As many classical liberals noted, when you take the Law of Equal Liberty to its natural conclusion, it necessarily entails equal rights to the use of the Earth.
However, since exclusive access rights to locations are a practical necessity, all those who are excluded must be given restitution.
I disagree. Rights to locations are a practical necessity to classical liberalism itself, and are not at all at odds with its logic. The basic foundation of liberty is the ability to own private property. I think most (if not all) classic liberal thinkers would object to the assertion that my ownership of private property requires restitution to be given to anyone.
I'm going to assume (and I do apologize if I am incorrect) that you're in the Bernie camp? I agree with the lions share of what you just said. But the collusion between big government and big business is entirely culpable for the "rigged system".
Always find it amusing/perplexing that so many people's solution to this rigged system is to give even more power to the coercive half of the equation...
Our current form of capitalism (crony) is in direct opposition to free-market capitalism. The prior can not be used as a functional con of the latter. Suggesting so is entirely illogical.
If a limited good, such as land, is diced and divided between people based on merit, and later these people have offspring, how do you handle the ensuing dispute over ownership of those goods? Within a "classical liberal" framework, I mean.
So don't let's have any enterprise which depends on 'hoarded' resources! Life is, exploitation - eventually bugs and other life forms will make use of everyone's personal resources. This is not to say that exploitation can't be nuanced. People who throw the word 'exploitation' around often mean they and their comrades want to do the forcible exploiting based on their personal moral preferences.
Exploitation has a narrower sense when people are talking about capitalism. It describes the relationship between those who do wage labor and those who extract profit from the product of wage labor.
Your sense of the word 'exploitation' is much too broad to be useful, imo.
The scenario being described requires people who want to use the land to purchase rights to the land. They can use the land but they don't own the land -- it's more like renting.
Any improvements upon the land are theirs 100% though.
Not sure if you read Paine's arguments but here are the important points.
1) Mankind inherited the earth and in the beginning wandered the earth as hunter and gathers. Nobody owned the land -- everyone had equal claim to it and could use it for their sustenance.
2) Governments formed and claimed monopolies on the land. They took "ownership" of the land without compensation to the original owners (everyone). This constitutes the use of force and violates the principle of non-aggression.
3) In order to make it fair, compensation must be given to the original owner. This makes it a fair transaction and is what Thomas Paine is proposing.
I mean this in the nicest way possible... It's cute that you think that. By that logic, assuming you are a tax payer, you are $159k+ in debt thanks to the government acting on your behalf.
Try not paying property tax and see how long you can stay on your "purchased land".
I'm not yet seeing much addressing determination of the relative value of the land: a square foot in Manhattan is extremely valuable, while a square foot most anywhere in Arizona or Wyoming (my favorite state) is practically useless. Roughly half of all land counts as "rank wilderness" which almost nobody could make use of; other land is extremely productive, some not really requiring any effort beyond simply harvesting what naturally thrives there.
That said, I tend to alternate between despising property taxes vs thinking they're about the only legitimate taxation. As said, there's a finite supply of land servicing a growing population.
It is very similar to property tax but there are some differences. I believe you can bid for the land for much longer periods of time.
Also, under the current system property tax includes the improvements on the land as well. Paine was proposing that if you build a house on the land you don't have to pay more taxes.
It's only on the land portion that you pay the "tax".
It's a similar system where people bid on the rights to spectrums of radio waves.
> The basic foundation of liberty is the ability to own private property.
The foundation of liberty is the freedom to make your own decisions and exercise your own will.
If the ability to own private property was the base what happens when you are a person that does not own any property? What if, in the extreme case, a single person or entity owns all of the property and you must either serve them or starve? Is that liberty?
"The basic foundation" might be the wrong way to word it. That would suggest it is the ONLY tenet, which is misleading. However, private property rights are absolutely a tenet of [classic] liberal thinking.
> The foundation of liberty is the freedom to make your own decisions and exercise your own will.
I think that is a common misconception. Liberty =/= Freedom. Absolute freedom, in fact, can be an obstruction to liberty (which I think is what your extreme example eludes to).
However, let's work through your example; how did they acquire all the property? If they did it without violating other people's property rights (i.e. voluntary exchange) than I think that would answer your question. It's kind of a non question (and I don't mean that rudely) - It just wouldn't happen. Every other person would have to give him/her all the "property" for free.
The land was given away to people, in the US, up to about 100 years ago, just for staking a claim on the land. Up to 40 acres per person. Many made illegal claims to more than one. Many of the wealthy quickly bought them up. You can learn more about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts
It is a bit of a non-question but it illustrates a point.
So let's say that person acquires all of the property through voluntary exchange. Ok. Now, what about the next generation who now live under that person's (or their descendant's) control of that property? They can demand anything they like (in this case their time and service) in exchange for the non-property owner's survival. Are those voluntary transactions?
While more than one person owns different parts of everything, this is essentially the situation a lot of people find themselves in...they must trade their time and service in exchange for their survival. That seems less than voluntary to me and a violation of liberty.
Granted, as you pointed out, absolute freedom cannot exist...there is a trade-off when freedoms of different entities collide. This is as true in the realm of private property as anywhere else, perhaps more so since certain people start off with so much more control, therefore choices and freedom, when it comes to property, from birth. All men are certainly not created equal when it comes to those rights.
So, the question is what has to give in the realm of private property rights in order to achieve maximum liberty (or at least approach that ideal)? Treating private property rights as sacrosanct leads to an obstruction of liberty as surely as treating any other exercise of control (IOW, freedom) would.
