The UBI debate is fundamental to how we perceive society and what kind of society we want to build into the future.<p>If one's idea of human society is people working to earn money. Fullstop. And those who are better at it are the be all and end alls of human civilization and progress and the ultimate aspiration. Then words like lazy, people will not do anything, arguments that are generic enough to block any action, and are actually red herrings enter the debate.<p>This seems to be a pretty impoverished view of humanity. But one that our current capitalist system necessitates,<p>The other way is thinking of the billions of brains wasted every generation just trying to survive, exactly what humans did 2000 years ago. Now imagine if all these brains could be freed and god knows how much innovation, progress and intellectual output can be unlocked into a completely different kind of society. That's a vision.<p>But the reality is many will stick doggedly to the personal wealth and achievement mantra and because of the disproportionate influence of wealth and entrenched interests in our societies right from feudalism to now, and UBI or any such fanciful idea will be sabotaged and blocked.
There's two issues that I don't think have been adequately addressed, or that I missed, in the banter over this issue.<p>1) What would stop us from recreating the inefficient welfare state that already exists on top of this new one when some people inevitably blow their UBI on drugs/cheetos/whatever and don't have money for rent? It seems that for this to work we'd have to maintain some intestinal fortitude to say "no" - and that to me sounds like a serious culture change in this country...which gets me to my next, perhaps more contentious, point.<p>2) What role do immigrants play in this? Google's telling me there's 11m illegal immigrants in the US right now (though I've seen higher estimates from more hawkish folks). What about people on a visa who pay taxes? Would they both get UBI from Uncle Sam? My view for both would be no, but some of my peers who support UBI have argued that they should, pretty emphatically.<p>I guess what I'm saying is that I'm detecting, at least in my circles, a lot of overlap between people who believe in the "global citizen" model and those who support this. Perhaps Altman's idea of basically just issuing shares of USG is meant to get around this, but that sounds still half-baked at this point, even if it is just a branding strategy. This, at its heart, is more of a rights question and I don't think we've been thinking about it that way.
If I were Sam A. instead of (or in addition to) funding UBI, I would fund R&D projects which enable people to live as off grid and self-sufficiently as possible with all the comforts of urban/suburban living without all the costs.<p>Basically strive to enable Amish style living but instead of trying to maintain an complete early 19th way of life, include elements which are near free due to automated manufacturing.<p>You supply the land (lot in an exurban area near a major metro with a temperate climate) and labor and the rest is available at a minimal recurring cost.
1.) Housing - Permit ready Ikea like house with mail order pre-cut 2x4 and panels
2.) Energy - Solar charged battery/heating/cooling
3.) Transportation - 4 wheeled e-mountain bike
4.) Clothing - Target/Walmart
5.) Food - Self grown heirloom tomatoes, quinoa with store bought supplements such as cheap corn, meats, etc.
6.) Telecom - Long Range Wifi Receiver or Internet Cafe
7.) Education - Khan Academy, home schooling
8.) Entertainment - Youtube by DVD<p>The first two minutes of this video are pretty interesting/inspiring (not that I'm ready to drop everything to start a farm or anything...yet):<p>Urban Farmer Curtis Stone
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHls2HEFudw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHls2HEFudw</a><p>TLDR - Farming can teach you a lot about yourself.
In ancient Rome there were a few honest reformers who felt bread subsidies (classical UBI) were deserved by the people. It was an economic argument (as is Sam's) since Roman conquest generated massive wealth that did not reach the masses who made it possible.<p>It was an honest attempt at economic reform by a few forward thinking leaders. Within a generation the movement was captured by politicians who used its popularity to further their ambitions. The fight against opponents self-perpetuated and wins became more important than change. The program morphed to the infamous bread and circuses, subsidizing a city of a million people that ultimately collapsed.<p>I will aplaud the reformers but some things never change.
<i>The question I’m interested in: How do we unlock maximum human potential?</i><p>Last I checked, welfare does the opposite of this. It helps people merely subsist, not strive for greatness.<p>Then he goes on to compare YC to basic income. Seriously? They take a share in your company and help you develop it. That isn't <i>money for nothing.</i><p>If he weren't a millionaire and the current president of YC, would we keep seeing articles about his vision on the front page of HN? I don't think so. I don't believe his arguments are that cogent or compelling.<p>I find it increasingly sad and frustrating to see yet another <i>Sam Altman on UBI</i> piece here. The mantra on HN is that ideas matter and that HN wants to deemphasize names and avoid promoting pieces being posted merely because they are about some celebrity. I think these articles fail that test.<p>If you take Sam Altman out of this article, would we discuss it at all? If the answer to that is <i>no,</i> then why are we discussing it?
