>Can someone please explain to me why a BI wouldn't simply result in higher prices, resulting in the need for a higher BI, resulting in higher prices, resulting in the need for a higher BI, etc?
Of course it would. But there is no reason to think that an equilibrium couldn't / wouldn't be reached.
>The endgame of the first option is Zimbabwe.
We can get Zimbabwe or Weimar Germany without BI.
> The endgame of the second option is Marxist communism; the point at which the system reaches stability is the point at which there is nobody left to extract extra money from to distribute.
For that to be necessarily true, we'd need to already be in a sort of Malthusian crisis, and/or have a resource scarcity. Sure, it might happen, but it is not a certainty.
>why would it be different here?
People still strive for wealth, why would they stop just because of all-you-can-eat-beans-and-rice buffet and health care?
> Of course it would. But there is no reason to think that an equilibrium couldn't / wouldn't be reached.
I agree equilibrium would be reached. I guess what I'm asking is "Why wouldn't the equilibrium be Marxist communism?" (and if it is, can we just admit that we're advocating for communism?)
> For that to be necessarily true, we'd need to already be in a sort of Malthusian crisis, and/or have a resource scarcity. Sure, it might happen, but it is not a certainty.
Can you elaborate on why this is necessary? This ties into my question of "Why wouldn't the equilibrium be Marxist communism?"
> People still strive for wealth, why would they stop just because of all-you-can-eat-beans-and-rice buffet and health care?
Wealth is a means to an end to achieve a certain quality of life. For most people, it is not the end itself. The caricature of the Scrooge McDuck character who collects money out of a psychopathic addiction to raw wealth so that he can swim around in it is not representative of almost anyone's actual financial goals or motivations.
People don't create wealth for the hell of it - they create it to improve their quality of life. If I am producing wealth, but it is not contributing to my quality of life, I have zero incentive or motivation to continue producing wealth.
> Why wouldn't the equilibrium be Marxist communism?
Communism is all about state ownership of the means of production at every level. Wealth and entrepreneurship are heavily discouraged, if not outright banned. Those who advocate for a BI have nothing against wealth and entrepreneurship, and would probably withdraw their support for it if they believed that it would result in the outcome that you predict. BI isn't about everyone being equal, but rather about establishing a minimum income level.
> If I am producing wealth, but it is not contributing to my quality of life, I have zero incentive or motivation to continue producing wealth.
I think that the ideas that you have about incentives and wealth don't track with reality. Just look to yourself--I would be surprised if you live your entire life as a wealth-maximizing entity. Most people are very complex in their motiviations, and many, many wealthy people continue building wealth because it is a side-effect of something that they love to do, not because they want to make even more money.
Regarding equilibrium:
What makes you think that we aren't already near the price equilibrium that would be reached under a BI system? Ostensibly, at least at first, the only people who would see a gain in income net of taxes under BI would be people who are currently receiving some sort of social welfare payment such as social security, unemployment, or AFDC/TANF, which payments would be eliminated concurrently. If no net cash is injected into the economy, how would it have any effect on prices? In fact, BI could have a stabilizing effect on prices if it reduced the deflationary pressure on consumer goods that accompanies economic downturns.
> Those who advocate for a BI have nothing against wealth and entrepreneurship, and would probably withdraw their support for it if they believed that it would result in the outcome that you predict. BI isn't about everyone being equal, but rather about establishing a minimum income level.
I get this; I just wonder about the effect that funding it would have on wealth and entrepreneurship, given that decreasing the value of a unit of work through taxation tends to retard economic growth, and heavy taxation would be necessary to provide for these kinds of programs. If we can manage to pay for them without over-disincentivizing entrepreneurship, everything is dandy. Given the scope of the proposal, that seems sketchy - we have already seen a tangible effect from things like the ACA on employment (that is employers are willing to sacrifice raw economic output in order to avoid higher effective taxes) and that's a relatively small drop in the bucket compared to what would be needed to bootstrap a BI system. I may just be mentally overinflating the issue, but it seems like the capital necessary to fund a BI system would be so gargantuan that it would have a significantly detrimental effect on low-margin businesses, kicking us into a feedback look of reduced supply and higher prices.
> many wealthy people continue building wealth because it is a side-effect of something that they love to do, not because they want to make even more money.
