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!
Cursed waffle maker
Poops in the shower.
Sometimes emergencies happen...
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.
At the end of the day, its Capitalism stealing work from artists, not the machine.
Fully agree on this.. but since we live in a capitalist system and until we don't anymore, it's still wrong.
The images are made from scratch with techniques learned from the things it trained on.
With no input (in the almost totality of cases) from the artist. None of the artists agreed to have their work being used to train the machine and if their work is being used for that they deserve to be compensated.
The fact that you are talking to me right now means you are using a computer chip in some way, it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to participate in Capatalist society and live an ethicly clean life. We all have different lines on which ways we'll opt out in order to sleep better at night. At the end of the day, fair compensation is an impossible task considering its not 10's of artists that got used, its quite literally all of the available images on the internet, Thousands if not hundreds of thousands of artists work, living and dead. Thats like asking a human artist to create their art in a vacuum, to forget all of the artists that inspire them, forget their culture, forget their muses that they dont even know inspired them. Even if you could assign a $ value and somehow contact that many people, their fair value would be less than a penny. For the core tech? Low numbers of art wouldnt work, the machines would need examples innumerable in order to start learning what the hell an apple is in 70 different art styles. I've stopped using artists styles as prompts, because yeah, there there is a specific artist I am grabbing from, and I'm not doing it with their permission, and so I stopped.
You can't just use Capitalism to wash your hands of every amoral action. I mean... clearly you can, but you shouldn't. The fact that fair compensation is impossible is literally the reason why ai is getting (rightfully) shit on by so many people. The fact that huge vc funded corporations went "yeah we needed a lot of data, but it would have cost us way too much to get it ethically so we just swiped it" is disgusting and the reason ai should be shut down.
It's so weird to me that so many anticapitalists have been enthralled by ai when they are made by huge companies that are profiting from work they stole... literally the capitalist wet dream. How exactly is that fighting against Capitalism?
1: Stable Diffusion is free my dude, no capitalist profits off of my using it
2: Literally ALL of modern society is built off progress made by disgusting methodology. Look up Unit 731 and the Tuskegee Experiments for a small sample of things that have benefitted our knowledge of biology and vaccines
3: It wasnt hard and expensive to track down the permission to use the data needed to start the process of machine image learning, it was IMPOSSIBLE, and fair compensation in regards to image importance would have been significantly less than a penny for an artists entire library of work. I havent seen this much backlash towards Pinterest, which also just hosts whatever images someone uploads, regardless if they are the owner of said image
5: To reiterate, for once, this powerful too is free to use. It is not only benefitting the capitalist class. Any artist is fully capable of using this tech as well without giving any capitalists a penny.
6: Should we start asking humans to list literally every piece of artwork they have ever looked at when they post an image they made? Because its similar levels of influence. The images the machines learned on are not stored in the code, the lessons learned are. All works produced are derivatives, and not rips or traced
7: The arguement the pro artist side makes is never 'lets make this tech ethically cleaner', its 'lets kill this tech in its cradle because we dont like its origin. Which is elitist and privileged, OF COURSE artists dont need this tech or see immediate use for it, they already have the skills to acces their creative freedom. Others like me arent as privileged, hence why there are a LOT of people celebrating having a tool that gives us access such freedom. So no, I dont owe these artists any more than those artists owe disney for the movies they watched growing up that inspired them to start creating. They dont have a monopoly on creative imagery anymore, and their reaction to that has made me lose a lot of empathy towards them. Because they are not entitled to my money, not entitled to my empathy, and I'm not the one taking their jobs away, nor am I enriching any of the ones who are by using a free piece of software. I'm not even adding to their competition, as I'm not selling anything that I make, I'm only making it for myself and my friends.
8: Again, why is the line being drawn now, when this arguement applies to literally EVERY advancement in tech. Yes, we should aim for better, but why isnt that ideal being applied equally to all fields?
TL:DR edit: Work with us to make and transition to an more ethically clear tool, and a lot of us will agree and follow. Continue to call us theives and entitled and try and just kill the tech in its cradle, and we'll call you out on your hypocrisy, and ignore you, as well as eventually replace you as the workfield adapts and integrates, only for the cycle to repeat when new tech replaces AI Tech
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.
Stop comparing businesses to people and we can probably get that sorted as well.
copyright doesn't stop stealing. I creates a tort against copying.
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.
wrong.
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.
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.
Because the example is not about copyright in particular but monopoly vs exclusive access. I wanted one that's not about art to illustrate the point, and the priciple is the same in this regard.
trademark has nothing to do with copyright. they're two sets of laws that developed a two different times for two different reasons.
So, what does that have to do with the exclusive rights vs monopoly discussion? Both give you exclusive rights, doesn't matter that they come from two different sets of laws.
trademark is a consumer protection. copyright is a fucking monopoly.
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.
Guaranteed housing tends to be shitty.
Except there's no reason it needs to be.
