While it's true that centralization does have its problems (nobody wants a Soviet style system), I feel that you are conflating political issues with the original point, which was that giving out money is unnecessary if access to basic services is guaranteed. I do think that's an interesting point.
On the political side, since the Soviet system we have seen some incredibly effective centralized planning from China, who have an arguable 3000 year nominal history of political meritocracy and no democratic hangups. Also, we now have new options emerging through technology: direct, lower cost referendum-like voting on a broader range of issues being one.
Finally, "real money" is a very loaded phrase... just because a government guarantees a scrip does not make it any more real than, say, Bitcoin or human time. What drives fiscal systems, fundamentally, is the shared belief that a dollar acquired today can be useful if spent tomorrow. If you look at the key properties of money - ie. medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value - then what the centralized, universal access to basic services proposal removes is all three properties of the handout: exchange, accounting, and storage.
What are the impacts here? Exchange: people are properly accounted for by the government when seeking services and cannot ask for things they do not use personally. (This could be seen as positive, but could also be seen as negative if the government is particularly inefficient at scheduling the supply of services.) Unit of account: There is no need to account monetarily for services that are provided, instead they are simply recorded has having been provided and the supply-side costs (medicine, food ingredients, etc.) are accounted for as standard. Storage: Society as a whole has an interest in allocating efficiently the resources used in basic services (shelter/food/medicine/education) as this is cheaper overall and results in less wasted resources; allowing recipients to store and hoard these is probably not in society's interest.
Overall then, perhaps there are some positive points in avoiding executing UBI in terms of cash handouts, and instead focusing on services. Of course, the real gotcha is going to be transition and utility ... without major society-wide restructuring, the cash-based approach promises a far simpler path of transition.
It's really not. The system you've described is literally how the Soviet union operated, and is in fact the norm for poverty reduction programs today (ex. public housing, public healthcare, etc.).
Without competition, programs inevitably acquire bloat and siphon off money to those with political connections. It's ironic that you mention China as an effective example of communism when most of their growth has come since moving more towards a free market.
What exactly do you think is the advantage of the government directly providing services?
Please don't inflict a communist nightmare on the rest of us.
You are entitled to an opinion, but it is no more correct than any other.
how the Soviet union operated
I believe that we have new technology, statistical and information literacy in the population, and technical and social means of validating the actions of government now. Though I wouldn't suggest this in practice, it would for example be possible to run UBI-style services on a smart-contract system off a blockchain...
It's ironic that you mention China as an effective example of communism
I didn't mention communism. I think you are conflating anything state-operated with "evil socialist-communist-coldwar Russian China Cuba impending failure!" in the way Americans often do, very much untruly. What I said was that China has some good modern examples of strong achievements from centralist planning on a society, which is true, as I live there and see them first hand. In the last few decades China has established the best network of infrastructure in the world, the most electric vehicles, and has pulled the highest number of people out of illiteracy and poverty of any country or political period ever in the entire history of humanity. That's pretty impressive by any measure.
What exactly do you think is the advantage of the government directly providing services?
As discussed, potentially a direct service model can offer better capacity to account for the ultimate use of resources allocated through such programs, as well as less waste through discouraging hoarding and providing more efficient allocation.
In addition, there is probably a psychological benefit to such an approach since, as Kennedy's speech posted above indicates so eloquently, economic figures so often miss the point. Happiness, health, purpose, safety, comfort, wellbeing, education. These are not things you can simply buy on a national scale by giving token quantities of money to people.
You didn't use the word, but a centralized economy where the state directly provides goods and services is the definition of communism.
I'm not afraid of a communist boogieman. I don't think your system would necessarily even be evil, just woefully inefficient. If there's no competition for providing services, what incentive is there to improve them?
You point to technology as a means by which we can provide a high standard of living cheaply. Who do you think is going to develop technology without market solutions in place?
I have no problem with the government funding social benefits. I think there's lots of room for that. I just don't think there's any reason to think that the government should be in the business of directly providing such services. It's the difference between SpaceX and NASA: both are funded through taxpayers, but SpaceX has competitive pressure to provide better services at a better price.
I agree that China's growth is impressive. Yet you completely ignored my point that such growth has largely come through increased liberalization of the economy—ie. the opposite direction of what you propose.
> As discussed, potentially a direct service model can offer better capacity to account for the ultimate use of resources allocated through such programs, as well as less waste through discouraging hoarding and providing more efficient allocation.
What a load of rubbish. What do you mean by "hoarding?" People who dare to purchase two cars?
You can't just assert that direct government services would be more efficient without any evidence. We have abundant evidence, both theoretical and empirical, that the market is much better at allocating resources efficiently than central planners.
> Happiness, health, purpose, safety, comfort, wellbeing, education. These are not things you can simply buy on a national scale by giving token quantities of money to people.
Why not? You seem to not understand economics. What in your view allows a government service to provide these benefits (by using taxpayer money to provision them) while giving people the money to buy those services directly would not?
I'm glad you live in China. Perhaps you should move to North Korea to see how effective an even more centrally planned government can be.
Like I said, you are definitely confusing things: socialism/communism/modern China/NK-style dictatorships.
All states provide services, or they wouldn't exist.
Who do you think is going to develop technology without market solutions in place?
There was an HN article recently about Wifi, which was developed by Australian government researchers at a famous research institution now being dismantled on the same faulty capitalist/neocolonialist reasoning you are peddling. The internet, wifi... many interesting modern developments have been government funded.
It's the difference between SpaceX and NASA: both are funded through taxpayers, but SpaceX has competitive pressure to provide better services at a better price.
