I was going to write some more about deflation today but then Vice posted a piece on Universal Basic Income (UBI) by Nathan Schneider yesterday. I suggest you read it and then come back here for a response.
1. After introducing my support for UBI, Nathan writes “[Albert is] worried about the clever apps his company is funding, which do things like teach languages and hail cars, displacing jobs with every download.” No. I am not worried about what we fund. I love what we fund. Hailo makes calling a taxi easy and the dispatch more efficient. Duolingo is teaching languages to millions of people for free. And I could go through the entire USV portfolio like that.
2. More to the point, I love the potential of freeing humans to do things that humans are uniquely good at (culture, exploration, innovation, etc) and letting the machines do everything else. This is the path we have been on since the earliest days of humans making tools. I am excited and optimistic about this potential of technology. But I am also cognizant that we have needed social reforms along the way to ensure that the benefits of technology accrue to all and not just a few. That was true during the industrial revolution and that is true now. My interest in UBI goes back to a series of blog posts I wrote in the fall of 2012.
3. Nathan describes, correctly, that most UBI proponents, myself included, see it as replacing many or all existing government welfare programs. He then goes on “It turns out that the tech investors promoting basic income, by and large, aren’t proposing to fund the payouts themselves; they’d prefer that the needy foot the bill for everyone else.” That conclusion makes no sense whatsoever: these existing programs are funded by the very tax bills that I (and others) have been paying. Existing welfare is redistribution. UBI doesn’t do away with redistribution, it makes redistribution explicit and direct.
