undefined | Better HN

0 pointsgnaritas9y ago0 comments

You're missing something, it doesn't matter how you split the remaining work, the gains from the productivity increases of automation aren't going to the workers regardless of how you muck with their hours; those gains go to the business owners. Splitting up the remaining work to make sure everyone has work only makes sure everyone is poor, they still don't get to keep wealth created by the automation so it's a pointless thing to try and spread the work around.

The goal is not to keep everyone working, the goal is to share the benefits of automation with everyone, not just the capitalist class. BI does this, your solution does not.

Unless you tax automation heavily and redistribute it, workers lose no matter how you slice and dice the hours. It's not enough to work less, you have to work less while not making less and that's simply not in the cards.

> The idea of BI deprecates the idea of having an economy (ie p2p transactions), and replaces it with widespread monthly funding from the government.

Simply not remotely true. Spending money you get from the government is still spending money. Redistributing money from the top to the bottom via BI in no way deprecates the idea of having an economy, it simply depreciates the idea the the economy is based entirely on wage slavery.

> This will necessarily come with strings attached, inevitably becoming a highly politicized way of dictating individuals' life choices.

Also not true, anything with strings isn't BI; the whole point of BI is that everyone gets it without restriction in order to eliminate bureaucracy and thus strings. If it has strings, it isn't BI.

> We already have something quite similar to BI, called welfare/medicaid

Neither of those are remotely similar to BI.

> which brings no end to hassling its recipients

Precisely because they aren't remotely similar to BI and force people to qualify for them; they're exactly what BI is intended to fix, all the hassles and stigma that come with those programs and the shit you have to go through to get them.

Frankly, you leave me thinking you really don't know what BI is, or don't understand it.

0 comments

3 comments · 1 top-level

mindslight9y ago· 2 in thread

I'm not missing this, and in fact it ties right in to my core point. Wages are due to an equilibrium. The supply side of that equilibrium is dependent on how much the workers need the money. Any individual has a rough idea of how long they can comfortably go without income ("runway"). While this is modulated with how in-demand their industry is (especially apparent today in our hollowed-out hand-to-mouth society), the core of their power is how much of a buffer they have saved.

If a person has no runway, they are forced to be constantly worried about losing their current job, whereas if they have a large enough runway they have the ability to quit on the spot and worry about their next job later. This power relation effects every single negotiation, from salary to benefits to day-to-day working conditions.

Thus my assertion is that the real problem is that people have no savings. This gives them no economic power, and thus terrible negotiating power. This is due to an economic policy that prevents savings by the lower classes, especially liquid savings, and turns their life's accounting into one of debt and monthly rents. This further destroys their negotiating power (they don't have $0 to their name, but actually -$10k), and channels any of their surplus upwards to the parasitic banking industry through monetary rent.

> it simply depreciates the idea the the economy is based entirely on wage slavery.

Sure it gets rid of that specific slavery, but it does not get rid of the wage nor the reliance on it. The real mass frustration is due to a lack of opportunity and self-determination, for which signing up for low-paperwork welfare will increase. Reliance on the continued existence of a government program is going to make many people (rightfully) uneasy, because...

> If it has strings, it isn't BI.

This is like saying that we've never achieved true capitalism or true communism. In the real world, individuals have their own incentives. The incentives of politicians and "news" media is to play on people's prejudices to divide them into groups so they can be led, creating power for the leaders.

Even if we were to start off with a perfect BI program on day 0, it is only a matter of time until some group demands preferential treatment for themselves, or protests what they see as preferential treatment for others. The subject of having kids is fertile ground for this - if BI is truly uniform, this means that having a kid gets you immediately double the BI, and if it only starts at 18 that means you now have more to support. Either way (or even with a "ramp" compromise), this is but one of the clear contention points that will be endlessly politicized.

gnaritasOP9y ago

People aren't lacking savings because economic policies prevent it, they lack savings because they're poor and don't have excess income to save. They use all of their income simply to survive. So no, lack of savings is not the problem, it's merely a side effect of the problem which is the dwindling value of labor in an ever more automated world. So yes, imho you are missing the point, terribly.

And no this isn't a no true Scottsman thing, the entire point of BI is that everyone gets it to avoid the need to administer the program with qualification red tape. Yes there would be some initial fighting about how to implement BI with regards to kids and what incentives that creates, that doesn't mean it'll be endlessly politicized nor does it make the whole policy fertile ground for politics. Fertile ground for that is what we have now, with endless programs and rules about who qualifies and who doesn't and BI would vastly simplify that system while also addressing the long term social problem of the coming end of wage labor. Nothing you've said addresses the problem at all.

mindslight9y ago

Your argument technique seems to be to state disagreement with my point, and then just assert that I don't understand your point.

> they lack savings because they're poor and don't have excess income to save

And yet we're witnessing the creation of even more poor people (ie hand-to-mouth), in educated industries which have not been automated away yet. Salaries in those industries are keeping rough pace with the official CPI, so what gives?

> the problem which is the dwindling value of labor in an ever more automated world

Yes, we agree this is one of the fundamental problems here - I'm not "missing the point" as you keep insisting. I'm also saying that another fundamental problem is that fiscal discipline went out the window when USD disconnected from the gold standard, a slow acting moral hazard which is only being felt decades later. With technological and market progress, we would expect prices to be continually dropping (which would mean people would have to work less to survive), so any diagnosis must address this as well.

What you seem to be doing is taking the logical induction that led to the idea of BI for granted. And then refusing to follow the logical induction around other ideas. Of course BI is going to look like the solution if you refuse to consider that there could be other approaches.

> the entire point of BI is that everyone gets it to avoid the need to administer the program

As I said, this is an anti-feature to those who derive power from controlling such programs. This includes voters.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse