Basic income - paying young men to "play video games and watch Internet porn"

There are many things wrong the the idea of basic income but this is, in my view, the killer reason why it is a really dumb idea:

Another major problem with the basic-income thesis is that its intrinsic vision of society is morally problematic, even perverse: individuals are entitled to a share of social prosperity but have no obligation to contribute anything to it. In the authors’ vision, it is perfectly acceptable for able-bodied young men to collect a perpetual income while living in mom’s basement or a small apartment and doing nothing but play video games and watch Internet porn.

From Aaron Renn's review of Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy, by Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght

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Owning robots...

Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution responds to this question (with a very interesting consideration of robotised government):

There’s two versions of this.

1. One or a small group of entrepreneurs owns the robots.

2. The government owns the robots.

I see how we get from where we are now to 1. How would we get to 2, and is 2 better than 1?

Leaving aside Cowan's discussion of what government means in a robotised world, isn't there a big issue with the premise of this question? The idea that state ownership of the robots is desirable? And whether 1. accurately describes how those robots will actually be owned?

The first point is that the robots will be an asset either of the business employing them or, assuming some sort of leasing arrangement, of a financial institution. So there may be a 'small group of entrepreneurs' owning the businesses that make the robots but the robots themselves won't be owned by those businesses (except one guesses for the robots that are making the robots that make the robots).

So the question really isn't about who owns the robots in a future economy but rather who owns the businesses that employ the robots to make and do things. This is a very different question. We can, on the basis of historical experience, dismiss the idea that state ownership of the economy is better than other forms of ownership. The Soviet Union tells us this is the case. At the same time, however, we can see that the productivity gains from the robot economy have to arrive in the pockets of regular folk for that robot economy to work.

Partly this distribution of the robot benefits comes through goods and services being cheaper (lots cheaper in some cases) thereby allowing our money to go further. But there is also the consideration that the benefits cannot simply go to a few entrepreneurs if the advantages of robots are to be realised. This is where some advocates of minimum basic income get their shtick - government taxes the robots' added value and shares it with the humans who don't have jobs any more thereby allowing those humans space to go off and do exciting, creative stuff. This does presuppose that government will not crash the robot economy so as to pay the higher basic income they promised in order to get elected. Not a presupposition I'd care to put money on.

Far better would be for us - not the government but us - to own the robots. Or, to put it another way, to own the businesses that employ the robots. And we have the models for this - mutual funds, pensions, investment funds. It would be good if (and Cowan's robot government suggests this might be so) government didn't crowd out investing in business by running huge debts funded by money that might otherwise be invested in the productive economy.

So the robot future could be very different from our presumption. Much smaller (or really much cheaper which isn't quite the same thing) government meaning that money currently taken either in taxes or spent buying government debt is available to invest in businesses that employ the robots. And a whole load of that money will belong to 'we the people' - actually belong rather than belong in some sort of romantic, wistful socialist manner. We get to own the robots.

So it's not how we get from 1. to 2. in the original question but rather how does government help us get to own those robots.

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Robots and the successors to Captain Swing....

Sir, Your name is down amongst the Black hearts in the Black Book and this is to advise you and the like of you, who are Parson Justasses, to make your wills. Ye have been the Blackguard Enemies of the People on all occasions, Ye have not yet done as ye ought,.... Swing

We are told - by people far wiser and more knowing than me - that the future of employment is bleak:

Could the jobless recovery be signalling that technology has lead to the sort of abundance and productivity that leaves NAIRU — the unemployment rate below which inflation rises — with no choice but to recalibrate higher, if returns on capital investment are to be protected?

The point being made here is that the future of making stuff rests with robots not with people. And that means there won't be enough work for all the people. The result of this is a lot of frothing and excitement and calls for something to be done. And is accompanied by the emergence - blinking in the lights of the 21st Century - of Captain Swing from his nearly 200 year rest.

For men who smashed up the threshing machines under Swing's directions, just as for the followers of Ned Ludd, the objective was to constrain technology. By preventing its spread or by limiting its application (or as in the print industry by requiring more overlookers and operators than the machine required) we protect jobs and the livelihoods of workers.

The simple truth of technology is that, while technology improves productivity, causes prices to fall, demand to rise, more workers to be hired, and the economy to grow, there is a practical limit. If all the work is done by robots all the productivity gain serves no purpose since there is no work and no earnings - no-one to buy the things the robots make.

The central issue here isn't whether we have a job but rather whether we need to have a job. In simple terms, the people who own the robots don't need a job because the rents generated from that ownership would provide. The problem - if the argument about technology destroying all the jobs is correct - is with the people who don't own the robots (or at least not the robots that make all the stuff).

The modern day successors of Captain Swing think they've a great solution - let's either pay everyone a basic income with no strings or else fund a guarantee of a job. We have to assume that the money for this system (whichever is chosen) would come from taxing the robots - or rather the returns the robots generate for the people who own them.

The questions we have to ask are firstly, will there really be a wholesale destruction of jobs without new ones to replace them? And secondly would a basic income or job guarantee actually work? There is a third question - is it morally justified to pay people to do nothing - but this is a far bigger question and we'll leave it for now.

Apple reckoned recently that the app economy (just the iOS bit) has generated nearly 300,000 jobs in the USA alone:

The app revolution has added more than 291,250 iOS jobs to the U.S. economy since the introduction of iPhone in 2007

These are jobs that we hadn't thought of - for all the jobs destroyed by technology there are new ones created.  Izabella Kaminska may talk about the 'jobless recovery' but there's precious little evidence for it - other than in the sclerotic, over-regulated economies of Europe. It could be argued as forcefully that supply-side barriers to employment, the lack of need to work (especially among young people receiving benefits and contributions from the bank of mum and dad) and poor education are more of a problem than the rise of the robots. That government is more of a barrier to future job creation than robots.

