Doug Casey and I Destroying Commies On Universal Income

in #money7 years ago

Last week at the Nexus Conference I was on a panel with Doug Casey debating Universal Basic Income (UBI) with Flip Flipkowski and Ellen Brown, the President of the Public Banking Institute.

I have never actually looked into UBI much and assumed it was just a passing, bizarre fad. But it appears to be gaining a lot of traction with people who like to virtue signal and don’t understand economics.

You really just have to watch it for yourself to see and believe just how uninformed their positions are.

Ellen Brown, in particular, could barely raise an argument and turned aside most of my evidence and analysis on why it would be a disaster with comments like, “I don’t believe that” and “I disagree”... but saying nothing more as to why she disagreed.

To summarize my view, printing up massive amounts of money in order to give it to everyone in society would:

  • Destroy the value of the currency almost immediately, and it would certainly lead into hyperinflation quite quickly
  • Neither incentivize people to be productive nor motivate them to improve themselves, leading to an even worse off economy and a society full of unproductive, unskilled, lazy people.

This is fairly obvious to anyone who even has the most basic understanding of money, economics and human psychology.

But, claiming to have a few “studies” that show otherwise, they countered that people would be more productive if they were all just given enough money to live… and that printing up money does not devalue the currency.

When Doug and I brought up examples pf countries who had hyperinflated their currencies by printing too much, of which there are hundreds of examples, including Zimbabwe and Venezuela, most recently, these two claimed that it was other factors that caused the currencies to become worthless.

Aside from that, when I pressured them on how her idea of raising funds to pay for it all using a sales tax was theft and immoral she claimed it wasn’t a “tax”, it was “just trimming.”

It’d be laughable how uninformed and confused their ideas and logic are if it weren’t gaining so much wide appeal amongst the public who, in general, never has a problem with getting “free money.”

Again, you really have to see it to believe it. Here is the entire debate:

When pressured on any other way of moving forward, both Flip and Ellen had only one thing to say about why we need UBI: “Robots.”

According to them, robots will soon take all of our jobs and we’ll all be left starving.

I pointed out to Ellen that I’d always have a job for her, even if it is just polishing my shoes, finishing with, “At least then you’d finally do something productive with your life.”

It was a bit mean in retrospect, and as we walked out, she muttered to me, “I hate you.”

To which, both Doug and I responded that we didn’t “hate” them, we just think their ideas are uninformed and dangerous.

If this is the level of debate on the topic and it gains ground with the public and becomes a reality, then The Dollar Vigilante’s theme of preparing for the demise of the US dollar will be sped up dramatically… and we are already expecting it to happen in the next few years.

If you want to learn how to prepare for the collapse check out this free webinar with Max Wright. Max gives his outlook on how the collapse will occur and how you can prepare and even profit from it.

It will happen in the next few years or really any day now. And, if these socialists get their way it will occur even faster and be even more destructive than we can imagine.

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"This is fairly obvious to anyone who even has the most basic understanding of money, economics and human psychology."

Having said that, what is your suggestion for fixing the potential of mass-unemployment-leading-to-social-unrest that automation is already bringing in?

Is there a better option than printing some UBI (perhaps, somehow forcing the inflation on the elite, heh I can dream)?

I remain unconvinced.

Less monetary manipulation, crony protectionist regulation, taxation, trade restriction, and general economic intervention would be a good start. It's not that something must be done, but rather that too many misguided things are being done.

That would certainly be a great check-list...

I have no idea how we manage to get there though.

Stop trying to use politics as a solution. Withdraw consent from the system that operates entirely though coercion and plunder.

OK, let me rephrase: I have no idea how to get the average person (Kardashian watcher, Selfie-poster on Facebook) to even care, let along change anything in their life.

If you've tried "spreading the good word", you probably already know what I mean.

UBI is gaining a lot of ground with many countries and economists. Being tried in one of the smaller countries in Europe.

Apparently it isn't going so well.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/opinion/finland-universal-basic-income.html?mcubz=1

Haha, its funny that the socialists use the robots as an argument:

Robots coming up in a free market:

Not all the jobs will be replaced in once, this will happen in a longer period. When the first robots come in, the salary will go down slightly. Few smartest take action and go look / learn for another job (job that still has demand in the market). Furthermore students will choose education for this job less, because they know there is no future. This will stabilize the salary temporarily, but finally it will go down again when more robots enter the market. Now the salaries go down more there will be more people shifting job and there will be no more new supply because the schools stop teaching this profession. In a free market the people will naturally relocate their job because of market forces and this will increase the overall wealth because robots produce for us.

