I just think that socialism and communism (which basic income basically is - it's paid for by the working class) ultimately leads to the destruction of the economy.
Why is this a problem? The market allocates work, the market has decided that a large and growing number of people's work is worth $0, the market is still producing enough to keep everyone happy and fed.
Why should someone be incentivized to work when their work has no value?
Put another way, we have made an amazing collective achievement: 100% effort from 100% of people is no longer necessary or even desirable to maintain/improve standards of living. Life has collectively gotten much easier, and coerced labor (yes, starvation and homelessness due to unemployment are coercion) is no longer necessary.
It incentivizes breeding. The more resources are freely available the more our population will grow until we reach equilibrium. Although we usually overshoot and end up with a Malthusian outcome.
"Yet in all societies, even those that are most vicious, the tendency to a virtuous attachment is so strong, that there is a constant effort towards an increase of population. This constant effort as constantly tends to subject the lower classes of the society to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition".
— Malthus T.R. 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Chapter II.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_on_the_Principle_of_P...
http://www.udel.edu/johnmack/apec324/excel_lab1/xy_plot1.png
As people get more resources, they tend to have FEWER children than those with little resources.
It's usually considered bad form to point this out, but there is no divine mandate that makes human breeding a process beyond the control of human societies.
Or rather is worth less than the legal minimum wage, which is not the same thing.
> Why should someone be incentivized to work when their work has no value?
Very few people's work has no value, especially if they're allowed to do what they like to do. Typically the problems arise when the value is lower than the costs involved (salary, ovehead of managing them, etc).
Reducing such costs should be a pretty important part of a basic income setup.
> coerced labor (yes, starvation and homelessness due to unemployment are coercion) is no longer necessary
The interesting question is what the end game is here. If we get to a situation where 100% effort from 100% of people is no longer necessary, but 100% effort from _some_ people is still necessary, how do you ensure that the people who still need to work keep doing so? And how will those people feel about it and what will the try to do as a result? A worst-case-ish scenario that seems all too likely is bans on emigration of "productive citizens" (defined as the ones whose 100%, or even 80%, effort is in fact still needed) who would otherwise decamp for other countries with lower taxes.
Wrong. Basic income lifts the floor. It does not concern itself with the ceiling. Calling it communism is utterly wrong and completely missing the point.
No one has ever said "I'm going to stop making money because I have $1."
At $1 the second dollar is useful, at $50,000, I'm good for the year and will not pursue additional dollars. Replace $50,000 with whatever amount you need to feel content.
Basic income recognizes the idea of a labor market, but admits that this market is neither pure nor perfect: the jobs seeker are in an unstable situation that they have to get out of to pay their bills.
Therefore the employer has an edge in the market.
By decoupling the revenu and the employment, the job seekers can make better decision for themselves.
I think that going forward, communications are a basic need. There was a startup in ~2008 that was attempting to provide "free" cellular service to its users who agreed to watch ads on their phones. If they interacted with the ads, they would get more service time...
The Facebook phone was an utter flop - however, if they wanted to surveil the population, they may have done better by creating a cell service company and allow people to be spied on in exchange for a free phone....
That damages my DNA saying that -- but it would be a workable model for the long tail of poor people that love facebook.
Quick! Let's tax them at 100% so that they have an inventive to work!
However, if you have a basic income that "replaces" welfare then no matter what job you get you always make more money. So it's better to have the basic income and work then to just have the basic income.
Of course the problem is MUCH more complex than that, and that is also dependent on replacing welfare not adding basic on top of welfare. Hence the research but this is the basic idea I grab onto to think of how a basic income could be better then welfare.
The capitalistic harnessing of greed still applies in the basic income situation - i.e. the motivation of going to work to get more income is still in effect.
Basic income is an extension of the welfare state, which is itself a capitalist construct. It does not presuppose a state-planned economy or really threaten capital ownership or free exchange at all.
Yes, many communist countries have attempted some kind of unconditional income. Was this what sapped people's desire to work? Not really. What sapped their desire was a complete lack of a reward structure. A universal income doesn't destroy the reward structure; it destroys the penalty structure. The big question is whether or not the economy survives that.
On top of that, though, most communist economies imploded because decoupling production from market forces also destroyed incentives towards efficiency, innovation, and satisfying demand. Those are the biggest failures of the state economy and those are not related to universal income at all.
Trouble is, isn't some form of socialism inevitable? As automation continues to progress, more and more no-to-little-skill types are eliminated which then requires people to gain further education and experience to continue to qualify for some type of job. At some point we're going to automate so much that you'll essentially have to be an expert in a field to be employable.
At least that's how it looks like to me. Today socialism doesn't work (at least to a degree; some socialism-like services I could see working today like health care) but in the future where every job but the ones with the highest skill requirements are automated, what do you do?
There are shortcomings with ideas like basic income, but I don't think the ones you've mentioned are particularly valid.
Also it doesn't imply communal ownership. It does not even imply communal consumption decisions -- unlike, for example, government-provided services: people themselves decide what to pay for and how much.
