Post shower toilet thought: Copyright isn’t there to protect the author, it’s there to create a multi-billion dollar legal industry.
you poop AFTER you shower???
Heresy of the highest order.
Maybe he’s going to get back in the shower. Hold your judgement until we have more information. Some people just gotta poop a lot
just get a bidet and it becomes irrelevant. you’re living in a different millennium if you don’t have one. or don’t and stay dirty.
Who needs a bidet when you’re in the shower?
Waffle stomp ftw!
Sometimes emergencies happen…
Poops in the shower.
Some people live places were poop is cleaner than their water 🤷
Expect…no? Like, copyright gets abused a lot, but it’s still used for its intended purpose of protecting small time creators and artists all the time.
There’s nothing about abuse in the comment you replied to. In fact, the act of “protecting small time creators and artists” goes through the legal system, funding it like the commenter said…
Lemmy is full of people that have never created anything of value frothing at the mouth because they aren’t entitled other people’s creations. I wonder how long it would take them to change their tune if they actually created something worthwhile but got none of the recognition for it if IP laws didn’t exist.
Published academic (mathematics) here - I suspect my contributions have some value ;)
Are you being paid to do research and publish it?
Or, it could be that for once we got access to the same powerful tools the capitalists got access to, and we’re annoyed that the capitalists have been successful at convincing people the tech is evil so that the poors dont use it. (Morals have never stopped corporations from doing anything, so tech being “Evil” only ever stops the general public from using it)
Only the capitalists have access to creating stuff? You do know you can just put in the practice and get good right?
Oh yeah sure. Lemme just dedicate another 5-10 years of my life to mastering a skill when I only have a few hours free a week to unwind after spending all my energy working full time.
Edit: The funniest thing about this take is that the people who spout it think they are defending artists without realising that they are massively devaluing all the time effort and skill artists have put into their craft with the suggestion that basically any working class adult could do what they do if they wanted to
Edit 2: I know its incredibly hard to believe, but some of us just want access to creative freedom, and dont particularly care about the skill that gives us said freedom. Even if I had the pen and paper skills to make my art from scratch, I’d STILL be using Stable Diffusion at this point as it massively speeds up the process, I’d just be doing heavier editing of the results than I already do, and would probably train a LORA off of my own art
Edit: 3 Lmao entitled artists are BIG MAD. Techs not going away, and you’re burning out the empathy of those who could be convinced to use more ethical options as they arise. Instead you want to kill the tech entirely, and so the new generation of artists that use these new tools will ignore your input entirely. Your labour is being exploited, welcome to capitalism. You want change? Fix the systemic issues. You want sympathy? Stop being assholes. AI Generators can be run on personal computers now with no connection to the internet, Pandora’s Box is opened and cannot be closed again. Live with it.
Why do you feel you’re owed the work of people who have spent those years without compensating them or even asking for that matter? You do realise that is unsustainable right?
Because I disagree on whether or not it is theft. I watch the program generate the images from blots and then add more details. The images are made from scratch with techniques learned from the things it trained on. Its not a 1-1 comparison to how a human learns, but its closer than anything before it has been. Most artists have traced or done other taboo forms of learning in the process of acquiring their skills before they have the skillset to charge money for their work, and they CERTAINLY have benefited from thousands of years of art history and culture. Its not as black and white as artists want to make it out to be, its not squeeky fucking clean either, as more ethical options arise, I will use those. But this tech is amazing and has the potential to dramatically change the art scene for the better once those with skills start adopting it more. It will allow more artists to break free from corporate sponsors, to take on bigger solo projects than they were able to before. At the end of the day, its Capitalism stealing work from artists, not the machine. This whole debacle has reminded me that what stopped me from entering the arts as a child was the elitism.
FWIW I’ve been creating IP as a career for a long time. I still want what OP wants, a UBI instead.
This is where people usually suggest that I start unilaterally sharing my work right now, ignoring the economic assumptions behind why a UBI would be necessary to replace IP.
I’m in your same position and fully agree. An UBI would be way better… but until that exists it’s not right that people make use of my work for their own profit.