It can be good, and there are parts of the developed world where public housing is not only abundant, but decent. And it has a cooling effect on the housing market, making all housing more affordable for everyone.
If we provide, decent, low cost housing to enough, everyone that needs housing prices to come down benefit.
That’s the crux of the matter. It’s easy to say “there’s no reason it has to turn out that way”, but there actually are some reasons for that to be the case. There’s a theory about how that works and that theory’s predictions hold up pretty good in reality.
More importantly than the theory (which involves modeling people as responding to incentives), imo, is the basic understanding that the world is far more complex than any person understands. This means that statements of the form “There is no X” aren’t very well founded.
Saying “There’s no reason that it has to be” is one of those statements, which asserts the non-existence of a thing, as if the entire space where that thing might exist has been thoroughly explored and mapped.
The way politics and society are presented in school, it’s often like a empty room. One could say “is there a chair in this room”? You look around the room. Potted plant, small rug, bicycle, no chair. Done.
But reality is more like a room of unknown size that’s absolutely full of stuff. You can’t see very far, you can’t inventory the room without massive undertaking to move all the stuff.
Saying “there’s no chair in this room” is less well-founded in that second room. It’s less wise to say that in that second room, where you can’t see everything.
Well, society is ultra complex. Group behavior is ultra complex. Construction projects are ultra complex. Politics is ultra complex. You shouldn’t just glance over all that complexity and say “nothing in there that behaves like X, no sir”.
So (a) some people think there are very concrete and predictable reasons why it has to be bad, and (b) others don’t know what reasons are operating, and accept that it’s beyond their comprehension, but look at the outcomes so far, and it certainly looks like there’s a reason it has to be.
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
But it's not a free market if the government is giving money to non workers.
FYI this will effect all business across the board.
If people will only pay so much for a cup of coffee, that’s capitalist for “coffee ain’t that big a deal”.
And now think of the ripple effect of all the jobs lost when places like Starbucks go out of business and restaurants go out of business. Then construction sites and so on.
Lmao no. People will still want to eat out, and will still want things built. Get real.
Yes people would want to still do those things. But how many people would want to wait on those people.
While thinking of that. Think of how much a waiter would want to get paid to do such a job when thier bill are already paid ? How about the cooks ? How about the people delivering the food to the restaurants, the bus Boys and so on. Then what does that do to the final bill and how many peoplenwill fund that palatable.
Just as many as want to do it now. Come back to reality, kid.
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.
This, and also working part time would become a lot more feasible. I would imagine there would be quite a bit of pressure to improve working conditions as well, which wouldn't exactly be a bad thing. A lot more hours would be spent on things people consider meaningful, and bullshit jobs would have to be compensated appropriately, which to me feels like a win for society collectively.
One caveat though is that for abolishing minimum wages to be safe the UBI has to be high enough to be actually livable, and would likely be a target of constant politicking. A model I've been thinking about would be to set the level of UBI as a percentage of GDP, distributed evenly across the population, which to me would feel fair but may have practical issues I don't see. It would create a sense of everyone benefiting from collective success, which appeals to me.
I think you will find that people will leave low end jobs in mass. Those willing to stay will ask for salaries that are extremely high and then those on ubi will be able to afford even less than before it existed
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.
Oh nooooo, people won't be as strongly bound to corporations anymore! Whatever will we do?
Starve?
That’s what the UBI is for. Keep up.
Ok, who will grow food? Who will truck it to grocery stores? Who will work at the store?
People will still work. UBI is enough that you're not on the street, not enough that you're living the high life.
Some people will go to school instead of working, and that's good. They'll get even better jobs than they would have otherwise, and give back way more to society in productivity and taxes.
Some people might be fine living the basic life that UBI affords, and who cares. Let them live their basic life. We can afford it.
Man Im glad you're not making decisions.
You criticize but offer nothing of value except “no, you’re stupid”
Man I’m glad you’re not making decisions.
Imagine supporting ideas and policies that help others which in turn helps you. Would be so crazy .
I don't know man, I like having food. Keeps me from dying. Water too now that I mention it.
Yeah? Do you like them enough that you’d word to get them even while receiving UBI?
Well when the store loses its workers, itll close. When the trucker stops trucking, food won't make it to the store. When the farmer doesn't farm, there will be no food.
This is not star trek, we are not post scarcity.
Who suggested the store should close or that truckers should stop?
Oh my goodness you’re one of those people. Go read about UBI and then come back and talk.
I have, with a critical mind. If no one works, people starve.
You clearly haven’t. People don’t just sit at home and collect UBI. People are clearly addicted to consumerism, and that requires having a job. People also enjoy working.
You don’t have a critical mind and you aren’t discussing this in good faith because you clearly think if UBI was enacted that people would all become lazy and sit and home and do nothing. That you think this way shows everyone that you HAVENT done any research or reading on UBI.
Most wouldnt, but a significant percentage would. I think enough that you cant discount those people from any discussion on UBI.
