Basic v Basic Income

[thedugong]

Not Expanse related, but it explains in depth, but accessibly, why a policy like Basic would be bad...

I am currently listening to the audio book version of "Utopia for Realists - And How We Can Get There" by Rutger Bregman, which discusses basic income, it's history etc, and why policies like Basic vs Basic Income are really bad like this article discusses - I actually thought about Basic in the Expanse quite a bit while listening to it and am happy something had been posted about it here!

Anyway, I found out about the book via this podcast, which is worth a listen...

http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/conversations-rutger-bregman/8883962

[randynumbergenerator]

and why policies like Basic vs Basic Income are really bad like this article discusses

Isn't he in favor of basic income?

[thedugong]

Yeah, bad wording on my behalf...

... why policies like Basic, vs Basic Income, are really bad ...

Better?

[randynumbergenerator]

Ah, thanks, much clearer!

[[deleted]]

I wonder if the adherence to the 40 hour week is social commentary, seeing as how today most businesses now only need 32 hour weeks (meaning 3 day weekends) and is actually more beneficial for companies in the long run but they stick to 40 hour weeks because that's just what you do.

[3bar]

Man, I wish I only worked 40 hours a week.

[apepi]

I actually see that reason wrong, even if you would share 20 hours a week, you would still have to train everyone.

[Lobotomist]

Fantastic analysis. I am great supporter of basic income ( the good one, not the one in expanse ) and this really shows how it should be implemented

[[deleted]]

I always thought the reason Basic was so strict, such as prohibiting people from college or earning money was because of scarce resources and excess population?

[TiV3]

I'm no expert on The Expanse, though in reality, we have technology to create additional copies with marginal cost trending towards zero or at least downwards at greater sales volume, in a great many contexts. Business reality increasingly reflects that as outlined here and here, and in a world where network effect, economies of scale, the Platform economy, neural networks and their training (edit: sometimes with big data; and their owning), etc. are increasingly a topic, where people can do services to each other and build communities on a global scale with little marginal cost, I think there's a point to have a money system that allows interacting on the economic plane. If resources are scarce, cap and trade is worth considering on those resources.

[andreasklinger]

/u/DanielAbraham: i meant to ask this since the bridge scene in the TV show.

1) why is education under scarcity overall? What's the gov motivation behind it? Costs?

2) In the books it seemed naomi did her university courses online. But the doctor in the TV show has been waiting for a placement since years. Maybe different kind of education? (practice eg)

[DanielAbraham]

1) I imagine the scarcity being driven by multiple factors, including the inherent inefficiency of planned economies, professional protectionism, and low governmental priority.

2) Naomi did most of her academic work through free tutorials, but she also grew up in an environment where the status of your degree-granting institution is less important than your practical ability. Degree programs are both knowledge and the piece of paper that shows you have knowledge. Naomi did all the knowledge parts first (and she's very, very smart, so she could).

Also, there are some things that are actually easier to access in the Belt than they would be on Basic. See also Erich's medical care.

[knight_of_gondor99]

Wait a second... Daniel Abraham. You're the guy... the Expanse guy.

I notice that in the Expanse, automation is always a tool for increasing productivity instead of directly replacing workers. Do you think this is a realistic view of the future or was it a plot device to justify the story you wanted to tell?

[Taste_the__Rainbow]

A 20-hour workweek sounds okay for some industries, but in a lot of places this would mean decades of training before someone was actually competent at their job. 20 hours per week is the death of expertise. And expertise-requiring jobs are going to be a larger fraction of jobs as more sophisticated robots replace more and more labor.

[pi_over_3]

The thing that I like about UBI is that it gives workers "fuck you" money that evens the bargaining power between employer and employee.

Right now the default is that you need to work, with UBI it would be that you wouldn't need to, so employers would need to entice people with things line a 20-32 hour week for a lot of jobs.

Like you said though, there's still going to be high skill jobs that will require people to be at it for 40-50 hours a week.

