Best products from r/BasicIncome

Actually, exploitation already exists as part of our system of property rights. If someone truly cares about liberty, they should care about how an actual system works in regards to liberty for everyone.

Right now people are not coming to mutual agreement on employment on equal terms, because one side owns resources and the other doesn't. Karl Widerquist makes a great example in his book: Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No about indirect force through resource deprivation.

> Example 1: Art enforces ownership of a small part of the atmosphere by blowing up a bicycle tire and forcing Bob not to interfere with the tire or the air inside it. Bob's duty not to interfere with the air inside the tire is passive or negative, and it is not excessive, assuming the rest of the atmosphere is available for whatever uses Bob might make of it. If Art goes on to tell Bob that he can't use his tire or the air inside it unless Bob does X, Bob clearly has the power to refuse X. He has no duty to do X either passively or actively enforced. Art might give Bob good reason to choose to do X, but he hasn't indirectly forced Bob to do X.
>
> Example 2: Art takes control of the entire atmosphere either by strangling Bob or by asserting ownership of the entire atmosphere by pumping it into a giant bicycle tire for sakekeeping. No matter how Art controls the atmosphere, Bob has the same negative duty as in example 1: he has to respect Bob's ownership of some amount of air. The difference is that the amount is excessive. If Art now says that Bob can have access to the air if he does X for Art, Bob has no reasonable alternative but to accept. Thus, he has an active duty to do X for Bob. In the case of strangulation, Bob has an active duty directly enforced: Art assaults Bob's person unless he does X. But in the case in which Art simply asserts ownership of the atmosphere, Bob's duty to do X is indirectly enforced. He is nominally free to say no, but he can't refuse to do X and maintain his passive duty to respect Art's ownership of the atmosphere without suffocating, which is thoroughly bad in an absolute sense. He has no exit option.

It is the comparison of these two examples that we need to look at if we value the idea of liberty. And that should be a central concern of any libertarian. A libertarian should also care about force, whether direct or indirect.

I think we can agree that we want a world that looks more like example 1 than example 2, but we don't live in that world. All the land is owned by someone else. We don't have the ability to say no to working for someone else, and instead just working for ourselves, growing our own food, making our own meals, building our own houses, we can't do that. We also see evidence of this all around us, where people try to live in tents and those tents are torn down. Ownership of everything is enforced, and this creates indirect force on everyone to do the bidding of those who have claimed the resources we all need to survive.

Basic income is a hugely libertarian idea, because it looks to create the most liberty. Yes it would require taxes, but it would also increase actual freedom through the elimination of the indirect force perpetuated through resource domination. Effectively, it's a way of keeping our system of property ownership, but it makes those who dominate the resources compensate those who are prevented access to those same resources.

Let's look at it another way. Let's say none of the land is owned in 3... 2... 1... Okay, I OWN EVERYTHING. I called it. I call dibs. Everything is mine. If you're living on some land, that's mine, because I just filled out the proper forms. Now I'm going to need you to pay me rent every month. Yeah, I know you might own your home, or pay rent to someone else, but the land on which it resides is now mine. If you don't want to pay me, that's okay, because you can live anywhere you like. Fortunately for me, I own all of that too, so guess what, you can't exist anywhere without paying me rent. So pay up and get used to it.

Now, for those who care about liberty, they might want to look at that as my infringing on your liberty. Or they can defend me and claim that because I called dibs, the land is all legitimately mine. They could also look at me and say that to tax me would be wrong, because that's stealing from me. It's not my fault you exist on all my land. Why should I have to give you anything?

When we support basic income, we are recognizing that I may have claimed all the land, but I can't force you to pay me rent. It's saying that my calling dibs was a fair move, but that I have to provide you and everyone else with just enough resources in the form of cash, to afford to pay me rent and to eat, such that my ownership of everything does not crowd out your freedom to exist, and what should be your freedom to say no to paying me rent for your existing.

As for a basic income increasing taxes on the middle class, that's not how it would work at all. A well-designed basic income would effectively only raise taxes on the top 20%.

So for those who care about liberty, let's get behind this idea and help make it happen.

