The whole point of the term “universal’ in UBI is that it does not depend on conditions like seeking work. There’s no good reason to call existing welfare programs that come with conditions UBI.
Yes, this. It’s weird for me to say that UBI makes people vulnerable to coercive control when a big part of the motivation behind a UBI is to eliminate such coercive control. That this might be democratically untenable in practice is a valid argument, but as the OP says themselves, the coerciveness and abuses already exist in current, conditional forms of social security. So that sounds to me like an argument for trying to move towards more unconditional systems, even if this was politically challenging at first. (In fact, I frequently hear people saying something like “and this is why we need a UBI” when reading about dysfunctions and abuses in existing social security systems—those are one of the biggest reasons why many people I know are UBI supporters.)
The whole point of the term “universal’ in UBI is that it does not depend on conditions like seeking work. There’s no good reason to call existing welfare programs that come with conditions UBI.
But some actually are called that already, like the UK’s Universal Credit.
Where do I call existing welfare systems UBI? That’s a misunderstanding of my argument.
My point is that I don’t think it’s likely that future real-world policies will BE universal. They’ll be touted as such, they might even be called UBI, but they won’t be universal. I argue they’re likely to emerge from existing social welfare systems, or absorb their infrastructure and institutions, or at least their cultural baggage.
I can see the confusion, and maybe I should have put ‘UBI’ in quotes to indicate that I meant ‘the policy I think we’ll actually get that people will describe as UBI or something equivalent.’
I’m speaking about the policy that’s going to be called UBI when it’s implemented. You’re allowed to discuss e.g. socialism without having to defer to a theoretical socialism that is by definition free of problems.
Anyway, it’s a quibble, feel free to find and replace UBI with ‘the policy we’ll eventually call UBI’, it doesn’t change the argument I make.
Your whole post is about deferring to your idea of theoretical UBI. We do have real-world trials of UBI and there are policies that are used in those trials.
If you want something nontheoretical it makes sense to call the kind of policies that are in UBI trials UBI.
Language is valuable. What you are doing is an attempt to remove the current meaning from the term UBI which makes it harder to talk about the underlying policies.
If you object strongly to the use of the term UBI in the post, you can replace it with something else. Then I make a number of substantive arguments.
Your response so far is ‘if it’s a UBI it won’t suffer from these issues by its very definition.‘
My response is ‘yes it will, because I believe any UBI policy proposal will degrade into something less than the ideal definition almost immediately when implemented at scale, or just emerge from existing welfare systems piecemeal rather than all at once. Then all the current concerning ‘bad things that happen to people who depend on government money’ will be issues to consider.
LessWrong is more about healthy epistemics than it is about political conclusions. Arguments about bad epistemic like redefining words matter independent of the conclusions.
When it comes to taking Australia as an example for how political dissent is treated, it’s worth noting that Australia takes actions like COVID-19 Quarantine camps that didn’t happen in Europe or the US.
This year in Germany we changed our system in the direction of UBI. While it’s still not UBI it does show the political viability of moving the system in that direction. If the FDP wouldn’t have been in the government we likely would have moved more into the UBI direction.
Apart from the change we see in Germany, how people who receive government money are treated also depends a lot on class. Various companies that get government subsidies are treated well. If you have a scenario where upper-class people think that they might receive UBI in the future you are likely to get laws that are a lot more friendly to UBI recipients.
You yourself said:
There’s also a growing part of journalism/civil society/activism concerned with an industry that “farms the unemployed” — billing the government for services it ostensibly provides to poor people, while in fact spending their time on coercive control and a moralistic form of discipline.
This is evidence of political movement in the direction of real UBI, but somehow you take it as evidence against UBI. This journalism/civil society/activism is the political muscle pushing for UBI and its power is growing.
I’ve noticed this as a trend for LW essays, whenever non-standard definitions are used there are bound to be logic gaps that are just below the surface, or sometimes even visible on initial glance. At least for every one that I can remember.
My point is not to argue that existing welfare systems are UBI. I don’t use any non-standard definitions. I don’t call existing welfare systems UBI.
My point is that the real-world policy we’re likely to eventually call UBI probably won’t actually be universal, and if it emerges as a consequence of more and more people relying on social welfare, or else is associated with social welfare culturally, bad things will likely happen. Then I give some examples of the sort of bad things I mean.
I frequently hear people saying something like “and this is why we need a UBI”
This is a good point. I would like it very much if we could implement a UBI policy that did not come with the cultural baggage of existing social welfare systems. I would like it if existing social welfare systems would become more unconditional. I see why people think UBI would achieve this. I think they’re more optimistic than I am about our ability to shed our social attitudes to work and welfare. Maybe it’ll change with demographics, who knows...
My point is that the real-world policy we’re likely to eventually call UBI probably won’t actually be universal, and if it emerges as a consequence of more and more people relying on social welfare, or else is associated with social welfare culturally, bad things will likely happen.
