequently it'll always be appealing
| to get rid of them.
|
| The only way ordinary people can survive is by having _power_ ,
| and UBI is not enough. If you need UBI you should probably have
| already had a revolution and seized control because the rulers
| can always end it.
|
| Consequently I don't see how UBI can be a solution. It must be
| something else. I believe a reduction in working hours could work
| for a while, at least a decade, but won't be enough in the long
| run and I'm far from certain that there is a solution.
|
| Another problem we've had here in Sweden is that people try to
| fund these things by taxing successful workers instead of capital
| owners etc., so it's a rebalancing within the working class while
| the genuinely rich are unaffected. Because any rebalancing of tax
| from ordinary people to the rich will cause inflation and reduced
| investment due to the fact that ordinary people spend a larger
| fraction of their incomes on consumer products it'll always be
| appealing to make this purely a rebalancing between workers.
|
| Thus there isn't just one failure mode, but two.
| coldtea wrote:
| >The only way ordinary people can survive is by having power,
| and UBI is not enough. If you need UBI you should probably have
| already had a revolution and seized control because the rulers
| can always end it.
|
| The problem is not much that the rulers can end it, but that
| they'll continue it in perpetuity. Or if you wish, that they
| will only selectively end it, or threaten to end it, for some -
| as a punishment of disobedience.
|
| UBI's allure from the point of view of those in power is it
| turns citizens into dependents. So people not working, and not
| having power, thus turning into "clients", is kind the whole
| point.
|
| So, yeah, the version of UBI that doesn't have that drawback,
| is UBI in a society where the masses have seized the control
| and are actively exercizing it too (not eager to give it back).
| viraptor wrote:
| > are turned into just a cost which never produces anything.
|
| The whole premise here is incorrect. Every time UBI is tried,
| this scenario does not happen. You can find study after study
| that finds the same thing. https://www.vox.com/future-
| perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/univer...
|
| > Economists found that it doesn't make them work less. It does
| lead to improved education and mental health, and decreased
| addiction and crime.
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