You are spouting meaningless socialist drivel.

Capitalism isn't terribly effective? Effective at what? I suppose that would depend on what your end goals are, but since the advent of free markets the world has seen an exponential increase in standards of living, health, education, and technology wherever it is adopted, not to mention that countries which peacefully trade with each other are less likely to go war. Capitalism has done more to help the poverty of mankind than anything else in history. But call it ineffective if you wish.

You cannot "destroy capitalism" without destroying freedom. A free market at its very core is simply two individuals agreeing on an exchange of goods or services in a way that benefits them both. If you "destroy capitalism," you must either prevent people from having the freedom of association and ability to trade without violence or coercion, or you have eliminate the property that permits trade - which is impossible.

Having workers own "the means of production" is an antiquated, hollow phrase that has no meaning. I can go to any online stock company and buy the means of production in any company on the planet that I wish, thus becoming a worker who owns the means of production. That phrase was coined by Marx in the middle of the industrial revolution, when he misread the movement to factory production as the future of mankind.

What if I can only get a job at the mills, but I want to be an owner of Google? Or I own the mill and it and goes out of business through no fault of mine? Should all workers in the mill own the means of production but be prevented from owning the means of production of anything else?

That phrase also misunderstands what property is. There are other forms of wealth besides "means of production" that he harped on about. Even animals understand the need for a nest or a den that is theirs. Property and wealth are the natural outgrowth of human work:

>The three great rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life, but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty, but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave.

• George Sutherland, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1921
  
  If everyone has "according to his needs" but must work "according to his ability," you remove incentive to work and people simply do not produce, because most people work for their "wants" not their needs - and the only one who can define what those are is the individual. Wealth is stored labor (work) of those who perform it, which they can then trade with others for the labor those other people perform. In a market, the ONLY way to get money is by offering services or goods to other people that they voluntarily give you their own stored labor for - you MUST serve others to gain wealth.
  
  The only way to destroy capitalism is to destroy freedom by enslaving everyone.
  
  Since this article was about education, you might be interested to know that even the poorest people on the planet can educate their children through the freedom of association, because parents everywhere want their children to be educated. No "bourgeousie" involved.
  
  Give people freedom and they prosper. Try and make people prosper and you destroy freedom and destroy prosperity.
  
  People like you scare me.
  
  Edit: clarity

You're making the huge assumption that the rest of society has the same values you do, and the only thing stopping them from a revolution is oppression from above. This assumption is dead wrong.

I'll point out a little bit of the recent history of respect, dignity, power, control, FREEDOM in my country:

Jim Crow did not happen because of people's strong belief in respect, dignity and freedom. The Southern Strategy wasn't so successful because of people's strong belief in respect, dignity and freedom. The Tea Party hasn't been so successful because people are lazy and don't care about working conditions, or because of their strong belief in respect, dignity and freedom.

All these are successful because people, especially people who don't feel socio-economically secure, would rather defend their place in society over improving society for everyone, if that improvement means they just might stand to loose some benefits on an absolute scale. It's been the Republican party playbook for 50 years now: use people's fear that other people's success might mean they compete with you for social standing to stop any attempt to give basic human rights to all races and genders, strengthen the social safety net, unionize, etc.

The majority of people in the US have proven over and over again they will vote to lower themselves one notch down the totem pole if it will lower those below them two notches. BI will not fundamentally change that on day one.

I totally agree that people don't live their lives in numbers, but they do live their lives based on a number of competing desires and mental heuristics that differ from person to person, though with some useful demographic clustering. I highly recommend you read some moral psychology, like Haidt's The Righteous Mind so that you understand better the various desires and drives people have that get tied up in their politics. This book that spends a good amount of time dealing with the moral differences of egalitarian and hierarchical individuals and this free course on behavioral economics are also related and highly recommended.

People's values will change over time as they become less fearful, but if you think giving a Republican ~10-15k would instantly turn him into a Communist, I can only conclude you've never met a Republican. A "Taxation is Theft" march on Washington is orders of magnitude more likely than a General Strike.

