HACKER Q&A
📣 amichail

Why not make universal basic income conditional on the crime rate?


If the crime rate rises above a certain level, UBI stops for everyone until it goes back down.

Do you think this would be a good way to keep the crime rate low in a city/country with UBI?


  👤 PaulHoule Accepted Answer ✓
I'm inclined to think of

https://morbidology.com/the-town-that-got-away-with-murder/

I was talking to my wife the other day and she was testing a rather hard position which was that in traditional cultures disabled or crazy people were probably often quietly killed (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Mice_and_Men)

You could imagine that a society that thinks that way could be well organized into vigilante groups that would eliminate crime by eliminating criminals. From the viewpoint of our society that seems terrible problematic (do they kill deaf people? all non-conformists? gay people?) but if our civilization collapses the survivors will turn their back on everything it stood for and the next nation might start with a bill of responsibilities rather than a bill of rights.


👤 bdangubic
the opposite of this would be a better idea, more criming, more money

👤 allears
God no. The people who need the benefit don't have the ability to bring down the crime rate, so it's not an incentive. And the "crime rate" is a statistic that is poorly reported and can be easily manipulated. This just sounds like "behave or go to bed without dinner."

👤 bigyabai
How do you expect collective punishment to reduce the desire for crime?

👤 k310
"Crime Rate" has been used as a proxy or dogwhistle for non-white neighborhoods.

Currently, there is deployment of federal troops to "blue" cities with imaginary high crime rates, which are actually low. Truth is in short supply lately.

High crime may be associated with economically depressed areas, but how about fixing that problem rather than a symptom? UBI may help do that by raising the floor, giving people more purchasing power.


👤 throwaway94275
No, people will just stop reporting it. It might increase crime.

👤 timonoko
There was some talk in X that in affluent parts of Nordic capitals there is more petty crime. This is because poor parts of town have "self-policing", bystanders do not call police, but may seriously harm drug-head shoplifting.

Government housing project have brought criminal elements among the richies, and they do not know howto react.

This is most noticeable when you compare where booze is kept behind closed doors. In Helsinki this happens Eira but not in Kallio. And this is not because US Embassy is in Eira.