There is a documentary out there showing someone who could quit their regular job and become an artist thanks to an UBI pilot (Canada IIRC). It is presented as a positive example in that they did not become lazy, but just work something different and still make revenue close to what they earned on their job by selling art.
How many people will become artists with UBI introduced nationally? Who is going to buy all that art?
There's lots of different kinds of art, some of it more commercially viable than others. Consider 3D designers selling print models, people like myself who are interested in restoring old cars or other endeavors that are artistically rewarding and aren't just painting or sculpting. Hell, people seem to do pretty well currently as content creators on YouTube.
My point is immediately jumping to the idea everyone's going to be pumping out shitty paintings and music that no one will want is lacking in imagination.
Food production is already absurdly automated. At least for grains, in theory you don't even need humans to drive the tractors on the fields any more, drones and RTK GPS systems automate all of it from seed to harvest. Cattle is fed and milked fully automated as well, with precise tracking of how much each cow ate and how much milk it yielded. Chicken also don't need much human work to lay eggs.
Most societies up to industrialization had a primary (i.e. agricultural) sector of around 50-70% of employees (numbers vary). Today, it's more like 1-2%, and the number is bound to fall - especially when lab-grown meat really takes off, because slaughtering and butchering farm animals _at the moment_ cannot be done by robots at scale and IMHO it's more likely that lab-grown meat succeeds before we entrust sharp knives to robots to actually kill animals.
> Who will fix our cars?
Modern cars - particularly electric cars - are much less maintenance intensive. That's part of why many established car brands are in serious trouble with their historically grown dealerships... "life long oil fills" and general improvements in technology already cut back on a lot of income from repair and maintenance of dealerships, and electric cars have far fewer failure points (other than crappy software) than ICE cars. We simply won't need anywhere close to the current number of service points, and we also won't need gas stations with trucks that fill up their tanks as the cars will be charged through the existing grid.
> Who will fix our potholes?
I 'member a story of some bloke holding up a sign like "I filled the potholes, pay me instead of your taxes". Local politics is on a downward slope across the Western world (with a common factor being the central government depriving local governments of revenue or loading off expenses to local levels), I think we're going to see a lot more of such incidents.
In any case, the price of trades labor will have to increase to be an effective incentive. And if you ask me, better pay the tradespeople than the vampires and vultures of Wall Street. At least the tradespeople do something to keep this society alive, the banksters do not.
The economic incentive doesn't just vanish because people have a little more money. Notwithstanding, a lot of people enjoy the work of being a mechanic.
> The economic incentive doesn't just vanish because people have a little more money.
The incentives are changed dramatically, though. The unworkability of the plan comes down to a very simple question: Why work for forty years, scrimping and saving to afford a meagre retirement, when a meagre retirement is on offer the moment you turn 18?
People have the option now to live like the meagre retirement of this proposed UBI while working, saving a ton more, and retire with a lot more than this UBI in far fewer years than 40. Instead, they spend more, because people always want more stuff. A meager retirement is not appealing to most 18 year olds.
Or with this proposed UBI, why wouldn't people work 20 years and have a good retirement instead of the a meager one out of the gate? Why not work 40 for a great one?
The median 65 year old has 200k in retirement savings. That's 8k per year at a 4% safe withdrawal rate. Hardly worth 40 years of work.
> A meager retirement is not appealing to most 18 year olds.
The option of shacking up with some buds and playing videophones all day will be utterly irresistible for many (if not most) male high school grads. Basically the college experience, for free, forever.
Well, we're apparently significantly more wealthy as a society and individuals than XXX years ago. Yet, most people still seem to be working and the economy is stronger than ever (On a multi-century scale).
I wouldn’t mind farming if it wasn’t for the need of money. There’s a lot of risk involved. I also don’t mind fixing cars, it’s just in today’s world I can work and make more money in an office - and it requires enough hours that I can’t do mechanical work at all, there’s not enough time and I have to pay for those.
Somewhat related: when do we get a truly user-serviceable automobile, something like a four-wheeled motorized version of a Fairphone or Librem. Set a max speed on them to simplify the safety requirements. Urban putt-putts.
Who cares if anyone buys the art? In a world with basic income where people didn't have to worry about survival wages, people could make art just because they were moved to make art.
To be fair, there is a massive percentage of non-productive jobs that are mostly security guards for goods and locations, and many inefficient roles related to ticket clipping, inefficient distribution and marketing that all stimulate the economy without being productive.
>>went from productive work (someone paying them to do it) to unproductive work.
Umm, that is literally wrong, by your own definition.
>>work something different and still make revenue close to what they earned on their job by selling art.
I.e., they went from an employer paying them to do work to a variety of clients/customers paying them to do different work of nearly the same value.
OFC, if everyone did it, the price of art might decline. Or demand might go up. Or both, or neither. We don't know. But either way, the example subject did NOT convert from productive to unproductive work.
Good qstn. The phrasing does leave room for ambiguity, but "make revenue close to" certainly indicates meaning closer to "$X from old job ~= $Y from art-gig"
>>work something different and still make revenue close to what they earned on their job by selling art
There is a documentary out there showing someone who could quit their regular job and become an artist thanks to an UBI pilot (Canada IIRC). It is presented as a positive example in that they did not become lazy, but just work something different and still make revenue close to what they earned on their job by selling art.
How many people will become artists with UBI introduced nationally? Who is going to buy all that art?