Sharing has the obvious advantages, but also a few costs. I am going to talk about the costs here—that doesn’t imply that people shouldn’t share, just they they need to do that carefully.
1)
Producing value requires effort. When you share, it means that other people can participate on the value. The question is, will they also participate on the effort?
If the answer is “no”, then we can get a situation where a few conscientious people work hard to produce value for everyone… but most people don’t join their effort, because they relax and watch movies and debate online instead… so ultimately, people don’t get much value anyway, because little is produced.
The usual solutions require putting guns to people’s heads to make them work; either literally (in communism) or metaphorically by refusing to share with those who don’t produce (in capitalism).
Is there a way to avoid this? Note that people have already tried—and failed—to achieve this. In communist countries there is a lot of propaganda around everyone all day long about how work is glorious, etc. And yet, even in the communist countries under 24⁄7 propaganda, most people avoid hard work if possible.
(And “lazy vs hard work” is only a part of the problem. You also need people to become competent, because an incompetent hard-working person can generate a lot of damage. Learning to be good at something is just another kind of work that many people are happy to avoid.)
2)
Some people destroy value. Well, in some sense everyone does—by eating a piece of bread, you have destroyed it. Things are used by spending them. But some people, through incompetence or negligence (sometimes it hard to distinguish between these two) destroy a lot more value than others.
Imagine someone so careless that no smartphone ever survives in their hands for a week; they will carelessly keep throwing or dropping it, the display will break. Imagine a society where people share everything with those who need it, including smartphones. How many smartphones would such society give to such person before saying “that’s enough”?
Because if you never say “enough”, then a few people like this will ruin the entire society, simply by breaking lots of stuff. But if you say “enough”, then… technically speaking, you are no longer a society that shares everything with all people who need it. Now you have rules about when to share, and when not to. And you have people without smartphones walking around and bitching about the system (even if from our perspective, this is totally their own fault). And we need to decide whether the quota for broken smartphones is “one per year” or “one per months”. Whether we make an exception for disabled people whose hands shake a lot, so they drop the smartphones more frequently even if they really try to be careful. Whether it is okay to break hundred smartphones on purpose while making a comedy movie that thousands of people will enjoy. Etc.
(UBI provides an answer to this part: We share, but only a limited amount. If you spend your UBI to buy smartphones and then you break them… that’s your problem. The damage you can cause to society by breaking smartphones is limited. But that’s because we assume that UBI exists in a system that still respects private property… well, after taxation.)
Isn’t this true even in a work place where people are paid? While in such a case, the person might be fired, sometimes the damage is too big (and among the possibilities I am thinking about, it seems someone working has a higher chance of creating a black swan than someone not working (maybe this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_CrowdStrike_incident)).
Anyway, if principle like the Pareto principle are true, we only need 20% of the working force to produce most of the goods. If you are talented, a UBI is a road to join that 20% :)
Yes, you can’t completely eliminate the risk. But there is a huge difference between “an occasional disaster” and “a sad everyday reality”.
There are some families where for cultural reasons it is unthinkable to keep your individual finances separate, and it is heartbreaking to see how one member of the family is working their ass off to improve the situation, and some other member of the family just takes the extra money and burns it (not literally), keeping the family in poverty. And there is no way out, unless they learn to establish some boundaries.
Anyway, if principle like the Pareto principle are true, we only need 20% of the working force to produce most of the goods.
I like this argument! Never heard it before (applied to employment).
I wonder where it applies, though. Probably true for most IT companies. But there are jobs that don’t scale well, for example teachers or doctors.
I guess if we fired the right 80% of teachers and replaced them with “kids watching Khan Academy”, little educational value would be lost. (Though there is other value of schools: babysitting. That one probably scales worst of all.) Even better, kids watching Khan Academy most of the time, once in a week having a debate with a teacher.
So… maybe we need about 50% of the current workforce? And with 50% of people staying at home, we would not need so much babysitting for the children.
We would still need the doctors, I think. One day, machines may replace them, but we are not there yet.
I’ve heard stories of missionaries and philanthropists in Third World countries ending up dejected by how impossible it is to get a lot of primitive tribes to join the 21st century and do Capitalism. They suggest the tribespeople start some business to provide needed goods to their village, but the tribespeople complain that if they made money, they’d be socially required to give it to their inlaws/clan/spend it all in a huge feast for the village, so what’s the point?
