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.
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.