Doing some back of the envelope math, US gov revenue is 3.31 trillion and the population size is 323.1 million. Which leaves about $10244 per capita to play with.<p>How would a BI work, give people $7k per year and save 3k for military and basic services? Seems like BI would need big tax increases to become viable.
Sam makes an interesting analogy with Y Combinator as providing a form of "basic income" to people trying to start startups. However, this analogy ignores a huge difference in the two cases: the people who are trying to start startups with Y Combinator's help are a highly self-selected group. Giving them "basic income" often turns out to be highly productive, yes. But that does not imply that giving basic income to everybody would turn out to be highly productive.<p>To be fair, he does describe what he's attempting as an "experiment" and acknowledges that it might not work out the way he thinks.
Sam: "<i>The millennials looked around and said, “Damn, I’ve got $200,000 of student debt. I have no job prospects that are gonna let me afford a house, or a car, or three trips a year to Europe. I better decide to shoot for something else.”</i>"<p><a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-typical-household-with-student-loan-debt/" rel="nofollow">https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-typical-household-wit...</a><p>"<i>The average balance of outstanding student loan debt for households with some debt was $25,700. The median debt was $13,000, and seventy-five percent of borrowers had less than $29,000. These burdens are relatively modest given the annual earnings of these households. The average annual wage earnings among this population was $71,700.</i>"<p>Note: "for households with some debt".
Sentimentalizing about drinking tea around a candle resting on a table of nice wood is all fine and dandy, but let's put aside the images of upper middle class comforts and imagine your local butcher embedded in a family and a local community. He's providing a service people need and he's receiving money for his work which he uses to support his family and keep his business running. There is a network of interdependence in communities that also extends into the economic sphere of life. The butcher's trade, craft, and work are meaningful and the meaning exists in that web of relations.<p>The butcher's motives are complex, but one motive is that his work is also for the sake of supporting himself and his family. His relationship with his family, his wife, his kids, is also complex, but part of it is the (at least partial) reliance on their husband and father in an economic sense.<p>What does UBI do to the butcher and his relationship to his family and to his community?
I largely agree with what's being said in this interview, except for a few comments:<p>> "But in countless ways it’s much harder to convince lawmakers and politicians to give every person in the country cash gratis than it is to guide a start-up to a nine-figure valuation."<p>You don't have to convince lawmakers to do it. It's possible to implement basic income without any direct government support.<p>> "The question I’m interested in: How do we unlock maximum human potential?"<p>This is almost the right question, but not exactly. The right question is "how do we unlock the economy's prosperity-maximizing capacity?" It's not about how how we get the most out of humans. It's about how we provide the most <i>for</i> humans.<p>> "Obviously, there are a lot of people who could do great things that would benefit all of us. Create art, start companies and yet they can’t."<p>This is true, but human labor is just one of many resources that we're not using to their full potential. By narrowly framing things just in terms of what we can get out of humans, we're limiting the possibilities of basic income.<p>> "One of the things that people forget is that if the robots really do come, yes, they will eliminate or change a lot of jobs, but the cost of goods and services will just go down and down and down."<p>Sort of. Monetary policy will prevent deflation. So the price of the things people need to <i>buy</i> will always remain stable. It's just that people might get more stuff for free.<p>> "What I would propose is a model like a company where you get a share in U.S. Inc. And then, instead of getting a fixed fee, you get a percentage of the GDP every year."<p>This is a mistake. The economy has the capacity to produce a certain amount of wealth for people. That amount is difficult to calculate ahead of time. Measures like GDP are probably not going to help. But the appropriate amount of basic income is always going to correspond to the amount of spending that the economy can productively respond to.
What astonishes me is how often I see a BI proponent is also a bitcoin proponent. The government can’t be trusted not to devalue our currency but at the same time we should introduce a system which makes our livelihoods dependent on the whims of bureaucrats.
A nice experiment would be to start with universal health care. This probably needs to be part of UBI anyways. It would already free quite a few people of having to stay in a bad job and would allow people with families or who are older to be more entrepreneurial. Try this and see how the politics work out.<p>The trend seems to go the other way though: taxes for upper incomes are being lowered, no estate tax and Obamacare is pretty much neglected until it falls apart. I think instead of UBI he should worry more about near term issues.
