Work deterrence, inflation, and the tremendous cost would devalue your own currency.
In general most people work jobs solely and exclusively for the $$$. If they didn't need that $$$ they'd have much greater power to negotiate wages. That sounds amazing in theory, but in reality - how much money would it take for you to go scrub toilets when you could otherwise sit and home and live a comfortable life with your family? Probably quite a lot to say the least. Or for a single young guy, how much would you need to pay him to work instead of him being able to play video games and chase tail all day, every day, if he wanted to? And if we're being honest - you can probably remove young as an adjective.
I did add "likely" because I used to be a huge advocate for basic income, but my view shifted on it overtime as I gained a greater appreciation for how economies, and even societies in general, function. Or that the large number of billionaires we have are largely due to accounting and speculation (read: total on-paper capitalization of stock market vastly exceeding the amount of money in existence), rather than them actually just making obscene amounts of money.
> how much money would it take for you to go scrub toilets
If my needs were otherwise met, and there were clear instructions allowing me to do this in confidence that I wasn't inconveniencing any users of the toilet, I'd do it free. (Cleaning a toilet is less messy than changing a baby, and that's not hard either.) Given proper PPE, I'd do even more "disgusting" jobs, if they were jobs that needed doing: I draw my line at cleaning up sharps, but that's only because I'm not trained.
Maintaining communal infrastructure is not a thankless task: you can know that everyone who uses the infrastructure until next maintenance time benefits from your work, which is more than most people can say about their jobs. There are people who take pride in their work, even if you consider that work low-status, and beneath you. Do different work, then!
Do you really think most people would live lives of idleness, if not compelled to behave otherwise? If you saw something that needed doing, and you had the means to do it, would you just… walk by? If I may, that says more about you than it does about anyone else.
Quite the strawman there. Not wanting to work [at times literally] shit jobs without excessive compensation, is not the same as everybody being idle. I can list thousands of things I'd rather do than clean public toilets, and I don't even do thousands of things! Though yes - I do think a huge chunk of the population would be generally idle, if possible, in terms of commercial productivity, and I see nothing wrong with that, besides the fact it would crash any economy where it was possible.
You not wanting to work "shit jobs" (without compensation you would consider excessive) doesn't mean that everybody doesn't want to work them (or even that everybody considers them to be "shit jobs").
I agree with your point about commercial productivity. I don't agree that it would crash the economy: it would crash GDP (by eliminating large classes of exploitative and abusive behaviour which currently prop GDP up), but we already know that GDP is a flawed metric. I don't see how this would interfere with food getting to our tables, buildings being built, or communal infrastructure being maintained, except that monied folk would be less able to demand that things be done "or else", so we might have to reorganise society somewhat (such as by providing better working conditions for "shit jobs").
I wouldn't want to clean public toilets if I didn't need to do so. You'd be willing to do it for free. I think one of our views runs rather closer to the overwhelming majority of people, like 99.999%, than the other. This issue is really not the one you want to argue. But I understand that you have to argue it, because if you simply accepted this point then you must accept the fundamental problem. When everybody starts demanding substantial amounts of money for any labor they don't want to do, you're not only going to crash your gdp but see hyperinflation as well.
Now not only is the basic income pointless because it's no longer enough to afford anything (and increasing it further just sends you closer to Zimbabwe), but you'd also completely crash your currency meaning you'd also no longer be able to afford any imports (though exporters would be getting filthy rich - see: why China intentionally devalues their own currency). The country would be obligated to rapidly transition, formally or informally, to another currency as the default unit of trade for anything of value, further nullifying the basic income.
You're getting way too strung up on the specific example of cleaning toilets. You know what job vastly more people will want to do? Installing and maintaining a self-cleaning toilet. Bang, massive benefit to the local community. Focus on profitability creates a blind spot.
I don't see why you think inflation would suddenly happen. You haven't justified that claim.
Also, anality drives me to at least mention the most straight forward way inflation will increase. You'd dramatically increase monetary velocity, which is what drives inflation, all other things being equal. Of course all other things would not be equal in this scenario - they'd also be changing in ways likely to drive inflation so you'd get a compounding effect.