I see what you're saying, but I think we disagree on WHY it's a non-question. One person can't lay claim to all private property through voluntary exchange. What was he exchanging for "all" the property?
My point is that the free exchange of goods (property, services, etc...) in conjunction with a strong adherence to private property rights is the least problematic method of allocating "property". It's the least problematic in terms of making sure "property" or resources are used for their most "effective" use as well as the least problematic in terms of maximum liberty for the individual (and therefore the collective).
> One person can't lay claim to all private property through voluntary exchange. What was he exchanging for "all" the property?
Yet, that is what is how things are currently trending if you change one person to one group.
When you own the means to produce what others need for their survival you can exchange those consumables for more production capacity -- the one side gets things that are valuable for a short time and fade to zero value and the other side gets things that increase in value or produce more value over time. It is a virtuous/vicious spiral (depending on what side of the equation you are on).
Nation-states are too large to effectively test things like basic income.
Those pushing basic income and expecting it to fix many problems aren't paying attention to the fact that that's how every policy got started, as a cure-all massive policy proposal. Over the years, like object-oriented programming, we realize that in practice it isn't as ideal as we thought, and indeed we've now abstracted and complicated our systems even more.
We need a more scientific, incremental form of governance and policy-making, one that is evolutionary and takes natural organic approaches. Basic income is the exact opposite of that - a massive (the most massive) policy ever constructed which presupposes way too much.
If you want to and can test it at the state level great. States should be the "laboratories of democracy". But we need some realism about it, because far too many discussions about it are not.
I don't see anything wrong with cure-all massive policy proposals. Some of them have worked in the past. For example, separating from the British Empire, freeing the slaves, and ending alcohol prohibition. (That last one has an obvious mirror in starting alcohol prohibition, but my point is just that they can work, not that they all do.) And yes, these all brought problems with them, but they were massive improvements.
I also don't see how this is "how every policy got started." There are plenty of policies that are incremental, evolutionary, and all that.
Obviously, big policy changes need to be approached very cautiously, since the potential for problems is huge. But that means you analyze and consider them carefully, not just say "nope, too big" and shut it down.
I don't think this proposal qualifies as "too big to manage." But I disagree with your examples.
Freeing the slaves was necessary and proper, but far from immune to the original argument. We screwed it up, big time (I don't mean to start a debate over this one, I think it's fairly uncontroversial that Reconstruction failed in some regards) -- in other words, we can simultaneously argue that sometimes massive policy proposals are correct but they almost always come up short of intention. "Ending slavery" couldn't be accomplished otherwise, but that doesn't meant that it was executed well.
Ending Prohibition was the opposite of a "massive policy," as are some other popular deregulations (airlines, electromagnetic spectrum, encryption to name a few). This is the federal government deciding to stop doing something. It's not the case that anyone is arguing "the federal gov't never makes a good decision."
Popular government-led programs are usually local or laissez-faire in nature. Public school systems, for instance. Or food stamps, which are relatively simple to execute. Or Social Security. The latter two have the feature that it's the individual's choice of how to spend the money.
So national income is a good example of "welfare that isn't centrally planned," and in that regard I believe it has a chance at success. The reason I think it's possible is because you wouldn't need a panel of bureaucrats deciding how to distribute all of the welfare -- you'd simply need to distribute the debit cards or whatever.
> Ending Prohibition was the opposite of a "massive policy," as are some other popular deregulations (airlines, electromagnetic spectrum, encryption to name a few). This is the federal government deciding to stop doing something. It's not the case that anyone is arguing "the federal gov't never makes a good decision."
Both establishing and ending prohibition were decisions made by the states collectively as overseers of the federal government, not decisions by the federal government; that's how the Constitutional Amendment process works.
> Popular government-led programs are usually local or laissez-faire in nature.
Social Security and Medicare seem notable counterexamples, neither is local, and neither is laissez-faire.
> Or food stamps, which are relatively simple to execute. Or Social Security. The latter two have the feature that it's the individual's choice of how to spend the money.
In both cases, I would say they aren't laissez-faire because of the fairly complex regulations determining who gets how much money; and, for food stamps, it also is not true that "it's the individual's choice of how to spend the money", as there are regulations as to what can and cannot be purchased with SNAP benefits.
> Social Security and Medicare seem notable counterexamples, neither is local, and neither is laissez-faire.
Medicare and Medicaid are both a lot more laissez-faire than people realize.
40% of all Medicare patients are on Medicare Advantage plans - ie, plans that are privately managed by brand-name health insurers that sell private insurance. And this understates the number of Medicare patients who utilize private insurance in one way or another, because (a) Medicare Advantage patients represent a disproportionate amount of utilization of care by Medicare patients, and (b) some Medicare patients are eligible for dual-coverage (so they "have" Medicare, but they use a privately-purchased health plan for all of their actual medical needs).
Incidentally, to address the original argument, Medicare Advantage patients are the ones who report higher satisfaction with their health care.
> Medicare and Medicaid are both a lot more laissez-faire than people realize.
You seem to be using "laissez-faire" to mean "private businesses are involved, regardless of the degree of government regulation". This is an unusual use of the term.
> 40% of all Medicare patients are on Medicare Advantage plans - ie, plans that are privately managed by brand-name health insurers that sell private insurance.
And very significantly regulated -- in who they are sold to, what they must cover, and various other things -- by the government, as well as the premiums being subsidized by the government. This is not "laissez-faire" by any normal definition.
