Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people • Hacker News Board

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#251

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 1:15 PM UTC

someguydave wrote: post #240

dragonwriter wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a conflict of interest any more than accepting any other public service, like fire protection, is.

>It's not a conflict of interest any more than accepting any other public service, like fire protection, is. You are correct, voting for a public service while being unwilling or unable to pay for the service is a fundamental conflict of interest. You ought not be able to vote if you aren't able to pay for the policy.

Everyone in society pays for all the benefits of organized society by bong subject to the law; each is entitled, in return, to participate in deciding what the law is. There is no "conflict" involved in any case.

"Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens, it isn't even a coherent concept to acting on one's own behalf as a citizen, where there is only one interest, one's own, being represented, and thus no opportunity for a conflict.

You may be abusing the term to mean a conflict between your interests and those of other citizens, but every citizen would have that kind of conflict, and that's what equal participation exists to resolve (and not what conflict of interest means.)

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#252

Post by someguydave » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 2:14 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #251

someguydave wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not a conflict of interest any more than accepting any other public service, like fire protection, is. You are correct, voting for a public service while being unwilling or unable to pay for the service is a fundamental conflict of interest. You ought not be able to vote if you aren't able to pay for the policy.

Everyone in society pays for all the benefits of organized society by bong subject to the law; each is entitled, in return, to participate in deciding what the law is. There is no "conflict" involved in any case. "Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens, it isn't even a coherent con…

>"Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens

That's precisely what a voter is doing. According to the Constitution, the citizen is sovereign. Therefore, when one votes, one is acting in a purely public capacity, completely separate from one's private interests as citizen.

Even Congress recognizes this about itself - it passed Amendment 27 which limits its ability to raise its own pay. It thus recognized that it is acting in a different capacity when addressing its own pay than when addressing normal business.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#253

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 2:33 PM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #231

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today we have automation on a scale never before experienced. Ultimately we will need approximately 0% of our population to work. This is not a problem; its actually the goal. We are not there yet, but a BI is a step.

Nonsense. Automation was the same 12 months, and largely the same 10 years ago. 0% working for some definitions of work . People want to be and do all sorts of things and will continue to, automation should help us live more comfortably and more gently on the earth, not make us redundant.

Factory automation today means almost nobody is needed to work factory jobs. And there is no longer a path from the factory floor to technical, engineering or management roles. Just minimum-wage standins for broken/missing equipment (moving a box from one conveyor to another during a rush).

34 million Americans resort to minimum-wage jobs because there's nothing else. This is not a fad or a downturn; its the new normal.

Citation: this article calls manufacturing automation "an explosion" in the last decade. http://www.automationworld.com/manufacturing-trends-2015

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#254

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:13 PM UTC

someguydave wrote: post #252

dragonwriter wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone in society pays for all the benefits of organized society by bong subject to the law; each is entitled, in return, to participate in deciding what the law is. There is no "conflict" involved in any case. "Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens, it isn't even a coherent con…

>"Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens That's precisely what a voter is doing. According to the Constitution, the citizen is sovereign. Therefore, when one votes, one is acting in a purely public capacity, completely separate from one's private interests as citizen. Even Congress…

> >"Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens

> That's precisely what a voter is doing.

No, its not. A voter is voting on their own behalf as a citizen, and not graned additional authority beyond that of a citizen to act as an agent of other citizens.

> According to the Constitution, the citizen is sovereign.

One might, perhaps, argue "according to the philosophy to which some subset of the framers subscribed, and which motivated the Constitution, the citizen is sovereign", however, to argue as you do is absolutely without support; the Constitution does not mention sovereignty, and insofar as it expressly grants the traits associated with sovereignty to any entity, it does so to both the states and the federal government, but not anyone else.

> Therefore, when one votes, one is acting in a purely public capacity, completely separate from one's private interests as citizen.

Even if one accepted the preceding claim, this doesn't follow from it. Individual sovereigns (as opposed to sovereign republics) have no distinction between private and public interests; that's the key thing that distinguishes a Republic from a Monarchy, that in the former government is not a private function. So, the idea that Constitutional sovereign citizenship (if it existed in the first place) would imply that citizens had both "public" and "private" capacities that were distinct is completely incoherent -- if individuals are sovereign, their public sovereign capacity is exactly their private capacity.

> Even Congress recognizes this about itself

Congress is, rather obviously, a body of people who each exercise additional authority in government beyond that of a citizen-voter representing themselves, and who are instead empowered to act as agents representing the interests of other citizens. That's the whole point of Congress.

