After Universal Basic Income, The Flood

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Wait, scratch that — he won’t eat for a lifetime. Automation took over and fished the metaphorical seas dry.

Meanwhile, some bold tech leaders pipe up: “I have a brilliant idea. What if we just give everybody fish?”

Math Assumptions : -

Math-based objections to UBI are the most commonly cited, so I want to skip them almost entirely, except to talk about inflation.

Price inflation of basic necessities
Rent is currently eating the world. Rental income just hit an all-time high. If we adopt a UBI system and everyone is given a very predictable amount of money, it may be seen as a system easily gamed by landlords and possibly other producers of essentials. Implementing UBI without reforming land-use and zoning regulations may result in nothing more than a slow transfer of money to landlords. What are the odds of that happening? Well, it seems like it already did happen with healthcare and college tuition (loans) in the U.S., and if we use those are our guide, the “money” part and the “meaningful reforms” part should be done in a very particular order.

Because housing rates are reasonable in some places (Japan and Montreal come to mind), I think the problem of combining a UBI system with current rent inflation is a problem that can be fixed. But without the fix put in place first, UBI may be punting real political problems while giving the appearance (until years later) of solving them. Plus it would make the price inflation obvious for landlords, just like it was for healthcare companies and colleges getting guaranteed loans.

Payments as a solution to a broken system is not the same as truly fixing the system. If UBI punts this real problem, we’ll be creating a financial time bomb.

We must be careful to make sure that, if implemented, UBI is not a transfer of wealth from the needy to the hucksters.

The P.T. Barnum Objection
“Very in favor of UBI. One of the reasons I like the idea is because it’d hold everyone accountable for their bullshit choices. What’d you do with your money this month? Spent it all frivolously? Fuck off… until next month.”
— Some Guy on reddit

The Existential Problem
“A basic income means they don’t have to work 40 hours a week just to survive so they can do what they really want to do in their spare hours.”
— Some guy on Hacker News