MiserableTonight5370 t1_j3cwgy7 wrote
Reply to comment by FinalJuggernaut_ in I asked chatgpt to write a UN resolution in favor of universal basic income, and this is what it returned. by AnneBancroftsGhost
First: you are the one who made the claim, if we're being rational it's on you to support your claim.
But since it's so incredibly easy to demonstrate how wrong you are, I'll take a few seconds to educate you in front of the rest of the thread. A few seconds of review on the UBI wikipedia page shows:
Julius Caesar implemented a 100 denarii UBI for common roman citizens (https://books.google.com/books?id=aSmr_bVR2-kC).
He had a full-time job I think. May have had a bit of education.
Saint Thomas More wrote about a fictional society that explored the concept in Utopia (What Money Can Buy: The promise of a universal basic income – and its limitations, The Nation magazine). He had some education: he was a lawyer, judge and statesman.
Juan Luis Vive's, who was advocating a municipal -level UBI in Spain before Thomas Paine and others picked up the theme was educated at the university of Paris, and worked as a professor at some of the most distinguished universities in Europe at the time.
Most of the modern thinkers like Bertrand Russel and C.H. Douglass who publicly advocates for something like UBI had degrees.
If you'd like to take the time to see the magnitude of your wrongness, you can peruse this list too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_advocates_of_universal_basic_income . There are a lot of people with jobs and letters after their names on that list.
If I've sounded a little bit harsh here, it's because I want to emphasize your intellectual laziness, and try to encourage you and others not to make unsupported claims then incorrectly place the burden of proof on people who rightly call them out. If society operated the way you're operating, we would be in a lot of trouble.
Do better.
FinalJuggernaut_ t1_j3czeww wrote
>First: you are the one who made the claim, if we're being rational it's on you to support your claim.
Proving negative is kinda hard, have to come up with loads of examples.
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>But since it's so incredibly easy to demonstrate how wrong you are, I'll take a few seconds to educate you in front of the rest of the thread. A few seconds of review on the UBI wikipedia page shows:
Beautiful.
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>Julius Caesar implemented a 100 denarii UBI for common roman citizens (https://books.google.com/books?id=aSmr_bVR2-kC).
>
>He had a full-time job I think. May have had a bit of education.
Indeed. And also he had a huge empire, all of which worked very hard to allow roman citizens, who comprised maybe 1% of population, their UBI.
lol
Great example - millions enslaved to provide for a few.
Also, worked really well.
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>Saint Thomas More wrote about a fictional society that explored the concept in Utopia (What Money Can Buy: The promise of a universal basic income – and its limitations, The Nation magazine). He had some education: he was a lawyer, judge and statesman.
No relevant education or experience whatsoever. If he was digging ditches, his opinion could've been more relevant.
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>Juan Luis Vive's who was advocating a municipal -level UBI in Spain before Thomas Paine and others picked up the theme was educated at the university of Paris, and worked as a professor at some of the most distinguished universities in Europe at the time.
Wow. A whole professor. I'm almost impressed. But how good was he at constructing bridges? Huh?
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>Most of the modern thinkers like Bertrand Russel and C.H. Douglass who publicly advocates for something like UBI had degrees.
lol
Again: no work experience, no relevant education, and no relevant background.
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>If you'd like to take the time to see the magnitude of your wrongness, you can peruse this list too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_advocates_of_universal_basic_income . There are a lot of people with jobs and letters after their names on that list.
A lot of people, none of which ever held a hammer in their hands. Their opinions are simply worthless.
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>If I've sounded a little bit harsh here, it's because I want to emphasize your intellectual laziness, and try to encourage you and others not to make unsupported claims then incorrectly place the burden of proof on people who rightly call them out. If society operated the way you're operating, we would be in a lot of trouble.
>
>Do better.
Thanks, I'm fine.
MiserableTonight5370 t1_j3d2f2t wrote
The fact that you can't back up an over-broad negative claim is a clue that you should not make it. That's exactly my point.
And I'm confused by your approach to intellectual gatekeeping. Does discussing the economics of universal basic income require expertise at economics and all other types of expertise don't provide any credibility at all, or do you need to be a hammer-wielding bridge builder? I'd wager that the number of economics PhDs that have sizeable construction experience is low enough that if we let only them discuss economic policy we'd have a pretty short discussion. More directly, it feels like you're moving the goalposts though: you said that the people who came up with 'the idea' had no work experience or relevant education. You didn't say that they had no 'construction' experience or 'economics' education, you said work experience or relevant education. Someone with public policy education who works in government has both relevant education and relevant work experience to discuss the idea of public policy like UBI. If you disagree, I'd love to know what criteria exactly you were implying when you made your over-broad, negative, impossible to support claim.