Definitely, and isn't that the ideal here? To get us, as a society, to the place where we can devote all our time to things that we love to do, rather than the things that we have to do? I half-joke that I love what I do so much that I'd do it even if I wasn't making money at it, and I think that's true for a lot of people, but I can also say that I think the fact of the matter is that most people do what they do because they have to, not because they want to; squeezing out the wealth incentive leaves little there for most. If we can get everyone to a point where people do what they love and society still functions smoothly, I'll be the first to sign up for that. :)
> What makes you think that we aren't already near the price equilibrium that would be reached under a BI system?
Back-of-the-napkin math suggests to me that it would require much more capital to implement BI than current entitlement programs require. If this is not the case, and it's just a matter of liquidating current entitlement programs, then there's absolutely no issue at all. My entire argument is predicated on the assumption that BI would require far more in the way of entitlement resources than we currently have available.
> can we just admit that we're advocating for communism?
Communism has gotten such a bad rap that even when people advocate for something like it, they cannot admit that it's like communism.
See the quote from Keynes in the article, even. Obviously Keynes wasn't exactly a communism advocate, but "society will be so productive that it won't be organized around work but around leisure" is almost taken straight from Marx in many ways.
I guess what I'm saying is a variant of Graeber's "Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!" Remove the ideology behind some words and the positions that people advocate can be fascinating.
I agree, and I'm really not trying to "trick" people into admitting a communist philosophy as some sort of way to invalidate the idea. I'm just trying to get at the heart of the matter. If it's communism as Karl Marx outlined in his writings, let's call it that, because that's what it is. Communism is not an invention of Soviet Russia or China - they're certainly examples of it failing spectacularly, but my intent is to say "If we're advocating for a system like Marx described, can we admit that it's what Marx wrote about?" - I'm not trying to equate people who advocate for BI with Lenin or anything. If someone believe that communism is the right economic model, then great, argue from that position. Just be straightforward about what the position is.
> I'm really not trying to "trick" people into admitting a communist philosophy
Well, you sound sincere, but your arguments are so ahistorical that it's really tough to believe you.
First of all, you keep saying "Marxist communism" and "what Marx called 'communism'", and so on. "Communism" is not the name of something Marx proposed. It's the name of something someone else proposed, while boosting its credibility by invoking Marx.
Second of all, nothing approaching Marxism has been tried on a large scale. Again, see "communism is not marxism".
But more importantly, the essential property of both Marxism and Communism is that the means of production are owned by the state, ("by the people collectively", ha ha ha). No BI plan is proposing that. So they're fundamentally absolutely not marxist, and not communist.
I simply don't understand what you think the BI plan has in common with Marxism, or with Socialism, aside from a concern for the welfare of poor members of society (a concern which I hope you will agree is not exclusive to Marxism and Socialism).
I'll fully concede that my terminology is poorly chosen. I genuinely am sincere here, and I'm happy to wear my ignorance on my sleeve in the hopes of learning something. I'm happy to admit that I don't have it all figured out!
I'm aware that the USSR didn't implement pure Marxism, but implemented something called "communism" and invoked Marx as its deity. I think that a purely classless society as Marx envisioned is probably unachievable. I really am trying to avoid equating support BI with some ridiculous 1950s idea of Soviet communism, and I'm probably doing a pretty crappy job of it.
All that said, the whole concept seems to me to lead down a path that drives entrepreneurs out of the market by making the cost of doing business greater than the profit of it, which would necessarily lead to the nationalization of industries deemed essential. A society in which private entrepreneurs are taxed to a point of zero net revenue is effectively indistinguishable from the state's name being on the deed. I recognize that that the concept of that level of taxation is severe, but I'm also trying to figure out why it wouldn't eventually happen.
As simply as I can state it, BI seems flawed to me because the cost of living is pegged to the cost of goods, and the cost of goods in a competitive market doesn't have a lot of downwards elasticity. The funding for BI would have to come from producers, which would drive up the cost of those goods, which would drive people out of the market, which would reduce competition and increase the cost of goods, all of which increases the minimum BI necessary to achieve a consistent quality of life. That seems to be to be a feedback loop of which the end effect is the effective nationalization of business in order to control prices.
Many people obviously disagree that that's the end result. Experience would tell me that I've made an assumption that they haven't, and I'd like to figure out what that assumption is, and how viable that assumption is.
I am absolutely suggesting that. It's revisionist to claim otherwise. They implemented socialism with the aim of eventually bringing about communism, in line with historical materialism and dialectical materialism. But you need a few generations of socialism (and possibly Permanent Revolution rather than Comminusm in One Country, which was the big feud between Stalin and Trotsky, for example) before you could possibly transition to communism.
