First, I agree with everything in the first half.

Second, the people in congress who would never consider a UBI just got a nasty shock when their constituents voted for the least conservative, most populist candidate out of a field of 9 or 11 or whatever it was.

If "conservatives" start appreciating things like being able to feed their families, those holdouts in congress might not be able to keep their seats for long if they don't change with the times

How about we control how many kids you can have instead of giving people money for not doing anything.

Instead, we reward poor people for having kids with government subsidies, how does that make any sense?

I don't want to live in a world where I'm worth just as much as the guy with no skills or benefit to society.

Indeed but not yet. There's a window to start introducing a basic income while there are still useful jobs to do.

That can lead us in a more linear manner to when there is nothing much left to do.

Such as the one depicted in post #2 in this thread?



http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/47...obots-1608234/

If via pressing a button one man can create a massive surplus of goods and services how do we distribute those goods?

Working for wages to pay for something lol, barbarians.

Yeah we should definitely spend time and money ensuring people do more work.

So an organisation that I've been supporting for a few years is actually looking at a basic income as a means to address extreme poverty, I suppose we should probably force them to do some menial **** like dig holes then fill them in as well, but it's a thing.

Give Directly Basic Income

There are real people running real tests using a basic income as a means to secure a basic standard of living. I guess we'll see a spate of African A_C_Slater's dying or something.

There are so many things people can do I drive around Los Angeles and imagine what can be fixed.

1. Hyperloop much 5x cheaper than high speed rail and 20x faster.
2. World Largest Desalination plant (what people don't understand about desalination is that all the water or farming and residential can be supplied by solar panels, do the math). A large plant near Pacific Palisades or Malibu could be pumped up the Santa Monica mountains 7 miles and supply 20 million people with water.
3. Small one man very light rail (almost roller coaster size) as opposed to subways which are dangerous. Saw a man take a massive fall in Minneapolis on light rail. From Encino you can go over the hill and have a line between Santa Monica, Malibu, LAX, and Encino and along Ventura Blvd. to universal and the red line.

4. Driving around there are weeds popping out of the cracks.
5. Homeless fight over cans, there should be other means for people to earn incomes in the city. Maybe grind trees.
6. The city is going to spending $130 million on homeless, yet this is made up problem as all land should be free. You should be limited what you can own, and people like Trump should actually be given more power to implement eminent domain by the private sector. Building high rises, takes up less land per person and considering pseudo ownership of the renter, Trump probably uses less land than his fair share. The city could end homelessness tomorrow without spending a dime.
7. There are a lot of curbs and sidewalks that can be fixed. Take a picture with your cell phone and the city can give you a quote to fix it.
8. There are signs that are dirty, broken benches, signals that can be cleaned and replaced, posts cleaned, fences mended, utilities put underground and modernized. Maybe a beautification expert could go around and make a list of things that need fixing, painting and cleaning.
9. I could make a list of 100 things that need fixing in a day.


This Basic Universal Income should be given to everyone, it might be only $2000 a year. But, in that movie Pursuit of Happiness, sometimes $5 is a lot of money.

There was a guy on the radio in Los Angeles Tim Conway Jr. 640 am, the son of Tim Conway. He says he lives in Burbank and is happy to pay his taxes because he sees what he gets. The roads don't have potholes and the schools are good. In Los Angeles it is the opposite, we get nothing. He had to move and when he did he was happy because he did not feel he was being ripped off anymore.

Houses are cheap if you have a place to put one.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Best-Barn...24df/203242403

honestly I don't care if it looks like C3PO, robots are less likely to be abusive to their charges than underpaid people. Unless of course skynet, but in that case, the robots are likely to just kill us as quickly as possible anyway.

Why use that silly example rather than what others are using such as helping out at bridge building sites or visiting the elderly?

How do you frighten a man whose wealth has been taxed at obscene rates to pay for the consumption wants of those that fail to achieve?