Have you been in a public bathroom, in the US, in basically any urban area? Self cleaning doesn't cut it. People cause damage to bathrooms for no apparent reason, piss everywhere within a 10' radius, and on occasion feces isn't far behind. Oddly enough even women's bathrooms, at least on occasion, can be just as bad if not worse - as you can add blood to the entire disgusting mix, people flushing pads, and so on. Cleaning public bathrooms is an unimaginably awful job that nobody, in a million years, would do if they had any other remotely reasonable way to get money, let alone getting handed it for free.
Inflation happens because increasing labor costs will inevitably get handed right back onto the customer, especially on the scale we're talking about. And the customer isn't just the final customer, but every business operation from the raw goods all the way down to the final product, so it'd lead to rather dramatic inflation.
It doesn't matter whether the overwhelming majority of people would be willing to clean toilets for however much money: what matters is whether enough people would that the toilets get cleaned. From what I can tell, the answer to that is "yes".
Given instructions, and absent other immediate obligations, I would do so much helping out, wherever I happened to be at the time. (The only reason I don't now is because I don't understand most jobs – my meddling could do more harm than good –, and they won't let me do jobs in my area of expertise.) I'm not unusual in this regard: perhaps I'm unusual in that I'll do this unprompted, but if it's a societal expectation that people clean up after themselves, and leave things in a slightly better state than they found them, people generally do it.
The problem is not a lack of workers. The problem is not a lack of things that need doing. The problem is a lack of "jobs". UBI (with the necessary patches to, e.g., prevent bad actors from redirecting all the money) is essentially employing everybody to do what they believe needs doing.
So the question becomes: do you believe direct democracy works at small scales? Your answer appears to be "no".
I have no idea what you're basing "from what I can tell" on. In America there are literally millions of janitorial and cleaning staff. The overwhelming majority of those people would much prefer to e.g. spend time with their family than engage in menial labor to make ends meet. And the marginal utility of money decreases dramatically, at least for most people, once you have enough to comfortably survive and provide for your family indefinitely.
I'm a white-collar knowledge worker. There is no downside to me getting my hands dirty with real work during my thinking time – that's time I can't spend with my family if I want to get anything done, because unstructured social interaction takes up the same space in my brain as the knowledge work does.
And the marginal utility of having cleaner toilet facilities increases dramatically when they tip over the boundary between "clean" and "not-clean". Given an apron and long gloves, I'd happily (most days, at least) clean shit off the wall, or pull pads out the U-bend, if it increased the chance the room was clean when I had to use it.
If I were able to choose whether or not to clean the toilets, and someone kept leaving them in a right state, then after the second-to-fourth time, I'd set aside some time to identify the culprits, and then I'd take measures to ensure they stopped, starting with confronting them over it: first in private (if possible), and subsequently in front of people whose opinions I'd expect them to care about. I might escalate further if it continued without good reason. This is not an option available to cleaning staff on the poverty line, who rarely have the time in their schedule to do this, and might be sacked if they used their breaktime to pull an insubordinate stunt like that. (I would not be capable of working in those conditions, and I expect I'd develop new and fascinating mental health problems if subjected to them.)
There is a major difference between volunteering to do something, and having your ability to live in your home contingent upon you doing it, as regards people's willingness to do various tasks.
I don't see why having to pay significantly more to people cleaning the toilets is a downside. It's a shit job, the pay should reflect that. Of course when people are forced into the treadmill just to get fed, they will take it for pennies, but that doesn't mean that it's the right way to do things.
Ideally I absolutely agree with you - I think everybody would. The problem is reality. Companies that make/sell real things, and not software, have almost shockingly low profit margins, with labor costs generally being their greatest expense by far. WalMart's net profit margin, for instance, is less than 3%. And as they have an absolutely massive number of employees (they're the third largest employer in the world in fact), their profit per employee is quite low - somewhere around $7,000.
Software and tech companies don't treat their employees better because they care more about their employees, but because they're drowning in money owing to ridiculous profit margins. Apple's net profit margin is > 24% with a greater than $2 million profit per employee!! [1] They could buy every single employee a new Ferrari every single year and still have [literally] more money than they know what to do with.
So you have this imbalance in the economy that employees working jobs that pay stupidly high wages are the ones where the companies could generally afford to pay them even more, dramatically more, but instead just hoard all the money. Whereas low wage jobs are the ones where companies themselves are also just 'barely getting by', but at a large enough scale - that can translate to billions of dollars, even if it's not much per employee.
Work deterrence, inflation, and the tremendous cost would devalue your own currency.