More like the multi-billion dollar legal industry sprung up around poorly-written copyright laws.
You can’t give UBI to a subset of people. Then it’s not universal anymore.
But if you did give artists a basic income, how much art would they need to produce to qualify? What qualifies as art? The law doesn’t do well with those kinds of questions.
Better to implement true UBI. Give it to everyone, and afford more security to folks who want to focus on art.
Sorry, I meant UBI for everyone, including artists.
Ah my bad, then I agree!
Would you work harder or longer at your current job if you were paid say an unconditional 1000 per month and if not, how would productively increase to pay for it?
I will get down voted but no one will have a good answer for this.
There’s actual experiments that have been done on this and every experiment has said that people don’t quit their jobs they carry on doing their jobs and they just have a better standard of living than the otherwise would have had.
It’d be really great if you could actually look this stuff up before making comments
Actually Manitoba Canada did one of the biggest experiments and the best that came out of it was productivity fell less than expected. So no your statement does not support that.
More so this post suggest more people would do things like art which is absolutely suggesting productivity will fall.
And seriously are you telling me you wouldn’t retire earlier if you were paid a significant amount over your lifetime? I can bs on people working just as hard if they didn’t have to.
Pretty sure OP meant UBI for everyone, as in its a much better fight than the fight against AI Art
The solution is UBI and then tax incomes. It gives everyone the opportunity to persue goals, and if you make enough extra it is taxes to pay for everyone else to have the same opportunity. Persue art if you wish. If it’s successful you’ll get to pay it forward. You don’t have to struggle to just survive while pursuing those goals.
So if 5 percent of the workforce pursues other endeavors such as the arts or retirees sooner, and certainly people will retire sooner, where do you find the people to take out your garbage when 5 percent of them quit?
I completely agree on giving UBI to everyone, Imagine a world without artists. Without movies, TV shows, theaters, musicals, museums, books, music, sculpture, paintings, architecture.
Imagine how dull everything would be, without the creativity and imagination of these people out to use. But nowaday people just say Y0u_sH0uLd_sTuDy_SoMeThInG_t0_hAvE_iNc0mE, ignoring the consequences of the absence of arts
My town, in a surprisingly conservative part of Louisiana, has an artist residency. They pay $700/month and supply a studio to 3 artists for 9 months out of the year.
The hours are whenever the artist has the time (so as not to interfere with their jobs), and the stipulation is that they have to be available twice a month to teach evening classes about their individual style. They have to have enough pieces by the end to fill a show, as determined by the board that assigned them for the year. But there’s no hard number of art pieces required.
All this to say that it can be done. Even if right now it’s just a few artists a year in one town, the concept is there.
im an upcoming starving artist (graphic designer) we def do not need a UBI for artists specifically my peers will take any excuse to not do anything.
but a ubi for all would be fire and likely increase productivity in everyway over time.
Graphic designers are not part of this. You guys can make a fucking killing designing everything from flyers, billboards, websites and bloody corporate logos.
I know a few British graphic designers. One made a logo for the US government in 1hr. They gave him $10k for it. He lives in a £1M mansion and works from home maybe 4hrs per day.
I don’t think I’ve ever met a poor graphic designer.
Maybe the UBI is the art? I mean, we’re talking about it, aren’t we?
Now that’s a cooked thought. How hot was your shower
Based
Yes we can see that he was based while cooking, we’re just wondering what temp for how long?
On SSI right now. My art has exploded recently because I have a lot of time. Every day, at least one complete piece. Still pretty poor, struggling financially. But oil pastels, gesso, baby oil, cotton balls, piece of plastic… because free time, I’m excitedly experimenting, create pieces deeply layered, sculptural. Was never possible when employed.
That was my tough, artist’s need raw material to work with wich is not free, having a UBI let’s artist’s buy the thing they need to create art and then mabe make some extra income.
What I’m realizing more and more is that we don’t have to buy materials from stores to make art. There are tons of videos out there showing how to make natural paints, paper, pastels, etc from local resources. I think so many people just can’t be bothered.
