We use the term "automation" to describe the displacement of manufacturing workers by machines.

Should we use the same term to describe the displacement of desk clerks and physical services providers?

My point was that govt employees will fight tooth and nail before they let their jobs disappear to automation.

The private sector won't have the same protections, or at least not as much. Although the private sector will lobby too.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90332454...tax-filing-app

I could be wrong about this. It's more of a gut feeling.

Edit: I'm also wondering what welfare administrators think about UBI. They might be a big obstacle to passing it assuming the American People get on board.

That's a good question. What about call center workers, retail workers, fast food employees....

Hell AI will be doing basic programming in the future.

How? General strike?

Just lobbying not to adopt technology that could eliminate their jobs.

There might be some protest too.

No, that wasn't my contention, and you can't even keep track of what you yourself are saying.

I responded to
"How do you determine who "legitimately" needs safe housing and food?"
with,
"There's no bureaucracy needed to weed people out."

But I love how you manage to still emerge from this whole thing with a condescending attitude. It's endearing.

Yes, I want to fine people who maliciously destroy public property and if they do it repeatedly put them in jail. But oh no! Some of them might not be able to afford to pay for the damages they cause. You really poked a hole there. Let's just give up on the entire legal system I guess. Of course if you pay them 1k/m then magically property crime will disappear. This is a good critique, really. You're a real outside the box thinker whose being objective in your analysis.

These are all basic considerations for how any organization works at any level. When you extend $x00 in cash for food the bureaucratic costs don't disappear, they're just blended with the cost of food at the point of sale.

They're all very simple issues to address and you know they are, but you're being intentionally obtuse because you've latched onto your candidates ideas and everything is being viewed through a lens of whether it confirms what you're committed to.

Just declare yourself the winner of every point no matter how stupid you look, and hopefully someone out there will be too disinterested to think about what's being said and walk away with a good impression of your joke of a candidate. Loyal to the bitter end. You're a good man.

In the context of what it takes to raise children in the modern world, it's almost 100% of people at the age of 18. Which is why it's inadvisable for anyone to have children that young without a strong network of people supporting and guiding them. But if people are able to do it independently and without hurting anyone i wouldn't tell them what to do. It's when they start asking for society to support their choices that you might want to consider hmm... maybe they don't actually have it figured out. And maybe putting conditions on the charity isn't an assault on their freedom after all, it's actually using the charity as a carrot to guide them towards making responsible decisions instead of rewarding them for their mistakes.

My apologies. I misunderstood the point you were making. So you do think there would be a huge bureaucracy for this program and a lot of administrative cost, you just don't think there needs to be a bureaucracy for weeding people out. Let me know if I'm still misunderstanding.

I never said giving people $1000 a month would eliminate crime. It will eliminate a percentage of it. I'm not sure what percentage but I would put it at 20-30%.

My point was if you fine people with no money they won't be able to pay therefore they will go to prison. It cost over $30,000 per year. I would rather find ways of keeping them out of prison.

Laws are still important.

I never said the issues would be unsolvable, the reason I brought up all those issues is because I misunderstood your original point. See above.

On the final point on the percentage I wasn't asking about the percentage of 18 year olds. I was asking about the percentage of the entire adult population. I don't think it had anything to do with raising children either. We were talking about UBI vs your housing project.

Edit: "it puts the decisions into the hands of individuals who have the functional capacity of children"

What percentage of the adult population has the functional capacity of children?

You actually don't want to change anything because you think this is all rightfully soft eugenics for the poor. You're just too ****ing dumb and/or cowardly to realize and/or admit it.

"My apologies. I misunderstood the point you were making. So you do think there would be a huge bureaucracy for this program and a lot of administrative cost, you just don't think there needs to be a bureaucracy for weeding people out. Let me know if I'm still misunderstanding. "

I was responding to you when you asked how we'd weed people out who 'deserve' it. Calling it a huge bureaucracy is negative spin. Do soup kitchens have huge bureaucracies? These things exist in every major city and in smaller communities religious institutions often provide similar programs on a smaller scale.

"I never said giving people $1000 a month would eliminate crime. It will eliminate a percentage of it. I'm not sure what percentage but I would put it at 20-30%. "

You implied that the fact that crime will take place in government housing diminishes it's viability. The point I was making is that offering accommodations doesn't produce criminality, it just draws attention to things that would otherwise be happening in a more diffuse way.

"My point was if you fine people with no money they won't be able to pay therefore they will go to prison. It cost over $30,000 per year. I would rather find ways of keeping them out of prison. "

It's the same way you deal with any ticket with people who don't pay. People who don't pay for one ticket don't get hauled away. If you repeatedly do things that harm others and you show no willingness to change your behavior or pay the fines then the legal system finds a way to remediate, and it would the same as if it happened in any public place.

