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passive_fist comments on Estimate the Cost of Immortality - Less Wrong Discussion
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The problem with that viewpoint is that you assume that the only reason - or, even, the most important reason - that people work is to make money.
But our understanding of human behavior tells us that other factors like status games, feelings of personal achievement or 'having a purpose in life', and so on are equally as important, if not more important, than the money-making aspect of work. Further, something that someone considers 'work' could be considered enjoyment by someone else.
Believe it or not, many people farm or tend gardens or animals simply because they enjoy doing so. They may even give away their produce for free. I currently have several trees and I pick and give away their fruit for free. I used to have chickens and I gave away their eggs for free. Both of these I did because I enjoyed doing them, and the hard aspects of the work averaged out. Of course I am not saying that a system based on everyone doing this would be sustainable. It wouldn't. It would probably lead to food shortages. However, it offers a counterpoint to the idea that humans will always choose meditation or video games or somesuch over 'mucking in the dirt' if given the choice.
I think Xyrik's scenario is too radical but a system of universal basic income where everyone gets a minimal amount of money sufficient for survival is quite tenable and sustainable. In such a system, you don't have to work to survive, but working produces a better, more satisfactory form of survival. Experience shows that systems like these do not run into problems of food shortages (in fact quite the contrary).
No, I do not. You're wrong.
I assume that the work that people do for money is important for the society and that a lot of it wouldn't get done if people worked just for pleasure. Basically, without money you'd get too many DJs and too few plumbers. Money fixes that balance problem.
Of course, so what? Small-scale agriculture is remarkably inefficient. Specifically, it cannot feed the current population.
Not always. But too few people will choose mucking in the dirt and without money I'm not sure how are you going to persuade a sufficient number of people to go and do what they don't like.
Do tell me about that experience. I'm curious.
That's a very good point, and I hadn't thought of that. This was basically why I made the post. Although I think I was mentioning somewhere that a scenario like this would only actually work if we had some AGI that could reliably judge who needed what resources when, in order to further the overall human endeavor.
Wouldn't the AGI also need the ability to compel obedience to its diktats? Or do you imagine that everyone will do whatever it tells them to do because it must be the best thing to do?
Money itself doesn't fix that balance problem. It's the allocation of money. I don't disagree with the idea that some type of work is unpleasant and necessary for society so there has to be some system of incentives to make people do that type of work. I disagree with the notion that the 'communist paradise' necessarily reduces such incentives to the point that society starves and dies.
As I said, I think Xyrik's scenario (evenly dividing wealth among everyone) is too radical. But you could definitely engineer systems where people are freed from basic survival needs yet still have incentives to work for the benefit of society. I see no contradiction here.
Again, I already mentioned this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_pilots
What actually happens is, of course, a bit different. If you take money out of the picture (as e.g. the USSR, Communist China, etc. did), another currency becomes dominant. That currency is power and the society becomes reliant on just force to make things happen. Recall that being unemployed was a criminal offense in the USSR.
Sigh. Let me quote myself from upthread:
Not at all. It's clear that you didn't even look at the examples. A lot of those examples were largely self-contained. For instance, the one in Madhya Pradesh was done on a set of villages that provided their own food and necessities.
Did they provide their own food, no trade with the outside world? I think you're mistaken.
The experiment in Madhya Pradesh provided a small unconditional cash payment to everyone in a set of villages. The outcome was entirely unsurprising -- people in those villages became a bit richer and spent that money to improve their lives.
There was some positive effect on the productivity of people in these villages -- I quote the UNICEF report:
which is fine and is a legitimate advance. However all this is, basically, injection of a bit of capital into a very very poor village and it does not tell us much about what would happen in a more advanced society with the basic income that is, presumably, sufficient to live on.
Keep in mind that basic income is redistribution -- you need to create the wealth to start with.
Indeed they did. This is mentioned in the report.
In fact cash-grant villages were more likely to grow their own food than control villages. A large part of the cash grants were spent on procuring better seeds and upgrading their livestock. Cash-grant villages were also more likely to undertake productive economic activity like starting businesses.
They did undertake trade with other villages, if they wanted to.
I think the fact that you say this hints at what may be the crux of the problem. Sure, cultural and socioeconomic differences are a huge factor, but believe it or not, 'advanced societies' do have poor people, and lots of them, and experiments like these hint that a universal basic income cannot simply be dismissed as 'eliminating incentives and leading to mass starvation.'
UBI is obviously not going to do much for rich people.
It's not clear that that the villagers were "more likely" to grow food for their own consumption rather than growing cash crops to sell. But if you want to dive into that level of detail, I would like to see the original report with all the data. I don't particulary trust this UNICEF report which looks a bit biased to me.
I'm not saying that UBI is a bad idea. I'm not saying it's a good idea, either. At this point I don't know -- I can see both good points and bad points and it's not clear to me how they will balance out in real life. I suspect the details of implementation will make a lot of difference. Those "pilots" that you mention are much too limited to draw any conclusions.
And please go easy on straw, no one claimed that UBI would lead to mass starvation. A full-blown scheme of no property, no money, etc. is likely to and that's what the "will starve" claim referred to.
What experience are you talking about in relation to a system of universal basic income?