Oh, and hey: many people do claim that the USSR wasn't actually _socialist_. You'll find two groups who do this: anarchists, and new Marxists who still have some liberal left in them. The USSR certainly claimed to be socialist, and was according to socialist principles.
The two groups will make this incorrect, revisionist claim because of two reasons. Anarchists want to bolster socialism while trashing statism, so they want to play up 'state socialism's failures. New Marxists will want to play down any perceived 'failures' of Marxism by distancing themselves from said 'failures.'
You omitted those who consider that there are different forms of socialism. Bertrand Russell covers this ground in "The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism" (which you'll find on Project Gutenberg). Since he was writing in the 1920s I don't think it can be considered too revisionist.
Suggested reading material would be welcome. I have a reading list of economic and political philosophy I'm plowing through in roughly chronological order, but I'm only up to mid-19th century so far.
If you only want one book, that book is Capital I. I suggest David Harvey's lectures along with it, they'll help out quite a bit. If you have read Smith and Ricardo, that'll make it much easier, too. For bonus points, read the short "Wages, price, and profit" by Marx, it's a bit easier of an intro than the book's.
If you can fit in a second, I'd suggest "the State and Revolution" by Lenin.
Marx identifies a problem and a crude solution, and Lenin provides a good solution. Those two will give you the most of it. Wikipedia, especially on the historical/dialectical materialism stuff, is helpful.
Absolutely, I just don't think most can be honest about it.
Also, minor procedural note, Marx wrote mostly about capitalism and analyzing it, and a tiny bit about socialism, but next to nothing on communism... Anyway.
>"Why wouldn't the equilibrium be Marxist communism?"
Why would it? I think that it might neatly solve the problem of the current system whereby low skilled people are actually dissuaded from working. I know for a fact there are people on welfare who would rather have gainful employment. It might even wind up being cheaper than the current system (from a tax perspective). Another thing that I am certain of is that technology will displace low-skill labor, and that we will have to have a society-wide solution for how we treat the displaced laborers.
>...can we just admit that we're advocating for communism?
It may well be the result. But I'd consider myself to be very far from a communist. My predictions about the future may be wrong, just as you may be in yours; but, no, I am not advocating for communism..
>Can you elaborate on why this is necessary?
If I understand your argument correctly, "...the point at which the system reaches stability is the point at which there is nobody left to extract extra money from to distribute." aren't you implying that there isn't enough productivity/resources to support the entire population currently?
>Wealth is a means to an end to...
I sacrificed precision for brevity when I used the word wealth. Maybe I should have said: I reject the hypothesis that providing BI for a person will squelch or kill his/her ambition. On the contrary, I expect some people to perform 'better' in that respect once the stress of survival is removed.
As for your assertion that the already productive will lose the incentive to produce, I don't believe that either.
Yeah, after I read your response to the parent, I thought about that. From an argumentative perspective, it makes sense for me to try move the conversation away from labels like "Marxist Communism" which are obviously meant to be derisory. Most of us probably avoid the word communism because of our culture's negative connotation of the word, without giving the ideas honest evaluation.
I deeply apologize for coming across as derisory. I was trying to communicate "Marx's ideals of classless economics" rather than some Red Scare caricature of communism, and I did a piss-poor job of it.
No apologies are necessary. It's hard to detect sentiment over teletype, I usually assume something close to the worst case myself.
To answer you WRT "Marx's ideals of classless economics" or what my idea of that is[1], In my opinion BI falls pretty far short of "Marx's ideals of classless economics"
[1] As steveklabnik has astutely pointed out, and I will readily admit that my notions of Marx and communism are colored by my Reagan era childhood's definition of communism. I wouldn't trust my own or anyone else's definition until I've done a bit more reading.
I think the existence of a market equilibrium would require the existence of a market. The existence of a market would preclude the existence of a truly Marxist economy.
Of course it would. But there is no reason to think that an equilibrium couldn't / wouldn't be reached.
>The endgame of the first option is Zimbabwe.
We can get Zimbabwe or Weimar Germany without BI.
> The endgame of the second option is Marxist communism; the point at which the system reaches stability is the point at which there is nobody left to extract extra money from to distribute.
For that to be necessarily true, we'd need to already be in a sort of Malthusian crisis, and/or have a resource scarcity. Sure, it might happen, but it is not a certainty.
>why would it be different here?
People still strive for wealth, why would they stop just because of all-you-can-eat-beans-and-rice buffet and health care?