In general most people work jobs solely and exclusively for the $$$. If they didn't need that $$$ they'd have much greater power to negotiate wages. That sounds amazing in theory, but in reality - how much money would it take for you to go scrub toilets when you could otherwise sit and home and live a comfortable life with your family? Probably quite a lot to say the least. Or for a single young guy, how much would you need to pay him to work instead of him being able to play video games and chase tail all day, every day, if he wanted to? And if we're being honest - you can probably remove young as an adjective.
I did add "likely" because I used to be a huge advocate for basic income, but my view shifted on it overtime as I gained a greater appreciation for how economies, and even societies in general, function. Or that the large number of billionaires we have are largely due to accounting and speculation (read: total on-paper capitalization of stock market vastly exceeding the amount of money in existence), rather than them actually just making obscene amounts of money.
> how much money would it take for you to go scrub toilets
If my needs were otherwise met, and there were clear instructions allowing me to do this in confidence that I wasn't inconveniencing any users of the toilet, I'd do it free. (Cleaning a toilet is less messy than changing a baby, and that's not hard either.) Given proper PPE, I'd do even more "disgusting" jobs, if they were jobs that needed doing: I draw my line at cleaning up sharps, but that's only because I'm not trained.
Maintaining communal infrastructure is not a thankless task: you can know that everyone who uses the infrastructure until next maintenance time benefits from your work, which is more than most people can say about their jobs. There are people who take pride in their work, even if you consider that work low-status, and beneath you. Do different work, then!
Do you really think most people would live lives of idleness, if not compelled to behave otherwise? If you saw something that needed doing, and you had the means to do it, would you just… walk by? If I may, that says more about you than it does about anyone else.
Quite the strawman there. Not wanting to work [at times literally] shit jobs without excessive compensation, is not the same as everybody being idle. I can list thousands of things I'd rather do than clean public toilets, and I don't even do thousands of things! Though yes - I do think a huge chunk of the population would be generally idle, if possible, in terms of commercial productivity, and I see nothing wrong with that, besides the fact it would crash any economy where it was possible.
You not wanting to work "shit jobs" (without compensation you would consider excessive) doesn't mean that everybody doesn't want to work them (or even that everybody considers them to be "shit jobs").
I agree with your point about commercial productivity. I don't agree that it would crash the economy: it would crash GDP (by eliminating large classes of exploitative and abusive behaviour which currently prop GDP up), but we already know that GDP is a flawed metric. I don't see how this would interfere with food getting to our tables, buildings being built, or communal infrastructure being maintained, except that monied folk would be less able to demand that things be done "or else", so we might have to reorganise society somewhat (such as by providing better working conditions for "shit jobs").
I wouldn't want to clean public toilets if I didn't need to do so. You'd be willing to do it for free. I think one of our views runs rather closer to the overwhelming majority of people, like 99.999%, than the other. This issue is really not the one you want to argue. But I understand that you have to argue it, because if you simply accepted this point then you must accept the fundamental problem. When everybody starts demanding substantial amounts of money for any labor they don't want to do, you're not only going to crash your gdp but see hyperinflation as well.
Now not only is the basic income pointless because it's no longer enough to afford anything (and increasing it further just sends you closer to Zimbabwe), but you'd also completely crash your currency meaning you'd also no longer be able to afford any imports (though exporters would be getting filthy rich - see: why China intentionally devalues their own currency). The country would be obligated to rapidly transition, formally or informally, to another currency as the default unit of trade for anything of value, further nullifying the basic income.
You're getting way too strung up on the specific example of cleaning toilets. You know what job vastly more people will want to do? Installing and maintaining a self-cleaning toilet. Bang, massive benefit to the local community. Focus on profitability creates a blind spot.
I don't see why you think inflation would suddenly happen. You haven't justified that claim.
Also, anality drives me to at least mention the most straight forward way inflation will increase. You'd dramatically increase monetary velocity, which is what drives inflation, all other things being equal. Of course all other things would not be equal in this scenario - they'd also be changing in ways likely to drive inflation so you'd get a compounding effect.