In Australia we have social security and I know people who are 3rd generation jobless and they dont usually supplement their social security with a casual job, its usually drug dealing or other crime.
Im all for a realistic discussion on UBI but you have to examine how its going to impact all strata of society. Including the ones who will use the lack of any meaningful motivation to do better or be better people.
I promise you that if it comes down to having to sacrifice some work getting done as a result of there being UBI, the market is not going to trim “food production” from the set of projects getting done. It’ll be more like “pumpkin spice ASMR videos” that get the axe.
Like, you agree the market is a medium that transmits needs between people allowing them to negotiate effort ratios for different projects, no?
So given a market and a bunch of people who need to eat, how does that result in food not getting produced? It doesn’t make sense. Hunger is a motivating force. Hunger is an incentive.
Receiving UBI doesn’t remove the incentive to eat. And if there’s a food shortage then there’s profit to be made off producing food. The market still operates with UBI involved.
Sigh. Read up on the programs already studied.
"Do your research"
I'm not going to waste my time jumping on google and citing stufies that have showed that it isnt some magical cure all for the worlds Ills because you arent going to read them, or take my opinion onboard because its easier to claim that my sources are biased, I'm wrong and you're still right.
Wait. So you're going to develop an opinion entirely on feelings, while the guy you're replying to developed an opinion based onr research? That is WILD
Nah you just can’t take the blow to your ego that you’re wrong. But that’s fine. You’re only human.
This video goes over multiple studies and meta analyses that show that, in every single case where it's been tried, social spending, including UBI, always pays for itself in the long run, and UBI specifically never leads to people just not working. It leads to people finding jobs more their style. And y'know something? The "undesirable" jobs still get done, because there are genuinely people that want to do them.
Have you met people? Get out of your bubble. Fucking hell, thats the daftest thing Ive ever heard, and I got an A in gender studies. (It was an elective, and I wanted to challenge my view that gender studies was bullshit, sue me)
There you go showing the class that you DIDNT do your homework.
There has been UBI implemented for studies in multiple countries around the world and overwhelmingly they show that people still choose to work.
Fuck off back your conservative bubble.
But he got an A in gender studies….. can’t be on a conservative bubble….. ya know…. cause he made friends there. /s (just in case)
No, Im conservative. Ubi is just dumber than gender studies.
Yeah. Most that I've met work hard to improve their lot, even the few I know who were born rich enough that they don't have to. Just because you'd be a lazy sack of shit if you could get away with it doesn't mean everyone else would.
I mean, the fact we have the modern world at all is evidence motivation doesn’t stop just because basic needs are met.
If that were all the human drive had in it, that is where we would be.
UBI desn't mean that you stop working, it's just that everyone receives a share of money, at least enough so that you don't end up on the street if you end up without a job. Easier to bounce back. The rest is additional income on top of UBI.
Personally I'd get bored shitless if I didn't work, I need some fulfillment, a purpose. If having UBI gives more people a fair chance at achieving their life goals then I'm all for it.
The people you're thinking of, in terms of laziness are always going to exist no matter what. You know who else doesn't work and leeches of society? The oligarchs. The exact same people that are scared of UBI and will lobby as hard as possible to stop that from happening.
Also like, our society already does provide free food and shelter to people. All it asks is some basic niceties like “quiet after 11pm” or “don’t poop in the shower”.
I know. I’ve been homeless, been very well fed and very well protected from the elements, and well-clothed too, entirely for free.
People act like our society just lets people drop and that’s not true. We’ve got free resources out the wazoo for people.
But there are a lot of people for whom availability of resources isn’t the problem.
This is my way of saying that, even with UBI, there will be homeless people.
And conservatives will say “we give that guy $1000 a month and he sits there and shoots heroin in the park all day … I’m not giving him any more” and liberals will say “You know $1000 a month isn’t that much money and we should be offering free counseling”.
Then a decade later there will be that guy who shits on the park bench and rips smelly farts in his counseling sessions and doesn’t do the work.
As a society we’ve basically solved the problems that can be solved with free food and housing because … well because we have that as a feature of our society already,
One thing that makes UBI better than what we have now, is the fact it’s not a perverse incentive structure.
Right now all the free shit we give people is based on them “demonstrating need”. This means if they want to rise out of poverty, they need to go through a weird, unnatural zone on their work-to-benefit curve that’s flat, They do more work, and see no benefit.
Or if the program is really badly designed, it’s not just level it slopes down. Like you get a $200/mo raise, it puts you over a threshold, and you lose your $500/mo EBT benefits.
That kind of thing is toxic and evil. That’s like pushing crack on kids. Except instead of little identifiable crystals it’s at least easy to conceptualize saying “no” to, the dopamine-ruining substance is ethereal and takes the form of tables showing income thresholds in little pamphlets in government offices. Instead of a 10-second timeframe where you either hit that pipe or not, the game a person has to play with our welfare system has rounds lasting months at a time. It’s insidious and evil.
