Togo made a digital government stimulus system in two weeks • Hacker News Board

Re: Togo made a digital government stimulus system in two weeks

#71

Post by egypturnash » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

galfarragem wrote: post #69

johnday wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you really cared about the poor, you would voluntarily donate money from your own pocket; you don't need a law for that. Instead, you want to use the legislator to compel the others to the involuntary distribution of their hard-earned money. Why "instead"? Why can this person not both donate directly and wish that everyone else were obligated to do the same?

Obligating people to do things that they don't agree with never lasts.

The US’ military budget says otherwise.

Re: Togo made a digital government stimulus system in two weeks

#72

Post by ByThyGrace » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

gerbilly wrote: post #57

cycomanic wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that in the west, and particular in the US, being poor is considered a character flaw. Rudger Bergman goes into a bit of detail on the history of that perception, which he attributes to the opposition against Nixon's UBI (at least in the US). So what we now have in many western nations is a huge bureaucratic body to prevent fraud on social security systems which at the same time significantly increase hu…

> The issue is that in the west, and particular in the US, being poor is considered a character flaw. This is the Just world hypothesis in action.¹ 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

Voltaire's "Candide or the Optimist" is a classic literary novella with this subject as backdrop. Short and wonderful, a must read.

Re: Togo made a digital government stimulus system in two weeks

#73

Post by hellojesus » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

reidjs wrote: post #16

dls2016 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it important to reflect on that?

I think it's important because it sounds incorrect, but in reality it works out like that. In my experience most people think that if you give a poor person money they are just going to spend it on things which make their life worse, like drugs. It's one way to justify not giving a few quarters or a dollar to a homeless person on the street when they ask.

Yes, but another way to justify it is that it's your money, and the utility you get from spending it on that random, asking person is less than you would get from the next best expenditure (opportunity cost).

That's not to say I don't give charitably or believe in it. I just don't think that anyone has to justify not giving money to some random when asked.

I don't believe it's the government's job to hand out money to people in need. I think private charities and churches do a lot better job of spending it than a bureaucratic government, and the auditability of where the money goes is way, way more transparent so long as you're not dealing with a shady organization (which you can easily vet).

Re: Togo made a digital government stimulus system in two weeks

#74

Post by Chris2048 » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #21

roenxi wrote: post #17

I dunno, is looking to "One of the World’s Poorest Countries" for economic advice really the best start? Even if they've done this well it seems risky to start trying to learn from the "successful" programs of poor states on the theory that maybe the things they are successful at are holding them back. I still haven't seen a definitive article on how the Chinese are running Shenzhen. There are probably useful and gen…

You comment only makes sense if you assume that they are poor of their own fault rather than due to a history of severe exploitation and other uncontrollable factors; and if you assume that the strategy can't be considered independently.

Then instead of absolute (global) measures, we could look at relative improvement rates instead?

Re: Togo made a digital government stimulus system in two weeks

#75

Post by samstave » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

Togo!

I did my very first class report in 5th grade in 1986 on Togo!

We had to pick a country in Africa to look up and do a report on, I chose Togo, and while sadly the Togo Ministry Of History will not be able to receive a copy of my report, as its been sealed in my archives which are under audit...

Every single time I see Togo, I think back on that report and learning about Togo.

Looks like I still have more to learn about Togo.

Re: Togo made a digital government stimulus system in two weeks

#76

Post by captn3m0 » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

vsskanth wrote: post #52

wtmt wrote: post #13

The speed of doing this is astonishing for sure, though the article also states that many people were excluded because they didn't have (or refused to have) the newer voter ID cards (issued after 2018) and also because they had to physically verify the cards due to fraudsters misusing lists obtained from polling stations. Exclusion is a larger issue that negates claims of equality or non-discrimination. Tangentially,…

I think in India iris scans are used in addition to fingerprint as biometric markers. Doesn't cover all cases but more robust than just relying on a finger or an eye.

No, Iris scans are used in the Aadhaar ecosystem during enrollment. But for authentication usecases (such as ration disbursement) - it is almost exclusively OTP/fingerprint verification.

Iris scans can be used, but are rarely used in practice anywhere except enrollment due to the higher cost of devices, the "creepyness factor", and speed of usage.

Re: Togo made a digital government stimulus system in two weeks

#77

Post by johnday » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

galfarragem wrote: post #69

johnday wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you really cared about the poor, you would voluntarily donate money from your own pocket; you don't need a law for that. Instead, you want to use the legislator to compel the others to the involuntary distribution of their hard-earned money. Why "instead"? Why can this person not both donate directly and wish that everyone else were obligated to do the same?

Obligating people to do things that they don't agree with never lasts.

Not sure what you mean by this. Taxes are so ubiquitous that there's literally an idiom about it.