I’m struggling with that. My red, orange, blue oil pastels are running out. But have a bunch of brown, grey hues left. So forcing me to adapt. Also, was struggling to figure out how to add layering, depth, large areas of white space. But just one tiny white oil pastel. That forced me to experiment with using gesso as a medium. Initially, just to more cheaply add more white space. But realized gesso is amazing, can be sculpted, if you sculpt patterns, or carve lines into gesso, let it dry… when you lightly run oil pastel over the dried gesso…
Poverty, limited means can be useful. Necessity breeds adaptation.
All of which is your work.
They’re suggesting UBI in place of copyright. So all that work your doing right now could be stolen by others and sold for cheaper than you would sell it, without your permission. So companies like Disney can just take it and put it in a movie or something, without paying you.
All you would get would be your UBI, they would get the profit.
We should just do UBI anyway. Copyright is a whole fucked up world of nonsense, we don’t need to go there.
copyright doesn’t stop stealing. I creates a tort against copying.
Stop comparing businesses to people and we can probably get that sorted as well.
They are suggesting focussing on UBI instead of getting angry at AI art as a bandaid for capitalism taking artists jobs away, because, spoiler alert, capitalism is going to keep using advances in tech to take all of our well paying jobs away. One solution gives us all a way to live, the other stems the tide for a TINY bit for ONE category of workers
UBI and copyright are not mutually exclusive. Why wouldn’t artists want to earn more on top for the work they do and the value they create, like every other profession?!
you can sell your work without resorting to government enforced Monopoly.
Not when work takes a large amount of time to produce the original, and very little work to produce a copy. An original and a copy of a digital artwork are identical.
Not when work takes a large amount of time to produce the original, and very little work to produce a copy
if you’ve never seen someone sell their own creative work without the trappings of a government enforced monopoly, you should look into how any author or artist got paid before the statute of anne.
By the rich?
patronage was common. you can’t think that every artist got paid by someone who is rich though.
wrong.
Monopolies are not about exclusively for one specific thing, but about scale and the availability of alternatives. It’s not like you can only buy pictures or music from one artist, just that you have to buy art from the artist who made it.
In a sense it is a monopoly, just a very narrow one. The first step to identifying a monopoly is identifying the relevant market, and that is quite hard to do, actually.
none of this contradicts what I said. government enforced monopolies are wrong.
The contradiction is that you imply copyright is always a government enforced monopoly. It can be, but it usually isn’t, especially with art. So using it as a counter argument here makes no sense.
copyright is always a government enforced monopoly.
that’s the only thing it is. it’s a law that grants exclusive rights to sell. how do you think it’s not in relation to art?
Exclusive rights and monopolies are not the same thing. Monopolies are about access to a category of things or services that fulfill a need, not one specific thing. E.g. Samsung has exclusive rights to sell Samsung TVs, but they don’t have a monopoly on TVs, and talking about a monopoly on Samsung TVs specifically makes no sense. Similarly no one has a monopoly on landscape drawings, rock music or scifi movies, just exclusive rights to specific pieces of art or literature that they created.
As a side note, patents are a different story imo. Because overly broad patents can actually give you exclusive access to an entire category, and therefore a real monopoly. But you can’t patent art.
your Samsung example is trademark. it’s not copyright.
do you know how I know that you aren’t a copyright lawyer?
Can you explain how government enforced monopolies intersects with the discussion here?
that’s what copyright and patent are. but you don’t need to use the cudgel of the law to sell your work. in fact, most times, it’s an irrelevant factor.
The creation can possibly have monetary value, thus the protection. How much is up to society.
This isn’t a good argument for UBI.
It’s a good argument because artificially constraining the supply to simulate “monetary value” destroys most of the actual value it could have by being available to everyone. The “protection” is a harmful kludge that only has to exist because we insist on making everyone measure their value with the market.
I don’t think that tracks though. If we all lived in universal basic income world I don’t think the idea of copyright would be given up. People would still want to be compensated for their work, universal basic income doesn’t get rid of capitalism, it just gets rid of the less desirable aspects of it.