And if you’re in a position to receive this welfare, everyone on your side is encouraging you to take it.
And UBI doesn’t suffer from that mental-health-destroying, prefrontal-cortex-shrinking pattern. It’s giving with a truly open hand. It’s a ladder that doesn’t extract a price in bone density for each rung you climb.
wow, thanks for sharing your insight
Let's say you're a scummy piece of shit landlord. It's a bit redundant I know but just bear with me.
You're a scummy piece of shit landlord (SPOSL) and you know for a fact that every single one of your tenants suddenly can afford 2000 extra dollars per month. You're probably not going to get away with taking all of that, but you're a SPOSL, you're definitely going to try to get some.
You also know that housing is being treated as a commodity so your tenants don't have anywhere else to go, and that because all landlords are SPOSLs, you know they'll all be doing the same thing.
Suddenly rent goes up across the board. They only people safe are the people in fixed rate mortgages.
But they're only safe from that one particular kind of price gouging.
Unless you're on a very fixed contact, everything you pay monthly for suddenly got more expensive over night. Your Internet will be going up, your phone bill will be going up, maybe not immediately, but when you renew.
Any common household item built down to a price, basically anything that can shrinkflate, when everyone has more money, will inflate instead. Because they know that consumers have more to spend, and won't look at the price as closely as they used to.
Basically everyone, simultaneously, moves up on the doesn't spendability side. And so prices move to adjust accordingly.
UBI works in small scale experiments because small scale experiments don't have this effect. No one knows who's getting more money and the market can't adjust. But the market will adjust where it can.
I know it sounds nice, but it's not the golden ticket it's being made out to be.
Address healthcare, address housing, do it all independently of UBI so that hopefully it never becomes required.
To be clear I have absolutely no problem with guaranteeing basic needs are met, I think that's a great idea. UBI does not do that.
Another issue is that housing is perceived as an investment. There would have to be some policies to be put in place to avoid abuse for sure.
For example, have a public registry that lists the rental price history of each apartment.
Have a tenant board managed by the government, that handles disputes between the landlords and tenants.
Maximum raise allowed per year, indexed to the inflation, with some exemption if there is a major renovation that was done (with proper documentation)
If the landlord isn't fixing a major issue within reasonable time, the rent can be deposited into a bank account controlled by the tenant board and held until the repairs are considered as acceptable by the board.
Have the government provide monetary incentives to build more low-income apartments, and mandate that xx% of new construction is dedicated to those per year l, depending on the availability.
How about this as an alternative. Housing is guaranteed. Full stop. The only way to really do that is to build an assload government housing, and anyone who wants to live there, can. No questions asked. In fact it's assumed everyone will want the free apartment. One per family. Might be a lot of excess apartments going unused but I don't see that as a problem.
Food, also guaranteed. And not just cheese but meals full of good nutrients. You want it, just show up and collect it. Is it good, no maybe not. But it's available and no one is going hungry.
Healthcare, universally covered. No one is going in to debt to get their basic healthcare needs met. Cosmetics aren't but basic healthcare needs are.
No need for cash, because it's all taken care of. It's not going to be enough for most, no. But it's not like work won't still be available to anyone that wants it. Hell, wages probably go up as people who don't want to work no longer have to.
Cosmetics aren’t but basic healthcare needs are.
Eh... with how it is now.. people would just start claiming that the birth mark on their face makes them want to kill themselves and now magically it's a medically needed surgery for mental stability. It's the same logic used for gender affirming care in many places. You can't limit by no "cosmetic" surgeries.
Everyone doesn’t have more spending power under UBI; some people would be paying more in taxes than they’re getting back from the pool.
But yeah, if you give everyone in a certain group more money to spend, that’s more demand and hence higher prices assuming fixed supply.
So really, to avoid that issue with housing, you’d need to reduce friction to increasing supply. Maybe that means letting people build higher density housing without having to wait for the government to re-zone from low to high density. Or removing the minimum size on apartments, whatever.
Point is your market will adapt to the newly-super-profitable endeavor of landlording, by providing more housing.
Because as long as there’s any vacant housing, landlords are not free to price fix however they see fit. I mean they could if they were all in cahoots, but they’re not. They’re in competition.
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?
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.
UBI is a separate concern from copyright being a dumb way of rewarding intellectual property.
Everyone should get UBI to reduce poverty and houselessness.
And separately, artists should get paid for their work, when it's valuable, regardless of whether or not UBI is in place.
And sometimes that value is immediately recognized at the time by the masses and can be measured in clicks and streams.
Sometimes it's only recognized by professional contemporaries and critics in how it influences the industry.
Sometimes it's not recognized until long after them and their contemporaries are dead.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"I mentioned printing money so now you're talking about it too"
No
It doesn't need to be printed. They just add the number to the digital bank account.
Adding money to a digital bank account is equal to printing money.