Also, you seem to assume that the rich are a fundamentally different kind of person than we are. They aren't. We have the same tendencies as they do, and roughly the same mix of egalitarian and hierarchical value systems as they do.

TL;DR: The problem isn't just Them and their biases and desires keeping us down. The problem is Us and our biases and desires keeping each other down.

> And that's your position, other stakeholders may have other positions and decisions may be made by each organization.

I like to refer to this read on some of the observed issues with playing make-believe with people.

> I think it is more likely that people would be retrained and re-assigned.

If you create the economic conditions for there to be a clear path for meaningful retraining and re-assignment then you may not need the kind of setup for it in the first place. But that said I still do like the idea of multi stakeholder co-ops. Just this problem in particular is not really addressed by that solution I think.

> Not necessarily a good thing, hence why we are discussing the catastrophic economic effects of automation and how to avert them.

I'm thinking the catastrophic economic effects have more to do with people taking on more and more low paying jobs to make rent, as well as more economically harmful spending on the super high end.

The automation itself I'm quite fond of, though.

> They wouldn't necessarily be out in the cold, looking for a job, they would be still in the organization. They may even vote to put a bureau in the HR department in that helps people find new jobs inside or outside the organization.

Let's just hope that these HR offices are less of a disaster than some of the HR offices you will find in the wild today. Career narcissists are not great at lending a hand. Either way the question is 'are the opportunities actually there or do we push more people into more hours of low productivity work?', which again has to do with credit taking.

> Could you link the study?

I'm going by memory from a talk by Guy Standing who also extensively wrote in one of his books about it, sorry for the vagueness!

> It would employ or train them (if that's what they decide).

When you say "it", replay replace that with "I" and do think about what you would have em do and for who and why. Because other people also only cook with water.

> Too expensive, if we were to split 2 trillion dollars between projects then it would not be sufficient for UBI. Opportunity cost.

It sounds to me like you want to first fund people doing things and hope that this is what they want to buy as well. Setting up multi stakeholder co-ops should not be a tall order if you deploy a UBI to fund economic activity and relief economic distress. If you want to further direct activity towards the newly set up co-ops that aren't quite decided on what people want of em in terms of items and services, that is precisely what tax policy is supposed to be for, direct economic activity.

I'm still not sure how Amazon/etc. and so on play into this, since we probably don't want two Amazons since the value in the platform is the vertical integration and network effects. I'd look at democratizing the platforms a little more but I guess we can do that later as we get the economic boot off of the throats of people.

> Suppliers are stakeholders as well, could be that the co-op would require the trucks to be manned .

How would co-ops require that trucks be manned? Pretend they need to be manned and make it a rule or is there a reason to have em be manned? To me it sounds like a soul crushing experience to do something completely pointless like ride around the country in a self driving truck when I have better things to do.

> The coal miners can be retrained for positions in renewable energy industries

So you are going to have people install solar panels and have em move throughout the country and they're going to be skilled workers and definitely not workers with a bad back and that's gonna be the coal miner folks to the tune of millions of people. Maybe there's better people for these jobs. Maybe there's better things for these people to do, if only the people in their towns had some money to spend.

> Or all these people can join a new co-op that has recently been heavily invested in with some of that 2 trillion dollars.

Why would you need so much money to fund ms co-ops. What do you think will be the effect on the market if you pre-fund undertakings to the tune of 2 trillion dollars? I'm not opposed to massively investing in a green energy transition to the tune of multiples of trillions of dollars over 10 years though I may not be so set on going about it as a jobs program nor as ms co-ops.

A humble UBI would save plenty costs and require less than 1trillion in new deficit less than 1 trillion in new tax revenue over a similar time frame and I don't see why you couldn't also have a multi trillion green energy transition program especially if re-purposing the military industrial complex in the process (which makes sense since we have that thing also to keep fossil fuel prices under control to ensure us fossil fuel profitability which we obviously have to address as we create a whole alternative energy system)

I've already read Robert Frank's Success and Luck, if that is what you are talking about.

>I do believe that the most influential post war economists got captured ideologically and paved an intellectual way for the political domination of whole swaths of populations. With fancy maths as red herrings and unrealistic, but tidy, coherent and ideologically acceptable, models. Not really like conspiracy, more like a naturally occuring corruption of a science by plutocratic forces.