Have you been in a public bathroom, in the US, in basically any urban area? Self cleaning doesn't cut it. People cause damage to bathrooms for no apparent reason, piss everywhere within a 10' radius, and on occasion feces isn't far behind. Oddly enough even women's bathrooms, at least on occasion, can be just as bad if not worse - as you can add blood to the entire disgusting mix, people flushing pads, and so on. Cleaning public bathrooms is an unimaginably awful job that nobody, in a million years, would do if they had any other remotely reasonable way to get money, let alone getting handed it for free.
Inflation happens because increasing labor costs will inevitably get handed right back onto the customer, especially on the scale we're talking about. And the customer isn't just the final customer, but every business operation from the raw goods all the way down to the final product, so it'd lead to rather dramatic inflation.
It doesn't matter whether the overwhelming majority of people would be willing to clean toilets for however much money: what matters is whether enough people would that the toilets get cleaned. From what I can tell, the answer to that is "yes".
Given instructions, and absent other immediate obligations, I would do so much helping out, wherever I happened to be at the time. (The only reason I don't now is because I don't understand most jobs – my meddling could do more harm than good –, and they won't let me do jobs in my area of expertise.) I'm not unusual in this regard: perhaps I'm unusual in that I'll do this unprompted, but if it's a societal expectation that people clean up after themselves, and leave things in a slightly better state than they found them, people generally do it.
The problem is not a lack of workers. The problem is not a lack of things that need doing. The problem is a lack of "jobs". UBI (with the necessary patches to, e.g., prevent bad actors from redirecting all the money) is essentially employing everybody to do what they believe needs doing.
So the question becomes: do you believe direct democracy works at small scales? Your answer appears to be "no".
I have no idea what you're basing "from what I can tell" on. In America there are literally millions of janitorial and cleaning staff. The overwhelming majority of those people would much prefer to e.g. spend time with their family than engage in menial labor to make ends meet. And the marginal utility of money decreases dramatically, at least for most people, once you have enough to comfortably survive and provide for your family indefinitely.
I'm a white-collar knowledge worker. There is no downside to me getting my hands dirty with real work during my thinking time – that's time I can't spend with my family if I want to get anything done, because unstructured social interaction takes up the same space in my brain as the knowledge work does.
And the marginal utility of having cleaner toilet facilities increases dramatically when they tip over the boundary between "clean" and "not-clean". Given an apron and long gloves, I'd happily (most days, at least) clean shit off the wall, or pull pads out the U-bend, if it increased the chance the room was clean when I had to use it.
If I were able to choose whether or not to clean the toilets, and someone kept leaving them in a right state, then after the second-to-fourth time, I'd set aside some time to identify the culprits, and then I'd take measures to ensure they stopped, starting with confronting them over it: first in private (if possible), and subsequently in front of people whose opinions I'd expect them to care about. I might escalate further if it continued without good reason. This is not an option available to cleaning staff on the poverty line, who rarely have the time in their schedule to do this, and might be sacked if they used their breaktime to pull an insubordinate stunt like that. (I would not be capable of working in those conditions, and I expect I'd develop new and fascinating mental health problems if subjected to them.)
There is a major difference between volunteering to do something, and having your ability to live in your home contingent upon you doing it, as regards people's willingness to do various tasks.
I don't see why having to pay significantly more to people cleaning the toilets is a downside. It's a shit job, the pay should reflect that. Of course when people are forced into the treadmill just to get fed, they will take it for pennies, but that doesn't mean that it's the right way to do things.
Ideally I absolutely agree with you - I think everybody would. The problem is reality. Companies that make/sell real things, and not software, have almost shockingly low profit margins, with labor costs generally being their greatest expense by far. WalMart's net profit margin, for instance, is less than 3%. And as they have an absolutely massive number of employees (they're the third largest employer in the world in fact), their profit per employee is quite low - somewhere around $7,000.
Software and tech companies don't treat their employees better because they care more about their employees, but because they're drowning in money owing to ridiculous profit margins. Apple's net profit margin is > 24% with a greater than $2 million profit per employee!! [1] They could buy every single employee a new Ferrari every single year and still have [literally] more money than they know what to do with.
So you have this imbalance in the economy that employees working jobs that pay stupidly high wages are the ones where the companies could generally afford to pay them even more, dramatically more, but instead just hoard all the money. Whereas low wage jobs are the ones where companies themselves are also just 'barely getting by', but at a large enough scale - that can translate to billions of dollars, even if it's not much per employee.
[1] - https://appleworld.today/2024/10/apple-generates-2-3-million...