Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters • Hacker News Board

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#201

Post by Xcelerate » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:29 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #97

akerro wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As already mentioned, you're ignoring a fact that even by working there for 10 years, it's close to impossible to buy a part of land and build a house anywhere near a city. Land and house prices are too high to stay there for live. It's only profitable to live there, make savings and buy 2-3 houses in Uk/Germany for it. Like two of my co-workers did.

I've never understood why people believe/feel that buying land and/or a house is the pinnacle of... something. Sure, it gives the person a feeling of control and stability. But rooting oneself in one labor market (vs. being mobile) decreases one's employment options and therefore their salary. It's also very risky, as it's the equivalent of putting one's eggs in one basket and leaves their financial wellbeing in the…

While I feel neutral about your post, I upvoted it to counter the downvotes. It seems to follow the HN guidelines and merely presents your side of the issue, so I can't see any reason for it being downvoted other than people not liking your opinion, which doesn't seem fair to me.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#202

Post by sbmassey » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:31 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #179

sbmassey wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racist immigration policies are perfectly reasonable if you are a relatively small country whose culture would be at risk from large numbers of people from alien cultures.

What makes them reasonable? Do you subscribe to some sort of corporatist ideology, where the needs/rights of some vague swiss-german corporate outweigh the needs/rights of individual humans? If so, I'm curious about something. There are 2^{6 billion} possible subsets of humanity. Any individual human is a member of 50% of them. This makes it impossible to treat all corporates equally, so how do you determine which co…

In a given country at a given time, the set of people who are citizens of that country will have a given set of cultural norms, speak a particular language, have a particular understanding of the relation between the government and the people and the law. The immigration of enough people from outside that set will change those attributes, and therefore change how the country is run, which may be displeasing to the original set of people.

You seem to be assuming that cultural attributes are randomly distributed across the world in your second paragraph.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#203

Post by yummyfajitas » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:31 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #195

yummyfajitas wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you support unfair collective punishment and protectionism, why limit it to nationality-based groups? Why not restrict work opportunities for Black Americans also? And to protect "us" from the high rate of crime committed by Blacks, why not force them to live on the other side of town where they are less likely to harm "us"? (I put "us" in quotes, since I don't consider "us" to refer to any morally meaningful grou…

Good. I suggest you go to your local animal shelter and adopt a cat. But then you'll be favouring one over the other. Even better, adopt all the cats they have there, lest you support unfair collective punishment.

A better analogy would be that I adopt a cat and threaten people with violence for adopting the other cats.

I didn't say an employer must hire all (or any) anyone. I just said that if a Canadian is willing to pay a Tamil to cook her food, we shouldn't threaten these people with violence to prevent them from engaging in this peaceful trade.

In any case, taking as a given your previous premises (that unfair protectionism is ok based on statistical properties), you seem to have no rational problem with bringing back racial segregation?

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#204

Post by swombat » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:31 PM UTC

Vaebn wrote: post #78

areyoucrazy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside are populistic decisions like the Swiss minaret referendum... Oh, you liberals. You hide behind democracy when, in fact, you are a bunch of tyrants who would like to jam your ideas of immigration, multiculturalism, socialism etc. down the people's throats whether they like it or not. Why are you labeling direct democratic decision by majority of people as bad/downside? It seems that when people do someth…

Because its all fun and games until the "majority" suddenly realize they can just say "oh, and also, how about we vote to take all the money of that 10% here". There is such a thing as tyranny by the minority, and tyranny by the majority. The second is in fact much easier to do, since the first requires a modicum of power & ability for someone to keep himself in that position. The minaret thing is irrelevant, as a mi…

There is no right to construct the things you damn like upon your private property in most of Europe. There are a lot of zoning laws, safety laws, standards, etc. Generally, even if fairly loose places like the UK, each locality gets to veto the construction of something if they don't like it.

Also, the idea of private property, here or anywhere else, is highly tenuous. Have you looked into how much you actually own that property? Try not paying your property taxes for a few years and see who really owns your so-called private property.

"Real" in "Real estate" doesn't stand for reality, it stands for royalty. Your private property is granted by royal decree, and can be withdrawn by the same mechanism.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#205

Post by nickik » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:31 PM UTC

Zarkonnen wrote: post #54

k__ wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it was 2500 bucks. Maybe 1500 would get more people to vote for it, or something else chagned, etc.

Thing is that Switzerland is a super-expensive country. 1500 would not actually be enough to live on. You can get 4000 working at the till at a supermarket.