To have that belief and be credible enough to make such a statement, you must be familiar with the mathematics and statistics that goes behind economic models.

I mean, a guy like me is not going to care what you have to say regarding models you have no idea about. If the author of my macroeconomics textbook (which I linked to you) has a critique then yeah, I'm going to pay attention. I am quite familiar with the standard critiques- that much I can assure you.

Ultimately, economics is like any other empirical discipline in practice. In the recent decades, the focus has really shifted to empirics.

For a good example, read the paper at the end of my post above regarding labour market outcomes for African Americans. Purely empirical- no fancy models.

Edit: You do have to be familiar with the mathematics to say "oh well that's unrealistic" without any understanding of why those models were created in the first place. Just like you have to be familiar with the structural engineering behind a bridge to say "well, I think a suspension bridge would work better here than a cantilever bridge." No one will take you seriously unless you are a structural engineer.

I am sorry, but that is the way it is.

Edit 2: In this same thread, another BE user has a very good post that is much more layman oriented that should clear up a lot of misconceptions.

Hmm. Well, the way I understand it is like this. You have private debt and public debt, and they are, in fact, completely different things. Public debt is what our public government functionaries create. They control whether it goes up or down. I'm arguing and putting forth data that show that when public debt goes down, the economy suffers.

"Debt" is actually a misnomer, in the case of debt-free domestic money creation (such as funds the U.S. military and most other public expenses AFAIK), because the idea that it is owed to someone is based on past practices from fixed-exchange days, when the currency was precious metals. In those days, the government had to 'borrow' metal coins from citizens, because it couldn't acquire metal as easily as it can acquire paper and ink. Once it had handed out the IOUs to borrow that coinage, it really did have to pay them back for their value to remain high(hence, governments also defaulted on internal debt sometimes).

Nowadays a country doesn't have to borrow, because we have left the fixed-exchange financial system behind us. The fact that the US pretends to borrow by issuing bonds, is actually a relic of a past financial system that has lived on as a matter of established custom (the bond market). When the lenders ask for their money back (the bond matures, or interest is due), the U.S. treasury or the Fed will credit that nation or institution's bank account, with money freshly created out of nothing.

Do you see that there is a strong element of farce in this? When you cash in your IOU, we give you some of the stuff we just make out of nothing anyway. One might ask, why was the IOU required in the first place? For appearances sake, and because the collective intelligence of the system has not digested the epiphanies and realizations which I'm explaining in this post.

Let me put it to you this way: do you really think the government needs to give China a 2-inch thick stack of papers, in order to get 10,000,000 dollars?
They have the ability to create 10 million dollars.

There is yet another misunderstanding running rampant, and it is that domestic debt (which is the "debt" that we "owe" "ourselves") -- at some point has got to be repaid by the taxpayer. Its called the theory of ricardian equivalence, and it all stems from some dude's elaborate, purely theoretical, 1974 thought experiment. It has come under heavy criticism. (wikipedia usually sucks for refuting neoliberalism but in this case the editors did well; addendum: I also just found this essay which lampoons the theory and this.)

Ricardian equivalence is the theory which underpins the notion that "our grandkids are going to have to pay all this debt back!" or "all this money was created at the taxpayers expense!!". As you might see from reading above, the theory doesn't hold water.

Private debt is different. When private debt goes up, the economy first booms, and then suffers. The best writers on this are Richard Vague, Steve Keen and Michael Hudson; Richard Vague did a nice long historical study in which he showed that private debt levels correspond very closely to economic crises. This is close to the point you were making before, which is a fair one (e.g. that private debt booms bring subsequent crises). In a nutshell, I would say this is because public debt is created by the currency issuer (government), who does not need interest payments or repayment at all, to remain solvent. Private debt issuers require interest payments and full repayment (generally) to remain solvent. The beneficiaries of government spending don't have to reduce their spending to payback the money they receive.

