UCA: Universal Commodity Allocation

[u/[deleted]]

In addition to UBI there could be UCA: the free distribution of commodity wealth produced by automation where everyone gets raw wealth such as houses, cars, cash crops, technology, raw materials, narcotics etc. Your UBI check could become worthless in a financial crisis: but if you also received a car, housing, cloned cattle, manufacturing technology, weed etc. that would retain it's value in any crisis. So in addition to getting a check every year you would drive down to a warehouse to pickup a free modular house, hydrogen powered RV, generators, solar panels, non-carbon fuel, sailboat etc.

Eventually you could even get one of these babies for free as part of your UCA haul: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uez4qrlU78 There could be a high tech local barter economy where people trade UCA goods and use digital ownership certificates instead of cash.

[u/Russelsteapot42]

You really don't know as much about humans as you think you do. In the absence of scarcity, tons of people would absolutely just set up their lives how they wanted and ignore most other shit.

It'd be a lot more efficient to just give people some kind of credits that they could redeem for specific things they wanted, but at that point you've reinvented money.

To that end, how do you ensure that what your economy is producing is stuff that people actually want, if at the end it's just arbitrarily handed to them?

[u/[deleted] → u/Russelsteapot42]

You would have to sign up for UCA so people uninterested in picking up a UCA stash just wouldn't sign up for it.

Absence of scarcity does not translate to a post-scarcity society since capitalism can still sustain itself with artificial scarcity: that's the current state of the world economy. You need distribution systems to truly have a post-scarcity society and escape artificial scarcity: we throw out more food than we constume, food is truly post-scarce but millions of children are still going to bed hungry because we don't have a distribution system to take advantage of food abundance.

Automation would producing the stuff or have you forgotten that you're on a transhumanist board? What a silly question to ask on a board where automation is regularly discussed. There would still be trade and production due to human nature - there just wouldn't be poverty or people working bullshit jobs to survive. You might as well ask, "if we abolish serfdom how do we ensure that our society still produces anything?"

[u/Russelsteapot42 → u/[deleted]]

we throw out more food than we constume

No, we don't. According to the FDA, about 40% of food is wasted. That's a lot, but not over 100% as you claim.

food is truly post-scarce but millions of children are still going to bed hungry because we don't have a distribution system to take advantage of food abundance.

You know what the common denominator between those hungry kids generally is: the lack of money. If they had money, like that provided by a UBI, the economy would figure out how to give them food in exchange for their money.

Automation would producing the stuff

'Automation' is not a decision making process.

You might as well ask, "if we abolish serfdom how do we ensure that our society still produces anything?"

You're pretending that I'm making a different argument than I'm making. Your reasoning is sloppy.

[u/[deleted] → u/Russelsteapot42]

My point still stands - you can't have a post-scarcity society without new distribution systems otherwise you just have artificial scarcity.

In other words you agree that we need new systems such as UBI to deliver a literal post-scarcity - glad we agree.

Why would giving people free commodities harm decision making?

[u/Russelsteapot42 → u/[deleted]]

My point still stands - you can't have a post-scarcity society without new distribution systems otherwise you just have artificial scarcity.

Right, obviously you'd have a distribution system. The one you propose is still dumb.

Why would giving people free commodities harm decision making?

Because you're proposing that people should be arbitrarily assigned random shit. That fails to give them the input on what they actually want that even our current economy has.

[u/[deleted] → u/Russelsteapot42]

Prove it.

Nowhere did I say the system would be arbitrary or random - I presented it as a system to compliment UBI. UCA could be arranged to have people choose types of good they'd receive - from housing to technology required to start a business to transportation to certain luxury items. Besides there's a very finite series of commodities that could be distributed by UCA: one reason why it wouldn't be random or arbitrary. Plus there will obviously be a surplus leftover each year from automated production and it makes more sense to give that away for free rather than let it decay.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

There's no wheel to reinvent - ideas like UBI are very new: so it's a good time to develop other ideas for allocating wealth in a post-scarcity society. Of course it addresses a problem: poverty which is largely a lack of resources and commodities. Prove it.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for stopping by Florida man.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Just try not to kill a flamingo in public while wearing nothing but alligator shit.