> And this understates the number of Medicare patients who utilize private insurance in one way or another, because (a) Medicare Advantage patients represent a disproportionate amount of utilization of care by Medicare patients, and (b) some Medicare patients are eligible for dual-coverage (so they "have" Medicare, but they use a privately-purchased health plan for all of their actual medical needs).
And it overstates the degree to which any of this is "laissez-faire", because not only is Medicare Advantage in general not "laissez-faire" as discussed above, but some Medicare Advantage plans are even more regulated as Medicaid/Medicare managed care plans (Dual-Eligible Special Needs Plans) into which beneficiaries eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare are either made eligible or outright assigned into by state Medicaid rules.
Also, dual coverage does not mean they use a privately-purchased health plan for all their actual medical needs. Ignoring Medicaid/Medicare dual eligibility (where Medicare is primary and Medicaid potentially pays for costs not covered by Medicare), dual coverage with Medicare results in either Medicare being the primary payer and the other payer being secondary and potentially paying costs not covered by Medicare or Medicare being secondary to the other payer. [0] It doesn't mean either Medicare or the other plan is used exclusively.
> Freeing the slaves was necessary and proper, but far from immune to the original argument
Yes, the abolition of slavery in the US is actually the perfect proof of OP's argument, that sweeping, panacea-like proposals are rarely effective in achieving the desired end-goal.
We should have executed a strategic plan for reintegrating freed slaves into society, providing them with the means to succeed and overcome the unbelievably disastrous impact that centuries of the slave trade had on their lives. This is in addition to the abolition of slavery, not instead of it.
Instead, we used a very blunt tool (the abolition of slavery) and followed it up with.... nothing[0]. Unsurprisingly, we are still feeling the effects of this massive failure today.
[0] Reconstruction, in many ways, did more harm than good, because it gave people the impression that the work had been done and 'was over', when in reality it was a band-aid sloppily placed over a gaping, septic chest wound.
Ending slavery was extremely effective. Millions of people gained freedom and human rights overnight. The result was a vast improvement in their situation.
Was it perfect? No. Could it have been done a lot better? Clearly. But your proposals for doing it better involve even more intervention! The original argument was that policy changes should be kept small, incremental, and evolutionary, or that they should be done at the state level.
> Ending slavery was extremely effective. Millions of people gained freedom and human rights overnight. The result was a vast improvement in their situation.
Yes, it was 'extremely effective' if you stop the clock on Jan 2, 1863, and don't look at what actually happened in the long run afterwards. People gained some basic freedom overnight, but that's only a small piece of what needed to be done, and that remaining part... never actually happened. So while it was a success in 1863, it was not a success in 1870, or 1900, or 2000, at which point the targets for 'success' were considerably higher.
There was no plan for executing Reconstruction, no process for evaluating its success or failure, no strategy for providing the support needed to have it occur successfully. It was assumed that the initial step taken would solve all the problems, and that no additional incremental steps would need to be taken beyond that.
> But your proposals for doing it better involve even more intervention!
Yes, and in this case (abolition of slavery and the reintegration of freed slaves into society), more intervention is exactly what I'd advocate was necessary.
> When you say it was "not a success" in 2000, do you mean that we'd have been better off in 2000 if slavery had not been abolished?
No, I'm saying that, 140 years after the end of slavery, "success" means more than "we no longer have 4 million people living as slaves". Success metrics aren't static; they're time-dependent, and it's not sufficient to say that what counted as "success" for a plan in 1863 is still "success" a century and a half later (or even a decade and a half later).
The comment I originally replied to was arguing against this sort of policy, not on the basis of what it proposes, but simply because it's too big and too centralized. They propose that policy-making should be incremental and evolutionary, or local.
I use the abolition of slavery as a counterexample, since it was a huge centralized policy change that was a great improvement, where incremental, evolutionary, or local changes had failed to do anything meaningful.
So unless you're saying that we'd have been better off without federal abolition of slavery, I don't see how your time-dependent "success" criteria has any bearing on this discussion. The argument I replied to wasn't that big sweeping policies need to be done right, it was that they need not to be done at all.
The reconstruction did attempt to do what you suggest. I'd more describe the failure as what has become the prototypical American war. An attempt to impose an egalitarian democracy through force which was ultimately foiled by terrorist insurgents after a period where the US declared victory and was attempting to rebuild.
I don't see how freeing the slaves isn't a counterargument. Yes, it was messy and got screwed up badly, but it was still vastly better than leaving it up to the individual states to figure it out.
And I don't see why ending prohibition doesn't qualify. It's a massive new policy that was enacted nationwide. Just because that policy was eliminating an existing ban doesn't make it "not a policy."
Thing is, those examples are quite final: nobody is compelled to continue contributing effort & wealth to maintain them. "Separating from the British Empire"? to wit: get out & stay out. "Freeing slaves"? end legal enablement of slavery. "End alcohol prohibition"? stop enforcing prohibition.
Those are VERY different from "basic income", where a government must actively & continuously compel the productive to give up the fruits of their labors for re-distribution to whoever is legally defined as "needy" et al. Were it akin to the Biblical practice of "gleaning" (farmers don't go back to ensure absolutely everything was harvested, leaving that to the needy to scavenge), ok: (US-centric answer) basically open up BLM-managed government-owned property for temporary housing & harvesting, shooing people off yearly or so to ensure no permanent claims & abuse. But such "gleaning" solutions are immediately shot down by BI proponents, preferring solutions which demand nothing of recipients and thereby demand complete care provided by the productive.