You can't scare him, for he has known a fear beyond every other. He who must witness the fruits of his labor going to the undeserving.

When the basic needs of a society are met, only then can it flourish.

A man who's had a good life that thinks he's deserving of his own fate should be grateful he isn't sucking dick on a street corner for spare change.

There're fair criticisms wrt basic income acting as a disincentive for people to make sacrifices in life, and that it creates a cycle of dependency.

But the idea that people get what they deserve in life, and that people who fell through the cracks of the system deserve a life of manual labor to fight for crumbs reeks of bitterness.

This

Why do you think that peoples basic needs being met should be dependent on them agreeing to do some menial task.

I have no idea, but I think people are overestimating the capabilities of the unemployed here. What percentage of the involuntarily unemployed are capable of bridge building or other infrastructure projects? If you have those skills or are in good enough physical shape to perform those activities, you can likely find a job today.

As far as I can tell David didn't make getting the UBI dependent on doing a task, but rather said give a UBI and eliminate the minimal wage since it wouldn't serve a purpose anymore, namely to keep people who work above a certain income threshold.

Sure though that wasn't the point of mine he picked up on where I was linking a basic income to doing some menial task.

In the event that there was a UBI sufficient for a persons basic needs I can see the case for ending the minimum wage. I have a problem though in that I'm not sure how to reconcile my views regarding open borders and a UBI and there would need to be protections afforded those in the state but not recipients of a UBI.

As far as I can tell too the problem with the idea that lots of people are going to be doing these 5 dollar an hour jobs is that the minimal wage jobs now suck and the jobs I can imagine that would pay less but can't probably suck more, giving a UBI isn't going to change that all that much.

What job doesn't suck ?

People will at least choose whether they think it's worth it and I can see the scope for enabling people to take low paying but civically minded work in a situation where their basic needs are met regardless.

Heh, no kidding. Obesity rates alone mean that most people in America (unemployed or not) are incapable of strenuous physical labor.

Metaphysics to the rescue!* Free will does not exist. It does not exist because the concept is incoherent. It is hot nonsense. Any theory concerning the ethics of the distribution of resources or the ethics of the coercion of labor in return for subsidies cannot therefore rely on incoherent fantasies about desert -- fantasies like that the foul the smelly and the poor are morally responsible for their circumstances -- and remain coherent.

Moral responsibility is an antediluvian meme that endures in most societies because lucky scumbags, over and above enjoying their entirely randomly bestowed prosperities, tend to enjoy inventing dubious, rather, contradictory, agential faculties to mythologize why they have prospered and others have not.** If you can have the sundae (the money, the property, the assets) and the cherry (a trivially refutable philosophical credendum to rationalize taking umbrage at less useful people), why settle only for the sundae? Why else would you ever think a poor person should dig a hole for subsidies when you are stipulating that it is a makework activity***?

* Sort of, not really

** also to mythologize why they deserve salvation, why they deserve political power, why they deserve to get laid, etc.

*** Before you spring the consequentialist trap on me, the stipulation that it is makework implies that it has next to no value. If it were the case that poors doing obviously worthless work is so indispensable to the morale of non poors doing more useful work then it's not exactly obviously worthless work to dig holes is it?

Yeah that, kinda, though I don't think the concept is incoherent but the determinist / compatibilist battles have been fought elsewhere and I've no interest in fighting that one. That said there's a lot I like in Rawls despite relying on some metaphysical assumptions I disagree with.

/batsignal for OriginalPosition. The little I've read I forgot, and these days I read as little as possible when trying to remember, but the Rawls stuff re:this seems to play well with being skeptical about moral responsibility, or is that what you're saying, that you wouldn't necessarily endorse the possible skepticism but like the approach otherwise?

The idea we should reward choices not circumstances central to Rawls ignores that our choices, in as much as we have them are, at least in part, determined by our circumstances.

The idea that people born with advantages whether situational or personal deserve them is a nonsense