> Would fewer people in the workforce really be so bad?
Yes. Someone needs to work to produce the goods and services they use, as well as fund their UBI. The more people who opt out of working, the harder everyone else must work to compensate.
> What’s the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don’t need but we bust our humps for anyway?
People dropping out of the workforce doesn't reduce the demand for those goods and services. In fact, giving people free income might increase the demands for goods and services as those people would have extra disposable income.
So it may very well be that the exact opposite of what you think is true and that you currently have to compensate for people working badly with long hours.
> In fact, giving people free income might increase the demands for goods and services as those people would have extra disposable income.
Thus far UBI tended to be about the same amount of income just from different sources.
I think some people imagine that people like me calling for 32 hour work weeks are part of some slippery slope to everyone working an hour a day.
I trust the research that suggests that humans may only be built for ~30 hours of detail oriented work per week. That's also a nice number where I have time to work on other things, rather than just loafing about. If my boss offered me 30hrs/w plus insurance, I'd spend an extra 5+ hours a week working on my side projects and volunteer work.
Competition still exerts a downward force on prices, and as the cost of labor increases the cost of developing automation will become more and more attractive to replace it.
You don't need UBI then, prices will just go down towards 0 because of competition, resulting in free food / housing / clothing / mobile phones for everyone.
> For which the market should correct by increasing their compensation, thus incentivising people to return to working, no?
Partially, but some of those increased compensation costs will translate to increased prices for everyone. That reduces the real value of a fixed UBI amount.
It's a given that a significant amount of UBI will be absorbed by inflation, particularly in housing prices in competitive cities. If everyone in a city is already competing for a limited housing supply and suddenly everyone has an extra $1000 per month, I wouldn't be surprised if the cheapest housing costs suddenly increased by nearly $1000 per month.
==If everyone in a city is already competing for a limited housing supply and suddenly everyone has an extra $1000 per month, I wouldn't be surprised if the cheapest housing costs suddenly increased by nearly $1000 per month.==
If we accept this logic as true, wouldn't it incentivize builders to increase housing supply? They would want to capture those higher rents and prices, right?
How so? The compensation is increased because less people are working, so the cost of labour is fixed (which is neglible in any case in a post-scarcity society as envisioned in the future)
If labor remains fixed then people as a whole have more money. Prices go up due to inflation and increased demand, no? I realize that's simplistic, but is it not generally true?
> the harder everyone else must work to compensate
I really don't want to get into this argument but supposedly productivity gains from automation/AI should make those who keep working work proportionally less to compensate non-workers.
Why I don't want to get into this argument: there's no conclusive view about UBI + automation yet, so it's all speculation
"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."
Or adapting to productivity gains, the productivity required is increasing to meet the needs of increasingly productive people.
So taking into account human nature might mean that productivity gains enable us to do more advanced work, not to work less. But like you said, we're all just speculating.
Since we already have the productivity to grow and make all the necessities of life, why are we worried about maximizing degree to which we work for more luxury goods?
> Yes. Someone needs to work to produce the goods and services they use, as well as fund their UBI. The more people who opt out of working, the harder everyone else must work to compensate.
Workers are more productive now than they ever have been.[0] Productivity was up 253% since 1948 seven years ago. For decades they’ve been promising us the 20 hour work week, and it’s here. In fact it’s only 15 hours comparatively.
The point is: you don’t need everyone to work full time everyday for a society to maintain a healthy standard of living.
> The point is: you don’t need everyone to work full time everyday for a society to maintain a healthy standard of living.
Maintaining isn't what people are aiming for though, they want improvement. People are not satisfied by objectively living much better lives than some king or pope 500 years ago.
First, peoples’ satisfaction is primarily influenced by the visibility of the inequities immediately around them.
Second, who said anything about the rate of change going to zero? Even if productivity suddenly dropped to 1948 levels, it’s not like we’d be living in 1948. It’s not a time machine.
> First, peoples’ satisfaction is primarily influenced by the visibility of the inequities immediately around them.
I agree. What follows from that? Do we let some people live in the 21st century but hide their life style from the rest so we can keep them happy at a level that we can more easily automate?
And sure, it's not going to reverse necessarily (though it will to some degree, because we can't "automate" the 2020 economy). My point is that people aren't satisfied with no progress. Wanting to change things for the better seems to be a very natural part of humanity, making plans that don't account for that drive doesn't seem wise.
I would give up some of my income to finance UBI without thinking twice. I probably would work a bit less, but I am planning that nevertheless with or without UBI.
What I am skeptical about is work that is real hard, not some silly office stuff. Care and nursing for example. There might be few people who would do that under current working conditions with UBI in sight. Not that I think the current situation is in any way sustainable. It is already completely broken before the large demographic bombs hit some countries.
On the other hand, maybe family members had more time to offer care themselves.