You don't have to physically print money to print money
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Cursed waffle maker
Poops in the shower.
Sometimes emergencies happen...
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.
Fully agree on this.. but since we live in a capitalist system and until we don't anymore, it's still wrong.
With no input (in the almost totality of cases) from the artist. None of the artists agreed to have their work being used to train the machine and if their work is being used for that they deserve to be compensated.
The fact that you are talking to me right now means you are using a computer chip in some way, it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to participate in Capatalist society and live an ethicly clean life. We all have different lines on which ways we'll opt out in order to sleep better at night. At the end of the day, fair compensation is an impossible task considering its not 10's of artists that got used, its quite literally all of the available images on the internet, Thousands if not hundreds of thousands of artists work, living and dead. Thats like asking a human artist to create their art in a vacuum, to forget all of the artists that inspire them, forget their culture, forget their muses that they dont even know inspired them. Even if you could assign a $ value and somehow contact that many people, their fair value would be less than a penny. For the core tech? Low numbers of art wouldnt work, the machines would need examples innumerable in order to start learning what the hell an apple is in 70 different art styles. I've stopped using artists styles as prompts, because yeah, there there is a specific artist I am grabbing from, and I'm not doing it with their permission, and so I stopped.
You can't just use Capitalism to wash your hands of every amoral action. I mean... clearly you can, but you shouldn't. The fact that fair compensation is impossible is literally the reason why ai is getting (rightfully) shit on by so many people. The fact that huge vc funded corporations went "yeah we needed a lot of data, but it would have cost us way too much to get it ethically so we just swiped it" is disgusting and the reason ai should be shut down. It's so weird to me that so many anticapitalists have been enthralled by ai when they are made by huge companies that are profiting from work they stole... literally the capitalist wet dream. How exactly is that fighting against Capitalism?
1: Stable Diffusion is free my dude, no capitalist profits off of my using it
2: Literally ALL of modern society is built off progress made by disgusting methodology. Look up Unit 731 and the Tuskegee Experiments for a small sample of things that have benefitted our knowledge of biology and vaccines
3: It wasnt hard and expensive to track down the permission to use the data needed to start the process of machine image learning, it was IMPOSSIBLE, and fair compensation in regards to image importance would have been significantly less than a penny for an artists entire library of work. I havent seen this much backlash towards Pinterest, which also just hosts whatever images someone uploads, regardless if they are the owner of said image
5: To reiterate, for once, this powerful too is free to use. It is not only benefitting the capitalist class. Any artist is fully capable of using this tech as well without giving any capitalists a penny.
6: Should we start asking humans to list literally every piece of artwork they have ever looked at when they post an image they made? Because its similar levels of influence. The images the machines learned on are not stored in the code, the lessons learned are. All works produced are derivatives, and not rips or traced
7: The arguement the pro artist side makes is never 'lets make this tech ethically cleaner', its 'lets kill this tech in its cradle because we dont like its origin. Which is elitist and privileged, OF COURSE artists dont need this tech or see immediate use for it, they already have the skills to acces their creative freedom. Others like me arent as privileged, hence why there are a LOT of people celebrating having a tool that gives us access such freedom. So no, I dont owe these artists any more than those artists owe disney for the movies they watched growing up that inspired them to start creating. They dont have a monopoly on creative imagery anymore, and their reaction to that has made me lose a lot of empathy towards them. Because they are not entitled to my money, not entitled to my empathy, and I'm not the one taking their jobs away, nor am I enriching any of the ones who are by using a free piece of software. I'm not even adding to their competition, as I'm not selling anything that I make, I'm only making it for myself and my friends.
8: Again, why is the line being drawn now, when this arguement applies to literally EVERY advancement in tech. Yes, we should aim for better, but why isnt that ideal being applied equally to all fields?
TL:DR edit: Work with us to make and transition to an more ethically clear tool, and a lot of us will agree and follow. Continue to call us theives and entitled and try and just kill the tech in its cradle, and we'll call you out on your hypocrisy, and ignore you, as well as eventually replace you as the workfield adapts and integrates, only for the cycle to repeat when new tech replaces AI Tech
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.
Stop comparing businesses to people and we can probably get that sorted as well.
copyright doesn't stop stealing. I creates a tort against copying.
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.
wrong.
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.
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.
Further reading for anyone interested
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.
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.
Because the example is not about copyright in particular but monopoly vs exclusive access. I wanted one that's not about art to illustrate the point, and the priciple is the same in this regard.
trademark has nothing to do with copyright. they're two sets of laws that developed a two different times for two different reasons.
So, what does that have to do with the exclusive rights vs monopoly discussion? Both give you exclusive rights, doesn't matter that they come from two different sets of laws.
trademark is a consumer protection. copyright is a fucking monopoly.
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.
Except there's no reason it needs to be.
It can be good, and there are parts of the developed world where public housing is not only abundant, but decent. And it has a cooling effect on the housing market, making all housing more affordable for everyone.
