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Guaranteed Minimum What?

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Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#381

Post by js8 »

cbanek wrote: post #4

> Humans are agressively being eliminated from as many business models as possible. Well that's true, where they don't add value. What's the difference between the case of getting movie tickets and your waiter at a fancy restaurant? One of them is practically a useless annoyance, and the other one is part of the experience. Someone in a movie box isn't going to tell you about the movie, or have a conversation about i…

> One of them is practically a useless annoyance, and the other one is part of the experience.

You make an interesting point, and I want to remark to it - this is why I don't think the problem is just automation, but in fact social inequality. You can always employ people to take care of a small, privileged class of people.

The extent to which society does this is completely cultural choice. I heard of comparison, in Brazil, several procents of households have a maid (or multiple), where in Sweden, less than half percent of households have one.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#382

Post by taway_1212 »

ethbro wrote: post #261
dredmorbius wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two distinct problems at play: 1. Workers whose contributions are undervalued. 2. Workers who cannot be trained or educated to provide high-value labour. These are both issues. (There are other categories: parents, caregivers, the disabled, sick, or handicapped, etc. But the two classifications above represent a major part of systemic failure of labour markets.)

3. Creating a hellish nightmare society where I am not afforded the opportunity to talk to a single random person in the going about of my average day. If you think the class gaps and problems of lack of cross-socioeconomic empathy are an issue now, wait until a middle class worker can go 24 hours without ever having to interact with anyone making less than them. "Raise taxes to fund foodstamps? Crazy! I hear the poo…

I've quit my remote job for in-office for this very reason. The hell of constant noise and having to warm up seat for 8 hours (even when I can realistically concentrate on code for maybe 4-6) is better than the hell of sitting at home alone coding for months. I think... (I'm starting the in-office job in a couple weeks).

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#383

Post by taway_1212 »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #342
brandonmenc wrote: post #19

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.

The ratings and reviews on my smartphone are often paid for or are artificially inflated by anyone willing to pay review sites or reputation management firms.

I think you just need to learn to interpret the numbers. For a big Hollywood movie, anything sub-8.0 on imdb in the week after release (where the shill votes still aren't outweighed by the general population votes) is bad. Just for this week, this rule of thumb tells me for example that the "Alien: Covenant" is probably not worth watching, and "The Circle" is a disaster.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#384

Post by erikb »

Actually I would argue to social systems and people arguing like this blog post we already have some slowing that process and its effect. We are actually already doing "better" than nature in this regard, because of culture (if you consider sacrificing survivability in exchange for social benefits better).

In general this is just normal evolution, something more efficient replaces something less effecient. And it's not completely stopabble. Let's say you can create laws that force McDonalds to keep staff and not use robots. Then at some point McDonalds will get bankrupt and another company will take its place. Maybe you can make the laws that forces all companies in your country to employ people despite not needing them any more. Then at some point your country will be too poor and gets replaced by another country, either through invasion, or revolution, or both.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#385

Post by taway_1212 »

qub1t wrote: post #354
loup-vaillant wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're looking at it with past-tinted glasses. This time is different, and the market won't solve it. Those newly opened industries have less people in them than the industries they replace. Mostly because our consumption doesn't increase as much as our efficiency does. Funny you mention Amazon. We enjoy their services, and they enjoy that expanded global market. And they do this by killing local businesses with thei…

50 years ago, who would have thought of search engine optimization as a job? Social media manager? Video game storyline writer? I'm not saying that people who are displaced will easily be able to retrain to a new job. They will have a rough time, and that's something we need to address as a society. But assuming that number of "jobs" for humans will decrease to zero is a big stretch. I think that even if we had robot…

All the jobs you've listed are white collar and require a probably at least above average intelligence. The high school dropout you remember from your childhood (the one who sniffed glue and never completely comprehended basic fractions) is not going to be a video game story writer. Once he got his issues in order, he made for a good truck driver though, and was a valuable member of society. I'm afraid it won't be so in the future.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#386