Massive policy proposals which stop an activity are successful. Those demanding ongoing taxation etc aren't, as they're prone to growing complications & abuse.
It doesn't sound like you read Paine's proposal. You're talking more about a collectivism along the lines of Socialism or Communism. That isn't what Paine is proposing. Under Paine's system people keep 100% of the fruits of their labor. Compulsion is not needed in order to have basic income. Basic income can be done in a way that is 100% compatible with private property rights and capitalism. Paine was not proposing that we tax income and use that for basic income.
What you mention are decisions, not policies. The latter is a decision to end a catastrophic policy, which itself contradicts your claim that such policies can work.
One issue: if we're talking about the USA, the ideal place to test new policies is probably state-level, or even MSA-level. But many policies, arguably including the basic income, might have integral components that require powers that are federal level. E.g., immigration controls for basic income.
Even something that states could conceivably implement using their powers might be made ineffectual by federal policies. For instance, a lot of what states can do are constrained by federal policy. In the case of a basic income, a lot of its value is undermined by how federal redistribution programs currently work, to the extent that even though it might be valuable as a greenfield project, doing it while federal programs exist as they do will end up being a costly boondoggle. (I'm not saying that's a point in favor of a basic income--having to throw out decrepit-but-functional legacy policies for it to work would be a big point against it--but it's a reason why people might try to push it on the federal level instead of the state level.)
This is why states cannot practice universal healthcare even when their citizens overwhelmingly recognize its value.
It is also the same problem as to why corporations incorporate in Delaware.
When you have money your locational mobility in the USA is astronomical between the states. This means that the most business friendly states will in aggregate attract the most business, attract the growth, and attract the money no matter how unethical or immoral the laws of the state they congregate in are. It is reductionist capitalism because everything trends towards having the least, or in the case of many enterprises having a broken market where they get no regulation but new competition can be destroyed with regulatory barriers.
When you want to move business internationally, the barriers are much higher than moving within the US, especially between neighboring states. That strongly impedes individual states abilities to actually experiment with policy, because unless they conform to the established trend of business interest pandering they are liable to lose those companies that have adopted their population centers as major sources of employment.
Though that problem really never stops. The problem of inter-state policy in the US is a global problem. International companies could care less about borders, and we are seeing in realtime the gradual reduction of global policy towards appeasing corporate overlords demands (see the TPP) so they do not discard their home country like a worn pair of trousers.
I mean, consider the feasibility of going to the extreme and trying to startup actual communism in any of the largely socialist European nations. It would be immediate and catastrophic wealth flight to other nations because economics will transcend borders while politics will not. Even if the majority of people want something, the ruling class will be intimately aware that they actually hold no real power in society, because they are beholden to the drivers of economics rather than their own people to keep their economies growing.
This is why states cannot practice universal healthcare even when their citizens overwhelmingly recognize its value.
What of the large percentage of citizens who, as a block, overwhelmingly reject it as "value" and seek to rid themselves of it? Many of our foreign friends here may not understand how absolutely essential individual liberty is to the classic American character & philosophy, the fierce opposition to being compelled (under threat of fines, incarceration, or worse) to act as strangers (being no more than equals) may decide they should beyond basic morality. That opposition to compulsion does not automatically equate to social evil, as many are charitable philanthropists - they just choose to give to others as they see fit, without the knowledge or approval of third parties whom they neither know nor approve of; those who do indeed see to it their poor neighbors have basic needs met. I don't want your "universal healthcare", and think it a waste of resources (and don't you go imputing evil just because I don't agree with you; I'd see to it others are cared for, if only the gov't would stop confiscating the value I've created).
Actually Alaska already has implemented this system (oil drilling rights and basic income for permanent residents).
Land, natural resources, airwaves, mineral rights, drilling rights, etc are considered common property under the proposed system. People bid for rights to them. The proceeds are then used for basic income.
There is no redistribution of wealth with what Paine is recommending. You keep 100% of the fruits of your labor.
What is an example of a "cure-all massive policy"? When I think through the list of common welfare state components, none of them appear to be intended as cure-alls, but rather solutions to specific problems.
That's a very US-centric view. Finland disagrees.[0] Now you can say, "Well Finland has the population of Colorado, so whatev'", but that's just silly. The entire, "Well this is just too big," argument has no merit. It's just arguing for the status quo for the sake of the status quo. It's an argument from helplessness. What's too big? Who says? Why can't we kick the can down to a county or town, or a ward, or a street?
It's not a hard project to implement you cut an identical check to every tax payer. The tax collection agency already has everyone's name and address, and has the infrastructure to cut checks, as does the welfare agency. It's really really simple. Anything beyond arguing what the check size should be, is a distraction.
It does matter that Finland has the population of Colorado because that has historically led to very different societies. You can't just ingore that. Finland's entire population is smaller than some demographics in the US.
You are correct, it is US-centric and I apologize for that. Backtracking now, a smaller nation-state such as Finland is a good place to test this.
> Now you can say, "Well Finland has the population of Colorado, so whatev'", but that's just silly. The entire, "Well this is just too big," argument has no merit. It's just arguing for the status quo for the sake of the status quo
We're on Hacker News, a website maintained by an investment firm focused on startups, created by a man (Paul Graham) who has written at length about why startups are better-positioned to tackle certain problems, address certain markets, or try radical management tactics internally, specifically due to their size[0], and the lack of overhead that larger companies use to manage their size.
