The Future of Not Working • Hacker News Board

Re: The Future of Not Working

#271

Post by malandrew » Mon, Feb 27, 2017, 8:06 PM UTC

Fraterkes wrote: post #210

malandrew wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What amazes me is that people keeping keep increasing the definition of basic needs and we wonder why things become unstable. Universal healthcare is now considered a basic need. We're not even talking about basic healthcare either. I see people arguing all the time that everyone is entitled to a level of care that is for all intents and purposes a premium product that commands a premium price. If you were to tally u…

You could argue that "premium" universal healthcare can't be a basic need because it isn't sustainable, but the alternative, deciding who deserves it based on who can afford it, seems even worse. This growing sense of entitlement that many people complain about is mostly just normal people wanting all the same perks that modernity brought the wealthy, and I don't think thats unreasonable. (As a thought experiment, im…

    deciding who deserves it based on who can afford it, seems even worse.

What's wrong with this? Technology improves and productivity improves. Over time, more and more people are getting better and better healthcare. The healthcare the cheapest insurance available today can buy is better than what the richest had access to 100 years ago.

If premium healthcare were extremely cheap, everyone could afford it.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#272

Post by marmot777 » Mon, Feb 27, 2017, 8:58 PM UTC

thehardsphere wrote: post #267

marmot777 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, the universal basic income would not work in a number of countries that are either failed states on one side or authoratarian on the other, but much of civilization, including the developed world, falls in the zone where this program might work and is at least worth testing. I accept your premise that this can't work unless some minimum conditions are met. Given that, do you toss the whole idea or do you…

I think it could work in places like the United States, if it is implemented correctly. I'm skpetical that a correct implementation will be possible because the incentives that created the haphazard system of poorly designed transfer payments we have today aren't just going to go away. It's too easy for someone to say "Group X needs additional support for Reason Y" and end up with something just as expensive and comp…

Yes, I agree, as part of what makes this program appealing is its simplicity and its relatively un-leaky bucket. That is if I have $2000 available for Bob, it's still pretty damn close to $2000 by the time it reaches his account.

As you suggest, it's difficult to imagine this shoehorned in with the tangle of programs administered by multiple agencies.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#273

Post by marmot777 » Mon, Feb 27, 2017, 9:19 PM UTC

mateus1 wrote: post #231

thehardsphere wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you define simplistic terms? If you were hungry and someone gave you enough money to eat, that would be a solution regardless of how corrupt your government. Let's work through an example. North Korea is one of the poorest countries in the world, and many people starve there every year. It's also a ruthlessly oppressive totalitarian state; the government decides who can enter and leave the country. The gover…

Of course cash transfers won't topple dictatorial regimes, that's not what it is for. You can't expect a microeconomics proposal to solve an international political crisis.

Not to mention that if the resources simply aren't available, money doesn't perform magic. Money is symbolic, more powerful than your average symbol, but still, it's not edible.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#274

Post by sametmax » Mon, Feb 27, 2017, 11:43 PM UTC

EliRivers wrote: post #270

sametmax wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traffic jams, pollution, loads of wastes, material consumption, needs to administrate all that, size of the cities, ability for justice to be served, hospital facilities, availability of pre-schools, number of children in class rooms... People think overpopulation is a problem when you reach a certain cap, but I don't think there is a cap. I think it's progressive. Plus with our current population size, we are bound…

People (in our hypothesised Western industrialised nations) WANT density of population. People can already freely move to less densely populated areas, where they avoid traffic jams, pollution, etc etc etc. They choose not to. Density of population creates opportunities that people decide are worth the extra problems to be part of. Halving the population wouldn't stop this happening. There would be a rush to the citi…

Yes but:

- I believe lowering the population density will not annihilate those benefits. Paris was still Paris with the half of its population, but you could find a pre-school much more easily 50 years ago.

