431–440 of 761 posts
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But if charity were reliable enough to rely on for livelihood wouldn't it make sense to remove any form of welfare or basic income?
And how many philanthropists practice charity by giving away money no questions asked?
I think if you could see close-up how these systems work now, you'd be convinced that it's completely not worth the cost in practice to try and figure out who "deserves" each of the many, many special benefits/allowances/exemptions available (plus it's incredibly difficult for potential recipients to figure out what they're eligible for, plus it imposes those costs on the people who aren't eligible, but end up having…
So since this is HN... is there any way to get to an MVP without having a sovereign state to experiment with? Generally, any communal institution either develops rules and mechanisms to prevent freeloading, or has an authority who acts to prevent such. Almost all of them succumb to a "Tragedy of the Commons" dynamic in terms of some aspect of quality of life. That said, there are some institutions that are identified…
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Check out the Sea Steading Institute. They are pushing towards colonizing the ocean and allow groups to form their own nations. If we can form tons of new nations to test out new ideas of government we will quickly learn what works and what doesn't.
Mostly we'll learn what governments are better at taking over others.
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You have heard of communism, right?
That's not why communism didn't work. Communism didn't work because they tried to micromanage every aspect of the economy. It was central planning that failed, not guaranteed minimums. A guaranteed minimum income without economic micromanagement or other central planning is what I'd like to see tried.
No, sorry, you're completely wrong. Communism didn't work because it destroyed every incentive for industrious, honest labour, supplanting healthy competitive free-market economics with a landscape of scheming and parasitism as people scrambled to exploit one another.
Communism failed (and will fail every single time another stupid generation which hasn't even bothered to pay attention to the past implements its ideas again) because, under Communism, there is no economy.
Communism is a terrible, terrible idea. Just like all coercive redistribution, which, proportional to the degree of redistribution, destroys economic growth. It's no accident that, other than a handful of tight-knit low-population nation cum communities with large oil stakes, the number of socialist policies enacted by a legislature correlates directly with poor economic performance.
The tragedy is that populations suffering from the negative effects of these policies delude themselves into thinking that an expansion of the policies will fix their woes, rather than hard work and smart investment. It's a vicious circle.
I agree there are immense benefits but it fails to recognize that markets rule the world. Once there would be a Basic Income, that is when market prices would go up to cancel out the benefit. You underestimate the rulers of the world (wealthy) to hold onto their advantage. I see it as many times better than welfare or unemployment since it is distributed equally to everyone. If there is a limit it will eventually be…
Why would prices go up? It's a money redistribution scheme, not a money creation scheme. The poor have more money, the rich have slightly less, the middle class have about the same, and the bureaucrats and parasitical corporations that live off administering the welfare system have a lot less. Goods generally purchased by the poor might go up slightly, but BI should shift the poor into the low end of lower middle cla…
Just like salaries have gone up over time yet the value of a dollar has shrunk, there would only be a momentary boom from the extra money and then the market, as markets purpose is, will find the value and adjust. It would keep things in more of a wave though like when minimum wage goes up, there is a temporary boom to low end markets but it always makes it back to the current distribution (I think minimum wage is a good thing). The money given would always find the way back up through pricing with a basic income though. Apartments suddenly would be x% higher and price increases because there is more money out there and if more actual printed then pricing has to come up. It is a forever balance and the only way to break it I can see is to ramp up the ladder individually.
Markets run everything and they are good, we would still all be farming and dumb if there weren't markets to trade goods for services. Markets and exchanges created conditions for the need for mathematics and allowed people have more free time as they could make products and sell them. This led to more time to think and create/innovate and the reason we have mathematics and technology today. But markets do find fair product to market/user value. Markets are as key to innovation and the evolution of human intelligence as anything. But they will always normalize after infusion, just recently we infused it from the top to banks, which may have kept us from the brink of destruction but only to get it back to 'balanced'. Why didn't they instead just give everyone 6k? Monetary distribution, unless we go away from markets/currency as value, will be pretty close to what we have now always (doesn't mean individuals can't climb it).