I think it's a little silly to dismiss the claim that size matters as having "no merit" and "arguing for the status quo [just] for the sake of the status quo".
Startups are trying to create something new. Governments are just trying to deploy the same thing across different numbers of cities/states/etc. There are certainly reasons why a larger-scale deployment of a public policy could be more likely to run into problems that might not have been encountered in a smaller scale trial, but that's a vastly weaker argument than for startups.
Putting aside that the idea that companies and societies are the same thing, this argument is still wrong.
The reason why small companies take risks is because they are not invested in the status quo and ossified. They innovate not only because the have to, but because they have a culture where it's possible to do that. The lack of innovation at large companies isn't that they've looked at the innovation and said, "No. Not for us. We'll let someone else do that." It's that they can't even see the opportunity for innovation. It's arguing for the status quo why you see the opportunity, and say "No. Not for us," which is exactly what what the grandparent was arguing.
> It's not a hard project to implement you cut an identical check to every tax payer. The tax collection agency already has everyone's name and address, and has the infrastructure to cut checks, as does the welfare agency.
Who pays for this? The bottom 46% of income earners already pay zero tax, and the top 10% pay almost 50%. Yes you can argue, I guess, that they should pay more but careful...at what point do you kill the golden geese?
We keep borrowing, you say? Well we are almost $20tril in debt right now and current unfunded federal liabilities are somewhat north of $200tril.
The only reason we haven't seen real inflation yet is because the dollar is the reserve currency of the world and that other countries are in even worse shape, thus we have natural inflation-resistant situation where we get to finance our debt on the backs of the world.
That works out to $3T in checks to every US citizen every year. That's about equal to federal revenue. Sure, a lot of people would just get their own money back (a waste of redistribution efforts), but half of recipients don't pay taxes so that's really $1.5T ... still half of federal revenue, when the gov't is spending nearly twice revenue.
Yes, it really just comes down to arguing about what the check size should be ... leaving a whole lotta people with a whole lotta motive to argue it should be a whole lot bigger than austerity-sized and covering little more than staple foods etc.
Wrong. (Even though, actually, in a redistributive scheme, this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, as you don't actually need the net recipients paying in anything at all, since that just means more shuffling for the same effect.)
It's actually an extremely hard project to implement because if it fails good luck removing the entitlement from those people who now "cannot live without it."
>Those pushing basic income and expecting it to fix many problems aren't paying attention to the fact that that's how every policy got started, as a cure-all massive policy proposal. Over the years, like object-oriented programming, we realize that in practice it isn't as ideal as we thought, and indeed we've now abstracted and complicated our systems even more.
Yes, that's why rural electrification failed, completely and utterly /s.
Paine's arguments, which have been widely expanded on by geolibertarians, are compelling but what he's specifically advocating here is most naturally interpreted as extremely limited compared with what developed world governments offer their populace instead.
Fundamentally, he's arguing that people should be compensated to allow them to reach the same standard of living as would have been possible in the absence of civilization and proposing a subsidy in the region of £1000 per annum in today's sterling to compensate. That's far closer to the Alaska Permanent Fund in both ideological underpinnings and magnitude than it is to being an adequate welfare state replacement[1]. Of course, we could speculate that he'd advocate a much higher subsidy in today's land of relative plenty, but his 1797 argument is quite explicit in suggesting that people are owed no more than the value of the life they could have enjoyed in a Native American "state of nature" and the landed classes owe no more than that.
Fortunately today we have new arguments for the economic benefits of universal education and necessity of unemployment insurance in an economy managed to ensure some level of involuntary unemployment persists.
[1]£1k per year for Paine's average 30 year adult remaining lifespan plus £1.5k at 21 is less than my government's investment in my education...
As a Libertarian who believes in the Singularity and that the workplace will be displaced by AI I think basic income and the Geolibertarian, Agrarian Justice, Georgism style basic income is the only one that will work and that doesn't violate the principle of liberty and respect for personal property.
With Internet based education, society has the potential to make education virtually free since the cost of distribution is essentially zero. It's only when people need access to special equipment or more hands on lab style education where facilities and mentors will be needed.
There is still the problem of gentrification though as basic income will be the same everywhere but certain cities will be much more expensive than others. This will lead to skilled labor concentrating in geographic locations.
I think you're wrong about education. The difference between a decent and an amazing teacher can be phenominal, regardless of the syllabus. Plus, the best education is apprenticeship/on-the-job training, which makes humans even more necessary.
The more we use technology, the greater the role people become. You can see any video on the Internet, but most of them are trash and a waste of time, so you look to the producers and curators you prefer.
"Machines will make everything we want," people in your category tend to say. Yes, but who designs the clothing, and who markets it into your soul to make you feel incomplete without it? Who comes up with the recipes for your gourmet lunchtime subs? Whom do you trust to suggest one vacation locale over an other?
Also, cynically put, this kind of societal transformation will require the dominant financial and political classes to willingly bestow the world with their riches, while giving away their power. When in history has that ever happened?
Well, the important threshold he isn't really commenting on -- but which is much more pertinent, is the further removal of blue collar labor.
You are totally right that for the most part, service oriented industries (design, marketing, etc) will remain long after those more labor and autonomous jobs have been transitioned into AI.
I disagree about the "blue collar labor" aspect as well. Aren't many lumberjacks in my neck of the woods these days, but woodworkers aplenty.