Sharing has the obvious advantages, but also a few costs. I am going to talk about the costs here—that doesn’t imply that people shouldn’t share, just they they need to do that carefully.
1)
Producing value requires effort. When you share, it means that other people can participate on the value. The question is, will they also participate on the effort?
If the answer is “no”, then we can get a situation where a few conscientious people work hard to produce value for everyone… but most people don’t join their effort, because they relax and watch movies and debate online instead… so ultimately, people don’t get much value anyway, because little is produced.
The usual solutions require putting guns to people’s heads to make them work; either literally (in communism) or metaphorically by refusing to share with those who don’t produce (in capitalism).
Is there a way to avoid this? Note that people have already tried—and failed—to achieve this. In communist countries there is a lot of propaganda around everyone all day long about how work is glorious, etc. And yet, even in the communist countries under 24⁄7 propaganda, most people avoid hard work if possible.
(And “lazy vs hard work” is only a part of the problem. You also need people to become competent, because an incompetent hard-working person can generate a lot of damage. Learning to be good at something is just another kind of work that many people are happy to avoid.)
2)
Some people destroy value. Well, in some sense everyone does—by eating a piece of bread, you have destroyed it. Things are used by spending them. But some people, through incompetence or negligence (sometimes it hard to distinguish between these two) destroy a lot more value than others.
Imagine someone so careless that no smartphone ever survives in their hands for a week; they will carelessly keep throwing or dropping it, the display will break. Imagine a society where people share everything with those who need it, including smartphones. How many smartphones would such society give to such person before saying “that’s enough”?
Because if you never say “enough”, then a few people like this will ruin the entire society, simply by breaking lots of stuff. But if you say “enough”, then… technically speaking, you are no longer a society that shares everything with all people who need it. Now you have rules about when to share, and when not to. And you have people without smartphones walking around and bitching about the system (even if from our perspective, this is totally their own fault). And we need to decide whether the quota for broken smartphones is “one per year” or “one per months”. Whether we make an exception for disabled people whose hands shake a lot, so they drop the smartphones more frequently even if they really try to be careful. Whether it is okay to break hundred smartphones on purpose while making a comedy movie that thousands of people will enjoy. Etc.
(UBI provides an answer to this part: We share, but only a limited amount. If you spend your UBI to buy smartphones and then you break them… that’s your problem. The damage you can cause to society by breaking smartphones is limited. But that’s because we assume that UBI exists in a system that still respects private property… well, after taxation.)
Hi @Viliam .
On
Isn’t this true even in a work place where people are paid? While in such a case, the person might be fired, sometimes the damage is too big (and among the possibilities I am thinking about, it seems someone working has a higher chance of creating a black swan than someone not working (maybe this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_CrowdStrike_incident)).
Anyway, if principle like the Pareto principle are true, we only need 20% of the working force to produce most of the goods. If you are talented, a UBI is a road to join that 20% :)
Yes, you can’t completely eliminate the risk. But there is a huge difference between “an occasional disaster” and “a sad everyday reality”.
There are some families where for cultural reasons it is unthinkable to keep your individual finances separate, and it is heartbreaking to see how one member of the family is working their ass off to improve the situation, and some other member of the family just takes the extra money and burns it (not literally), keeping the family in poverty. And there is no way out, unless they learn to establish some boundaries.
I like this argument! Never heard it before (applied to employment).
I wonder where it applies, though. Probably true for most IT companies. But there are jobs that don’t scale well, for example teachers or doctors.
I guess if we fired the right 80% of teachers and replaced them with “kids watching Khan Academy”, little educational value would be lost. (Though there is other value of schools: babysitting. That one probably scales worst of all.) Even better, kids watching Khan Academy most of the time, once in a week having a debate with a teacher.
So… maybe we need about 50% of the current workforce? And with 50% of people staying at home, we would not need so much babysitting for the children.
We would still need the doctors, I think. One day, machines may replace them, but we are not there yet.
EDIT:
Haha, just saw this at Astral Codex Ten:
That’s funny :)