We would still have money but it would change in its nature. Instead of needing it in order to survive you would simply need it in order to improve your lot above whatever base level the theoretical society decided on. You would still need copyright to enforce your right to compensation and prevent others from taking credit for your work.
To me copyright is one of the more undesirable aspects of capitalism, for the reason I mentioned. I don’t think you really have a right to prosecute people for copying, repurposing and remixing the stuff you’ve made just so you can personally profit, that would be just selfishness if it wasn’t something of a necessary evil to make sure creators can have a way to survive.
Unfortunately, “society” doesn’t control most of the value of anything. The monopolists do.
So the only really valuable kind of art is the art that can be used for speculation and money laundering.
What if their “art” is actually and utterly a pile of steaming shit?
That typically sells better than art that isn’t made of literal shit.
You mean like Tracy Emin’s bed? It gets featured in the Tate Modern of London.
Ohhhh man …
That is too logical and convenient to be allowed under psychopathic capitalism that runs the world
So what you’re suggesting is the artists should make a set income, determined by the legislature.
And then create lots of free art that isn’t copyrighted.
So that a corporation can come along, take their art, and use it compared with their superior distribution and marketing to make more profit off of it than the artist ever could, without paying them.
Sounds like a flawless system.
If the artist has their needs met then yes, absolutely fantastic. Works better than our current system where most artists make copywrited art for their corporate overlords abd can get laid off whenever new tech roles around that makes them obsolete, and now the corporation owns their art AND they have no house
Give artists a basic universal income, and I guarantee every single person on earth will suddenly discover their “inner Picasso” to qualify.
You say that like that would be bad.
Who fights for having people in braindead jobs, working unsafe conditions, Christ almighty. Check please.
You can debate the merits of some work, you can debate the amount people are compensated for that work. But what is absolutely not debatable is that we actually need people to do work for us to contribute to function as a society. Some of that work that’s absolutely necessary is both dangerous and nigh impossible to automate. Do we need another Starbucks? No, absolutely not. But we will still need places to be built, and infrastructure maintained. There’s really no escaping that.
That’s why it’s a basic income. Enough to keep you housed, clothed and fed. Your clothes might be thrifted, your apartment small, and your diet mostly instant ramen, but your basic needs will be covered. Plenty of people would still work hard to get more than the basics.
Why not just guarantee those things for everyone?
Guaranteed housing, guaranteed food, guaranteed clothing. No work required. I agree with you, I think most people will still work with all of that taken care of. Because it’s just basic.
That’s what a universal basic income does. It’s way simpler and more likely to succeed than a hundred different programs for everything people need. Studies show that poor people, when given money, don’t misuse it, like some would have you believe. They use it on things they need, but otherwise couldn’t afford, like housing, healthcare, car repairs, things like that. It’s even good for the economy
I’m sure there are already answers to this question l, but wouldn’t a basic universal income lead to some inflation/price rises?
I live in the most expensive city in my country and rent is insane. It’s not about finding a cheaper apartment or a smaller one because there are none or you won’t get them. They are not taking in a family of three into less than a three room apartment and sometimes even three room apartments are considered too small for a family with one little kid. And to be clear, if you are long term unemployed, the government pays for your housing. Theoretically. You still have to find a suitable apartment and there.are.none.
I would much rather have someone provide me guaranteed housing for free than to fear that my basic universal income will at some point not even be enough to cover my rent, even if it is just “basic”. But to me, “basic” in this sense would equal survival. It would mean housing, food, healthcare. I much rather take these things directly than make use of a small amount of money that will always be too little and end up having to choose between the cheapest cereal or the cheapest bread because I cannot afford both this month. Money and freedom to spend it as you wish is great, but I just cannot imagine how this would work. Apartments won’t magically keep their prices or appear out of thin air.
I’m sorry if this comment is too focused on housing, it is just the most anxiety evoking example I have. (And also we are moving in two weeks so maybe I am a bit preoccupied.)
It would lead to increased demand for goods poor people consume, and decreased demand for goods rich people consume. It’s a continual wealth transfer down the hierarchy.
In the short run the increased demand would probably lead to increased prices. In the longer run it would lead to more market investment, more production, more innovation, and by those two factors, lower prices.
