This might be an interesting read for ya.
Universal Basic Income Will Accelerate Innovation by Reducing Fears of Failure
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Re: Universal Basic Income Will Accelerate Innovation by Reducing Fears of Failure
#12No, no it won't. Innovation is generally not accelerated by people that are comfortable/have all of their basic needs met. It's accelerated when you are put into a situation where you need to innovate or fail. Failure is actually the stimuli and it pushes people to succeed more than anything.
For some people. For others, it ruins their lives. And those of their families. Failure can mean starvation, yes, even in the West; it can mean a collapse into addiction; or it can mean suicide.
Re: Universal Basic Income Will Accelerate Innovation by Reducing Fears of Failure
#13And one reason UBI is unlikely to ever really happen is that the few people at the top (who continually adapt the system to maintain their positions of dominance/wealth) exactly do not want the system to change. They especially do not want to democratize markets, lest they lose their positions.
UBI would raise the little guy, freeing him or her to explore more possibilities beyond the treadmill of survival. And that could lead to disruptions, and disruptions are bad for dictators/monopolists.
Re: Universal Basic Income Will Accelerate Innovation by Reducing Fears of Failure
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can go around thinking contentedly to yourself that basic income advocates are total idiots (and that those on the academic side, in particular, are outright frauds, and functionally illiterate in the field that they claim to have gotten their advanced degrees in) if you want to. But I might recommend doing some basic research on the topic, instead.
The way you put it, as though all ideas that ever existed only ever had opponents who were illterate and did not have advanced degrees in anything. But the second part sounds fair and will take that to heart
We can all tell that your conclusion was written before you read any studies or started on any premises, so please just stop having this conversation. One man's modus ponens is another's modus tolens, and all that.
Re: Universal Basic Income Will Accelerate Innovation by Reducing Fears of Failure
#15This is why the ACA was great for startups as well -- a shame it looks like it may be dismantled.
Of course while a UBI of some sort is necessary to deal with the widespread loss of jobs it is hardly sufficient. Most people want to feel useful (mostly as part of something rather than a starter of something) and addressing this need for dignity and acceptance is crucial. Else we'll have more social unrest.
Re: Universal Basic Income Will Accelerate Innovation by Reducing Fears of Failure
#16No, no it won't. Innovation is generally not accelerated by people that are comfortable/have all of their basic needs met. It's accelerated when you are put into a situation where you need to innovate or fail. Failure is actually the stimuli and it pushes people to succeed more than anything.
Oh, of course. Why didn't any economist ever think of just pointing guns at people's heads until they come up with world-changing innovations for fear of their lives?
Re: Universal Basic Income Will Accelerate Innovation by Reducing Fears of Failure
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Innovation is generally not accelerated by people that are comfortable/have all of their basic needs met. Really? We could certainly come up with stories of great innovation being done by uncomfortably poor people, but I bet if we came up with a list of 100 innovators, at least 80 of them would be from middle-class-plus homes and could almost surely have gotten any number of comfortable-enough jobs doing something un…
You're right, but I would retort that not all innovations are created equal. Example: The French artisans, the middle class of their time, created wonderful toys for the gentry but almost none of their wonderfully intricate work had any impact on the Industrial Revolution in Britain, while a handful of illiterate working class types turned the Roman water wheel on its side and massively improved mechanical power prod…
>Anybody can be 'possessed' by an idea, but it is clear that Silicon Valley has too many smart and well educated people wasting their time on trifles, their choices significantly retard what ought to be natural advantages.
Look, I like criticizing Silicon Valley for its ad-dollar silliness as much as anyone else, but that's fundamentally down to what VCs and angel investors are willing to fund. Everyone would work on Mars colonization, self-driving cars, and artificial intelligence if they could. Nobody pays you for that, though.
Re: Universal Basic Income Will Accelerate Innovation by Reducing Fears of Failure
#18No, no it won't. Innovation is generally not accelerated by people that are comfortable/have all of their basic needs met. It's accelerated when you are put into a situation where you need to innovate or fail. Failure is actually the stimuli and it pushes people to succeed more than anything.
The innovator's story is of people who are motivated to fix a pain point in their lives or the lives of loved ones.
Being destitute is only one of a panoply of goads that can serve as that motivation.
Re: Universal Basic Income Will Accelerate Innovation by Reducing Fears of Failure
#19No, no it won't. Innovation is generally not accelerated by people that are comfortable/have all of their basic needs met. It's accelerated when you are put into a situation where you need to innovate or fail. Failure is actually the stimuli and it pushes people to succeed more than anything.
Failure is actually the stimuli and it pushes people to succeed more than anything. A favorite saying of comparatively wealthy (or potentially wealthy) people, where "failure" means something on the order of "not being able to retire very comfortably by 40" or "not being able to make a high salary and do what I love for a living." Rather than "getting evicted", "never having decent health insurance", "being stuck in…
Okay, I'll bite.
In response to your failure comment: I meant being evicted or not having food on the table if you don't succeed. Not being able to retire by 40 is a very strange idea of 'failure'.
Who thinks this way?
Most businesses in the US are started with loans or personal money and failure means you can't pay the rent.
It will inflate our currency. The middle class will get a pay decrease and money will not go as far because the cost of many things will increase. Wages in many different industries will be increased because it will be difficult to find anyone to work for less than what they are receiving from the government. This sounds great, but it just means an increase in overall costs for many goods and services and the minimum to survive will now be more expensive.
It won't work in the long-run. Everyone seems to think we will have exactly what we have now, but with free money. Free money means we will have more and more people staying out of the workforce and we will eventually run out of people to tax.
Welfare destroyed the lives of many people in my extended family. Most people aren't that ambitious and UBI, which is basically just welfare with no strings attached, will only create generations of people dependent on the government.
Re: Universal Basic Income Will Accelerate Innovation by Reducing Fears of Failure
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right, but I would retort that not all innovations are created equal. Example: The French artisans, the middle class of their time, created wonderful toys for the gentry but almost none of their wonderfully intricate work had any impact on the Industrial Revolution in Britain, while a handful of illiterate working class types turned the Roman water wheel on its side and massively improved mechanical power prod…
>Anybody can be 'possessed' by an idea, but it is clear that Silicon Valley has too many smart and well educated people wasting their time on trifles, their choices significantly retard what ought to be natural advantages. Look, I like criticizing Silicon Valley for its ad-dollar silliness as much as anyone else, but that's fundamentally down to what VCs and angel investors are willing to fund. Everyone would work on…
That has something to do with it.
However I notice we have a lot of billionaires and millionaires in comparison to the former centuries. Not many Renaissance Men or aristocratic scholar-patrons (think Lord Asriel from HDM) though. The groups aren't special either. The modern cliques of the rich and powerful I see today are pathetic in comparison to the likes of the Royal Society or the Lunar Society.
Imagination and implementation of the new is hard, but is also a cultural issue. Today I think many people are convinced the low hanging fruit is picked and what remains is the difficult stuff that shall require large sums of capital and decade long education to solve for X.