If we provide, decent, low cost housing to enough, everyone that needs housing prices to come down benefit.
That’s the crux of the matter. It’s easy to say “there’s no reason it has to turn out that way”, but there actually are some reasons for that to be the case. There’s a theory about how that works and that theory’s predictions hold up pretty good in reality.
More importantly than the theory (which involves modeling people as responding to incentives), imo, is the basic understanding that the world is far more complex than any person understands. This means that statements of the form “There is no X” aren’t very well founded.
Saying “There’s no reason that it has to be” is one of those statements, which asserts the non-existence of a thing, as if the entire space where that thing might exist has been thoroughly explored and mapped.
The way politics and society are presented in school, it’s often like a empty room. One could say “is there a chair in this room”? You look around the room. Potted plant, small rug, bicycle, no chair. Done.
But reality is more like a room of unknown size that’s absolutely full of stuff. You can’t see very far, you can’t inventory the room without massive undertaking to move all the stuff.
Saying “there’s no chair in this room” is less well-founded in that second room. It’s less wise to say that in that second room, where you can’t see everything.
Well, society is ultra complex. Group behavior is ultra complex. Construction projects are ultra complex. Politics is ultra complex. You shouldn’t just glance over all that complexity and say “nothing in there that behaves like X, no sir”.
So (a) some people think there are very concrete and predictable reasons why it has to be bad, and (b) others don’t know what reasons are operating, and accept that it’s beyond their comprehension, but look at the outcomes so far, and it certainly looks like there’s a reason it has to be.
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
But it's not a free market if the government is giving money to non workers.
FYI this will effect all business across the board.
If people will only pay so much for a cup of coffee, that’s capitalist for “coffee ain’t that big a deal”.
And now think of the ripple effect of all the jobs lost when places like Starbucks go out of business and restaurants go out of business. Then construction sites and so on.
Lmao no. People will still want to eat out, and will still want things built. Get real.
Yes people would want to still do those things. But how many people would want to wait on those people.
While thinking of that. Think of how much a waiter would want to get paid to do such a job when thier bill are already paid ? How about the cooks ? How about the people delivering the food to the restaurants, the bus Boys and so on. Then what does that do to the final bill and how many peoplenwill fund that palatable.
Just as many as want to do it now. Come back to reality, kid.
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.
This, and also working part time would become a lot more feasible. I would imagine there would be quite a bit of pressure to improve working conditions as well, which wouldn't exactly be a bad thing. A lot more hours would be spent on things people consider meaningful, and bullshit jobs would have to be compensated appropriately, which to me feels like a win for society collectively.
One caveat though is that for abolishing minimum wages to be safe the UBI has to be high enough to be actually livable, and would likely be a target of constant politicking. A model I've been thinking about would be to set the level of UBI as a percentage of GDP, distributed evenly across the population, which to me would feel fair but may have practical issues I don't see. It would create a sense of everyone benefiting from collective success, which appeals to me.
I think you will find that people will leave low end jobs in mass. Those willing to stay will ask for salaries that are extremely high and then those on ubi will be able to afford even less than before it existed
Thanks for announcing your single digit IQ on this topic so everyone is aware. Excellent work.
Wow what an insult. Good job
Citation needed.
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?
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.
Oh nooooo, people won't be as strongly bound to corporations anymore! Whatever will we do?
Starve?
That’s what the UBI is for. Keep up.
Ok, who will grow food? Who will truck it to grocery stores? Who will work at the store?
People will still work. UBI is enough that you're not on the street, not enough that you're living the high life.
Some people will go to school instead of working, and that's good. They'll get even better jobs than they would have otherwise, and give back way more to society in productivity and taxes.
Some people might be fine living the basic life that UBI affords, and who cares. Let them live their basic life. We can afford it.
Man Im glad you're not making decisions.
You criticize but offer nothing of value except “no, you’re stupid”
Man I’m glad you’re not making decisions.
Imagine supporting ideas and policies that help others which in turn helps you. Would be so crazy .
I don't know man, I like having food. Keeps me from dying. Water too now that I mention it.
Yeah? Do you like them enough that you’d word to get them even while receiving UBI?
Well when the store loses its workers, itll close. When the trucker stops trucking, food won't make it to the store. When the farmer doesn't farm, there will be no food.
This is not star trek, we are not post scarcity.
Who suggested the store should close or that truckers should stop?
Oh my goodness you’re one of those people. Go read about UBI and then come back and talk.
I have, with a critical mind. If no one works, people starve.
You clearly haven’t. People don’t just sit at home and collect UBI. People are clearly addicted to consumerism, and that requires having a job. People also enjoy working.
You don’t have a critical mind and you aren’t discussing this in good faith because you clearly think if UBI was enacted that people would all become lazy and sit and home and do nothing. That you think this way shows everyone that you HAVENT done any research or reading on UBI.
Most wouldnt, but a significant percentage would. I think enough that you cant discount those people from any discussion on UBI.