- the benefits of the current density can be achieved with a lower one given our current knowledge and technology

- accumulating wealth is probably not as much as linked to population density (in our modern countries) as that we have added science (machines and software) to our optimized slavery and theft.

- With a smaller population, we may be able on concentrate on quality of life. And education, which could lead to limit our current huge amount of wastes and appetite for superficial things. This could balance what we loose for a higher density population.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#275

Post by blamestross » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 12:52 AM UTC

apozem wrote: post #224

Razengan wrote: post #135

With 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…

> Don't want so many people? Mandate reversible sterilization at birth. No. Forced sterilization is eugenics, and we've seen what happens with that [1]. Eugenics is unconscionable for moral, ethical, legal and humanitarian reasons. When you give government or the private sector or any human being the ability to control other humans' reproduction, that power is ripe for horrific abuse. We know this because that's exac…

being a 2+ planet species wont help local overpopulation. it is too much more effective to ship a highly diverse sampling of frozen sperm and ova manufacture most of your people onsite. Moving that many people just does not make sense when you have more cost effective alternatives.

plus adding planets inside the solar system only gives you 2 real targets (mars and venus) mining asteroids to build spinning habitats is a much more viable colonization target.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#276

Post by omegaworks » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 9:21 PM UTC

watt wrote: post #232

omegaworks wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Don't want so many people? Mandate reversible sterilization at birth. So... they tried a little something like that back in the 30s and a lot of people didn't like it.

There was 2 billion people on Earth then. It's 7 now and will be 8 by 2024 if nothing changes.

Turns out, if you raise people's standards of living, make it possible to invest in their kids, they stop having so many kids. In fact, in Japan and about 48% of the world they're not having enough kids to replace the existing population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

Seems a lot more humane than sterile-by-default until magical government bot decides it's ok for you to continue your genetic lineage.

But we're technologists right? We don't care about that fluffy duffy humanity thing. Politics is not worth our time.

Sign here to add yourself to the baby waitlist. Party members get priority, of course.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#277

Post by ezy » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 9:32 AM UTC

cannonpr wrote: post #143

Razengan wrote: post #135

With 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…

If you have an IQ of 89 or below in a first world country, you might be able to barely complete high school, but are not going to become a math professor.

IQ (g) is normally distributed.

The only hope here is that there is some extrinsic element, similar to nutrition, but as yet undiscovered, that will improve human IQ for those on the left-hand side of the curve in a real way. Otherwise, no, not everyone can contribute in the same way.

Re: The Future of Not Working

#278

Post by pokemongoaway » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 3:09 PM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #241

pokemongoaway wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What reverses sterilization? Money? The possession of a certain ideology? Do you trust government in creating ideal criteria for which germ lines should live on - when the human genome project was such a failure?

It could just involve the signing of a simple document that says you and your partner are ready to raise a child together, and preemptively agreeing on who will get custody and who will pay how much should you divorce in the near future. The only criteria a government needs to check is whether the couple has lived together for a certain amount of time (say 1 year) without an incident of domestic abuse etc. or a past…

And you trust the government to keep it simple and not push any other legislation into it besides the simple "just live together for a year without incident"? What's the punishment for having a kid before you've lived together for a year?

Re: The Future of Not Working

#279

Post by nrdwavexe » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 4:53 PM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #135

With 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…

in order to believe this is possible, you have to believe in some group that has decided---a priori---to arrogate to themselves to decide what is a "meaningful contribution to something that is essential or impossible to automate" and furthermore you have decided that the situation is hopeless and that this group is ABSOLUTELY DETERMINED to discard AT LEAST SOME PEOPLE as INCAPABLE of MEANINGFUL CONTRIBUTION.

In reality, all you have is a bunch of people who periodically go around looking for troublemakers and deciding on which justifications to use to push them around. I don't like you, so I'm going to arrange things so that if anyone gets the notion that you are making a meaningful contribution, I will hurt them. That way no one will say that the troublemakers are making a meaningful contribution.