FinalJuggernaut_ t1_j3d8pv9 wrote
>The fact that you can't back up an over-broad negative claim is a clue that you should not make it. That's exactly my point.
I don't think so.
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>Does discussing the economics of universal basic income require expertise at economics and all other types of expertise don't provide any credibility at all, or do you need to be a hammer-wielding bridge builder?
Discussing the economics of UBI requires very solid understanding of how the real world is working, and obtaining such knowledge without working in fields that physically create all the wealth is not possible.
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>I'd wager that the number of economics PhDs that have sizeable construction experience is low enough that if we let only them discuss economic policy we'd have a pretty short discussion.
And this is one of the main causes of the weak state of the global economy.
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> More directly, it feels like you're moving the goalposts though: you said that the people who came up with 'the idea' had no work experience or relevant education. You didn't say that they had no 'construction' experience or 'economics' education, you said work experience or relevant education.
Yeah, my bad, should've formulated it better.
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>Someone with public policy education who works in government has both relevant education and relevant work experience to discuss the idea of public policy like UBI. If you disagree, I'd love to know what criteria exactly you were implying when you made your over-broad, negative, impossible to support claim.
Well, to be precise, everybody have a right to discuss ideas. The question is whose opinions should have more value that others.
In my opinion someone with public policy education who works in government is concerned by their career only. In my opinion government employees should not have a right to vote, let alone make decisions like these, also because they never bear any responsibility.
Criteria?
Hmmm.... Lemme see...
Intelligent humans that have experience either directly managing large masses of other humans or have studied human intelligence, human evolution and human history.
Oh, and no, no politicians and no gov. employees.
MiserableTonight5370 t1_j3dc65b wrote
Well, your revised position is much more reasonable. Score one for discourse.
I still completely disagree with your insistence that making a claim you can't support well is a good idea. C'est la vie.
I think it would be better if only intelligent people made decisions for other people, but I have yet to hear any ethical, or maybe moral is the better word, ways to enforce any kind of such system in practice.
My last little quibble with your revised criteria is that there are very few types of management of large masses of people that can't be considered a form of government/politics. Seems like you're triangulating on the CEOs or owners of large companies. If that's the case, then I'll politely disagree with you - I would trust academics with less vested interest to provide more intelligent and more objective positions on economic policy. Important to note: I said LESS vested interest (than corporate magnates), not none at all. I would say that rank-and-file academia have less vested interest in economic policy than the average CEO, as an example.
Completely agree that politicians' opinions on economic policy are not worth repeating, much less forming one's own opinion on.
Edit: p3, 'little' => 'few'
FinalJuggernaut_ t1_j3dfrhx wrote
>Well, your revised position is much more reasonable. Score one for discourse.
Cheers :)
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>I still completely disagree with your insistence that making a claim you can't support well is a good idea. C'est la vie.
That's completely fine. I'm not upset XDXD
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>I think it would be better if only intelligent people made decisions for other people, but I have yet to hear any ethical, or maybe moral is the better word, ways to enforce any kind of such system in practice.
Which is precisely the reason why I haven't mentioned morals or ethics.
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>My last little quibble with your revised criteria is that there are very few types of management of large masses of people that can't be considered a form of government/politics. Seems like you're triangulating on the CEOs or owners of large companies. If that's the case, then I'll politely disagree with you - I would trust academics with less vested interest to provide more intelligent and more objective positions on economic policy. Important to note: I said LESS vested interest (than corporate magnates), not none at all. I would say that rank-and-file academia have less vested interest in economic policy than the average CEO, as an example.
Which is why I mentioned direct management. I should've clarified - people who know by name all who they manage. Owners of successful hitech startups (leave alone Musk - he's tad too big XDXD), operations managers in corporations and such.
Why do I tend to trust this kind of people? Because they tend to be very rational and they know people. Academia are too detached, they live in their academic world and tend to believe that everybody else is just like them, maybe less educated.
Also, academia is very interested in ensuring their own employment. Contrary to businessmen, who can just make money out of thin air, literally buying lemons and selling lemonade if there's nothing better, academia isn't really capable of surviving in the wild and depends on government donations.
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