In Australia we have social security and I know people who are 3rd generation jobless and they dont usually supplement their social security with a casual job, its usually drug dealing or other crime.
Im all for a realistic discussion on UBI but you have to examine how its going to impact all strata of society. Including the ones who will use the lack of any meaningful motivation to do better or be better people.
I promise you that if it comes down to having to sacrifice some work getting done as a result of there being UBI, the market is not going to trim “food production” from the set of projects getting done. It’ll be more like “pumpkin spice ASMR videos” that get the axe.
Like, you agree the market is a medium that transmits needs between people allowing them to negotiate effort ratios for different projects, no?
So given a market and a bunch of people who need to eat, how does that result in food not getting produced? It doesn’t make sense. Hunger is a motivating force. Hunger is an incentive.
Receiving UBI doesn’t remove the incentive to eat. And if there’s a food shortage then there’s profit to be made off producing food. The market still operates with UBI involved.
Sigh. Read up on the programs already studied.
"Do your research"
I'm not going to waste my time jumping on google and citing stufies that have showed that it isnt some magical cure all for the worlds Ills because you arent going to read them, or take my opinion onboard because its easier to claim that my sources are biased, I'm wrong and you're still right.
Wait. So you're going to develop an opinion entirely on feelings, while the guy you're replying to developed an opinion based onr research? That is WILD
Nah you just can’t take the blow to your ego that you’re wrong. But that’s fine. You’re only human.
This video goes over multiple studies and meta analyses that show that, in every single case where it's been tried, social spending, including UBI, always pays for itself in the long run, and UBI specifically never leads to people just not working. It leads to people finding jobs more their style. And y'know something? The "undesirable" jobs still get done, because there are genuinely people that want to do them.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
This
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Have you met people? Get out of your bubble. Fucking hell, thats the daftest thing Ive ever heard, and I got an A in gender studies. (It was an elective, and I wanted to challenge my view that gender studies was bullshit, sue me)
There you go showing the class that you DIDNT do your homework.
There has been UBI implemented for studies in multiple countries around the world and overwhelmingly they show that people still choose to work.
Fuck off back your conservative bubble.
But he got an A in gender studies….. can’t be on a conservative bubble….. ya know…. cause he made friends there. /s (just in case)
No, Im conservative. Ubi is just dumber than gender studies.
Yeah. Most that I've met work hard to improve their lot, even the few I know who were born rich enough that they don't have to. Just because you'd be a lazy sack of shit if you could get away with it doesn't mean everyone else would.
I mean, the fact we have the modern world at all is evidence motivation doesn’t stop just because basic needs are met.
If that were all the human drive had in it, that is where we would be.
You’re right. If no one works, people starve.
There’s no reason to assume nobody would work under UBI though.
A critical lack of mind
UBI desn't mean that you stop working, it's just that everyone receives a share of money, at least enough so that you don't end up on the street if you end up without a job. Easier to bounce back. The rest is additional income on top of UBI.
Personally I'd get bored shitless if I didn't work, I need some fulfillment, a purpose. If having UBI gives more people a fair chance at achieving their life goals then I'm all for it.
The people you're thinking of, in terms of laziness are always going to exist no matter what. You know who else doesn't work and leeches of society? The oligarchs. The exact same people that are scared of UBI and will lobby as hard as possible to stop that from happening.
Also like, our society already does provide free food and shelter to people. All it asks is some basic niceties like “quiet after 11pm” or “don’t poop in the shower”.
I know. I’ve been homeless, been very well fed and very well protected from the elements, and well-clothed too, entirely for free.
People act like our society just lets people drop and that’s not true. We’ve got free resources out the wazoo for people.
But there are a lot of people for whom availability of resources isn’t the problem.
This is my way of saying that, even with UBI, there will be homeless people.
And conservatives will say “we give that guy $1000 a month and he sits there and shoots heroin in the park all day … I’m not giving him any more” and liberals will say “You know $1000 a month isn’t that much money and we should be offering free counseling”.
Then a decade later there will be that guy who shits on the park bench and rips smelly farts in his counseling sessions and doesn’t do the work.
As a society we’ve basically solved the problems that can be solved with free food and housing because … well because we have that as a feature of our society already,
One thing that makes UBI better than what we have now, is the fact it’s not a perverse incentive structure.
Right now all the free shit we give people is based on them “demonstrating need”. This means if they want to rise out of poverty, they need to go through a weird, unnatural zone on their work-to-benefit curve that’s flat, They do more work, and see no benefit.
Or if the program is really badly designed, it’s not just level it slopes down. Like you get a $200/mo raise, it puts you over a threshold, and you lose your $500/mo EBT benefits.
That kind of thing is toxic and evil. That’s like pushing crack on kids. Except instead of little identifiable crystals it’s at least easy to conceptualize saying “no” to, the dopamine-ruining substance is ethereal and takes the form of tables showing income thresholds in little pamphlets in government offices. Instead of a 10-second timeframe where you either hit that pipe or not, the game a person has to play with our welfare system has rounds lasting months at a time. It’s insidious and evil.