Robots coming up in a socialist market:

Once the first robots come in the salary have to go down naturally and some will loose their job, but the government will add to the salary and pay the ones that lost their jobs to stay at home and being unemployed. This will increase the cost of the social security and taxes have to be raised. Now robots become even cheaper compare to humans and even more people will loose their job. Because they get money every month they will not / slowly look for other opportunities. Finally all human beings are being replaced by robots and only a few will get another job. Because the government have to pay a lot for unemployment they have to tax others even more, this will make other professions more vulnerable to being replaced by robots, because they compete less because the extra tax expenses.

Another thing that is always annoying me is the fact that people are always complaining that the USD buys less for Americans caused by inflation. I don't give a f#ck about the americans, they robbed the world for 100 years already. My problem is that ALL other civilians of the world have to exchange more of their local currency to buy the same amount of oil, steel, coal ect.(because it is based in USD) , so their currency will be inflated. This is the reason poor countries can never get out of their poverty and more rich countries work their ass of for the american dream.

Bring the robots, I will own them, I will own their energy and I will own their intellectual property rights, and I will enjoy my time at home with my family as we grow 80% of our food, produce our own clean water and energy and use my dividends from the robot labor force to travel the world and continue my education.

Exactly. The point of using machines is to Decrease our labor and Increase production.

If robots do the work and pay the taxes then basic income can be funded without taking property from any human. This is actually one of the ideas I endorse as workable once technology gets to that point.

I will agrue back at you on this one bud. Much money is spent trying to controll the homeless but if UBI was a reality much money would be saved. Also many people worldwide are underpaid, UBI would fix that. Or does dollar vigilante still believe the top one percent actually need all that money? No distribute it to the people. We need a major shift of wealth for UBI. if your against it then you are no anarchist or vigilante. Just another rich bitch, ignorant.

So, we're ignorant if we don't advocate theft based on income level?

No your ignorant cause universal income in no way advocates theft, mr.plunder

You said that the top 1% don't need their money and that it should be redistributed; obviously via theft (taxes). It will have to be Taken from someone.

Why treat an abstraction as an empircal bit!? If corporations have the same rights as 'people' then if you take from the top one percent of 'persons' i.e. corporations that have the same rights as people and also real life people treated as 'corporate beings', then the job of UBI would have to be to destroy that paradigm completely! You would stop treating corporations as people and people as corporations! First step to UBI baby! Why would it be considered theft if it was in fact a renegotiation of terms.

"Taking" even from companies, against their will, is theft. They are only "Corporations" for tax and regulatory reasons. The government only lays out a few options for organizing a business: Sole Proprietorship, Partnership, Limited Liability Company, and Corporation. So companies being identified and organized into corporations is a result of government regulation. Would there be big companies anyway? Probably Yes, and they would still be serving your needs better than any politician.

Companies have no will, except the will the humans give them. Going by the book for tax and regulatory reasons seems pretty uh, un-anarchy. When the companies in question use such practices as de-regulation, and terms such as development to expand their empire. Many poor countries have little to no regulations and these corps and govt's stomp all over them, pay them little and pollute their land. If people had UBI they would have much greater agency and not have to be forced to work for slave wages while the big companies ruin the land with mining, oil extraction, mono culture farming etc. I say don't let the government own your flesh and tax your body. Undue the birth certificate, who would want to be part of a country - corporation that oppresses their own people. "Take a step outside the planet, and take a good look at who you are."

If you don't think the government should be able to tax, how will your UBI be funded?

Doug is the man

subscribe to his mailing, then try to unsubscribe; doug is a piece of shit

I'm guessing you're not a big fan of Grantcoin then?

@dollarvigilante I don't uderstand one thing, If and I say If robots can produce everything we need to live for free, why would Ellen work for you? Every studies show the same thing, yes technology creat jobs, but they take away more jobs then they create. This is a problem that we have to deal in the future.

Quite common in stattistics to forgot that people could change their job.

There would be people who were doing some task that would be replaced by a robot. And then they could be fired.

There would be people that weren't working before that could start doing by designing or maintaining those robots. Like first-time workers, young people.

But there could also be, and it always happens, that there is people who were working when robots are introduced into their jobs, but they decide to find another existing job who still is in need to be done by humans.

you have never read 1 single book about the industrial revolution; 100% for sure, because if you did ... you wouldn't spew this bullshit

IMO, as Artificial General Intelligence increases it will be harder and harder to argue against UBI.