Let's take another example. Perhaps McDonald's goes 100% automated, and a sub shop next door adopts automations for things like cleaning, but still cooks the food by hand. Sure, it doesn't take too much to make a sandwich, but it's the personal aspect that makes it more appealing. And maybe you go there because you like chatting with the people who work there. Couldn't get the same from a machine.
I think before we get ahead of ourselves on AI we should re-read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and remember that the organic will always value the organic more than the inorganic.
Depends... Some entry level jobs kind of breed contemptuous workers. So unless they have great training, such as Starbucks or any Japanese store in Japan, you may want to actually avoid interacting with people.
And then you have the places where the servers think they're too good. That what they do is craftsmanship and artisan.
But the places where the servers think they're too good are often successful businesses whose target market genuinely believes that what they're getting is artisanal produce served by master craftsmen.
And at the lower end of the market, vending machine technology (including heated optimised-for-fast-food vending machine technology) has existed for many decades now, as has the production line technology to prepare most types of fast food. The McJobs are still there because fast food giants that invest heavily in researching process optimisation have continued to figure that relying mostly on minimum wage employees and using very little in the way of even basic robotics will actually generate more profit.
Bingo on both fronts. Low-wage, low-quality establishments get away with not automating because they are subsidized by low minimum wages and food stamps.
Quality establishments are seen as artisan because all it takes is a personal touch in a sea of robotics to feel that you're getting more than you are. I'm sure a pure price analysis of ingredients would show little differentiation (except, in MCDs case, that terrible "meat")
>With Internet based education, society has the potential to make education virtually free since the cost of distribution is essentially zero. It's only when people need access to special equipment or more hands on lab style education where facilities and mentors will be needed.
The "education system" isn't an education system, it is a selection system and its function is almost purely social, filtering most people out of attractive social locations.
Additionally, even if the number of engineers doubled overnight, there would not be a proportional increase in firms or jobs because that is not what drives the economy - new initiatives do, and that doesn't come from education (see Schumpeter on the role of the entrepreneur.)
Further, as you admit, belief in AI is just that: belief. It is ideology and like religion has nothing to do with science, or reality.
Not everyone is self motivated or disciplined enough to learn entirely online. Different people also find different learning styles with better for them.
Finally, someone recognizes there's a vast range between truly basic income/expenses, vs maintaining a standard of living exceeding the norm of most people on the planet. The US "poverty line" is at the ~80th percentile of world income, and one way or another one below it can get enough aggregate welfare payments to step well above that line. Contrast that with really basic costs of food ($1/meal traditional diet, or $12/day Soylent ready-to-drink), housing (one 100 sq ft simple "tiny house" per person, $1-10/day), data service ($1/day), plus other comparably humble-yet-sufficient services add up to something like $5000/yr (and much less in bulk or with other careful reductions). But that is, of course, outrageous to most BI advocates - viewing "basic" as a complete-and-served product, not a collection of staples requiring the recipient put some real effort into.
Define car payment; actually please don't, I can't see any point other than inflammation.
A 'basic' income should ideally fulfill the basic structural needs of someone living in an area.
* Adequate Shelter
* Food (possibly basic, but it should be healthy. Food does tend to work better in bulk though, so not-for-profit health kitchens are something I'd recommend)
* Health (including cleaning supplies/etc)
* Enough whatever (transit, clothing, education, etc) to get a better job.
* //basic// entertainment
In these last two points I see work uniforms, transit, probably paper/notes, and likely --basic-- computers (think Raspberry Pi 3) with Internet access (generic TV/work).
Actually if it doesn't do this it would likely just end up acting as a subsidy to low wage employers.
Only if it's enough to give people the freedom to walk away from their jobs is it actually meaningful, and realistically it's not going to be introduced at a level where it would.
And that leads to the other core issue few address: "supply and demand" still rules, and the economy would merely shift prices to drive beneficiaries right back where they were before. If you don't have to actually do anything to buy a gallon of gas or a loaf of bread, prices will rise until you once again have to work about 20 minutes of menial labor to earn whatever "extra" you need to buy it.
Most people benefitting from BI wouldn't be using it to go start a business or produce fine art, they're going to sit around watching TV or procreating or finding some new imputed need to demand even more BI to cover. Harsh, yes, but fits my dismayed discoveries whenever I go out serving the poor (doesn't stop me, but does increase bitterness).
Do you also believe that welfare recipients would not miss welfare payments if they were suspended today, or does "supply and demand" not function presently to neutralize the effect of transfer payments in society?
The second bit about people squandering resources has been nicely answered by Friedman in his discussion of negative income tax: it is better to have individual market participants make occasional mistakes than to suffer the greater inefficiencies of central planning [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM].
Of course such a tax is progressive, which hurts rich people much more than a flat payout.
Other points made by Friedman are hilarious, especially the part about people not wanting to go to work when on basic income. It's basic. I don't know a person who wants to live in a near poverty situation.
It's not that they want to be poor, it's that you're making it viable for them to lounge instead of work. A great many would rather sleep in and watch TV all day, instead of get up early and work hard for not a significant improvement in living. Every time I go to help the poor at their homes, I'm amazed at how many choose their conditions by opting for behaviors causing their poverty.
>And that leads to the other core issue few address: "supply and demand" still rules, and the economy would merely shift prices to drive beneficiaries right back where they were before. If you don't have to actually do anything to buy a gallon of gas or a loaf of bread, prices will rise until you once again have to work about 20 minutes of menial labor to earn whatever "extra" you need to buy it.