And if you’re in a position to receive this welfare, everyone on your side is encouraging you to take it.
And UBI doesn’t suffer from that mental-health-destroying, prefrontal-cortex-shrinking pattern. It’s giving with a truly open hand. It’s a ladder that doesn’t extract a price in bone density for each rung you climb.
wow, thanks for sharing your insight
Let's say you're a scummy piece of shit landlord. It's a bit redundant I know but just bear with me.
You're a scummy piece of shit landlord (SPOSL) and you know for a fact that every single one of your tenants suddenly can afford 2000 extra dollars per month. You're probably not going to get away with taking all of that, but you're a SPOSL, you're definitely going to try to get some.
You also know that housing is being treated as a commodity so your tenants don't have anywhere else to go, and that because all landlords are SPOSLs, you know they'll all be doing the same thing.
Suddenly rent goes up across the board. They only people safe are the people in fixed rate mortgages.
But they're only safe from that one particular kind of price gouging.
Unless you're on a very fixed contact, everything you pay monthly for suddenly got more expensive over night. Your Internet will be going up, your phone bill will be going up, maybe not immediately, but when you renew.
Any common household item built down to a price, basically anything that can shrinkflate, when everyone has more money, will inflate instead. Because they know that consumers have more to spend, and won't look at the price as closely as they used to.
Basically everyone, simultaneously, moves up on the doesn't spendability side. And so prices move to adjust accordingly.
UBI works in small scale experiments because small scale experiments don't have this effect. No one knows who's getting more money and the market can't adjust. But the market will adjust where it can.
I know it sounds nice, but it's not the golden ticket it's being made out to be.
Address healthcare, address housing, do it all independently of UBI so that hopefully it never becomes required.
To be clear I have absolutely no problem with guaranteeing basic needs are met, I think that's a great idea. UBI does not do that.
Another issue is that housing is perceived as an investment. There would have to be some policies to be put in place to avoid abuse for sure.
How about this as an alternative. Housing is guaranteed. Full stop. The only way to really do that is to build an assload government housing, and anyone who wants to live there, can. No questions asked. In fact it's assumed everyone will want the free apartment. One per family. Might be a lot of excess apartments going unused but I don't see that as a problem.
Food, also guaranteed. And not just cheese but meals full of good nutrients. You want it, just show up and collect it. Is it good, no maybe not. But it's available and no one is going hungry.
Healthcare, universally covered. No one is going in to debt to get their basic healthcare needs met. Cosmetics aren't but basic healthcare needs are.
No need for cash, because it's all taken care of. It's not going to be enough for most, no. But it's not like work won't still be available to anyone that wants it. Hell, wages probably go up as people who don't want to work no longer have to.
Eh... with how it is now.. people would just start claiming that the birth mark on their face makes them want to kill themselves and now magically it's a medically needed surgery for mental stability. It's the same logic used for gender affirming care in many places. You can't limit by no "cosmetic" surgeries.
Everyone doesn’t have more spending power under UBI; some people would be paying more in taxes than they’re getting back from the pool.
But yeah, if you give everyone in a certain group more money to spend, that’s more demand and hence higher prices assuming fixed supply.
So really, to avoid that issue with housing, you’d need to reduce friction to increasing supply. Maybe that means letting people build higher density housing without having to wait for the government to re-zone from low to high density. Or removing the minimum size on apartments, whatever.
Point is your market will adapt to the newly-super-profitable endeavor of landlording, by providing more housing.
Because as long as there’s any vacant housing, landlords are not free to price fix however they see fit. I mean they could if they were all in cahoots, but they’re not. They’re in competition.
Probably people wanting to make some money.
We only need like a dozen farmers to feed the everyone
You're off a bit, but only by a factor of about 3 million.
One US farmer feeds about 150 people. 300 in absolutely ideal conditions that do not exist.
I was exaggerating.
Less than 1% of the population is pretty good tho
The fuck are you on about? A dozen farmers? Yeah, if there were a dozen people. Wtf are you on?
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?
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.
UBI is a separate concern from copyright being a dumb way of rewarding intellectual property.
Everyone should get UBI to reduce poverty and houselessness.
And separately, artists should get paid for their work, when it's valuable, regardless of whether or not UBI is in place.
And sometimes that value is immediately recognized at the time by the masses and can be measured in clicks and streams.
Sometimes it's only recognized by professional contemporaries and critics in how it influences the industry.
Sometimes it's not recognized until long after them and their contemporaries are dead.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Tax doesn't finance spending
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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.
"I mentioned printing money so now you're talking about it too"
No
It doesn't need to be printed. They just add the number to the digital bank account.
Adding money to a digital bank account is equal to printing money. You don't have to physically print money to print money
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.
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.
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?
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.