Why? Every universal healthcare system I have heard of was introduced at a stroke.
The whole point of the term “universal’ in UBI is that it does not depend on conditions like seeking work. There’s no good reason to call existing welfare programs that come with conditions UBI.
Yes, this. It’s weird for me to say that UBI makes people vulnerable to coercive control when a big part of the motivation behind a UBI is to eliminate such coercive control. That this might be democratically untenable in practice is a valid argument, but as the OP says themselves, the coerciveness and abuses already exist in current, conditional forms of social security. So that sounds to me like an argument for trying to move towards more unconditional systems, even if this was politically challenging at first. (In fact, I frequently hear people saying something like “and this is why we need a UBI” when reading about dysfunctions and abuses in existing social security systems—those are one of the biggest reasons why many people I know are UBI supporters.)
But some actually are called that already, like the UK’s Universal Credit.
Where do I call existing welfare systems UBI? That’s a misunderstanding of my argument.
My point is that I don’t think it’s likely that future real-world policies will BE universal. They’ll be touted as such, they might even be called UBI, but they won’t be universal. I argue they’re likely to emerge from existing social welfare systems, or absorb their infrastructure and institutions, or at least their cultural baggage.
I can see the confusion, and maybe I should have put ‘UBI’ in quotes to indicate that I meant ‘the policy I think we’ll actually get that people will describe as UBI or something equivalent.’
You use the term “UBI dystopia” in the title of the post. If you aren’t speaking about UBI that’s heavily misleading.
I’m speaking about the policy that’s going to be called UBI when it’s implemented. You’re allowed to discuss e.g. socialism without having to defer to a theoretical socialism that is by definition free of problems.
Anyway, it’s a quibble, feel free to find and replace UBI with ‘the policy we’ll eventually call UBI’, it doesn’t change the argument I make.
Your whole post is about deferring to your idea of theoretical UBI. We do have real-world trials of UBI and there are policies that are used in those trials.
If you want something nontheoretical it makes sense to call the kind of policies that are in UBI trials UBI.
Language is valuable. What you are doing is an attempt to remove the current meaning from the term UBI which makes it harder to talk about the underlying policies.
Edit: removed a bad point.
If you object strongly to the use of the term UBI in the post, you can replace it with something else.
Then I make a number of substantive arguments.
Your response so far is ‘if it’s a UBI it won’t suffer from these issues by its very definition.‘
My response is ‘yes it will, because I believe any UBI policy proposal will degrade into something less than the ideal definition almost immediately when implemented at scale, or just emerge from existing welfare systems piecemeal rather than all at once. Then all the current concerning ‘bad things that happen to people who depend on government money’ will be issues to consider.
LessWrong is more about healthy epistemics than it is about political conclusions. Arguments about bad epistemic like redefining words matter independent of the conclusions.
When it comes to taking Australia as an example for how political dissent is treated, it’s worth noting that Australia takes actions like COVID-19 Quarantine camps that didn’t happen in Europe or the US.
This year in Germany we changed our system in the direction of UBI. While it’s still not UBI it does show the political viability of moving the system in that direction. If the FDP wouldn’t have been in the government we likely would have moved more into the UBI direction.
Apart from the change we see in Germany, how people who receive government money are treated also depends a lot on class. Various companies that get government subsidies are treated well. If you have a scenario where upper-class people think that they might receive UBI in the future you are likely to get laws that are a lot more friendly to UBI recipients.
You yourself said:
This is evidence of political movement in the direction of real UBI, but somehow you take it as evidence against UBI. This journalism/civil society/activism is the political muscle pushing for UBI and its power is growing.
I’ve noticed this as a trend for LW essays, whenever non-standard definitions are used there are bound to be logic gaps that are just below the surface, or sometimes even visible on initial glance. At least for every one that I can remember.
My point is not to argue that existing welfare systems are UBI. I don’t use any non-standard definitions. I don’t call existing welfare systems UBI.
My point is that the real-world policy we’re likely to eventually call UBI probably won’t actually be universal, and if it emerges as a consequence of more and more people relying on social welfare, or else is associated with social welfare culturally, bad things will likely happen. Then I give some examples of the sort of bad things I mean.
This is a good point. I would like it very much if we could implement a UBI policy that did not come with the cultural baggage of existing social welfare systems. I would like it if existing social welfare systems would become more unconditional. I see why people think UBI would achieve this. I think they’re more optimistic than I am about our ability to shed our social attitudes to work and welfare. Maybe it’ll change with demographics, who knows...
Is your point then a ‘true UBI’ system is practically impossible? And any feasible implementable system shouldn’t be called UBI?
Why? Every universal healthcare system I have heard of was introduced at a stroke.
And is “we” just the US?