> Yes, it’s not equal and not free either. But we have it working today.
I mean, it's literally not working, even a little bit, for the vast majority of the people who would be net beneficiaries under a UBI. This is “let them eat cake” levels of out-of-touch.
The greatest mass-pulling out of poverty I personally witnessed in my lifetime was when the communist states of Eastern Europe moved to capitalism. More of that, please.
Capitalism is very good at allocating capital and as a result innovating to increase the "ceiling" of the human experience.
Capitalism is very bad at increasing the "floor" of the human experience. Almost by definition, there is some threshold, X% of the population, where the marginal reward is no longer worth the effort (in lay terms - its not "worth it" to R&D and innovate to build amazing and cheap products for poor people). Trickle down economics typically doesn't happen[0]. This band typically is the target and victim of rent seeking - i.e. stagnation with a higher long-term price than innovation. Historically, Capitalism has always just exploited the floor through rent seeking until that "floor" dies a few decades later, then continues to exploit the new "floor".
UBI is a focus on improving that "floor" of the human experience (different than other government programs by reducing stigma and increasing guarantees).
If you can think of it, I would love to hear about a way to incentivize Capitalism to increase the "floor" of the human experience. If you want more capitalism, we need to figure out how do we incentivize more "Altruistic Capitalism" (maybe a different name?). There are some companies kinda starting to do this, I've heard them called "For Purpose Capitalism"/"For Purpose Companies" e.g. Tom's shoes, etc.
The floor of the human experience is not what got us to the moon and invented the transistor.
> Trickle down economics typically doesn't happen
Is that why basically everyone in America has some sort of always-connected smartphone with more computing power than a laptop from 2008 did? Citing telecom infrastructure as your example is just arguing in poor faith as it's well known American telecom infra is an oligopoly/monopoly. Just because there are some market failures doesn't mean we should throw the entire market out the window by implementing UBI.
The point I’m making is about the floor. I agree with your statement that the market is amazing for the average, even the 25th percentile. But there is some percentile after which the market no longer prioritizes the people (except to rent seek). It’s simple market dynamics: At a certain point, the marginal value of acquiring users is no longer worth the marginal cost of acquisition.
For example, not everyone in the USA has smartphones[0]. The biggest discrepancy is by age, which we can possibly factor as a choice. The second biggest discrepancy is by wealth. There is a 2000bps difference in rates between people making more than $75k vs people making less than $35k. There is no profit in a $5/month smartphone plan. So the poorest will consistently be excluded.
This isn’t a market failure. Markets are in their nature utilitarian on a single metric and truly aren’t designed to improve the floor of the human experience.
Take the trolley problem for example. It’s supposed to be a hard problem because of all the nuance. The market “solves” the trolley problem trivially by running over the least wealthy group of people.
Markets aren’t a solution for improving the floor. At best, the market is punting the problem (until that group of least fortunate dies) and at worst the market is rent seeking, exacerbating the problem.
The link you sent shows a heavy bias towards age being the major contributor of people not having smartphones. According to it, 96% of age 18-49 have smartphones. Knowing the income distribution of the US, it's not possible that there's a 2000 bps gap caused purely by income disparity given that 96% number. What's more likely is that for older low income people the smartphone adoption rate is very low, but for younger generations it's very high (even though they're poor). That lines up with what I anecdotally see - even homeless people have smartphones.
> There is no profit in a $5/month smartphone plan
$15/mo plans with multiple gigabytes of LTE + unlimited 3G exist (Mint Mobile). There's an entire class of MVNO dedicated to the low cost market. I myself pay $25/mo for 10GB of LTE through AT&T. And the reason the price isn't lower is because the carriers (who are an oligopoly - that's why they pay massive dividends) lease time on the towers to the MVNOs and determine the price at which the time is leased.
> Markets aren’t a solution for improving the floor.
In the long run, they are. Smartphones coming into existence did more for the vast majority of poor than any amount of government subsidy of telecom bills did. (If you didn't know, the FCC subsidizes low income Americans' wireless bills!) The reason internet prices haven't been a race to the bottom yet like smartphones is precisely _because_ there is an oligopoly and a non-functioning market.
If you compare markets where Google Fiber entered to ones where they didn't, the impact of a competitor actually trying to win market share and compete is obvious.
Can you give me an example of a market with substantial competition that has ignored the 10th percentile of customers?
I have a few ideas. There are 3 problem-areas in the world holding back poor people today: education, health and housing. Look at what worked in other areas to raise the floor and apply it here. There is just one answer: free markets.
Not a coincidence but education, health and housing are heavily regulated everywhere and even governmentally run in some places. De-regulate them, allow the free markets to do their magic to find solutions, reduce prices and thus raise that floor.
Then remove artificial barriers in the jobs market like minimum wages. Allow people to be employed no matter how little their added value is worth. Free companies from onerous regulations and make creating a competing company easy and cheap instead.
Finally, separate the Economic power in state, just like Executive and Legislative powers are separated. Make it illegal for governments to engage in, regulate or influence economic activity. Focus their role on ensuring freedoms and applying externalities to markets through taxation. Also accept and use taxation's role in shaping societal behavior.
Oh, and re-energize private charity by removing the corrupt and ineffectual state welfare crutch.
No, you can't get an equal share with every other citizen that way, especially if you are a lower-class worker without substantial surplus income.