Chris,

What if people prefer to drive their cars rather than use public
transit?

Harry

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-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Christoph Reuss
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2003 2:15 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites

Arthur Cordell wrote:
> Don't you think that at some point, at some time, there will be
fewer
> workers needed in a highly productive economy?  What then?  How
do we get
> income to those who are no longer employed?  Shouldn't we begin
to think
> about the transition to a new, new economy.  One where the
production
> problem is "solved."  It is here where basic income can play an
important
> role.

Even "in a highly productive economy", there is no shortage of
work.
There's a shortage of "profitable" work and an abundancy of
"non-profitable" (but societally/environmentally
necessary/beneficial)
work.  What's necessary to get the latter kinds of work done, is
to
re-define "profitability":  From "producing consumerist junk"
towards
"improving society and environment" (such work includes both the
blue-collar and white-collar level, e.g. environmental clean-up
activities and R&D for cleaner technologies -- note that both
kinds
of jobs can't be automated).

With a BI, however, you won't get that work done.  On the
contrary,
you're wasting funds (mostly for consumerism) that would be
needed
to pay for the necessary but "non-profitable" work.  The BI
prospect
is pretty hopeless, both from an individual and societal
perspective.

An example:  Say, we have $1.2 billion and a county of 1 million
people,
with a destitute public transportation system.
(a)  You give a general BI of $100/month to everyone.  Most
people
     will spend that on gasoline for unnecessary car travel, or
     on consumerism junk.  After 1 year, all the money is gone.
(b)  I spend $1 billion to upgrade the public transportation
system
     (new railway wagons, high frequencies, hiring good
personnel)
     and the other $200 million for welfare for the few who
really
     need it.  After 1 year (and much longer!), all people have a
good
     transportation service (possibly for free), there's less
pollution
     from car traffic, and many people have a useful job in PT.
I think solution (b) is much better.  In solution (a), you can
guess
what's the probability that some people will take the initiative
and
build up a good public transportation system with the $100 BI
they got.
In the best case, some will write a poem for Thomas Lunde.

Chris



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