Let me give a concrete example of the difference between these two forms of money creation. A great deal of our prosperity (let's think of this for right now as "money in circulation") was created by the mortgage loan. As /u/smegko often reminds us, these mortgage loans and other financial products are how banks have created the majority of the money that's out there. Anybody who gets that money issued to them (as a mortgage or as the recipient of the resulting loan), has to pay it back. They become a debtor, to Goldman Sachs, who is their lender. That's not a positive thing in the long-term, because we enjoy the high of easy money, but are stuck with the hangover of debt repayment plus interest. It also allows banks to become the most powerful players in our societies. None of this is a good thing, except for the financial boost we get initially (which, arguably, is better than nothing).

But public debt is different. Right now there is a soldier somewhere fighting in Iraq. Seems like a misuse of human labor to me, but we'll take it for this example. That guy receives a bi-weekly deposit in his bank account, which his family uses to pay for groceries and rent. They don't have to pay it back. It doesn't collect interest. It is debt free money created out of nothing. Economies suffer when this money is removed, as the article by Thayer suggests.

As far as the role of the 1% in these dynamics, I see them more as shysters able to manipulate the terms and provisions of the contracts governing private lending. The Big Short for example, has some characters like that. The reason we are so desperate for their money and contracts in the first place is because we have weak government spending, and its because we can't figure out that public debt is not debt, and private debt is bad debt, generally. We refer to them both as 'debt' and misunderstand the dynamics between these two completely different sources of the origin of money.

It's all good. Technology is getting us closer and closer to what spiritual teachings always said. We are one. And nowadays a day doesn't go by without some abuse exposed through a smartphone camera, or a leak of some sensitive information, or a whistle blower, etc.. Humanity is exposing all its ugliness for all to see, whether we want it or not.

Take Basic Income. An idea is spreading like wildfire today. It's really funny actually how we all pretend to be separate when you can see how information spreads today and how we end up all talking about the same things.

Hence, I'm not worried about echo chambers and any other dystopian scenarios. It makes for good headlines, but it simply is not possible.

In fact recently I read about this scientific theory of flow, the constructal law

> ‘for a finite-size flow system to persist in time (to live) it must evolve such that it provides greater and greater access to the currents that flow through it’

Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organizations

https://www.amazon.com/Design-Nature-Constructal-Technology-Organizations/dp/0307744345

For this reason of optimized flow, rampant inequality is simply unsustainable =) What an optimally designed society looks like I don't know, and it might not mean UBI, though it seems likely.

"the future belong to societies (which are open to change) which liberate our flows" (...) "and also through rule of laws and governments which are free to change"

How a single principle of physics governs nature and society: Adrian Bejan at TEDxMidAtlantic 2012

Depends on which type of "marxism" we're talking, if we're talking about "Libertarian marxism" like say autonomist marxism (or some old libertarian marxist like the famous William Morris or someone like Paul Lafargue) , then sure it's compatible.

Willian Morris wrote the old Useful work versus useless toil, and there's funny and controversial stuff like Paul Lafargue's The right to be lazy.

Harry Cleaver's Reading capital politically is a good introduction into this sort of stuff.

If you're interested there's also Cleaver's upcoming book "Rupturing the Dialectic: The Struggle against Work, Money, and Financialization", which I think is very different and really better than his first one.



Some marxists like Silvia Federici are kind of pro-ubi, her book Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle is basically about arguing for something like a UBI.


(There's also David Frayne's "The Refusal of Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work" which is not explicitly marxist but is a joy to read).






Massimo De Angelis (another libertarian marxist who kind supports UBI) is writing a book titled "Omnia Sunt Communia: The Strategy for Postcapitalism", which is probably going to be better than Paul Mason's book if you're interested in that sort of stuff.




There's also Moishe Postone's stuff like Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory, which is also quite compatible with the goals of a UBI.


Kathi Weeks (author of "The Problem with Work") is another marxist and UBI advocate.

Erich Fromm supported a UBI way back in the day.

Ownership is becoming increasingly concentrated, you can't trade what you don't own.