Now if your basic income takes the form of newly printed money, that’s a whole new thing and would suck a lot.
I am sure there is an official answer, but I am going to wing it.
Inflation is from too much money chasing too few goods.
UBI will free you from having to live in a specific place. Or if not you, some of your neighbors.
Guaranteed housing tends to be shitty. Think of the worst people running the program and them hitting the lowest standards most times.
With money, you can decide the housing trade-offs. Save money on rent and spend more elsewhere, or the reverse. With money, you have flexibility.
I wonder how they operationalized the proper or misuse of money in those studies.
The reason UBI is better than that is it still allows market forces to operate on those goods, improving them over time due to competition and innovation.
Also if someone wants to use their housing money for extra clothes instead and just couch surf, they should be allowed to do that. Granting money provides freedom of choice with it.
Who says the market can’t operate there? Providing a basic version of anything doesn’t mean an organization can’t compete. They just have to compete with basic. Most people will want something better.
It will still get done.
Who would work at Starbucks if you get a living wage making shitty art ?
Is there even a quota needed in this? Can I make one piece of art a week that takes ten minutes and I get my living wage ?
Why would I work 40 hours dealing with any customer. Why would I work in a field picking crops or at a construction site ?
I’ll join hunter Biden making blow art and getting g paid
It’ll increase demand, which should in theory increase wages for those jobs. A universal basic income is “basic” in the sense that it’s the minimum to survive in society. There will still be plenty of people who want more and are therefore willing to do those jobs.
Except that people will only pay so much for a cup of coffee. So how much do you need to pay a retail employee to come back to work over what ubi pays and how much will the products rise in cost to off set that
Sounds like you just identified a business that shouldn’t exist. If a company can’t afford to pay people what they need to survive, and still make a profit, the company needs to change, or shut down. That’s supposed to be the essence of the free market
If people will only pay so much for a cup of coffee, that’s capitalist for “coffee ain’t that big a deal”.
how much do you need to pay a retail employee to come back to work
Probably a lot less than you’d think. With UBI there’s no need for a minimum wage so if you’re offering a great work environment you could pay next to nothing for labor. If the job that needs done is inherently shitty you might have to pay more, but that’s already how it is for quite a few things.
Thanks for announcing your single digit IQ on this topic so everyone is aware. Excellent work.
Wow what an insult. Good job
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But what is absolutely not debatable is that we actually need people to do work for us
Citation needed.
to contribute to function as a society
As if that’s a worthy goal.
Says the guy who literally advocate the enslavement of the majority of the human race. Where even if your line, my guy?
2 edgy 4 me m8
So your ok if your garbage does not get taken out or if that many less people want to be doctors and nurses?
Probably someone who sees a causal connection between unpleasant work and pleasant outcomes later.
I mean if work was an end unto itself it doesn’t make much sense to go do things you don’t feel like doing. But once you connect the present moment of facing unpleasantness to the future payoff of the work, it makes more sense.
Most office work for company conglomerate X? Completely useless to society. The whole of Wall Street? Completely useless to society. In fact, most jobs in any field which isn’t STEM R&D are largely superfluous. So, what was your point again?
You say that like that would be bad.
There’s work to be done. Everyone can’t be an artist. It’s exactly why they’re not paid well to do it. It’s a high-supply, low-demand job.
You people are living in a fantasy land.
We got fat on the third world and people think we can just say “fuck you, got mine” to the rest of the planet.
“Artists” make everything you touch or look at. Unless you define “artist” as someone who drinks all day, and whips paint at blank canvass.
UI-UX artists design the way programs look and function. Game artists build the worlds we play in. Architecture. Indoor decor. Even the cool looking rug you got at IKEA… designed by an industrial artist.
We are everywhere. Coming up with cool looking phones, apps, OSes, and yes, sculptures and paintings too. So you’re right, there is work to be done. There is so much skill and investment into the life of artist. You’d know if you ever spent a day in their shoes.
Your know exactly what I mean by “artists”. Don’t be daft
I do not. Why don’t you tell us what an artist is in your opinion.