We did this interview with Sam a few weeks before he posted his recent essay on the topic. Not having to coordinate illustrations definitely helps with publishing speed. :) During the interview, we realized it was the first time I had heard him talk about the GDP idea as an answer to the branding problem of bringing UBI to America.
I support some form of UBI. My concern is that UBI is a classic redistributive strategy, and redistributive strategies have done poorly in America's long and ongoing class war. The most recent tax plan is a good example the haves winning another battle in that war. So the basic question for anyone who believes in UBI and economic justice is: How do you convince the wealthy and powerful to give up some of their wealth and power? Almost by definition, they can't be forced to do it, because wealth and power are their own defense against redistribution.
I find it interesting to read up on UBI schemes and the discussion here as well as Altman's is fascinating too.<p>What particularly strikes me is how he points out that this already exists in cultures. Even in villages in India, you'd find people simply willing to do stuff for each other. If you have a wedding in your family, the village will come together to cook and serve meals, offer hospitality to your guests and generally work to make everyone happy on the occasion. If you happen to be mentally ill, someone would still feed and clothe you, include you at least in some small way in their social life, and so on. You won't be abandoned.<p>UBI looks like a quantified version of this social capital. If we resist and think "why should someone else do nothing and get the benefits of my work?", the society has lost the practical generosities of village life and UBI might be a way to resurrect that. I personally find it pretty ridiculous that there are homeless and hungry people at all in the wealthiest of countries, and am certainly curious about what potentials UBI could unlock for them given they haven't yet fallen into antisocial ways despite their condition. Something is wrong if you see an old man in rags rummaging through a trash can for food scraps in a high GDP country.
The experiment Sam mentions is already <i>heavily</i> biased. They are giving away $1000-$2000 to few families in Oakland as basic income. The problem is that these families are already aware that some Silicon Valley billionaire is performing experiment on them and they know this life line would disappear in future. So they would be forced to make best out of it unlike if this was provided by government for rest of their lives unconditionally.<p>Another counter point is that doing this at scale would have huge impact on pricing of services. A lot of people do
monotonous boring repetitive work they absolutely hate even if it generates bare bone income. This can include everything from janitorial services to cashier at grocery store to construction sites. Once you get same amount of money for free, there is less incentive for anyone to do this sort of work. Consequently supply for workers would reduce while demand stays same. This would inflate prices of goods and services in general economy. My hunch is that price increase would be exactly such that to offset the basic income. So the net effect would be having no basic income at all. In countries like Finland things are different because of their sovereign funds, tax structure and external income sources.
Universal basic income is a complex issue.<p>First, you need to see it as a part of the existing system: healthcare, education, law enforcement, prisons, etc.<p>- A hospital cannot deny care to a patient in an emergency situation. Many medical emergencies occur due to poor living conditions. If you give money to people, their living conditions improve, improving their health and reducing their chances of getting in a medical emergency situation.<p>- Law enforcement spends a lot of resources and time handling crime. Given money to people is a deterrent for crime.<p>- Did you know that having a person in prison is more expensive than having them on a hotel? Since giving money to people deters crime, it also prevents them going to prison.<p>So, in this respect, just by having people do absolutely nothing, you can end up saving money. This is unintuitive.<p>Now, universal basic income can be bad in some cases. Many people in the economy do whatever it takes to have an income, however low. They will risk their lives, their health, do things they don't want to do. Universal basic income gives people an option to not engage in those activities.
I think reinstituting a 2 year (or whatever length of time) national service requirement is a much more realistic, practical way of moving the country, and this general discussion, forward.<p>UBI feels like a tactic with too many complications and opportunities to distort incentives, motivations, etc.
"We’re still in our pilot. It turns out that giving money to people is much harder than you might imagine. We’ve had to work with state, local, federal governments so that people in our study don’t lose their housing eligibility, lose their food assistance just because we’re giving them money and raising their income level. And what we don’t want is to make anyone worse off."<p>It feels like this statement is what would concern most skeptics of UBI, that is yet another layer of complexity on top of an already complex system.<p>Isn't the main benefit of UBI to make it so everything is streamlined into a single program and administrative overhead is reduced?