That's not how supply and demand works. The supply elasticity of a price of bread in particular is very high because it's trivially easy to ramp up production. It's the same for most industrial goods - industrial slack (google it) means that increases in demand do not correspond to increases in price.
The price of goods and services which have a constrained supply (low elasticity goods) would go up in price to match the new level of spending. The only one I can think of that would qualify these days is land, but it would be trivially easy to throttle spending on that at the same time by raising taxes on it.
Yes, if one wants to play this thought experiment with numbers that don't assume magic money trees, you're probably talking something in the $5-8K/yr/adult range (plus presumably still making Medicaid available for some). You'd still see a middle class income transfer, but go with it.
The thing is that a lot of BI advocates I read seem to be envisioning this as something that lets them do their startup or create great art thing without worrying about having to have a job. I suppose that's possible on that level of income with maybe a bit of work on the side. But it's probably a lot closer to eeking out a very spartan existence in a crappy, very low cost of living area with a lot of excess housing no one wants.
Paine advocates for roughly 10% of the GDP to be redistributed which indeed works out to $5600 in the US using 2014 numbers. This, however would easily lift a single-earner part-time minimum wage head-of-household of 3 from below the poverty line to above the poverty line ($5600 * 3 = $16800, which is just $3360 below the poverty line of $20160)
While true, many advocates of this sort of plan are arguing for it so that workers don't have to work crappy minimum wage jobs but can go off and do something more creative. Or they can rely on basic income if their jobs are automated away.
> While true, many advocates of this sort of plan are arguing for it so that workers don't have to work crappy minimum wage jobs but can go off and do something more creative. Or they can rely on basic income if their jobs are automated away.
I think its not unreasonable to see UBI as something that could enable that, with sufficient growth in productivity driven by automation.
I think that its naïve to think that you can set UBI at a level now that achieves that, though. 10% of GDP can provide a lot different living standard as GDP/capita increases.
I don't see a politically feasible basic income plan of that scale happening anytime soon. But allowing a single mother to cut hours down to 20-30 hours a week from 50 would be a huge win for quality-of-life.
Really, most people who read HN would notice the difference of an extra 5 grand in their pocket each year, and they are on average much wealthier than the people I'm thinking of.
The average person who reads HN would almost certainly have >$5K removed from their other pocket to pay for the $5K they would be given. There's no magic source to suddenly give everyone $5K more money--unless you pretend there is and have inflation eat up the whole amount.
My point wasn't that the people on HN would be $5k richer; it was rather that if they would notice $5k, how much more would someone notice who is right around the poverty line.
> The US "poverty line" is at the ~80th percentile of world income
This figure doesn't matter much, unless a person in the US can decide to buy a loaf of bread from Kyrgystan for 25.86 Som, does it? You'd have to adjust to make a meaningful comparison with the rest of the world.
> Contrast that with really basic costs of food ($1/meal traditional diet, or $12/day Soylent ready-to-drink), housing (one 100 sq ft simple "tiny house" per person, $1-10/day), data service ($1/day), plus other comparably humble-yet-sufficient services add up to something like $5000/yr
$5,000? Come on now. This guy[1] apparently lives on $7,000, but it is quite an extreme lifestyle. And he has an RV, the cost of which he doesn't count in his expenses. And he has a garden in which he grows his own food, which we don't all have a place to put. etc. Combine that with the fact that this lifestyle won't be feasible for everyone -- some of us need more medical insurance than he pays for, for example -- and when the lifestyle fails for people they end up in the ER or prison or otherwise taxing everyone else.
I agree with your general premise, but let's not exaggerate, $5k/yr is not realistic.
> This figure doesn't matter much, unless a person in the US can decide to buy a loaf of bread from Kyrgystan for 25.86 Som, does it? You'd have to adjust to make a meaningful comparison with the rest of the world.
If you adjust for purchasing power parity, US poverty lines are all still above the median world income. Around half the world lives on less than $10000 in notional US purchasing power per annum.
This amount of money is not realistic even when you put it into an inflation calculator. For example, Walden built his cabin for $28 in the 1850's, which is about $900 today and clearly not enough to build a cabin with today's dollars even scrapping like he did.
Sure, inflation and purchasing power parity calculations don't always work between very different societies, but if you replace that indicative £1000 sum with "sufficient to ensure you can rent enough land to put a teepee on and buy some of the basic foodstuffs you can't hunt/forage any more" which is what Paine argued civilization had cost the average person, it doesn't start to look like an adequate welfare replacement.
He does say, "That price does not include windows, door, insulation or interior furnishings. In place of a brick fireplace I have recommended a recycled steel barrel stove and stove kit from Vogelzang that would be more efficient."
Those things he is excluding will easily double the price. A wood stove costs thousands, maybe hundreds used. 8 sqft of insulation is $50. Windows are $200 each. A door the same or more. And also, 10'x15' isn't really viable for a home, even for one person, much less a family that wants a shower in the bathroom.
We also have building codes now that require a functional kitchen and bathroom which add significantly to the price of a livable structure the government won't tear down.
I think bare minimum costs to build a livable structure today, would be in the $50,000 range and the mortgage on that would be $300 per month, which would fit within my proposed living stipend of $2,000 per month per family of 4.
Wood burning stoves used in homes in developing countries are the number one cause of disease and death. To suggest that countries downgrade from electricity to this is absurd, would cost lives, and billions in increased medical expenses.