Post by danbruc »

dllthomas wrote: post #257
danbruc wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a general problem with universal basic income schemes. Unless technology and automation is advanced enough to provide goods and services for basics needs without requiring any labor at all, the scheme will fail in the worst case, i.e. everyone decides to stop working. And there is not much you can do against that, at best you can devise an incentive structure that makes it unlikely that you will hit the worst…

> Unless technology and automation is advanced enough to provide goods and services for basics needs without requiring any labor at all, the scheme will fail in the worst case, i.e. everyone decides to stop working. I mean, of course the scheme will fail if everyone stops working. But if not enough people are working to make enough stuff to satisfy demand, you'll see inflation, the BI will fall below someone's comfor…

If you understand it this way, then why wouldn't my original example be sufficient? The incentive structure might be really bad, but once you start starving you should certainly consider working again. Actually it seems almost everything would be workable in this way. Unless you structure a system in a way that it is simply unable to produce the required goods and services or makes access to them impossible for at least some, then at some ultimate point life threatening forces will set the incentives.

In reality, I guess, people would just overthrow your shitty system or circumvent it with black markets. So after thinking a bit longer about this, the requirements given in the initial comment seem not to be as straight forward as they may appear at first. What does sustainable mean? Is it sustainable if we make use of hunger to convince people to work? Is it implementable at the current population level if it entails something that the current population would never accept, say for ideological or religious reasons?

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#387

Post by bitJericho »

prostoalex wrote: post #353
bitJericho wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trivial. Tax the top 1 percent at least 75 percent for about 2 trillian or more once you close off loopholes, ban insurance companies altogether and make hospitals publish their prices, and require estimates for any work to be done, and you suddenly have a balanced budget.

> make hospitals publish their prices They already do http://www.oshpd.ca.gov/Chargemaster/ > ban insurance companies So lose the negotiating advantage and be forced to haggle on prices on a case-by-case basis?

Who haggles for anything besides cars in the us? Publish pricing and give estimates, shop around.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#388

Post by taway_1212 »

Frondo wrote: post #274
darpa_escapee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone in a movie box isn't going to tell you about the movie, or have a conversation about it with you. They are there to take the most basic info (movie, time) and money, and give you a ticket. It's also always done thru a thick bit of glass that makes communication sometimes difficult if not painful. This has not been my experience at all. People who work at theaters get discounted, if not free, tickets to movi…

"Speak for yourself. There is nothing more aggravating to me than self-checkout, it is slow, ... " Oh, man. I never use the self-checkout. It's part of the invisible work movement--stuff someone used to be paid to do for you, now you do yourself. Same thing with pumping your own gas. I miss Oregon, for how there was always someone to pump your gas for you. Is gas cheaper here in Washington, where you have to do it yo…

Huh? The pumping is automated, all you need to do is place the nooze and push a button? It seems crazy (like 5-star hotel level of service crazy) to have people in full time employment to do just that.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#389

Post by KJP191 »

freshhawk wrote: post #337
brandonmenc wrote: post #19

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.

Those smartphones answers are full of paid shills and scores made up of fraudulent votes. Even people who aren't on HN (and likely at least know this, if they haven't literally done it) are starting to catch on to that these days.

The person in the booth is literally employed by the movie theater

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#390

Post by taway_1212 »

moxious wrote: post #351
wvenable wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the biggest problems in the world right now is how much money is simply captured and not moving through the economy. A huge amount of money is sitting around adding very little economic value. Redistribute that money to people who will use it to consume products and services and you get a much more active economy.

Where is this money that is captured and not moving? Most invested dollars are still moving in one form or another. Invest in a company's bond, and they're using that money to build a factory.

If you buy stocks, you could argue that this money is not doing anything (except maybe the person who sold you the stock now has cash and is presumably doing something with it).
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