A further factor in all this will be that - as has happened over the past decades - we'll see a further decline in average working hours. Back in Captain Swing's day the workers toiled for six days - probably for ten, even twelve hours, for wages far less than any basic income we might propose. And despite this the Captain and his mates smashed up the machines so the workers could carry on with back-breaking, life-shortening heavy manual labour.

Today, the average working day is under eight hours and people work just five days - our time working nears half that of those Captain Swing and Ned Ludd protected. And yet our incomes are immeasurably higher - even the wealthy owners of those threshing machines would be amazed at the life, the comforts that the poorest Englishman enjoys today. What is to suppose that this trend continues? That we work only 25 hours before enjoying the benefits of that work (and let's face it most people work because they want the money not because their work is such an exciting thing to do)?

It seems to me that the bounty of the robots' efforts will be more leisure time for all. And not some ridiculous idea that allowing anyone - at any time - to down tools and toddle off to live on their basic income. Get a good summer and no-one would be working (I appreciate that many of the believers in basic income also follow MMT - "magic money tree" - fantasies and the delusion that this doesn't matter). This indeed is rather the point of it all - we know that, given half a chance, people will swing the lead (you only need to look at sickness statistics in local government to understand this), so if we legitimise swinging the lead we'll just take advantage. As Flanders & Swann noted: "you can't change human nature."

This argument - 'there'll be no jobs, you know" - rather reminds me of Paul Ehrlich's bet on resource depletion. Following one thread takes you to a point where logic and common senses collapse. The theory still looks shiny and right but it has lost any contact with reality. Which, I guess explains why seemingly intelligent people are sucked into believing the sort of nonsense that is basic income (or worse job guarantees that are essentially slave labour directed by the state - we feed and clothe you and you do whatever work we demand).

If there is more stuff (in the widest sense of the word stuff) for us that is good especially if that more stuff comes without us having to work more hours. And that increased earning means more time for arts, sport, celebration, fun and games (and for all the people that provide such pleasure).

So let's be optimistic about what the robots bring and let's escape from the controlling, dictating approach that is captured by one advocate of basic income:

And I don't think anyone from the basic income side would dispute that the public sector might need to help those who are not self-starters to find useful and productive things to do.

And this from someone who self-describes as a "liberal" - such a view is as far removed from liberal as it is possible to get. Look folks, the future's a great place - there'll be flying cars, jet packs, holographic opera and leisure trips into space. And, even better, nearly everyone will be able to afford this stuff. So let's get on with the free markets that make it work and give up on the idea that the solution lies in either a vast lump of unmotivated drones paid to do nothing or else a slave labour force for the masters to direct to projects of their choice.

Above all let's remember - always remember - that government, mostly and most of the time, is the problem not the solution. And let's enjoy the future - it will be better than the past.

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Basic income, human nature and freedom

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I thought about this basic income idea - it sounds, as these things do, wonderfully Utopian:

A basic income is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement.

And, for it to make any sort of sense, it has to be big enough for people not to have to work so as to live. According to some this is a good thing but I'm not so sure - it does rather depend on the nature of the choices made by individuals whose only options are low paid work at a level slightly above the basic income.

I recall a lecture on crime and social conditions during my masters degree study. The lecturer (I'm afraid I forget his name) began by asking us: "would you work 35 hours a week for £7?" That was - give or take a few pence - the difference then between what we might get on benefits and what we might earn in a low paid job. The response was mixed - some said 'yes' arguing that this might lead to opportunities for still more lucrative work while others said 'no' since there is no real prospect of advancement (and we could earn a little on the black).

The idea of basic income makes this even more stark. That £7 a week job is now gone since the basic income is far in excess of the previous level of benefits. And because that income is enough to live on (that's the whole point after all), the number of people who become drones - living off the efforts of others - increases and is not tolerated. It may seem cute to say this:

Jobs are scarce, so it's better for workers if some are subsidized not to seek them, leaving more opportunities for those who do want to work.

...but that little tic of common sense suggests that those idling their lives away on basic income will be resented by those working and paying for their idleness. And that more and more people would seek such a life - after all most people see their job as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. So if the reason for working - providing for self and family - is removed, these people will stop working. And will be resented by those who are working.

All this is wrapped up in the view that there are too many people - or rather, too many workers. And that this problem will increase as technology finds more ways to do things without people that now require people to do them. Hence we need to either find things for the surplus to do ("the government must create jobs") or else we pay them to sit around doing nothing.

In the end, if we pay people to do nothing (in the mistaken belief that there's nothing productive for them to do) what we'll end up with is the corvée. The workers (assuming there's a sufficiency of them) will expect those idling around on a basic income to do something. And government will find that something. The drones stop being an escape valve for supposed excess labour and become a slave resource for the wealthy governors.

Welcome to the new slave state, the 21st century oikos society!

So a glimpse at the possible future. In his monumental “History of Government”, Finer used the Greek word oikos to describe ancient world governments. Oikos means “the household” which for the Greeks meant family under a male head including slaves and other dependents. We are headed back towards such a polity – where we are free in our daily actions within the constraints placed on that freedom by the government and its advisors. And the product of our labour belongs not to us but to the group and to the state – not through confiscation but through a combination of taxation and benefit dependency. It may even be the case that those out of work will be directed toward “socially useful” labour – a precursor of which we see in Labour’s “Future Jobs Fund”. Future jobs are not wealth creating but have a social purpose paid for either through taxation or (less likely) through philanthropy.

It may be "efficient" but it won't be free.

I prefer free.
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