Universal Basic Income

[BananaStand]

A question I'm trying to figure out is why people don't think of economics in definable and objective terms

I was always under the impression that they do, and it's something like "Good Economics = +EV"

That's kind of the idea with UBI. You've probably heard Jordan Peterson talk about how it's illegal to enlist someone in the military if their IQ is lower than 83. Because someone of that intelligence can't be trained to do anything that isn't counter productive. So the UBI'ers will tell you that's 10% of the population, so what the fuck are you gonna do with those people? They'll say that you can't put them into the economy because it's -EV. That's the right problem to be looking at. I just think that UBI is the wrong solution.

It's wrong because giving those people money to sit on their ass and do nothing is bad for their soul. It makes things worse for all the rest of to have to live among grown up infants like that. We should make them work anyway and consider their -EV as an investment in the psychological well-being of society.

[wufwugy]

I was always under the impression that they do, and it's something like "Good Economics = +EV"

Perhaps people say that; I'm not sure that's how they act. This is on the level of societal policy. When it comes to personal circumstances, people are pretty keen to pay attention to facts. Yet when it's expanded beyond that level, it seems common for people to not care what the facts are. The smaller domain is influenced by what works, and the larger domain seems to be influenced by morals. This could be why it's so hard to get people to think in terms of facts and logic when the domain is larger than that which affects them personally and obviously.

So the UBI'ers will tell you that's 10% of the population, so what the fuck are you gonna do with those people? They'll say that you can't put them into the economy because it's -EV. That's the right problem to be looking at. I just think that UBI is the wrong solution.

The 10% sub-83 IQ people are already in the economy, and it is impossible to remove them. The same economic principles that apply to Bill Gates apply to Joe Numbskull. A system that perverts incentives yields worse results than otherwise because everything that happens is marginal and repeated. Sure, UBI can make Joe Numbskull better off, but it will make Future Joe Numbskull Who Would Not Be Joe Numbskull If The Economy Had Been Marginally Less Perverted worse off. It will also make everybody else worse off like you mentioned.

It's wrong because giving those people money to sit on their ass and do nothing is bad for their soul. It makes things worse for all the rest of to have to live among grown up infants like that. We should make them work anyway and consider their -EV as an investment in the psychological well-being of society.

These peoples' -EV of production is to the military, not to themselves and not to some other forms of work.

It is astoundingly rare for somebody to not be capable of making marginal +EV decisions. Those who can't are sufficiently insane that they don't know their own preferences. Those who are not insane like this are already maximizing their EV.

Freedom of economic choice is not about making people more able to maximize EV (they already are), but at reducing the asymmetric information between agents, thereby making their maximized EV a greater value than otherwise.