No, SpaceX and NASA are very different. SpaceX is a for-profit business, whereas NASA is a national (some would say international) research institution. For example, a friend of mine from Australia is currently doing an internship at NASA's JPL facility in the field of applied chemical geology with a pure research goal.
China [...] growth has largely come through increased liberalization of the economy
You are incorrect. There is liberalization, but effectively the government still runs all the roads, train networks, airports, communications infrastructure, education and media.
hoarding?
You know, medicine or food or real estate or whatnot. We were not talking about cars.
We have abundant evidence...
{{citation-needed}}
What in your view allows a government service to provide these benefits (by using taxpayer money to provision them) while giving people the money to buy those services directly would not?
If I give someone $2 a week, even if there are 20,000 people in a town, how long will it take them to coherently organize savings amongst themselves build a $2M road to the provincial capital? Some of them are leaving, some of them are old, some of them ride bicycles, some of them don't drive, others prefer the train, there are rumours of a new train line. Sometimes a decision just needs to be made. And if every village builds a direct road to the capital, is that really a desirable network topology? No. There are concerns at play that those affected cannot or will not have the time to research and execute. Whereas, history teaches us that a commercial actor, which you propose, would by definition cut nearly all available corners to prioritize profit, whilst working to establish an effective (explicit or implicit) monopoly on the sector, leaving portions of the people underserved. Oh, and they'd be tollways.
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I can't imagine the nightmare that a government-provisioned Google would be, for example.
Straw man.
the service they provide (space exploration) is largely identical.
Did you read my comment? It's chalk and cheese.
the market is more capitalist than it was 50 years ago
Instead of discussing the point you make a tangential point then essentially falsely assert that because the market is more capitalist all the good stuff comes from capitalism. Having a discussion with you is completely insane.
You think under UBI people would use their limited income to hoard medicine?
I was discussing the relative benefits of a service-based model.
The idea that some central planner knows better than people what they need is the height of arrogance.
You are conflating providing essential services with providing everything. The scope was: food/water, shelter, transportation, health care, electricity/information.
Capitalism does not automatically imply corruption or inefficiency.
No, but it implies a profit motive which usually suggests a few things, the foremost being chiefly crap service for everyone in low population density areas that isn't easily serviced.
The Japanese rail system...
... is terrible unless you want to get from a major town to a major town. I recently spent 2 days stuck there trying to get between point A and point B along the coast. Why? As you say...
> All states provide services, or they wouldn't exist.
Sure. There are vast differences in the amount of services provided, from minimalist contract enforcement all the way up to full government control of everything in the economy.
> The internet, wifi... many interesting modern developments have been government funded.
Yes, and they generally only saw consumer adoption once for-profit businesses got involved. I can't imagine the nightmare that a government-provisioned Google would be, for example.
> No, SpaceX and NASA are very different. SpaceX is a for-profit business
They operate differently, yes. But the service they provide (space exploration) is largely identical. By all accounts, SpaceX has been much more successful at that and has dramatically lowered the cost of launches.
> You are incorrect.
No, I'm not. I have studied Chinese history in depth and have visited many times. I recognize that many services are government provisioned, but that doesn't change the reality that the market is more capitalist than it was 50 years ago.
> You know, medicine or food or real estate or whatnot. We were not talking about cars.
You think under UBI people would use their limited income to hoard medicine?
The idea that some central planner knows better than people what they need is the height of arrogance.
Where did I argue that all services should be privately provisioned? It probably makes sense for governments to build roads, since that's something that really does benefit from central planning. Even for things which I think the government should do (ex. universal health care) I think it should do it through a free market (ie. provide a national insurance company which competes directly with private insurance).
Capitalism does not automatically imply corruption or inefficiency. The Japanese rail system, for example, is admired around the world. Yet it's entirely privatized.
I agree with you on some of those things. For instance, it would probably be difficult to develop a road network that spans across groups of people without some planning and coordination between those people's governments. And, this is where governance does help.
But, even though governments may identify and enumerate the collective requirements of where those roads will be (for better or worse), it would be hard to imagine the government being efficient or innovative at executing the work.
If people want to coordinate their collective goals together, that can be effective, and I'm a supportive of that. But, that's a huge difference from having an external group of people dictating what those goals should be and how they should be achieved.
On the political side, since the Soviet system we have seen some incredibly effective centralized planning from China, who have an arguable 3000 year nominal history of political meritocracy and no democratic hangups. Also, we now have new options emerging through technology: direct, lower cost referendum-like voting on a broader range of issues being one.
Finally, "real money" is a very loaded phrase... just because a government guarantees a scrip does not make it any more real than, say, Bitcoin or human time. What drives fiscal systems, fundamentally, is the shared belief that a dollar acquired today can be useful if spent tomorrow. If you look at the key properties of money - ie. medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value - then what the centralized, universal access to basic services proposal removes is all three properties of the handout: exchange, accounting, and storage.
What are the impacts here? Exchange: people are properly accounted for by the government when seeking services and cannot ask for things they do not use personally. (This could be seen as positive, but could also be seen as negative if the government is particularly inefficient at scheduling the supply of services.) Unit of account: There is no need to account monetarily for services that are provided, instead they are simply recorded has having been provided and the supply-side costs (medicine, food ingredients, etc.) are accounted for as standard. Storage: Society as a whole has an interest in allocating efficiently the resources used in basic services (shelter/food/medicine/education) as this is cheaper overall and results in less wasted resources; allowing recipients to store and hoard these is probably not in society's interest.
Overall then, perhaps there are some positive points in avoiding executing UBI in terms of cash handouts, and instead focusing on services. Of course, the real gotcha is going to be transition and utility ... without major society-wide restructuring, the cash-based approach promises a far simpler path of transition.