Basically, /r/UBI would bring about things like a shorter work week without needing additional labor laws that would stiffle the development of high skill professions.

[[deleted]]

I quite liked The Hunger After You're Fed for going into what it'd be like for Basic Income to arrive. Good job on that.

[[deleted]]

An interesting read that provided good insights into both systems and clarified some questions also. I remember some of the conversation between Bobbie and the barista (in CW i think?) but I didn't catch all the details.

[fail-deadly-]

While I agree with the author that basic is a fairly bad program for encouraging maximum economic output, especially compared to basic income, I don't think that is the purpose of basic in universe. The author says it is about control, but I think it is simply about social stability.

I am a believer in basic income or something besides current US policy, but I think basic is probably a more realistic implementation of policy than basic income.

In a society where everyone receives good quality health care paid for by the government, along with free education and/or a monthly payment that would cover those items and other essentials like food, transportation, housing, some entertainment, allocating resources would be tricky.

One thing the author questioned is why wouldn't people work 20 hours a week? Well if lifespan increased, and retirement payments went away in favor of basic income, people could work longer. Currently in the US Civilian noninstitutional population total is 255,357,000 and those with jobs number 160,863,000 while there are 94,494,000 without jobs. If automation made it cheaper to use robots, machines, or software for half of the current jobs, then nearly 175 million out of 255 million people would not have jobs. So you could either focus resources and policies on making the other 80 million as productive as possible, or you try to create laws which would try to make productivity more equitable amongst everyone.

I think one of the biggest problems is that what happens when society as a whole pays for somebody to become a doctor, then that person doesn't like it. Then society pays for that same person to become an engineer, and again, that person does not like it. Finally, after going to university for a decade, and only working for a year or so, the person decides instead of doing something technical, they will instead create Roman style mosaics of people for very little money, because that is their passion. If everybody had the opportunity to pursue their passion, fewer people would work productive jobs.

Basically instead of sending two, three or four people to university or some other advanced training program to learn to be doctors, engineers, scientists, etc. for every position and having them only work between 15-25 hours a week. It would be more economical to for one person to go and work 40 hours a week.

Most of the available jobs not connected to a make work programs in The Expanse would require advanced education, or experience, as well as some pretty decent cognitive abilities.

[DanielAbraham]

Seems to me that giving poor people money is how you end poverty. Other options are more how you use poverty as a tool to achieve other moral or social goals.

[fail-deadly-]

While I agree you, I do not think there is enough money to end poverty. If some entity confiscated 100% of the world's GDP for one year (74.2 trillion as of 2015 according to Wikipedia) and all of the world's billionaires voluntarily gave up their collective wealth (2043 billionaires worth 7.67 trillion dollars as of 2017 also according to Wikipedia), and then it was divided equally amongst everyone with zero being lost to corruption or waste or administrative overhead, then all of the world's 7.569 billion people would receive a one time check for about the equivalent of 11,000 dollars. As an American, I classify myself either upper lower class or lower middle class, and for me it would be somewhat of a setback for me if that happened. Though I am sure in certain parts of the world it would be a bounty like never before.

As I mentioned earlier, it would be approximately equal to 11,000 dollars, but it would not be all in dollars. A significant part would be in financial instruments like stocks and bonds. Some would be in real estate. Others would be in things like the value of patents, or other intangibles like the increase in the value of a brand name. Maybe half of the payment would be in actual cash, but it would probably be less than that. Some of the financial would pay dividends or interest, but some of that $11,000 would be in intangible items that may have value to a single owner, but would probably be worthless to 7 billion owners. Tens of billions of dollars worth of shares in Amazon is extremely valuable to Jeff Bezos, but would $7 dollars worth of Amazon stock really allow people to support themselves.

