| ▲ | shaman1 2 hours ago |
| https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2026/02/27/the-i... from the same author |
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| ▲ | maybewhenthesun 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| Geohot is a smart dude. But here I think he misses the forest for the trees. He has a point, certainly. But while he is harping about the U part of ubi, he's completely ignoring the B part. UBI is meant to provide some basic income so people don't starve. It's just an optimization of welfare programs where you have a ton of bureaucracy and make people jump through endless hoops and cause them endless amounts of stress (which is known to make people work less, not more). And replace it by just giving all citizens the same amount. Yes, that's a bit stupid for the people first paying taxes and then getting them right back again minus overhead costs, but if you think about it: that's what happens now too, only less efficient (in the netherlands, that is) so you pay even more overhead. On top of that comes the other realization: If the current trend of automating everything continues,we'll ultimately end up with (hyperbole) 1 person owning all the machines doing all the work. That 1 person earning all the money, and (in an ideal case) paying his taxes to give everybody else welfare. Which just is the same as UBI. In a certain way this already happens now. Most not-too-smart people that used to be gainfully employed as laborer somewhere are now on welfare, and the threshold for not-too-smart could go up rather steeply with the current AI trends. |
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| ▲ | echelon_musk 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | The owners of production paying taxes?! Seems unlikely. | |
| ▲ | mike_hearn 12 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Someone needs to make a website explaining why UBI doesn't work conceptually because this comes up over and over again on HN. You cannot make UBI work from money saved by removing means testing. Even UBI is a welfare scheme and would require significant bureaucratic hoop jumping to check that a person claiming it isn't: • Dead • Non-citizen • Already claiming it under a different name/bank account/etc • In prison • Moved abroad and so on. All that is expensive, and yet the overheads of even existing welfare systems just aren't high compared to the amounts they pay out. Getting rid of means testing doesn't magically make the numbers balance. Geohot is correct. UBI seems to only appeal to people who don't understand how the economy works. You can't have an economy in which one person earns all the money by definition. | | |
| ▲ | deaux 4 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | This is a complete non-issue in basically every wealthy country bar potentially the US, all five things you named are already known to the government at all times. They also apply the exact same way to any other scheme, there's nothing new about it. | |
| ▲ | flammafex 7 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Guess we'll starve then. Good luck dealing with hundreds of millions of hungry angry people. |
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| ▲ | joegibbs 13 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think it’s a bad idea for about the same reasons, but that’s assuming we’re implementing it right now in the current economy. If automation means that in the future there’s not much for all these people to do that creates value then it makes sense. |
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| ▲ | bravetraveler 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Also: https://geohot.github.io//blog/jekyll/update/2025/02/19/nobo... Apparently if we, the poorer ones, win the war of attrition, the problematic ones that own everything will resign to golf. Or something. Getting financial planning from a lottery winner. |
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| ▲ | zozbot234 28 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > I dream of a day when company valuations halve when I create a GitHub repo. Someday. Isn't that exactly what Anthropic did to the SaaS sector? Taking the "I can replace you with a very small shell script" line from BOFH lore (except that it was a bunch of SKILLS.md files, not shell scripts) and making it real. | | |
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| ▲ | zozbot234 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Which of course ignores the obvious point that UBI is all about taking existing resource redistribution and making it less costly and more efficient. Practically all Western countries redistribute income on a massive scale (compared to the default outcomes of a completely free market capitalism) in order to ensure everyone can provide for their basic needs, and that could all be gradually replaced by UBI. This is broadly in line with OP's suggested ethic "create value for others, don't play zero sum games" since capitalism is based on rewarding those who create the most value, whereas zero-sum games are largely political in nature. |
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| ▲ | mike_hearn 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Forget UBI and AI. They are distractions. Today it's very unclear that even just existing welfare schemes are sustainable. Political parties can buy votes with welfare and they do, so it's an unstable configuration. Europe is full of countries with this problem. A good example of a country in a downward spiral towards UBI hell is the UK. Around 25% of the working-age population now claim to be disabled, and around 10% receive disability benefits. Labour have a genius idea for how to fix this: let disabled people try out employment for a bit to see if they like it, whilst keeping their welfare payments. So they're turning disability benefits into UBI by the back door. The UK can't afford anything even close to this. It can't even afford the theoretically non-universal benefits schemes it has: it has massive government debt and deficits because its economy doesn't generate enough wealth, and its health welfare system (the NHS) experiences Soviet-style shortages all the time. This has happened despite that we've been mass automating jobs with computers and robots for decades. Chips aren't magic wands that make communism suddenly work. The problems with wealth redistribution are fundamental and will never go away regardless of your level of technology. If you disagree, fine, but please for the love of God focus on walking before you can run. Drive government deficits to zero whilst keeping growth at US levels, and then talk about more generous welfare schemes. (you can't magic new money by eliminating means testing either, see my other comment on this thread). | | |
| ▲ | deaux a minute ago | parent [-] | | > The UK can't afford anything even close to this. It can't even afford the theoretically non-universal benefits schemes it has: it has massive government debt and deficits because its economy doesn't generate enough wealth, I'm fairly certain its economy generates more wealth per capita than at any point in the past. If it doesn't, please explain how so. |
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| ▲ | card_zero 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The inefficiency of the bureaucracy of limiting welfare (or charity) to the poor and needy. I don't know, though, maybe giving everybody's money to everybody cancels itself out. | | |
| ▲ | zozbot234 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You're giving money to everybody but then anyone who isn't poor and needy has to pay taxes on their income that more than offset the money. It's taking "the bureaucracy of limiting welfare (or charity)" and folding it in with the IRS and the local Department of Revenue. | | |
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| ▲ | DeepSeaTortoise an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | You can never just use existing resources as long as those end up in places they're no longer accessible to the market anymore. Cash just about never sits just around as long as whoever holds onto it has no current need for extremely liquid assets. Like insurances. I doubt that the ratio of cash that ends up bound up that way to the one that doesn't changes a lot overall. The real problem to UBI is governments creating income via debt, IMO. | | |
| ▲ | zozbot234 an hour ago | parent [-] | | > The real problem to UBI is governments creating income via debt, IMO. The national debt is just a hidden tax on future generations. You're stealing resources from the future (by selling claims to them in advance, that's what national debt is) and spending them in the present. It's justifiable in extreme cases like a war (or perhaps for massive public investments that can't be funded within the existing budget - which is actually not that common), but really not otherwise. | | |
| ▲ | ncruces an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | It's fine if you're leaving something to those future generations. Like a bridge or a dam built to last 100 years. | |
| ▲ | notarobot123 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I've often thought of state debt as an accruing tax collection deficit. Selling bonds (creating more of this debt) is more politically convenient than raising taxes but it digs a deeper hole and obliges the state to pay interest largely to the same class of people they have failed to tax. | |
| ▲ | crimsoneer 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is like suggesting no business should ever borrow to invest. | | |
| ▲ | coffeebeqn 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I feel like government borrowing sometimes and government borrowing more and more every year and never paying it down until the end of time or more likely bankruptcy are two different things | |
| ▲ | zozbot234 35 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | If your business can't self-fund the investment, borrowing is justified. But if you're earning revenue that allows you to self-fund, why borrow? You're just incurring extra costs. |
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| ▲ | booleandilemma 18 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| He's a privileged startup founder who has 301k followers on X. Who cares what he thinks about UBI, of all things? Also he looks like an ass. |
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| ▲ | castral 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Ah, well... TIL to not take anything geohot writes seriously in the future. |
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