"On the final point on the percentage I wasn't asking about the percentage of 18 year olds. I was asking about the percentage of the entire adult population. I don't think it had anything to do with raising children either. We were talking about UBI vs your housing project.
Edit: "it puts the decisions into the hands of individuals who have the functional capacity of children"
What percentage of the adult population has the functional capacity of children? "

Why of the adult population? Why not of the population of people who are struggling financially that would depend on these subsidies? That's the subset we're talking about.

It's rare that you meet the lowest functioning people out there but my god, they exist. Have you ever known a social worker? The stories are tragic and very common. And sometimes their children turn out alright because we (i'm speaking as a Canadian) have robust programs to help put people on the right path but when it doesn't work out, it tends to fail spectacularly. The fewer people born in these situations the better and these cash payments with no questions asked would lead to more of these situations.

Catholic Charities has a big bureaucracy. The red cross is known for having one too.

When people have more money they have less children but if poor people got more money they would have more kids? Idk.

What I want to change is the idea people are owed anything without any real effort in life. But no its cool, I will work pay way more than most and not worry about how it is spent. Everyone just keep popping out kids they cant afford and/or wont spend time with. The change i really want is for people not doing right by the people they should. Lots of victims on the take,whats to change? I am talking about the rich and the poor by the way.

Having more money correlates to but isn't the reason people have fewer children. It's more that careers are often an alternative to having children.

Similarly giving money to poor people is not what's going to cause them to have more children. It's that offering them help conditional on not having more reduces the number they have.


UBI has very little bureaucracy to it's benefit. There are benefits and drawbacks. The drawbacks are huge though.

From what i have read its mostly do to better access to birth control.

I smell sterilization in your future govement housing.

Are you going to answer the question about what common characteristics these people who keep popping out babies and not wanting to work share?

They dont want to work, its an old problem. Just got done with a booked called Hillbilly Elegy, describes it pretty well to me.
I have a nephew whos a Cali hillbilly, has no high school diploma but has had jobs paying 15 to 25 dollars an hour but quit them all. Says he cant hack it, thats bs, hes just lazy. Has a ton of excuses, blames Obama, but now that his mans in there I want to hear it again lol.
I think what bothers me is that they dont want to live life, they are happy being miserable. At least thats what i see when i deal with people on welfare. Miserable and angry but dont mind spreading it around.

I wonder if anyone's done any systematic look at people who "just don't want to work". Mostly I think people identity the most salient point about work, is that even for the people who love to work, they'd say about 50% of it sucks.

Fair enough, but people need to stop being a little ***** about it. My wife use to complain how we didnt have enough money. Well we do now and i work all the time. Then she starting complaining that im never home. Well you cant have it both ways, she has come to this concluaion finally. Her uncle is loaded and she remembers that all he did was work, put 2 and 2 together. The American Dream takes work period. I say welcome the imigrants, they are willing to work for it. If the good life was easy everyone would do it.

That does not sound like a good life. Ymmv

The amount of work someone does has very little to do with how successful someone is. Implying some developer making 100k 1 year out of a boot camp is working harder than someone who works multiple minimum wage jobs is ludicrous. Do you think poor people are their by choice? Or have moral failings?

Better access to birth control contributes sure. Abortions too. But there's only so much you can chalk up to those two factors. You can provide infinite condoms and there will still be a lot of people who don't use them because they don't like the way it feels, there will still be women who want to get preggo by some stud playboy and there will still be people who are on shaky financial grounds who go in with the best of intentions but severely misjudged the sacrifices involved.


I'd rather do more to help the people in the crap situations and have it come with the condition that they have fewer children. For any budgetary constraint you have that tradeoff.

People who say they don't want to work are really saying that don't want the options that are in front of them. There's nobody whose unwilling to make any sacrifice. It just has to make sense in the context of their life. You have to sell them on why it will make their lives better, and they need to develop the ability to defer gratification.

You know what ensures that it wont make sense in the context of many peoples lives? Giving them 1k/m. It just stretches so far for people in an already comfortable position. It would make a really big difference in how people plan their financial future, especially people who live in areas where the cost of living is low.

I’d rather give them good access to birth control.

One of the funnier things in life is hearing people who have to pay for a gym membership talk about hard work. Half the people saying the poor are lazy could not physically do some of their work.

"I’d rather give them good access to birth control."

Do you really think that this eliminates the problem? Or do you just reflexively parrot off that answer because it makes you feel like you're one of the good guys?

More condoms! More education! More good things and less bad things!

Subsidizing birth control is a positive but doesn't address any of the other scenarios. I've known so many people who've chosen to have unprotected sex with people they were casually dating because they just didn't like how a condom felt. I've known plenty of people who had children who could barely support themselves but thought it was a good idea because they had no concept of what it would entail in terms of cost and sacrifice. And these weren't anything close to worst case scenarios. These are normal people by any standard. Most university educated, they have a job, decent income... yet still dumb as a brick in terms of practical life skills.

How naïve do you have to be to think that cost is the primary reason why people are in these situations? The cost of a condom is less than the cost of bus fare to get to someones apartment.

I’m not naive enough to buy all the bs you have whittled together.