Re: Togo made a digital government stimulus system in two weeks

#78

Post by tsimionescu » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

complianceowl wrote: post #58

typon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are so concerned with accidentally helping someone who doesn't deserve it that they'd rather sacrifice the well being of millions who do

The mistake you make is assuming that your supposed 'noble intentions' justify what you are proposing; they do not. Your noble intentions are absolutely hypocritical and fake. If you really cared about the poor, you would voluntarily donate money from your own pocket; you don't need a law for that. Instead, you want to use the legislator to compel the others to the involuntary distribution of their hard-earned money.…

"the idle" are almost universally those at the top of the wealth chain, doing nothing whatsoever and living handsomely off of rent, their ancestor's wealth and so on.

This myth of the idle poor has to die. Poor people are overwhelmingly working, and the vast majority are working much harder than the upper middle class, and almost universally harder than the 0.01%.

Unfortunately, most poor people made the mistake to work on crucial jobs such as nursing, teaching small kids, cleaning up, maintaining infrastructure, building buildings and so on. All jobs that are not deemed inprotant enough to deserve a living wage.

Re: Togo made a digital government stimulus system in two weeks

#79

Post by ctdonath » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #50

Robotbeat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In part because we have used regulations to require you to be rich. In India the cheapest new street legal car is the Tato Nano, around $2500 (maybe small electric cars from China even less). But the cheapest new car in the US is the Chevy Spark at $13-14k. Building codes and zoning regulations mean there’s a minimum price you have to pay for housing in the US that’s around a factor of 10 higher than in much of the w…

> In part because we have used regulations to require you to be rich. ... > Building codes and zoning regulations mean there’s a minimum price you have to pay for housing in the US that’s around a factor of 10 higher than in much of the world (less than $100/month for a single bedroom apartment in a city in India vs around $1000/month in the US in a city… median is currently around $1200/month). That's a pretty incre…

The "bubble" accusation works both ways.

"Building codes" is used here in a very broad stroke. Yes, minimum wage is 10x that of India, which means the basic cost of construction labor is already 10x. If you're going to quibble the point, you make the point: 90% of the cost of construction labor is due to building codes insofar as you can't pay less than that, and that labor payment requirement exists deep into the supply chain. Insofar as minwage doesn't account for all the high cost, there are thousands of other laws edging up the price of housing. Insofar as that cumulative burden doesn't explain all the high price, there's more.

Having driven the price of housing up just thru laws directly & indirectly related to home construction (which can colloquially be referred to cumulatively as "building codes" for purposes of casual discussion), there's the psychological factor of "if I'm going to pay $X for that, I may as well pay a bit more and get more." Ergo the price bumps up further.

Having seen all that direct & indirect increase of price due to laws, we then get to the land. Again, psychology intervenes: if the price of the building itself has grown, the value of the land shifts too. One can casually assume that a house of some cost will typically be placed on land worth 1/10th that price. One is not inclined to put a $500,000 house on a $1000 property. Ergo, houses will tend to be built on land valued commensurate thereto - and housing & population growth will tend to get located on such property. There is "dirt cheap" land in the USA, but few are inclined to live there.

Further discussion would call for combing thru an itemized invoice for building a home, starting with land and labor, then similarly examining why each component is chosen vs legal requirements, and breaking each component similarly for legal and labor costs. I expect there'd be little surprise that, after analysis, US and other first-world homes cost as much as they do - given that the very starting point of labor is an obligatory 10x, and the same legal sensibilities permeate all of construction.

Consider that I could, tomorrow, buy a lot in my state for $1000 and put a new $10,000 camper on it. Instant home, owned outright. Can't do that because, broadly speaking, building codes.

If you're going to make the "bubble" accusation, please explain what's wrong with it rather than equally flippantly dissing the original assertion.

Re: Togo made a digital government stimulus system in two weeks

#80

Post by WarChortle » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #64

typon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are so concerned with accidentally helping someone who doesn't deserve it that they'd rather sacrifice the well being of millions who do

>"Americans are so concerned with accidentally helping someone who doesn't deserve it that they'd rather sacrifice the well being of millions who do" This reads like hyperbole and cynicism. Americans as a whole donate a large amount to charity each year and the United States already has wide-ranging social welfare programs. I challenge the use of the word "accidentally", because there are legitimate concerns about de…

I am speaking in generalities because I don't know your exact stance on everything.

The American military budget is so massively over-bloated its sickening. No only that, they made 35 Trillion dollars in adjustments in 2019 alone. The year before they made 30 Trillion dollars in adjustments.

In 2018 the pentagon failed its first ever independent audit, instead of releasing the report, they changed their own rules to hide the report under the guise of "national security".

I shudder to think how much money is being skimmed from the pentagon budget, but no one seems to care.

> Why is it such a negative thing for I, as a contributor, to look at the system critically and with reservations?

Its not, but I find it disturbing how, in general, even the smallest whiff of fraud from a social program, brings all sorts of regulations and cuts. But the Pentagon making 65 trillion dollars in adjustments to its budget in 2 years is meet with silence.

For me, I would rather every single person in this country go to bed with a full stomach, even if it meant some amount of fraud, then to let the pentagon piss away more money.

If people really cared about not wasting their tax dollars they would be outraged over the pentagon. Doing a proper audit of that would probably get back so much money any fraud in social programs would be statistically insignificant.