So why don't managers and administrators work to produce things? They seem capable of labor, and they're paid extra, but they work less. Why?
Edit: You downvoted me within a minute of my posting. I asked two questions. If you can't answer them, then it is because you fear their answers.
So let's answer them! Managers and administrators don't produce things because they claim that their positions allow them to optimize labor. Specifically, their bonus pay is based upon the idea that management and administration increases output proportional to their efficacy. It follows that we should measure the output of management practices, and compensate managers according to their actual impact.
>So why don't managers and administrators work to produce things? They seem capable of labor, and they're paid extra, but they work less. Why?
Management and administration is a skill that not everyone possesses. There are such things as good and bad managers. Just because the work they do doesn't directly output a tangible product doesn't mean it's not valuable. Additionally, it's typically a position with more responsibility as well as accountability which tends to reflect in higher pay. That's not to say it's a perfect system but this is generally how it works.
As for working less, unless you mean they do less physical labour than the people they manage, they often work more. It's unfair to say managers work less because they do management tasks rather than the work their subordinates do. In virtually every job I've had, the more senior the manager, the more hours they worked. Retail especially.
>So let's answer them! Managers and administrators don't produce things because they claim that their positions allow them to optimize labor. Specifically, their bonus pay is based upon the idea that management and administration increases output proportional to their efficacy. It follows that we should measure the output of management practices, and compensate managers according to their actual impact.
They don't just claim their positions optimize labour, it actually does optimize it. I don't understand where this idea that managers are merely irrelevant middlemen who have no impact on the people they manage comes from. Companies seek profit and have no desire to pay people simply for existing, especially if they do not meaningfully contribute to the bottom line. Managers are hired exactly because they do affect the bottom line in a sufficiently meaningful way to justify their presence. And, as with almost any other job, a manager that fails to contribute will be replaced much like any other underperforming employee.
That isn't to say there isn't a thing as too many managers or levels of management or even bad managers that do not get fired, but to sweep them all aside as irrelevant is simply not a realistic interpretation.
> Additionally, it's typically a position with more responsibility as well as accountability which tends to reflect in higher pay.
Who has more responsibility for cooking your burger correctly, the cook or the manager? Who has more responsibility for measuring before cutting, the carpenter or the architect? Who has more responsibility for not leaving PII all over service logs, you or your team leader? I would politely suggest that there are different responsibilities for managers, but not that this somehow removes responsibilities from laborers.
> It's unfair to say managers work less because they do management tasks rather than the work their subordinates do. In virtually every job I've had, the more senior the manager, the more hours they worked. Retail especially.
My former CEOs have had enough spare time to show up in the tabloids because they can't stop having sex with their employees or making questionable business decisions with authoritarian governments. I don't have time for sex with my coworkers. Perhaps team leaders or low-level managers have to put in hours, but administrative management definitely does not.
> They don't just claim their positions optimize labour, it actually does optimize it.
In my lifetime, Linux was born and became not just a serious competitor to proprietary kernels, but supplanted them. Thus, the FLOSS model of a massive global commune of public-domain information and tools is a viable contender, able to compete with any corporation.
When I contributed to Linux, I reported to one of the subsystem lieutenants, and my code was reviewed by them and other contributors to the subsystem. For no money whatsoever, they advised me on which parts of the subsystem were worth contributing to, which outstanding tasks were too hard to tackle, and which documentation to read.
Also in my lifetime, Wikipedia was born, supplanting many proprietary encyclopedias within only a few years, and today it is another shining example of the triumph of the FLOSS model.
When I contributed to Wikipedia, I just did whatever I wanted. Whenever something looked like it could be improved, and I had the time and energy to improve it, I did what had to be done to make things better. If people disagreed, they could undo what I did; if I disagreed with them, then there were community arbiters who could negotiate a solution.
So, like, do managers actually optimize labor to the point where they earn their keep? I can't tell, and I think that we ought to measure.
> I don't understand where this idea that managers are merely irrelevant middlemen who have no impact on the people they manage comes from.
Oh, it's worse than that; the typical manager has a net negative impact on their direct reports, from what I've seen.
> And, as with almost any other job, a manager that fails to contribute will be replaced much like any other underperforming employee.
I no longer believe that you have been gainfully employed in a corporate hierarchy. This line gave you away.
But we need the counterfactual. When the labor they "optimized" would have done the same or better without their interference, we cannot tell. We just take the estimates from the manager themselves as the baseline. And of course, they would lie about that.
Yes. Someone needs to work to produce the goods and services they use, as well as fund their UBI. The more people who opt out of working, the harder everyone else must work to compensate.
> What’s the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don’t need but we bust our humps for anyway?
People dropping out of the workforce doesn't reduce the demand for those goods and services. In fact, giving people free income might increase the demands for goods and services as those people would have extra disposable income.