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Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

businessinsider.com

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Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#21

Post by quaquaqua1 »

echelon wrote: post #18
sak5sk wrote: post #2

Great to see tech leaders get behind UBI. Now is the time and Yang is the candidate of a lifetime. I never understood how people buy into the whole "break up the tech giants" argument. It makes no sense, just a great platitude with no real accomplishment. Who wants to use the 2nd best Twitter or Facebook? Not a single person.

How does UBI even work? Won't it just lead to rampant inflation where the basic income is spread thin, eaten up almost entirely by the rising cost of goods? It seems like this in turn will require an even higher basic income, which exacerbates the problem. Isn't an analogous situation that of private loans for tuition? Tuitions have risen across the board to eat up all the new "free" money in the system. Won't UBI ma…

The main cause of inflation is the artificial restriction of supply on certain items from govt/business.

Housing isn't expensive because of the cost of labor/materials, for example. It's expensive because the government literally says "you can't build that here". So the 100 old parcels of land where you want to live have 1000 people bidding for them.

UBI maybe on paper would cause additional inflation in that scenario. But it might also be the catalyst that allows people to move elsewhere for work, such as to a low cost of living area, because UBI can be relied on to survive.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#22

Post by jon_richards »

sak5sk wrote: post #2

Great to see tech leaders get behind UBI. Now is the time and Yang is the candidate of a lifetime. I never understood how people buy into the whole "break up the tech giants" argument. It makes no sense, just a great platitude with no real accomplishment. Who wants to use the 2nd best Twitter or Facebook? Not a single person.

If you break them up, they’re forced to develop common protocols. Who wants to use the 2nd best email client? A lot of people, it turns out.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#23

Post by pdonis »

keiferski wrote: post #19

I haven’t read all of the literature on basic income, but my (admittedly semi-educated) impression is that one potential downside is that it fosters dependence on the state and is thus not anti-fragile. I’m just thinking out loud here, but: what if instead of a flat cash payment, the basic income program provided free technologies that covered basic needs. For example, a small greenhouse device that can grow enough f…

> what if instead of a flat cash payment, the basic income program provided free technologies that covered basic needs

What if, instead of yammering about UBI, Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur, went out and started a company to make such technologies? The way to innovate is to innovate, not to try to milk money out of the government.

The whole discussion about UBI misses this basic point: to make it easier for people to make a living, you don't give them more money, you make the basic needs of life cheaper. And why doesn't that happen? Because the government keeps putting its thumb on the scale and preventing people from doing it. For example, the government subsidizes large agribusinesses instead of letting innovators and entrepreneurs find cheaper ways of providing people with food. The government prints money and gives it to banks for mortgage loans to keep home prices high while rigging building codes so the only method of construction that's feasible is two by fours and drywall, instead of letting innovators and entrepreneurs figure out cheaper and more durable methods of construction for homes.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#24

Post by save_ferris »

keiferski wrote: post #19

I haven’t read all of the literature on basic income, but my (admittedly semi-educated) impression is that one potential downside is that it fosters dependence on the state and is thus not anti-fragile. I’m just thinking out loud here, but: what if instead of a flat cash payment, the basic income program provided free technologies that covered basic needs. For example, a small greenhouse device that can grow enough f…

I’d argue that giving out this free technology still creates the dependency you’re trying to avoid.

Realistically, a lot of people aren’t going to know how to use this technology up front, so what are they gonna do?

What if the technology breaks and needs to be fixed? Do people rely on the state for maintenance? You’re still paying for it either way.

In your first example, it sounds like the ultimate goal is grow enough food to sustain the family. But which is easier to actually accomplish that goal: an existing market that accepts cash, or some fantastical technology which would inevitably come with its own complexities, given the nature of the problem it tries to solve?

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#25

Post by hnbreak »

Yang says that breaking up tech monopolies won't help (with giving a very weak example) but he doesn't give a proper answer how to get competition back. Why does China have 20 different kind of Youtubes and the western world just one?

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#26

Post by intuitionist »

Altman and Yang are a natural fit because they’re both very invested (Altman literally so) in the narrative that automation is coming for huge numbers of jobs. But the economic statistics just don’t back this up. Total factor productivity, a (rough) measure of the technological contribution to economic production, is growing considerably more slowly than it was during the early 2000s, and much more slowly than during the 1930s, when the Second Industrial Revolution really came for the masses (and helped catalyze a huge labor shift away from agricultural work—but didn’t put all former farmers out of jobs).