The reason it’s called universal is because everyone gets it.
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That’s called unemployment benefits. Universal Basic Income is universal, like the name says. If it’s not universal, then it’s not universal basic income.
That’s exactly how it works. That’s why it’s called “universal” basic income. Let’s say we set the UBI to $10k per year, just to make a number up. I know that’s not a living wage, I just want an easy number. If someone has $0 income for the year (because they had to stay at home and take care of their parents), they get $10k. If someone made $500k as a banker, they also get $10k. Now, the banker is going to be paying about $250k in taxes while the carer would pay $0, but they’d both get the same amount of money.
Alaska and some countries do this out of an oil fund. The idea there is that the oil in the ground belongs to the people, who must be compensated for its extraction. I think the Alaska fund is around $3k or something like that. UBI would be the same but funded via taxes on individuals and companies.
If it’s less than you can live on, you’d still need to work and it would supplement your income or pay for a vacation or something. If it’s enough to live on, you could do what you like (including making more money by taking on a job, or go off and paint, or just go fishing or whatever.
Actually that is how one way of rolling it out works.
EVERYONE gets it, which makes administrating the whole deal very easy. No application process, no means testing, nothing. You give it to everyone and tax higher to cover it.
Oh nooooo, people won’t be as strongly bound to corporations anymore! Whatever will we do?
You say that like it’s a bad thing. We could use more people who can afford to make art in the world, even if a lot of it would be shitty art.
Do we really need them more than doctors, plumbers, teachers, etc. though? While I’m for a UBI, I’m against it being enough to fully live off of for exactly this reason. The world doesn’t need a bunch more popsicle stick art.
Speak for yourself. I think the world would be a much better place with more popsicle stick art.
Eeh deviant art had that perspective and then got flooded with mspaint fetish porn and became unusable.
Art station on the other hand always blows me away every time I visit the front page. So there’s a limit.
Not really. Basic income is - just that. Basic. It’ll cover your necessities and put a roof over your head, but not much else
Id much rather continue working so that I can afford luxury items (my hobbies are as expensive as they are time consuming). I’d imagine most would feel the same.
Opponents of UBI all seem to have this bizarre notion that most people would be willing to take a big step down lifestyle wise to not have to work, but that doesn’t mesh with how most people treat money.
How many people deliberately underemploy themselves just to have more free time, even if they could easily be making more money? Very few. And I’d wager that most in that category have lucrative enough careers that their “underemployed” is still making most people’s normal income
Are you unaware that many people don’t get much for their work beyond a roof over their head?
That really just furthers the point that we need UBI in my mind.
The people who are making today more or less the same as what the UBI would be would have their income doubled overnight. And yeah, some will say fuck it and quit their jobs to just lounge around (though I imagine many will go back, ask anyone whose been out of work for a long time, it gets boring quicker than you might think), but I’d wager most will take that double income and run with it. Twice your takehome would be life changing for just about everybody. Hell, those who continue to work will probably wind up with more than double, because demand for those jobs will go up.
Jobs that are unpleasant or difficult will basically start actually getting paid what they’re worth, because no one will be stuck in a “I have to do this or starve” situation.
And yes, the overall GDP probably will take a hit, because we won’t be working our population to death, but productivity has skyrocketed over the last century, it’s about time we start putting that fact to work for the actual people, instead of using it to extract record profits for the top 1%.
TL;DR - People will still work because working will still mean more money. Some won’t, but that’s fine. If jobs are having a hard time being filled, then employers will simply have to pay more to get them done, or explore ways to automate the parts people don’t want to do
Point being?
UBI is a separate concern from copyright being a dumb way of rewarding intellectual property.
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Everyone should get UBI to reduce poverty and houselessness.
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And separately, artists should get paid for their work, when it’s valuable, regardless of whether or not UBI is in place.
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And sometimes that value is immediately recognized at the time by the masses and can be measured in clicks and streams.
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Sometimes it’s only recognized by professional contemporaries and critics in how it influences the industry.
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Sometimes it’s not recognized until long after them and their contemporaries are dead.
