Here's how I think the only possible way this will ever be realized: A non-profit organization will have one of the highest (top 10 to pick an arbitrary number) net-worths of any company on earth.
The Catholic Church.
The Future of Not Working
151–160 of 279 posts
Re: The Future of Not Working
#152Work will have to be redefined. It's a psychological need to form teams and solve your needs or some others. That is the underlying basis.
Re: The Future of Not Working
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the first stage of testing a BI is to build a means tested program? Huh? The moral hazard of this doesn't concern me but maybe I'm misguided. vs That's a pretty cynical attitude...I doubt you're now gasping for air as you sink below the waves. I'm confused.
No i didn't say that was the first stage, I was assuming that they were going to test this with very poor people near the edge before they tested it with people higher up the income ladder. It's an assumption, possibly completely wrong. The second statement about sinking beneath the waves was there are people who are starving right as we speak even here in the U.S.
I am afraid of the situation where a person who is reasonably well decides to let go of opportunities in the presence of UBI. The parent post is a case in point - what if the person tries the startup idea; but since the person's livelihood is not on the line, the startup never lift offs?
If UBI endangers the motivation of people 'higher in the income ladder', they are likely to become 'people near the edge'. Since UBI hypothesis is testing ideas for the future, it is hard to predict but important that it does not create a demotivated/poorer workforce.
Re: The Future of Not Working
#154This is a nice article, but I'd like to remind everyone that it's probably also native advertising.
Re: The Future of Not Working
#155With almost 8 BILLION people on this planet soon, not everyone can meaningfully contribute to something that can't be done more efficiently by automation (which is also cheaper for everyone and easier on the environment) or done away with entirely. See [1], [2], [3] for examples from our not-so-distant past. You just cannot expect everyone to "earn" money while expecting technological progress to continue unabated. D…
I do wonder about the "not everyone can contribute" perhaps they can't contribute in building cars, but with a cultural shift and education, well there are a lot of avenues of research and mathematics that only require thought and basic tools like chalk. I tend to view an unemployed human as an awful waste of computational resources. This ofcourse assumes we haven't figured out strong AÍ or we don't want to, cause th…
I have been building houses in Indonesia and other parts of South East Asia and there is ample need for people who can build stuff and teach things.
Re: The Future of Not Working
#156With almost 8 BILLION people on this planet soon, not everyone can meaningfully contribute to something that can't be done more efficiently by automation (which is also cheaper for everyone and easier on the environment) or done away with entirely. See [1], [2], [3] for examples from our not-so-distant past. You just cannot expect everyone to "earn" money while expecting technological progress to continue unabated. D…
> Mandate reversible sterilization at birth.
This sounds like an absolutely atrocious idea ripe for corruption. It would be only a matter of time before those programs target the poor, those who whose political views, religious views, or ethnic origins are unwanted or inconvenient.
Re: The Future of Not Working
#157With almost 8 BILLION people on this planet soon, not everyone can meaningfully contribute to something that can't be done more efficiently by automation (which is also cheaper for everyone and easier on the environment) or done away with entirely. See [1], [2], [3] for examples from our not-so-distant past. You just cannot expect everyone to "earn" money while expecting technological progress to continue unabated. D…
> not everyone can meaningfully contribute to something that can't be done more efficiently by automation
I don't know if this statement is true, but a lot more jobs could be created in the area of teaching, caring for elderly and ill people, etc.
Re: The Future of Not Working
#158With almost 8 BILLION people on this planet soon, not everyone can meaningfully contribute to something that can't be done more efficiently by automation (which is also cheaper for everyone and easier on the environment) or done away with entirely. See [1], [2], [3] for examples from our not-so-distant past. You just cannot expect everyone to "earn" money while expecting technological progress to continue unabated. D…
That's a very classist attitude founded on a view of economic activity that pertained to human history only over a short period of tube and otherwise is a completely unrealistic view of the human condition.
Humans are amazing creatures. Moreover there is no limit to the work that can be done, there is always something else that can or should be done should the labor become available. I can assure you, people will not run out of valuable, substantive work to do.
People got much more efficient at farming (by orders of magnitude), that didn't lead to people stopping working it led to people finding other things to do such as crafts, art, and later manufacturing. Now that the save thing has happened with manufacturing people are again finding other things to do.
Re: The Future of Not Working
#159The article's title is misleading - it is not about not working, it's about giving money directly to poor villages for 12 years to provide what is similar to basic income but meeting fundamentally different needs in a very different part of the world. That said, I think it is a fascinating anthropological read. We often do not realize how many layers of wealth we had to stand on to possess our current wealth.
I agree, and I think the misleading headline is aligned with traditional resistance to consider BI as a serious economic policy.
In fact, what seems to be a common story in the article is that giving money directly in a way that is sustained over time allows people to plan long-term, stand on their feet and find better work or start businesses, making better long-term financial decisions to reverberate to the whole of the community.
The easy resistance to BI is to say that it will remove incentives to work, and that is what the headline seems to imply. The content of the article seems to suggest the opposite.
Re: The Future of Not Working
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not against cash transfers, but I feel like they can't solve everything, having a bit more money won't necessarily cause hospitals or schools to appear, so I think that some non-cash support will continue to be necessary to provide expertise that they couldn't obtain on the free market.
If direct cash transfers work the economy of the recipient country will grow. They can then afford to build their own schools and hospitals - and employ teachers and doctors to work in them.
If honest and moral people will rise to the leadership positions - which is not what always happens.