It could be proven that we all think like the wealthy on this, once a human gets ahead, they don't want to lose that ground or progress. Case in point the US, if you live in the US like I do, we might have a higher quality of life and currency status than many parts of the world. Would you give that up to allow all countries in the world to be equal in monetary value? If you aren't in the US how about where you live? The people above the fold want to keep it that way, the people below will want it another way, the people above the fold create the game rules, repeat until entropy.
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You should also look at it from the other side: if I have a job that I work at 8-10 hours a day (and might not do if I didn't need the money), how am I "punishing" the other guy by not sharing the fruits of my labor with him for nothing in return? EDIT: To put it another way: if I'm a productive worker and have a job, I am "rewarded" by working for a boss (taking orders from him/her), and having to turn over 35-50% o…
The correct answer here is that you are not valuing your opportunity costs highly enough. If you are working 8-10 hours a day, you should be making an incredible surplus. People in ancient societies worked less, and managed to survive just fine. With the technology available today, you could be making millions of dollars of surplus value, if given the opportunity. All you would need is the time to experiment with you…
Naturally it would be much better for businesses to do this than the government. Businesses have much higher motivations to use their money wisely (i.e. give the right amount to the right people and create the right incentives to ensure people are motivated to use the funds wisely, go bankrupt or get sued by investors if they spend poorly) than a government (which just gets to shrug or inflate the currency or embark on a fresh round of vilifying productive citizens).
Oh wait, don't we already have that? Bank loans or something, I don't know, lol.
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At the 7 billion mark we would need 5 planets worth of resources if everyone were to consume at the level Americans do You're assuming that we are already making maximal use of all available resources. We aren't; we're not even close. The reason the "poorer nations" are poor is politics, not lack of resources.
What indication did I give you that leads you to believe I'm making that assumption? I didn't make any claim to suggest why poor nations are poor, did I? I simply suggested that as poor nations evolve, their people will consume more.
So let's assume this was implemented. Some citizens, with their guaranteed basic income, will spend it wisely to cover their needs...as envisioned by proponents of this approach. Others, however, will waste their income and again find themselves short of what is necessary to cover their needs. What then? Simply increase the amount of basic income awarded, and hope that by throwing more money at the symptoms of povert…
It would be very tough to prevent people from borrowing against their future BI money, though. An irresponsible person could dig themselves quite a hole that way, and lenders would be eager to make that loan.
I think if you could see close-up how these systems work now, you'd be convinced that it's completely not worth the cost in practice to try and figure out who "deserves" each of the many, many special benefits/allowances/exemptions available (plus it's incredibly difficult for potential recipients to figure out what they're eligible for, plus it imposes those costs on the people who aren't eligible, but end up having…
My proposal is an e-currency with a time based demurrage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_(currency)) fee. The demurrage fees would be paid out equally to all consumers. The demurrage fee pay outs would be equivalent to a basic income. Since it is an e-currency, it would be independent of governments.
Why would businesses accept such a currency? In the future wealth inequality will probably cause economic demand to shrink. By accepting these types of currencies, businesses could grow while remaining profitable.
I have a proposal. Those who favor basic income should pick one or two recipients who are deserving of assistance, and open their own pockets and provide the money. The recipients will be glad and thankful, the donors will feel they have moved society toward utopia, and the rest of us can just get on with our lives without suffering the burdens that an additional entitlement would impose. I say this not to incite a f…
That would only seem workable if the donors could offset the amount of donation from their tax liabilities. Also, most BI discussions I've seen are about how to replace the existing benefits delivery infrastructure with BI, and not as an additional entitlement.
Yourapostasy: "Hey great idea, even better why don't we give them all the money they give back so they don't actually have to make a sacrifice at all for their beliefs!"