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Given computers and the internet, there is no technical reason that every single individual on the planet couldn’t have access to all digital art at all times.
All of these things can be true, and their sum total makes copyright look like an asinine system for rewarding artists. It’s literally spending billions of dollars and countless countless useless hours in business deals, legal arguments, and software drm and walled gardens, all just to create a system of artificial scarcity, when all of those billions could instead be paying people to do literally anything else, including producing art.
Hell, paying all those lawyers 80k a year to produce shitty art and live a comfortable life would be a better use of societal resources then paying them 280k a year to deprive people of access to it.
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You do realise U in UBI means Universal, they arent suggesting only artists get it
So you just have to give everyone universal income
It’s not really universal unless you do.
Then the shower thought is dumb suggesting giving it to only artists
The biggest issue with UBI is that it will never work, the math just doesn’t add up.
- Where does the money come from? The government only really has one source of money and that is taxes, so to pay UBI it would either need to raise taxes or massive cut on other expanses.
- Should a solution be found for 1) and everyone (universal means that everyone will automatically qualify for it, no questions asked) will be paid UBI then the prices for housing, food and all the other basic things will skyrocket because a) of the higher demand and b) because of the higher amount of money in circulation creating inflation.
- The higher prices will mean that the amount of UBI money must be raised, which means we are back at 1)
Where does the money come from? The government only really has one source of money and that is taxes, so to pay UBI it would either need to raise taxes or massive cut on other expanses.
How’s that National Debt looking?
Debt is not a reliable money source, in the long run it is a huge money sink with payments and interests. So yes, the only money source for governments are taxes.
I like the idea of a “Citizen’s Dividend” funded from taxes on pollution, carbon Emmissions, etc. We can throw a wealth tax for billionaires in there too.
Taxes on pollution, carbon emissions etc. would raise the costs of living and would therefore mean that the UBI would need to be higher to accommodate for the higher costs. Which means that a huge part of these taxes would be payed in proxy by the government. Rendering it useless as a method to fund the UBI.
The costs for a UBI are just so enormous, and all on the shoulders of the working class, because those are the majority of tax payers.
If you have a million people, old, young, in between, and a working rate of 60% (because the other 40% are too old or too young or can’t/doesn’ t want to work) and pay everyone 1000$ as UBI. That would mean that a billion dollars has to be payed by 600.000 people, so every working citizen has to pay 1667$ to receive 1000$ in return. This means that working people don’t get a UBI because they have to pay more then they get.
And those 1667$ taxes would only be for the UBI, meaning that the taxes would be much higher to pay for all the other costs that the state has.
This is a vast oversimplification. A UBI could replace a vast amount of existing welfare programs in a much more efficient way which would have a fraction of the overhead. There are tons of other proposals to fund a UBI such as a negative interest rate. Likely there would be many sources of funding, including money which now goes to existing wasteful welfare spending.
Ok, negativ interest rate sounds interesting and maybe doable. It is something I have to read more about, I see a few issues but have not enough information yet.
Tax doesn’t finance spending. That national debt is owed to no one. Money is created out of thin air, my friend, and always has been since fiat money was introduced. When the government spends, they just adjust the number on their account; they’ve come right out and admitted this.
“We can’t afford that” is a lie. They can afford absolutely anything, because they own the money, and they own the debt in that money - it’s a constructed fiction.
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Printing large amounts of money out of thin air is a great way to turn a valuable currency into worthless Monopoly® money via inflation. That is basic economics. There are lots of examples for that in history.
Inflation is not a guarantee, that depends on the actual economy. Japan is massively in deficit and yet is seeing deflation.
Beeing deficit doesn’t have to mean that they print money, they can be deficit by taking higher and higher loans. Which comes with it’s own problems.
I didn’t say printing money.
Yes, but I did in the text that you answered too. By the law of inference your answer was about printing money too, because my whole text was about that printing money out of thin air will create inflation.
If their art doesn’t make enough money then it’s clearly not in enough demand. It sucks but thats how things work. Only a small number of artists can ever coexist at the same time.