Patents, land, raw resources, brand protection, all go to make trade between ownershipless people less viable than just buying from established players. You can't pay the fee on land or must charge more than the modest per-item premium that established brands charge for known and known to be good items, you have the exact same resource footprint, so no way to compete on that front (actually probably a worse footprint, assuming technology to reduce it is RnD cost heavy, is patented for 20 years), and energy is of course dependent on owning land to build solar collectors. Same for producing food. Need a lot of money upfront, or pay a lot of rent to get involved there. Continual development of patented GMOs further puts fees on growing stuff, unless you protect the stuff you grow from accidentally crossbreeding over the air with those GMOs.

Take labor and innovation out of the equation, and people without property are left wanting much more than today. Technology that leads to abundant means of production basically takes labor from of the equation, at least in the traditional sense. Everyone can still become an entrepreneur or one who creates marketable content, but patents paired with high upfront costs on the development of more technology takes innovation to mean a headstart for owners, and so does brand ownership that ultimately helps customers save time, as customers have to spend less time figuring out what’s good and here to stay.

I'm having a feeling that Guy Standing's new book is going about the topic in a similar way, he sure seemed to take a liking to talking about the massive expansion of ownership rights into the domain of ideas as of late, maybe worth a read as well.

Now I have no doubt in my mind, that the propertyless would start trading between each other, if they had a UBI that grows with net volume of money in circulation that could go towards obtaining/maintaining ownership titles (and I'm thinking periodic fees on holding ownership titles might just be a key component to financing such a UBI, but that's just a wild idea for me for now).

It's certainly more complicated than that. Capitalism is mostly rooted in the [extrinsic motivations] (http://psychology.about.com/od/eindex/f/extrinsic-motivation.htm) of fear and profit. While you could say [what socialism is more about] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0691143617) are the [intrinsic motivations] (http://psychology.about.com/od/motivation/f/intrinsic-motivation.htm) like challenge, curiosity, and collaboration. People operate based on both kinds of motivation and a [surprising amount of it is intrinsic] (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc) especially when creativity is called for.

Is the wage laborer doing hard manual labor full-time operating off the profit motive? Of course. Is the scientist, painter, inventor, etc.? Not so much. The inventor may dream of millions, but I bet you curiosity and the challenge lead to that inspiration, and if you just sit around just trying to think how to get rich your ideas won't be that original. What about the millionaire investor picking carefully which companies to fund? Is the investor greedy, evil, and siphoning money out of the economy, or is that investor doing a public service by making sure our resources are pooled in the best place? It's some of both.

Believe whatever you want about human nature, but recognize that it's complicated. Basic income would help the hard-working poor and the starving artist but it'd also prop up the unmotivated. It seems most people here on this subreddit though have faith in humanity and want to move away from the profit motivate running so much of the world.

This one by Allan Sheahen is considered to be one of the best books on the topic, and Allan Sheahen is one of the oldest supporters of UBI in America.

This one is also great, from a more libertarian perspective. Charles Murray is a well-respected libertarian thinker.

If you're looking for something academic, these textbooks are pretty awesome- one and two.

We need to tax rent-seeking activities. Effectively this taxes wealth. Also, we need to reduce the amount of money that banks are allowed to create and make a certain amount of debt-free money which is directly distributed via UBI. UBI only really works alongside monetary reform. I strongly recommend https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grip-Death-Slavery-Destructive-Economics/dp/1897766408 (it's great, but not without flaws), you should read some standard economics stuff like The Wealth of Nations too, but it's a useful viewpoint to understand)

What a great line, and an incredibly important truth to realize and overcome to make this a land and government turkey for the people.

I'm currently reading Basic Income: An anthology of contemporary research

It's been a great and interesting read so far.

I'm not convinced. The largest expenditure in the United States of America is on housing. The reason for this is radical urbanization, combined with competition for homes in the right neighborhood and school districts. Extra money handed out would likely go straight back into home ownership and rent.

For more understanding on this, take a look at (now Senator) Elizabeth Warren's and her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi's book The Two-Income Trap. In this they lay out a convincing case that life in the USA with two incomes at home barely scratches the living standards of yesteryear on a single income because of this environment which pits middle class Americans against one another in competition for a reasonable standard of living.

There are lots of other great documents and videos of Murray explaining his idea that he details in his book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State