This works in small experiments because when you give money to a small group of poor people (A) within a larger group of poor people (B), group A gains leverage compared to their prior position and compared to group B.
When you give money to all poor people, the net result is simply inflation[1]. If transfer payments were made to taper up from max(wealth) (receives $0) to min(wealth) (receives $average(wealth)), disparity would be brought to 0, which would naturally lead to everybody doing what they wanted rather than what earned them income. This would be a lot of fun, but it would unfortunately reduce the developmental value of humans to zero[2], and machines would evolve to replace us all (could be gray goo, could be the borg, etc.).
The true path to freedom from work is to work collaboratively on a humanoid robot with some basic rules for human interaction: 1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2) A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Those should suffice for a while, but I know not what will come of them down the line.
That's all for now :) Have a great weekend, everyone!
> When you give money to all poor people, the net result is simply inflation
Obviously, redistributive tax + BI schemes that result in some group having more money than previously increases demand and market clearing prices for goods disproportionately demanded by that group (and does the reverse for goods disproportionately demanded by the people who are net payers.)
So, clearly, the increase in effective buying power won't be as much as the increase in income compared to the pre-policy price levels would indicate.
But that isn't sufficient to make the case that BI won't mitigate poverty, however. Just that the degree of mitigation will be less than the most naïve analysis conceivable might suggest.
(Also, the link to Newton's third law to support this position was amusing.)
Moreover, there are a number of agricultural products where we're already keeping the price artificially high. Shifting demand toward these shouldn't see any increase in price for a while.
When you give money to all poor people, the net result is simply inflation[1]. If transfer payments were made to taper up from max(wealth) (receives $0) to min(wealth) (receives $average(wealth)), disparity would be brought to 0, which would naturally lead to everybody doing what they wanted rather than what earned them income. This would be a lot of fun, but it would unfortunately reduce the developmental value of humans to zero[2], and machines would evolve to replace us all (could be gray goo, could be the borg, etc.).
The true path to freedom from work is to work collaboratively on a humanoid robot with some basic rules for human interaction: 1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2) A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Those should suffice for a while, but I know not what will come of them down the line.
That's all for now :) Have a great weekend, everyone!
1. http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/newtlaws/Lesson-4/Newt...
2. http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/05/robots_of_the_f....