He's pointing out that it's a practical impossibility. The money for UBI has to come from somewhere, and any money a government has at its disposal comes from: 1) extortion (ie. taxation), 2) printing, 3) borrowing.
Those are the three options, and none of them are a sustainable way to fund UBI, because the amount of money needed is so massive. You can't get something from nothing, and everyone can't get something from everyone else.
Not necessarily. Money can be printed out of thin air. It is printed out of thin air right now, mostly by private banks (I know they're not technically printing money, but Fractional Reserve Banking and other shenanigans have the same practical effects).
Of course, once you're explicit about printing money, you need to be careful about inflation. But we shouldn't fool ourselves: we never ever lacked money. Money isn't scarce. What we may lack however are resources (both renewable and fossil), and labour.
But in this era of massive unemployment, it looks like labour isn't the bottleneck.
This is the crux right here.
The government no longer providers you money as BI. It provides you with the right to housing (build up), the right to energy (one person can only use so many KwHs/day), the right to worldwide communications (I think we can all agree the price of moving bits is going to continue to fall), the right to food, and the right to transportation (electric self-driving vehicles).
With enough wind, solar, nuclear power, with self driving cars, with automated manufacturing and farming, you don't need money. You simply provide for your citizens their basic essentials. The people who want to work, will. The people who don't aren't a burden, because robots don't resent.
> But we shouldn't fool ourselves: we never ever lacked money. Money isn't scarce. What we may lack however are resources (both renewable and fossil), and labour.
Money is a representation of value - you've had to earn it somehow (unless you're the government ofc). In other words, money represents labour/resources/services etc, and those are scarce even if our fiat currencies can be created out of thin air seemingly without any limit.
The point here is, again, that you can't get something from nothing. If a government wants to implement UBI, it can't just distribute grains of sand to everyone - it has to be something valuable and useable as a means of exchange, and that places limits on what the government can feasibly do.
I'm open-minded but not convinced that printing money for UBI is an awful idea.
Printing money and sharing it out equally results in inflation, very likely, which affects people with existing wealth/savings more. The result is that money is very effectively redistributed, in a way which the existing income-based taxation system is unable to. Isn't that exactly the goal?
Also, I wasn't only advocating printing money by the state. I was also suggesting we stop banks from printing money as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-reserve_banking Monetary policy is too important to let private special interests control it.
Also, the current way of dealing with money, even for a state, is to think in terms of budget, deficits… while it should instead think in terms of money supply. The state would then increase the money supply through various spending, and decrease through taxes. Deficit would be zero by definition. Only inflation would remain. (My guess: inflation should probably be kept between 3% and 10% per year. It should definitely not be null.)
Monetary policy influences all other policies, because you do need a budget to do anything. (A budget in resources and manpower, but money is too convenient to do away with.)
My point is, money is too important to let a few powerful, not-even-elected entities control it.
I'm not convinced that it is NOT financially viable. Especially in Switzerland where the governance is exemplary compared to other countries. I believe it is, only a real world example will convince me and Switzerland IMHO is the perfect country to run this experiment.
The fact that you equate taxation with extortion for example, shows that you have a different, not necessarily wrong, starting point than me.
It's not about the "quality" of your "governance", ie. "how satisfactorily you're enslaved". It's just that all money a government hands out to people has to come from somewhere, and each of the ways of acquiring the money has negative, compounding consequences.
> The fact that you equate taxation with extortion for example, shows that you have a different, not necessarily wrong, starting point than me.
True. But if you think about it for a moment, you'll realize it actually meets the criteria for extortion. You're handing over your money under threat of violence, even if the violence is X steps removed from where you are now.
No one would pay taxes without the threat of violence. If you were just asked nicely: "would you like to support yet another war in the Middle-East with a few thousand dollars?", you'd just decline and go on with your life, and that's exactly why they don't just ask nicely, they force you to pay.
If I take your laptop, is it extortion when you demand its return? At some point you may resort to violence (or have someone else do it on your behalf), so, that's extortion right? I would say no, because we have collectively agreed that property rights should usually be enforced - the mere fact that I possess your laptop doesn't mean it is rightfully mine. Likewise, we have collectively agreed (through the process of government, with all its flaws) to pay certain amounts in tax in certain situations. Asking for something that in someone's possession but that they don't actually have right to is not what extortion is.
Oh come on.. :p It's my laptop, my property. But if I tell you I'm going to hurt you if you don't give me your laptop, that is extortion.
> Likewise, we have collectively agreed (through the process of government, with all its flaws) to pay certain amounts in tax in certain situations.
"We" can't collectively agree on anything, because we're all individuals, and we all have the exact same rights as everyone else (which don't include making binding decisions on behalf of complete strangers).
Imagine there are 10 people in a room, and 9 of them decide that each will eat five of the hottest chilis in the world. Does that mean the remaining one has to eat them too, because they have "collectively decided" to eat chilis, or does he have the right not to participate?
I agree with the rest of your points, but not necessarily with this one. Many people do pay taxes voluntarily, because "it's their civic duty", and roads and schools and all of that.
If it were genuinely voluntary, they could just stop any time they wanted to, without any negative consequences. We all know they can't - they'll be forcefully hauled into jail, and their property will be confiscated.
