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0 pointschongli9y ago0 comments

You know, in the absence of any negative consequences for those actions

And there's the rub. Even if we could make 500lb all-tenderloin cattle you wouldn't see people buying hundreds of pounds of beef tenderloin for themselves every day. Billionaries like Bill Gates can already afford millions of pounds of tenderloin yet you don't see him eating that.

Basic income might cause the price of tenderloin to go up a little bit but so what? It's not going to do anything to the price of corn or rice or wheat. Maybe the price of an apartment in Manhattan will go up a little bit (I doubt it) but not a house in rural Wisconsin.

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msandford9y ago

> And there's the rub. Even if we could make 500lb all-tenderloin cattle you wouldn't see people buying hundreds of pounds of beef tenderloin for themselves every day.

First off, we can't make an all tenderloin cow. And second, that's the problem! If filet cost 1/4 of what it did now consumption might go up 100x. And obviously, it can't. But people would try. Until the price went up enough that the market for tenderloin started to clear again. But people have this extra money, right? So they can afford to spend more on hamburger. Congrats, we've raised prices!

chongliOP9y ago

People have the extra money but they don't have to spend it on hamburger. They can spend it on durable goods as illustrated by the Discworld quote above. And just because demand for something goes up doesn't mean prices will. Often increased demand is a signal that a new market has opened up and this draws in competitors, causing prices to go down.

Look at the headlines about solar panels! Demand for solar panels is much higher today than it was 20 years ago and yet prices are dramatically lower.

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