Well, here's a copy from memory of my post from hours ago that has now disappeared:<p>Um, no need, it's in my comments but not in this message list any more, not necessary to use what's left of my feeble memory, I'll just copy & paste it back in :)<p>Without the leading dollar sign for one of my run-on sentences, replaced by USD instead, just like you would do on a teletype machine.<p>Quoting myself here:<p>>It is easy for some of us to remember what it was like back in the '60's when SF rose to become the US center of non-capitalism at the time.<p>>The Grateful Dead were local musicians who gained more widespread popularity whether every one of them wanted it or not, especially once they got a record deal with a capitalist outfit that could advertise and promote in ways that the musicians could not or would not do on their own.<p>>As the purported "leader" of the band, Jerry Garcia for one indicated that he was soon earning more income than he really needed, and having a strong balance toward benevolence over greed, set out to give 1000USD each to numerous individuals who without a doubt were truly in need of the funds.<p>>1000USD really would go a lot further then compared to a short 10 years later once the devastating devaluation of the US dollar was set into motion after it was unlinked to a universally appreciated natural resource (gold).<p>>Anyway, turns out that before too long it was determined that it was costing 1200usd to give away each 1000USD, and the program ended up grinding to a halt.
It is easy for some of us to remember what it was like back in the '60's when SF rose to become the US center of non-capitalism at the time.<p>The Grateful Dead were local musicians who gained more widespread popularity whether every one of them wanted it or not, especially once they got a record deal with a capitalist outfit that could advertise and promote in ways that the musicians could not or would not do on their own.<p>As the purported "leader" of the band, Jerry Garcia for one indicated that he was soon earning more income than he really needed, and having a strong balance toward benevolence over greed, set out to give $1000 each to numerous individuals who without a doubt were truly in need of the funds.<p>$1000 really would go a lot further then compared to a short 10 years later once the devastating devaluation of the US dollar was set into motion after it was unlinked to a universally appreciated natural resource (gold).<p>Anyway, turns out that before too long it was determined that it was costing $1200 to give away each $1000, and the program ended up grinding to a halt.
> And there’s some country where it was, like, referendum. It got totally crushed a year, two years ago, maybe it was Sweden. I don’t remember.<p>Fwiw, the country that Sam is referring to here is Switzerland.<p><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36454060" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36454060</a>
> "a bunch of people have guessed my email address and emailed me saying, 'I heard that you’re doing this. I’ll be in the control group just because I think this is important. I don’t need any compensation, I just believe in this idea, and I want to be part of the study.'"<p>This is hardly evidence that getting 2,000 control volunteers will be easy. Unlikely that the people who knew about the study and came forward are representative of the entire target test group on relevant criteria (e.g. income level). It's great to see support for the experiment and getting people to volunteer information without receiving money is a solvable problem, this answer just seemed evasive and promotional when a "you're right, it's going to be tough and we're working on it" would have been plenty justified.
I don't think people should view UBI as "giving away free money".<p>Instead we should look at it from a geologist[1]/geolibertarian[2] perspective: as compensation for appropriation of land and natural resources that rightfully belong to everyone.<p>UBI should be funded by land and resource taxes, not from income, sales or corporate taxes.<p>1. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism</a><p>2. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism</a>
If you gave everybody a dollar, wouldn't businesses increase their prices, and consumers be okay with that price increase because they have more disposable income?
Okay, forgive me if this has been mentioned elsewhere here, I haven't read the whole thread.<p>My take on UBI is that it only makes sense as a response to rampant automation that has marginalized a substantial (perhaps >75%) portion of the global human population. Meaning that most people cannot effectively enter the economy and provide for themselves because they just cannot compete against the machines, at some point in the near-future.<p>In the limit, nanotech and fusion power will put almost all of us out of work (not to mention AI/ML et. al.)<p>At that point, we have to figure out what to do with all these "surplus" people. The (gruesome) options are: enslave them (N. Korea), or kill them.<p>One maybe-possible other solution is to <i>just give them money</i> and see what they do.<p>From my POV any discussion of UBI as something other than a response to a "phase shift" in economic realities due to advancing automation is kind of missing the point.<p>I actually would like to create a Universal Automation Inc. company and issue shares and get crackin', but I'm lazy <i>and it seems to be happening anyway!</i>
UBI is inflationary and discourages people from working. Economists have moved on to better ideas than UBI, like the federal government providing a JG (Job Guarantee) or being an ELR (Employer of Last Resort):<p><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/job-guarantee-government-plan-full-employment/#" rel="nofollow">https://www.thenation.com/article/job-guarantee-government-p...</a><p>The summary is: everyone who is willing and able to work should get a standard salary and benefits from the Federal Government. We could have a decentralized system for setting up/vetting/approving JG/ELR projects all across the country, but the Federal Government would pay JG/ELR participants directly. This could include all kinds of things, like Y Combinator.<p>As for profit-sharing "United States, Inc" as Sam Altman proposes, we can do that too. We can set up a government program that says publicly traded companies in the USA will get a tax incentive if they promise to pay at least Y% of income in dividends. The government can take a small stake in these companies, and distribute the dividends equally to all citizens. It can try to track a broad stock-market index in its portfolio to make sure the investment passive (we don't want the government actively investing in companies, it shouldn't be picking winners and losers). Also, with a low-risk portfolio, the program would hopefully stay solvent, leaving the option of liquidating assets should we ever want to unwind this (for either political or economic reasons).<p>Where do we get the money to do all this? Governments don't need to finance spending when they have sovereign control of their own currency. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory</a>
Would like to hear Sam's thoughts on how this would impact on immigration. Could the system sustain the current or higher levels of immigration? If not, would Sam recommend cutting immigration drastically for this to be a viable option?