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I mean, I’m sure the people who painted their hands in caves were doing all kinds of things. i.e. they had “jobs” even if those jobs were compensated for by something other than money.
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Yeah but like… That’s also true of capitalism. Grain can still paint from his desire to paint. Grain just goes and does a job instead of hunting because that’s how he and his fellow humans will be able to eat later or get other services that they want/need. If Grain is good enough, Grain doesn’t need to hunt at all because Grain trades art for food.
Hobbyist work exists outside of economic systems…
I guess you can argue Grain just came across the materials and the cave and didn’t have to pay … where as now you need to buy stuff to actually do the painting… But also that stuff is way nicer and made by other humans.
Also, I bet if Grain was spending all of his time painting in the cave and not helping with the hunt, his fellow caveman would tell Grain he needs to do his part if he wants to eat.
If their art doesn’t make enough money then it’s clearly not in enough demand.
Unless you burden the word ‘enough’ with far too much work in that sentence, then that implication doesn’t necessarily follow. It is possible for something to be in great demand by those without money to spend. Furthermore, it is possible for there to be issues with the logistics between the source and the demand (e.g. demand is very physically distributed, or temporally limited and/or sporadic).
Money is a very particular way of empowering and aggregating only some demand. It ties the power of demand to history and not moral or egalitarian considerations for one.
Interested to know - what political party do you support?
I have absolutely no idea what that means.
But to answer the actual question, I don’t disagree that universal basic income would be great I just don’t think that the above arguement is a particularly great one for it. There are many better arguments that could be made and I don’t appreciate the false dichotomy that OP is putting out that because it just makes the whole idea seem hippie and stupid.
Also been aggressive with people who even marginally disagree with your opinion isn’t productive.
I asked you a question out of curiosity. There was nothing aggressive in my comment. You’re being overly defensive.
Not all Art has the same value.
You think someone who delicates their life to musical excellence should get the same as someone who sticks seashells onto things?
What t about if they only produce one seashell covered mug per week? Per month?
If only there was some mechanism to objectively measure the value of what we produce.
Do… Do you think that mechanism is market? Like, you seriously think that?
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Recent times have shown two important things to me.
One: People want to create regardless of any reward related to it. The excuse that people need to be rewarded in order to do anything valuable is completely wrong. People, in general, want to do things that other people find valuable and beneficial and bring joy to other people. We are very social, and that desire is nearly universal. If one has no concerns over their continued comfortable existence, then the vast majority of people would dedicate themselves to something they enjoy which is also useful and helpful to others.
Two: People will very happily give rewards to those who create things that they want and enjoy. Even people who themselves have little, will give some to those who have brought them happiness and joy with their work and effort. We see this in all the people donating even when they receive nothing in return for it.
Point two suggests that universal income is theoretically unnecessary, but point two is unreliable. Yes, people will give, but they won’t give in a steady, reliable way that can be counted on to meet another’s needs regularly. And just as importantly, they don’t really give if the quality of the creations are low, which…fair enough, however, this limits the potential creator’s ability to practice and get better, since they cannot devote their efforts to the thing they enjoy that would, if they got good at it, be enjoyed by many; instead they are forced to devote their efforts to continued survival and comfortable existence.
People should just be paid to exist at this point regardless of what they contribute.
Most people are wholly incapable of doing for themselves so just give them subsistence money so they can sit in their house and not bother anybody else.
I think that anyone who wants to contribute somehow in a positive way to their society, environment or country, should get enough money to have their basic needs fulfilled. Being it full-time or part-time work, volunteering or just helping out random people from time to time (pick trash alone somewhere and stuff).
I don’t approve ending people’s lives because they create harm to others. Of course it’s a whole different thing when you compare a feared dictator who hates humankind versus someone who spends all their time trolling people out of their minds in the Internet just because of the lulz. But I don’t know, what would be a good solution in these or any other cases.
Lmao as if artists would manage to produce anything if they could just slack off and hit a blunt instead of producing anything
Yep, totally correct. History is totally not full of artists creating despite their genius not being recognised socially and economically and dying poor and isolated. Clearly, the only way to stimulate artists is monetary compensation.