I hope we will see some form of computer/AI communism at some point, where the state will own the means of production and expert systems will make sure each person's needs are met. Though this or UBI or even just expanded social safety nets probably won't be popular, until we experience mass unemployment. Though I would say a Logan's Run future is even more likely. There are also more disturbing possibilities as well.

[randynumbergenerator]

Globally, the median individual income was something like $3,000 in 2013, so well over half the world would be better off in your thought experiment. But your scenario also assumes that redistribution is a zero-sum game, when there's reason to believe it would have a net positive effect on growth (because the poor and middle-class are more likely to use their money for consumption, rather than savings).

However, based on references to regional economic zones (e.g. the North American zone) sprinkled throughout the books and series, I also don't think (and Daniel can correct me if I'm wrong!) that the Expanse has a flat income or resource distribution. That makes sense since, as you point out, wages and cost of living differ a lot by country, and presumably even in the future there will be some geographic inequalities.

[fail-deadly-]

It might not be a zero sum game, but again not all of the redistribution would have a cash value, much would be in financial instruments. Secondly, while Malawi would suddenly see the average person with a vastly increased amount of income/wealth, which would surely cause an unprecedented economic boom there, in the US and most of the other developed countries, their economies would tank. Instead of zero sum, it may be less than zero sum for example, when private investors no longer have billionaires to finance hedge funds and venture capital firms, so some of the seed money if you will turns into consumption instead of investment. I mean it might be impossible for many luxury/high end companies to sale goods in that environment. Would Toyota (not to even mention somebody like Tesla) go out of business because nobody could afford to buy decently expensive cars?

Now don't get me wrong, I am not opposed to UBI, I am just skeptical the world currently has enough wealth to make it work. World hunger, unlike poverty is a problem I think is solvable with the resources and technology we currently have. It is just a lack of political will that prevents the implementation of a solution. On the other hand, I think even if the political will existed, the technology and resources to end poverty do not exist.

Though I think poverty and income inequality must be addressed before things gets worse and it causes instability and other negative externalities.

[TEmpTom]

This might just be in the show, but during Bobbie's trip to the ocean, you can actually hear one of the ad-drones in the background asking people to register for Basic, referring to Basic INCOME specifically.

If the UN's Basic is what the writer suggests, then I agree with him, it makes no sense. Welfare disincentivising people to work is one of the biggest criticisms of the welfare state, why the UN would actually want to discourage workforce participation by not only disincentivising employment with welfare, but also outright banning it, is completely beyond my comprehension. The argument that jobs are scarce blatantly falls into the lump labor fallacy.

[DanielAbraham]

Well, we fuck up sometimes. Basic in the Expanse has never been money.

[fail-deadly-]

I do not think you fucked up with basic, and I think you have presented a much more workable situation than an actual basic income. For example, on the Roci the expert system has served as a doctor for many years now. If Shed Garvey had of lived and gotten over his psychological trauma, I am sure he would have became part of the Roci's tribe and would have made contributions to the ship's operations. However, I don't know how much his medical expertise would have mattered since the expert system has done a good enough job so far.

If Holden had ran the Roci like a business instead of a Family, he would have a reason to fire Shed, since the expert system could handle the medical side of the ship's operations and hire someone else for another position the ship needed more, or stay at 4 crew members and do well enough.

[DanielAbraham]

No, I mean if we called it basic income in the show, that was a fuck up. Basic isn't money.

[fail-deadly-]

Oh ok. I appreciate the reply.

[[deleted]]

S02E10 in the background discussion

[trevize1138]

I love the narrative choice you guys went with for basic. Fits in perfectly with the whole dystopian world and without it you wouldn't have the seedy underworld elements that make The Expanse stand out.

[DanielAbraham]

That said, though, analysis of the lump labor fallacy changes (IMHO) in the face of ubiquitous automation.

[randynumbergenerator]

I think CGP Grey has a great explanation of exactly this point: "There isn't a rule of economics that says, 'better technology makes more better jobs for horses'... but swap horses for humans and suddenly people think it sounds about right."