The reason a bunch of extremely wealthy people are huge proponents of UBI is because it is a way to create apathy in the general population. They hype up the great UBI enabled artist or entrepreneur trope while knowing full well the vast majority of UBI recipients will just buy more opioids and another pack of smokes. As the wealth gap continues to grow around the world, the UBI scenario is much more palatable to the ultra-wealthy than another French Revolution (nobody wants to end up as the Tech Titan equivalent of Louis and Marie).
The "share of GDP" thing has already been discussed on HN (in response to Sam's own blog post on the subject):<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15789108" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15789108</a><p>My comment on a basic flaw in the underlying analogy (that nothing like "shares in the US" corresponds to a share of GDP) is here:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15791054" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15791054</a>
> America competitive in the world—lies in giving every citizen a regular allotment of money to cover basics like housing, food, and shelter.<p>Out of curiosity don't we already do this? We have public/section 8 housing, food stamps, medical/dental, etc... If we are talking about handing out cold hard cash as basic income, as the statement implies, then that is a recipe for disaster. There would be no guarantee that people would use that money for basics like housing and food.
It seems naive to think that the "universal" aspect would be maintained absolutely. At some point, the "bad people" don't deserve a share, and when it gets to the point that "happiness" can't be bought without UBI, you potentially have a very powerful means of near-universal coercion.
How can Sam Altman realize that YC is itself a potential solution and still do nothing? YC is still the same private club, that brags about funding just 3% of the founders that apply.<p>If Elon Musk ran YC, he'd raise billions and fund thousands, and then use that success to fund tens of thousands, and then ...
UBI is a thinly veiled attempt by elites to buy the consent of those of us who then can't just drug or satiate with cheap goods. I won't fall for it. Consume the rich!!
Sam talked right over something very important. He points out that poor people have a hard time making rent and buying food. He then notes that it was difficult to give them money without affecting their subsidies. I've said before, if you give poor people money the first thing that will change is their rent. Every time the government make money for something more available the price of that something goes up - see housing (lower interest rates increase prices) and student loans (no explanation needed).<p>IMHO the key is not to give people money, but to reduce the cost of their existence. Get rid of the mortgage deduction. Reduce or eliminate property taxes on homes. Heck, put a cap on what percentage of a home price can be borrowed.<p>I agree that unlocking many peoples potential may require freeing them financially, but I don't agree that you do it by handing out money.<p>While I'm ranting, I'd expect someone in tech to be able to model or simulate a hundred million person economy and figure out how to get desired outcomes rather than jump on some popular untested idea like BI. Kudos for trying to test it though, but it's not a real test unless it's economy-wide (rents won't really increase if 0.1 percent of the people get free money).
After deriding UBI for a long time, and believing it won't work, I came up with a trial model that, IMHO, would allow it to be tested out with minimal damage to the economy (even though I still don't think it would work):<p>Take a country, US for example. Let's say that society determines that a reasonable UBI is $1000/month (ignore the number, this is about the process, not the amount).<p>When I say "everyone", I mean "every US resident who has been a US citizen for at least X years".<p>- Year 1: everyone begins receiving $10/month, conditioned to willing to have employment and spending tracked by researchers. Everyone who receives a payout and also receives social support funds, sees the social support funds reduced by $10 per month.<p>- Year 5: if researches see no significant negative results and the economy continues to grow, etc. the payout is increased to $50/month. Otherwise, if there are significantly negative outcomes, the payout is eliminated.<p>- Year 10: repeat, payout increased to $100/month.<p>- Year 15: repeat, payout increased to $200/month.<p>- Year 20: repeat, payout increased to $500/month.<p>- Year 25: repeat, payout increased to $750/month.<p>- Year 30: repeat, payout increased to $1000/month. All other social payouts are ended.