While interesting, I think this demonstrates why numbers are basically useless in these kinds of discussions.
Even with a very simplistic model, there are too many assumptions that can be contested forever and that will ultimately only depend on what the people debating already think about it. I, for example, would make the assumption that the marginal value produced by a Basic Job worker in an hour would be close to 0, while administrative costs are underestimated by an order of magnitude. Now, it might be fun to try these out when I get home, but I don't think I can get any significant insight from it.
And if you were to refine the model, it would then become too complicated to discuss in ways that could be comprehended by most people - too much effort and they'll stop listening.
Moreover, it fails to account for larger benefits to society, which cannot be measured in the way such a simulation works. For this one we could seem crime dropping (happier society, prison costs diminishing, etc.), global health indicators improving (thus preventing tremendous cost), etc.
So should we just go with our gut and intuition? There are places where that's a valid approach (a reason why Amazon Turk thrives) but understanding complex systems is probably not the place for that.
I do agree his model is probably overly simplistic. What could be awesome though is open sourcing something like this and having the debate evolve as a series of pull requests and forks that represent different assumptions and scenarios.
Why can't you model a happier society, reduced prison costs, etc?
Lets focus on the latter. How many people commit crimes due to lack of a Basic Income? (If you don't know precisely, choose a probability distribution that includes all values you find plausible. For example, choose a uniform distribution on [0, # of criminals/year].)
How much do each of these criminals cost society? (If you don't know precisely, choose a probability distribution that includes all values you find plausible.)
Multiply the former by the latter and subtract it from the result. Rerun the simulation. Maybe the result will change a lot, maybe it won't change much at all. I don't know what will happen, but the simulation will tell you what could happen.
Even with a very simplistic model, there are too many assumptions that can be contested forever and that will ultimately only depend on what the people debating already think about it. I, for example, would make the assumption that the marginal value produced by a Basic Job worker in an hour would be close to 0, while administrative costs are underestimated by an order of magnitude. Now, it might be fun to try these out when I get home, but I don't think I can get any significant insight from it.
And if you were to refine the model, it would then become too complicated to discuss in ways that could be comprehended by most people - too much effort and they'll stop listening.
Moreover, it fails to account for larger benefits to society, which cannot be measured in the way such a simulation works. For this one we could seem crime dropping (happier society, prison costs diminishing, etc.), global health indicators improving (thus preventing tremendous cost), etc.