41–50 of 446 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When I worked in the movie box, that was not at all true. People would come in and ask about the movie. How long was it, whether it was any good, should they see another one instead? We gave them real answers. Your smartphone gives you all of these answers now.
Perhaps it's a matter of trusting the person behind the counter over your smartphone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, those are the best of both worlds when you're not dining at an upscale place. Don't have to use cash, don't have to wait for them to complete two round trips just to leave. I never understand why waiters don't give me a chance to hand them the card immediately when they drop the check. I don't need to sit with it for 10 minutes, especially after it took 10 minutes to flag you down for it. Years ago I was a wait…
If you want to review the check you're going to have to wait for a round trip. If not, just hand the card when the check comes or better yet, give them the card when you ask for the check.
I'm not talking about restaurants where you expect excellent service. I'm talking about restaurants where you can't take it as a given that they're going to be attentive to something you say when they put the check down.
I realize that UBI is a very popular position on HN, so I am hoping someone here has given this more thought and can comment. My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the macro scale inflation you would expect when redistributing trillions of dollars without commensurate economic value being created directly. Mo…
The thing is though, most people who would benefit from UBI are not currently generating enough economic value to live, or barely so, and many are probably not capable of doing so for any number of reasons. We can do this because:
> Money is a complicated subject, but essentially it represents a transfer of a future scarce resource. For commodities, the cost is essentially the sum of labor to generate it (either to mine the raw resources, build the factory, etc).
...the costs of all of these things are plummeting due previously to outsourcing, and now to automation. As manufacturing becomes more and more automated and the costs of these items continues to drop, you start seeing volume sales/renewing subscriptions being the only possible way to make money on some products.
> If no economic resource is being added to the economy, then you are just devaluing money. That is usually very regressive, and in this case could be made worse by people slightly reducing their economic labor because of the extra income stream. I could see this leading to a bad cycle, where any economic gains due to increasing UBI are later undermined.
This is my one beef with UBI and the one thing that does make me worry about it, but the way I see it is that whatever effect this does have the overall value of the currency cannot possibly approach the effects that the results of borrowing and printing currency to fund things like the outrageous defense budget (of the US) do, the economic benefits of which are muddy at best.
For me this is both an issue of economics -and- of people. To me, in a country as rich as mine it's embarrassing that we still have such vast areas of the country that look more like the slums of Brazil than the cities they're usually parked next to. It's also the simple fact that if you continue to displace more and more people, as we've done, who are too old/not smart enough to change careers, eventually something is going to give. Frankly I pitch UBI as how we avoid the second Civil War, where instead of North vs South, we have Urban vs Rural when the much larger (and better armed) population gets tired of the cities and their nonchalant attitude towards their plight.
These are legit questions and I hope we get better answers than mine (I'm no economist), but speaking as someone on the higher end of the income brackets who would never see a dime from UBI, I really don't think continuing to pretend that the rich can keep on getting richer and the poor poorer is a good plan. When it comes right down to it, there are more of the poor than the rich, and the cash won't save you when they break down your door with pitchforks.
UBI makes little sense whenever someone making 500K a year still gets it unconditionally. The marginal utility of that is nil, but its tax implications are massive (how do you even fund something like that in today's economy).
Guaranteed minimum income is: sustainable, sufficient for basic life necessities, can be implemented for the current population levels. Choose two. It is as inevitable as CAP theorem.
Set the income tax rate to 100 %, give an equal share of that money to every citizen. That should check all three boxes, shouldn't it?
The early adopters will be the largest companies with the most to gain from improvements in efficiency. This pattern is actually the one I'm worried about the most. New tech is giving outsize advantage to the major players across almost every industry, who can afford to invest in creating internal teams for these big new technologies. I see this in every industry I encounter. The middle class worker lost out over the…
There is a counterbalancing force, which is hard to see going away, which is that larger companies have a harder time seeing which way the wind is blowing and getting ahead of the curve. They make decisions slowly, and tend to be wary about investing in risky things that might pull resources away from their existing profit centers. They have something to defend, so they're anchored to past decisions in a way smaller…
1. Invest in small companies broadly enough so they get key insight so they can acquire before they become a threat. See GV, Intel Ventures etc...
2. Overwhelm small companies through brute force if they can't acquire. See: Facebook vs Snap
3. Invest in internal moonshots that startups can't compete with. See: Google X
In previous times, big monoliths didn't have the foresight to do this or weren't agile enough to restructure internally. I think the way AFGAM operates and has proven they can pivot at scale, using their market dominance to change that whole equation.
I realize that UBI is a very popular position on HN, so I am hoping someone here has given this more thought and can comment. My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the macro scale inflation you would expect when redistributing trillions of dollars without commensurate economic value being created directly. Mo…
I realize that UBI is a very popular position on HN, so I am hoping someone here has given this more thought and can comment. My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the macro scale inflation you would expect when redistributing trillions of dollars without commensurate economic value being created directly. Mo…
I think the best solution is instead of handing out liquid cash that can be used/abused in any way (and contribute to inflation as you say), the better option is to provide basic accommodations for every citizen in a given country. This means, basic housing / basic education / basic means of transportation (either car or ride sharing credits) / basic forms of entertainment / basic access to some vacation spots. That way no one needs to work anymore but you could keep the general citizen's happiness to a stable level.
The only problem with this solution is that the government has to pay for this by either borrowing money from private creditors or to tax the rich heavily. The rich are only rich because they're good at keeping their money, so it's a good solution, but incredibly hard to pull off.
The early adopters will be the largest companies with the most to gain from improvements in efficiency. This pattern is actually the one I'm worried about the most. New tech is giving outsize advantage to the major players across almost every industry, who can afford to invest in creating internal teams for these big new technologies. I see this in every industry I encounter. The middle class worker lost out over the…
> New tech is giving outsize advantage to the major players across almost every industry, who can afford to invest in creating internal teams for these big new technologies. Oohh, this very much. Inside Amazon warehouses, there are tens of thousands of employees called 'Pickers'. They walk around with these handscanners with 300x300 pixel screens that tell them where to go and what item to get next. For two years, my…
I realize that UBI is a very popular position on HN, so I am hoping someone here has given this more thought and can comment. My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the macro scale inflation you would expect when redistributing trillions of dollars without commensurate economic value being created directly. Mo…
If we're moving money from rich people to poor people, perhaps we'll see the prices of stuff rich people buy go down and the prices of stuff poor people buy go up.
The vast majority of stuff poor people buy is demand limited, not supply limited, so if poor people start buying more PS4's, Sony will just make more.
I'll also assert that food is demand limited, we have lots more capacity to increase production than people think. It doesn't matter though; the problem with poor people in the United States is that they eat too much, not that they eat too little.
The only thing that might see price movement is housing. That's definitely supply limited in many places. But maybe UBI will encourage people to move from high cost areas where UBI isn't sufficient to live on to low cost areas where it is. And movement will only happen in the margins -- most of the poor in the States already have a place to live, so demand shouldn't increase that much.