51–60 of 116 posts
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What is the status of the MOOC? When can we expect additional details? YC should consider writing the occasional blog post about the projects it's working, it would be interesting to follow and the feedback from HN might be useful.
We'll announce details on structure and timing in January. Good idea; I may try something like a "State of YC" update once every 3-6 months.
We've started giving money to a small pilot group. We're still working out the kinks but expanding it slowly. The plan is still to run the pilot until we're confident everything is working well (especially with issues like making sure no one loses eligibility for income-based benefits) and then start the full-scale study.
There is no other way to define this except that it is socialism brewing here. In that light, I'd like to refer you to the words of Milton Friedman, 'If you want to learn the truth about socialism, look at how people vote with their feet'. People always leave socialist nations when their inevitable collapse occurs. Please folks, I'd like to urge you to reconsider such initiatives. Take a look at these two articles ab…
This is not a capitalism vs socialism or left vs right issue.
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> For the vast majority of people, if they don't have to work in order to earn, most people will choose not to work. So then who supports these folks? Those people are already being supported with fantastically expensive bureaucratic benefit systems. Sometimes those systems also act as a disincentive to return to work, trapping people on benefits, by making it impossible for them to get education or work experience o…
> Those people are already being supported with fantastically expensive bureaucratic benefit systems. You are basically saying: We already have bad socialism so lets try good socialism . UBI is as bad if not worst. Distorted market will be least of our worries. I am in favour of guranteed, no-string-attached food & shalter.
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> For the vast majority of people, if they don't have to work in order to earn, most people will choose not to work. So then who supports these folks? Those people are already being supported with fantastically expensive bureaucratic benefit systems. Sometimes those systems also act as a disincentive to return to work, trapping people on benefits, by making it impossible for them to get education or work experience o…
>You should reward effort, not necessarily achievement. Note that this is different to "cuddling our young ones". It is to a degree a question of semantics seeing as though we're mostly on the same page on most issues. However, I'll still indulge you; sustained effort often leads to achievement. I find achievement to be the best metric to measure effort, otherwise how do you know there's real effort if a given proble…
HN is full of smart people who through their school life were rewarded for their achievement, not effort, and who got a rude awakening when they went to college and discovered that they were not the smartest in the room, and that the work was hard, and that they were ill-prepared for that hard work.
> I personally know of a man in the UK who has an arrangement with his employer to receive payments in cash only. This thereby allows him to still claim unemployment benefits from the government. The employer benefits by not paying PAYE taxes and the employee benefits by earning from two income streams putting him fiscally at par with people who have much higher qualifications than he does.
But that's the point. HMRC have a bunch of people employed to detect that abuse; DWP people have a bunch of people employed to detect that; local councils have a bunch of people employed to detect that.
We can eliminate fraud, and the expensive fraud detection systems, by telling people it's allowed and expected that they work in addition to their UBI.
We've started giving money to a small pilot group. We're still working out the kinks but expanding it slowly. The plan is still to run the pilot until we're confident everything is working well (especially with issues like making sure no one loses eligibility for income-based benefits) and then start the full-scale study.
There is no other way to define this except that it is socialism brewing here. In that light, I'd like to refer you to the words of Milton Friedman, 'If you want to learn the truth about socialism, look at how people vote with their feet'. People always leave socialist nations when their inevitable collapse occurs. Please folks, I'd like to urge you to reconsider such initiatives. Take a look at these two articles ab…
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Egalitarianism always collapses on itself. The incentive structure that is created when you take resources from producers to award to non-producers (who are often indolent actors) is horrible. Many many experiments have been conducted and all failed miserably leading to the suffering and death of millions. I mean, Soviet farmers usually opted to kill their livestock as opposed to having government take it and redistr…
> The incentive structure that is created when you take resources from producers to award to non-producers. I'm sorry, but this is idealogical nonsense. The classic 'non-producer' is the rentier. Quite the opposite of what you seem to be implying (i.e. that the needy are the 'non-producers').
Anyone can make it if they apply effort. Anyone. There is no discrimination against hard work, smart work.
A non-producer simply means, someone who is not providing a good or service of value to a willing buyer.
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Nonsense. There are social programs that have been incredibly successful. And pointing to the USSR is a shameful strawman.
Why is the USSR a strawman?
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> The incentive structure that is created when you take resources from producers to award to non-producers. I'm sorry, but this is idealogical nonsense. The classic 'non-producer' is the rentier. Quite the opposite of what you seem to be implying (i.e. that the needy are the 'non-producers').
It really isn't a question of the rentier class vs proletariat. Capitalism solved that problem a long time ago. Surely, capitalism has lifted billions from poverty. Anyone can make it if they apply effort. Anyone. There is no discrimination against hard work, smart work. A non-producer simply means, someone who is not providing a good or service of value to a willing buyer.
How exactly did Capitalism solve that problem? We still have stark class divisions between people who make the majority of their money from capital ownership and people who have to work to survive.
I don't work on YCR Basic Income, but the early steps of any experiment are pretty time consuming and not particularly interesting (e.g. logistics, experiment structure, etc...) I'd guess we can expect an update early next year with some of those details and a reflection on existing progress. In their blogpost, they provide an email for feedback: basicincome@ycr.org They're likely very consumed by all the work they n…
I expect there are quite a few people here who would find logistics, experiment structure, etc... fascinating. Which is not to say it's necessarily the best use of their time to update us on it.
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There is no other way to define this except that it is socialism brewing here. In that light, I'd like to refer you to the words of Milton Friedman, 'If you want to learn the truth about socialism, look at how people vote with their feet'. People always leave socialist nations when their inevitable collapse occurs. Please folks, I'd like to urge you to reconsider such initiatives. Take a look at these two articles ab…
Friedman himself would disagree with you. He supported a related idea - a negative income tax. Hear him describe it here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM . This is not a capitalism vs socialism or left vs right issue.