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#27

Post by root_axis »

danShumway wrote: post #10
sak5sk wrote: post #2

Great to see tech leaders get behind UBI. Now is the time and Yang is the candidate of a lifetime. I never understood how people buy into the whole "break up the tech giants" argument. It makes no sense, just a great platitude with no real accomplishment. Who wants to use the 2nd best Twitter or Facebook? Not a single person.

I'm assuming you're asking in good faith, so I'll point out three problems with your line of thought. First, you assume that having multiple competitors is pointless if one product is the clear winner. Proponents of breaking up tech giants would argue that Twitter and Facebook are not actually very good products right now, and the reason they're popular is largely due to network effects and anticompetitive behavior,…

> Proponents of breaking up tech giants would argue that Twitter and Facebook are not actually very good products right now

Based on what criterion?

> reason they're popular is largely due to network effects and anticompetitive behavior, not innovation

Can you give any examples of anticompetitive behavior exhibited by social media companies?

> the existence of competition would force the original Twitter to innovate at a faster pace than it's moving right now

If the "original" twitter kept the twitter brand and domain, absolutely nothing would change since that would be the equivalent of the status quo. It's not as if it's technically difficult to create a product similar to twitter, thus any attempt to break up big tech companies would mandate the retirement of the incumbent domain and brand. How would this be implemented practically? Also, what happens to all the user PII? Does it just get copied over to a new corporate entity which in effect doubles the risk of the data being hacked or leaked?

On a more speculative note, I am not sure if it is a given that "innovation" in the realm of social media is necessarily a good thing for the consumer, especially considering that the barometer for social media success is engagement. Social media "innovation" inevitably means "getting more people to look at ads".

> The products are good for different things, and fit different niches and use-cases

Right, but those products exist because they serve a niche in the market, simply breaking up companies doesn't create a niche.

> Her plan is to split Apple so that the company controlling the iOS App Store isn't the same company selling software on that store.

How would this work? Would Valve be allowed to sell 1st party software on Steam? Would Google be allowed to sell their software on the play store? It seems pretty impractical to prohibit a company from selling their own products on a platform they own.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#28

Post by djrobstep »

echelon wrote: post #18
sak5sk wrote: post #2

Great to see tech leaders get behind UBI. Now is the time and Yang is the candidate of a lifetime. I never understood how people buy into the whole "break up the tech giants" argument. It makes no sense, just a great platitude with no real accomplishment. Who wants to use the 2nd best Twitter or Facebook? Not a single person.

How does UBI even work? Won't it just lead to rampant inflation where the basic income is spread thin, eaten up almost entirely by the rising cost of goods? It seems like this in turn will require an even higher basic income, which exacerbates the problem. Isn't an analogous situation that of private loans for tuition? Tuitions have risen across the board to eat up all the new "free" money in the system. Won't UBI ma…

Every redistributive program that gives the poor more money increases demand for goods that poor people want - that's the whole point!

It's no problem because supply can adjust to compensate - the exception to this is land, which is why a UBI ought to be funded with a land value tax. This is why Yang's UBI isn't very good, because it is sales tax funded (he's too much of a centrist to tackle land and capital, touching either of these things upsets rich people's delicate feelings too much).

An underdiscussed advantage of UBI is that it's good even for those that don't get more out of it overall than they put in, because it spreads income out more evenly over the whole lifecycle (people generally have not enough money early in their careers and during child-bearing, and too much during later life and death).

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#29

Post by rapsey »

quaquaqua1 wrote: post #21
echelon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does UBI even work? Won't it just lead to rampant inflation where the basic income is spread thin, eaten up almost entirely by the rising cost of goods? It seems like this in turn will require an even higher basic income, which exacerbates the problem. Isn't an analogous situation that of private loans for tuition? Tuitions have risen across the board to eat up all the new "free" money in the system. Won't UBI ma…

The main cause of inflation is the artificial restriction of supply on certain items from govt/business. Housing isn't expensive because of the cost of labor/materials, for example. It's expensive because the government literally says "you can't build that here". So the 100 old parcels of land where you want to live have 1000 people bidding for them. UBI maybe on paper would cause additional inflation in that scenari…

That sounds like a pet theory someone in the bay area comes up with. No economist I’ve read has any such opinion.

Re: Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

#30

Post by lotsofpulp »

hnbreak wrote: post #25

Yang says that breaking up tech monopolies won't help (with giving a very weak example) but he doesn't give a proper answer how to get competition back. Why does China have 20 different kind of Youtubes and the western world just one?

Do the Chinese YouTube’s have positive cash flow? I don’t even know if youtube has positive cash flow.
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