Modern wood stoves are sealed to the inside and have vents to pull air in from outside the house via vacuum created by the heat pushing the air out through a vent to the outside as well.
You'll easily pay $800 for one of these stoves, used -- in the summer. Which is why I was saying that you can just use an inflation calculator to figure out how much things cost today relative to yesterday. We have better technology, more building codes to follow, and more things to buy.
Life does cost more today than it did back then, more than inflation can account for.
All philosophizing about UBI is superfluous because it is impossible to set the level of this "income". Nobody would be satisfied with $2K per person and year; $20K would be too much for any state budget yet too little to live on.
> All philosophizing about UBI is superfluous because it is impossible to set the level of this "income".
I disagree that that the difficulty in reaching consensus on the ideal standard of living UBI should provide makes philosophizing about UBI superfluous (in fact, I think that observation is a key part of the philosophizing about UBI, and among the reasons that it should not target a particular living standard; rather, it should be tied to a particular revenue source or set of revenue sources (whether that's a resource extraction charge, a tax on capital income, a land value tax, or some combination thereof), and then simply redistributes the value of that revenue stream among the citizenry on an equal basis. It should be the kind of revenue stream such that the expectation is that with continued technological and economic development, the value (and thus the standard of living it supports) will usually increase over time.
Money is fungible however. The government is still in the position where (theoretically) you're somewhat balancing money in and money out. So tie UBI to some specific revenue source or set of sources, and you still need to: 1.) Determine those sources and 2.) The tax rate on those sources. That's still all money that would have gone to different individuals or different uses. It's also subject to future political pressure to change the percentage. So it's not a case of picking source(s) and rate(s) to support an arbitrary payment outcome.
Sometimes it is close to the ideal. The Alaskan Permanent Fund probably comes closest in the US. But that's probably not enough for a UBI and it's unclear what the equivalent at the US level would be. In addition, it's likely that anything directly associated with resource extraction would decrease over time.
I generally agree. I mean you possibly could do it. One could live on a pretty small sum in a non-luxury area of the country. (Forget about the Bay area. Think Detroit.) But it's going to be a pretty minimalist existence and you're probably not going to find a lot of supplemental jobs in such an area.
Philosophically, its kind of hard to justify a harm based charge (which is what Paine suggest) if you accept otherwise the principles of a free-exchange, market-based economy. It would be just as justifiable to demand a benefit based charge based on what the beneficiaries receive beyond what they would receive in the state of nature, and obviously a fair charge would be somewhere in between those values, such that both those who lose (directly) to privatization of property and those who (directly) gain from it are net winners.
>To create a National Fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twentyone years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling [...] And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age
This essay advocates a pension system, not basic income. The one-time payout at 21 is negligible in comparison with the annual payments after 50.
I've been looking through the GDP for a Living Stipend and this is what I have found thus far:
Living Stipend
tax/share 0.01
Population 320,000,000
NYSE 802,026,511,675 8,020,265,116.75
Forex 5,300,000,000,000 53,000,000,000.00
CBOE 1,274,776,218 12,747,762.18
Nasdaq 671,175,892,500 6,711,758,925.00
$67,744,771,803.93 TOTAL REVENUE
OIL 6,970,000,000 10 69,700,000,000
FIN SERVICES 1,260,000,000,000 15% 189,000,000,000
TECH 606,000,000,000 15% 90,900,000,000
Entertainment 546,000,000,000 15% 81,900,000,000
PROFESSIONAL Services 1,500,000,000,000 15% 225,000,000,000
2,263.26 STIPEND PER PERSON PER YEAR
I think we need more than this. There could be more if we stop asking the tax payers to subsidize the salaries of high level executives as well, but I haven't done that math yet.
To explain the numbers above, $10/barrel for oil, a penny per share traded on the major stock exchanges. 15% tax on services, which aren't taxed. Why aren't we taxing lawyer fees for example or computer consulting services or massages? Of course we can take those numbers up a bit or down a bit in the appropriate areas, but we need about 10x that I think to really give people food and shelter security.
I'm really shooting for $2,000 per month per household. I think there is a place somewhere in the country that any family could live on that amount of money and feed their families. Of course this would be adjusted based on family size and the numbers above are per person. An individual could survive on $1,000 per month I think and a family of 3 or 4 could survive on $2,000 per month if they do it right. If they don't they can get a job to supplement income. If they want to work more, they can do that too.
No, not specifically at a federal level. Some states have business excise taxes but they are less than a percent for most businesses. I'm talking a tax on services like when you go buy food and the receipt has the tax added.
The income tax on those professionals is the closest thing we have now, but blue collar workers pay that too and the products they make have a sales tax at the other end on top of their income tax.
Funny how, at HackerNews, a post with data and intent on progress is still drowned out by useless rhetoric that will never actually make a difference. Someone posted real numbers with a clear intent to find a solution to an imminent problem and did not get one up vote. Edit: More than one upvote. :)
In Paine's time, this theory of income was intended to stimulate expansion and conquest of virgin lands in the hopes of acquiring enough resources to offset and even contend against European powers to right certain ideological wrongs.
Ironically, when this theory was practiced by America (via American-printed currency not bounded by metallic limitations) the credit expansion created a mechanism to conquer more and more virgin land to pay off the interest on the loan, which resulted in the elimination of Paine's ideal Native American strawman utopia.
However, since exclusive access rights to locations are a practical necessity, all those who are excluded must be given restitution.
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