> it passed Amendment 27

No, Congress doesn't pass amendments. Congress proposes Amendments (Amendment 27 was one of the 12 initial amendments proposed as the bill of rights.)

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#255

Post by kasbah » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #116

kasbah wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't put a dollar value on a lot of contributions towards society. For instance artists, for now, need to try and sell their work but a lot of cultural works are not necessarily sell-able. It also seems to me that, due to our racist and sexist history, there is a massive wage inequality geared towards industries that are dominated by white males. Who is paying for whom here?

Playing Devil's advocate, > You can't put a dollar value on a lot of contributions towards society You could still measure whether any contribution is being made at all and only give BI to those who are contributing. Which is essentially what existing subsidies for art & etc are for. > It also seems to me that, due to our racist and sexist history, there is a massive wage inequality geared towards industries that are…

Very good points, I think my comments weren't very focused on the argument at hand but more some thoughts that had been kicking around in my brain that go against the general sentiment of the parent comment.

I do think the poor and those with skills in areas that are beneficial to society but not necessarily commercial suffer under our current systems but maybe BI isn't the solution either.

I think the appeal of BI is more one for simplifying the bureaucracies around benefits but we would still need some bureaucracy for those that need additional income to support themselves (say people with severe disabilites that can not work).

Thanks for the thought out response, the downvotes were getting me down.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#256

Post by err4nt » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 5:33 PM UTC

clarry wrote: post #91

randall wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another data point: I became an entrepreneur while my wife worked fulltime. Many don't have this option.

I want to become an enterpreneur, but can't afford it. I'm not interested in "make money fast" schemes just for the sake of making money. I have ideas, things I want to try to build, but building my product would not happen overnight no matter how f *ing hard I work. More likely a minimum of anywhere between 6 and 12 months is required before it's feasible to start selling the product, and from there on it could take…

Try freelance, or contract work. You can be employed for yourself and making money right away without having to build a product or a business first. That's still running your own business and being an entrepreneur!

Switching from salary to contract can be a big stepping stone for creating the career and life you want :D

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#257

Post by ebalit » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 9:42 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #90

heartsucker wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was taking the most simplistic approach. Your point is better than mine, but usually the argument I see is that "there are welfare queens, and that's not fair, therefore there shouldn't be welfare at all." I was more arguing against that.

I'm arguing for good government , not no government . Unfortunately good government requires carefully understanding and administering a bureaucracy, taking into account individual incentives, and building something non-simple. Basic income is just a cheap mental hack used to seduce the lazy. It's like looking at a webapp, realizing that 75% of your compute cycles are doing error handling and then saying "aha, the so…

This proposition by Marc de Basquiat seems to be a lot more than "back of the envelope calculation": http://www.allocationuniverselle.com/doc/BIEN_Munich_2012-09...

It's a reform of the French tax system based around a basic income and flat taxes on income and wealth. The resulting redistribution is similar to the current system without the nasty border effects and bureaucracy.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#258

Post by someguydave » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 2:52 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #254

someguydave wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens That's precisely what a voter is doing. According to the Constitution, the citizen is sovereign. Therefore, when one votes, one is acting in a purely public capacity, completely separate from one's private interests as citizen. Even Congress…

> >"Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens > That's precisely what a voter is doing. No, its not. A voter is voting on their own behalf as a citizen, and not graned additional authority beyond that of a citizen to act as an agent of other citizens. > According to the Constitution,…

I am not going to engage you on what is. My position is that voters ought to be responsible for the policies for which they vote.

To do otherwise is madness, and the degree to which our legal and political systems say otherwise is madness.

Re: Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people

#259

Post by clarry » Wed, Aug 31, 2016, 1:54 PM UTC

randall wrote: post #248

clarry wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to become an enterpreneur, but can't afford it. I'm not interested in "make money fast" schemes just for the sake of making money. I have ideas, things I want to try to build, but building my product would not happen overnight no matter how f *ing hard I work. More likely a minimum of anywhere between 6 and 12 months is required before it's feasible to start selling the product, and from there on it could take…

I disagree that you can't afford it. I've learned how that if you can't make a business that's generating 10k / month in 3 months it's probably the wrong market. You could keep iterating through markets until one of them sticks. That's what I'd recommend, anyway.

I'm not saying it's impossible for me to start generating money in 3 months. But merely generating money is not of interest to me. There are certain things I want to build, things I'm interested in, and these aren't things anyone's going to ship in three months starting from scratch.