The idea of basic income is not to replace jobs. The idea is to give you the basics of living and food. Then you can take on additional work of some kind to improve your overall income.

You could live with 1500 if you really wanted to. Its not impossible.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#206

Post by ZoeZoeBee » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:34 PM UTC

alva wrote: post #161

mamon wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Populism is just another name for the very basic feature of democracy: giving everyone the right to vote means that the country is effectively governed by idiots, because they always outnumber smart, reasonable people.

Not sure if being sarcastic or not. Do you believe that holds up on a purely statistical basis?

Poll after poll decade after decade has shown the average American to be quite ignorant. The fact we live in a Constitutional Republic and not a Democracy is lost on the vast majority of the citizens. Only 40% can name the three branches of government, and far less than that can correctly describe the powers enumerated to the branches by the Constitution.

http://www.alternet.org/story/90161/ignorant_america%3A_just...

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#207

Post by ethanbond » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:35 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #196

jack9 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're ignoring a fact...it's close to impossible to buy a part of land What does that have to do with s3nny's post? I can't afford to buy a house in the area I work.

Not being able to buy a house near work is pretty common for younger people these days across the world.

Not wanting to buy a house seems pretty common for younger people, at least in my experience (in various parts of the US).

I think young people realize that the suburban dream was just that.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#208

Post by Al-Khwarizmi » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:37 PM UTC

cm3 wrote: post #67

Havoc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The construction of minarets is prohibited. Hardly surprising. Nobody wants to be awoken at ungodly hours by that howling.

I would vote for a ban on regular church bell noise as well if I had the choice. In Germany they also ring at ungodly hours in the morning for most programmers. Just as you wouldn't be able to pass a ban on a mosque's call for prayer in Turkey, you'll have a hard time enforcing a ban on church bells in Europe. That's the reality and I wish religious freedom would extend to not being bothered by any other religion's r…

Spain is a quite religious country as far as western Europe goes, and problems with church bells are rare. Most cities and towns I know have by-laws prohibiting noise over a certain amounts of dB during the night (typically 0:00 to 8:00 or so), churches just respect it and don't ring bells during that time. There have been cases of some churches insisting on ringing bells in the night, losing in court and being forced to stop.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#209

Post by yummyfajitas » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:38 PM UTC

sbmassey wrote: post #202

yummyfajitas wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes them reasonable? Do you subscribe to some sort of corporatist ideology, where the needs/rights of some vague swiss-german corporate outweigh the needs/rights of individual humans? If so, I'm curious about something. There are 2^{6 billion} possible subsets of humanity. Any individual human is a member of 50% of them. This makes it impossible to treat all corporates equally, so how do you determine which co…

In a given country at a given time, the set of people who are citizens of that country will have a given set of cultural norms, speak a particular language, have a particular understanding of the relation between the government and the people and the law. The immigration of enough people from outside that set will change those attributes, and therefore change how the country is run, which may be displeasing to the or…

If enough local people engage in political activism or other cultural activities, then those attributes may also change. Those changes may be displeasing to people who favor the original values.

Therefore, should we also ban political activism? If not, why not?

I'm assuming nothing about cultural attributes. I'm simply not understanding why the use of violence to preserve certain statistical distributions of cultural attributes is justified morally.

And if it is justified morally, I also can't see why one can't use the same justification to suppress various local cultural movements which might also change how the country is run and displease a bunch of people.

Re: Basic income plan clearly rejected by Swiss voters

#210

Post by nickik » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:38 PM UTC

hodwik2 wrote: post #117

Vaebn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if they had money to spend, then they wouldn't be "unwashed" and in fact thus be part of an ever increasing economy. Unfortunately that would require an understanding of how an economy works, rather than a zero-sum mindset and collectivist hate of seeing "other" people have money who "don't deserve it" because their "birth coordinates were wrong", even if you were to receive exactly the same. Talk about self-de…

There is something to be said for having been born (and as a result, raised) in a post-Enlightenment society. Migrants from pre-Englightenment societies almost always raise the general crime levels, take value that they didn't earn, and become the new underclass. Look at Irish and Italian immigrants in the US in the 1800s. We came from countries that did not have the same level of education, without the history of li…

That is a very one sided view of things. Lots of assumptions that have been proven false over and over again. If you actually look into the economic research on this questions you will quickly see that its very hard to make a case against immigration. Anti-immigration economists have to make arguments such as "over a period of 30 years immigration reduced the real wage of people without a high-school degree 5-8%". And that's of course a terrible argument that does not hold up in comparison with the positive effects.

Essentially xenophobia is the only reason why people are against immigration.