UBI is free money foe every single person. Capitalism is about creating opportunities of making money. If I wanted to provide a product or service to society, I would have to take into account that my employees would need to be paid at least one monetary unit more than whatever the UBI amount was at the moment. That would make me price the product or service taking that into account.

In other words, UBI is a way of making the market less free.

So when peoples jobs start getting replaced and they can't find new ones what are they going to do?

Getting a different one or study in order to get another kind of job or create a new kind of job which doesn't exist already

It's not about the jobs it's about wealth. People wont need jobs anymore because they'll have robots doing the jobs and providing the income. Whether the robots are businesses owned by each family and the shares are widely dispersed or the robots are all owned by the state and the dividends paid to all.

javirid- I think you may be underestimating the future of AI. I recommend reading Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark. Great commentary on a variety of scenarios on how AI may play out

Good points, Jeff. This kind of idea stems from a belief that you can create wealth by printing paper. They are so mistaken. Thank you for shedding light on this. Upvoted, my friend!

I'm all for the dismantling of the fiat/fractional system because the economics are unsustainable but the fiat currency masters created more wealth and better standards of living for more people than any other system in the known universe. This is a fact and I say this as one of their biggest critics. It was one hell of a casino while it lasted!

they didn't create any wealth, they've been stealing it, while entrepreneurs created the wealth ...

it's the same argument people make when employment goes up in a state with high minimum wage ... this while when comparing that state with another state that didn't increase the minimum wage, it's obvious that employment would have gone up way more if it wasn't for the minimum wage

it's not because the economy/entrepreneurs create more wealth than the fascists could steal, that the fascists created that wealth ...

They did not create wealth. They transferred it from current money holders (us) to new money holders (government and well-connected special interests). With newly created money, they can buy at current prices, enjoying it's full purchasing power, while our money held decreases in value and doesn't go as far.

If I compare the city I live in to how things were in 1300 AD here I could prove without a doubt that enourmous wealth and standard of living have been created ( I could do this by comparative metrics). Why you're dismissing this obvious fact is astonishing and seemingly really fuckin' dumb! If you have a toilet and electricity you live better as far as standards than kings and queens in 1300. This is the wealth I'm talking about and standard of living is a fair synonym.
However, I think you may be talking about the machinations of the fiat/fractional system? A system which was fine in 1900 as the resouces and population could sustain the model; the earth can no longer sustain an economic model premised on unending debt and growth and consumption. You have this naive mindset that 1850 economic ideas (Adam Smith) are in any way relevent to the circumstances today. They are not! They are a death sentence to the planet and your way of outsourcing costs to the future as a way of doing business now should be made criminal! Got it? No, of course you don't because the blind have always loved to lead the blind!

BTW: instead of endless yakking on the internet about how corrupt the guvment is ( something I agree with) why don't you instead create a test town, city, 'state' that is patterned modelled on your political/economic philiosohpy? Typing on the internet is pissing in the wind! Show me the money!
But my best guess on this society: someone will want to run the show and that will take about 5-minutes into the experiment to happen. But again, I'm open to it.....

Yes i was talking about fractional reserve banking, as i though that you were. So much is lost between social interaction and text.
I agree, people should be left to associate and work how they like. I assume then, you have already created a UBI since you were in favor of that, right? How's it going?

And fiat did not create wealth, expansions in production and the ability to keep and reinvest earnings did.

There may be things we agree on? That goverments today have become corrupted by the business class? That governments now serve the fiat masters and their corporations and use govenment to solidify that power?
Now, correct me if I'm wrong: the early founding fathers of america sought to protect the citizen from the corrupting influence of power? But they did that within a government structure? So the issue it would seem to me through logical deduction is not government per se; but rather the corrupting influence of power?
In philosophy the assertion that it's the guvment that's the problem is called a strawman argument. It's imbalanced power relations which are at the heart of corruption in todays systems.
But evolutionary complexity is playing a role, too. The conditions today are no where near the same as 1750 no matter how much you wish that they were so.....

No it Is gubment. Even while small, this organization is the source of corrupting power given that it has a monopoly on law and enforcement in a given territory, by force, mind you. I'm not surprised your liberal professors taught you that disagreeing with the authority of government to rule our lives is a strawman. lol
Why not remove the corrupting and corruptible authority? Which is government.
Just because the founders chose a small government over a big one, does not mean that government is good. It may mean, the less-the better. Best case-zero.

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