571–580 of 761 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it would be cheaper to use a machine to build the bridge, give the money you save to the people, and then let them add value to society in some other way.
So direct them to do that other thing for their Basic Job and use the machine for the bridge.
I support the idea, but there are other things that have to go with it in order to really work and not end up like the broken economy that Argentina had to put up with when doing something similar. It would need serious tax reform, changes to how business are treated locally and internationally. One suggestion for tax reform is to apply taxes strictly on only sales tax, not income tax. Certain property taxes may stil…
Can you explain what you see as the problem and why the solution to that problem is not to tax income?
We spend billions just paying accountants to fool around wit millions of rules that most people do not understand. Sales tax is very simple. Rich people get out of paying taxes by doing inefficient things like tax shelters.
Now, the sales tax would need to be refunded for those in the basic income bracket, especially on food, housing, etc..
Remember that HN article about "We'll not incorporate in the US" by some Danish group? What needs to happen is to encourage businesses to run locally, and part of that is simplifying the entire structure to represent what the economy is closest to--consumption.
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Basic Job is stupid because it leads to silliness like building bridges with hand labor instead of machines.
If labor is abundant and machines are scarce, why is this stupid?
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I'm not convinced that Basic income would necessarily deal with edge cases all that much better. A simple basic income implies that you provide everybody with the same minimum income and they cut back on public services etc to the minimum since in theory people can now buy what they want. But there are problems in that not everyone can live off the same amount of money. This is especially true with disabled or very i…
Additionally, the cost of living varies widely, for example, in the US. Between climate differences (it costs more to stay warm in Alaska in the winter than it does in Florida), logistical differences (fuel costs more in Hawaii than it does in Texas), to real estate costs (housing is more expensive in SF, CA than in Norfolk, VA), to transportation costs (parking in NY is more expensive than in Jacksonville, FL), etc.…
Conversely, why should we give less to people who live in more affordable places?
Basic income is the first step to an empirically ethical society, which accounts for inherent human limitations and behaviors. Evolution is an extremely feckless game, and thus far we've been trapped by its whims, endlessly struggling in a free-for-all battle for survival. In order to transcend and escape our evolutionary origins, we will first and foremost need to understand ourselves. How we came to be, what behavi…
> Basic income is the first step to an empirically ethical society Not sure, but wouldn't basic income induce increased prices for commodities? If disposable income increases for everyone, then there is an incentive to increase prices everywhere (including accommodation which is a significant part of monthly expenses), thus negating the positive effects of basic income. Then you know what would happen next... people…
Despite the slight price increase, it would still be a net benefit for poor people.
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…
> ...is there any way to get to an MVP without having a sovereign state to experiment with? Or is this solely in the realm of public policy? I don't know, but technology like http://ethereum.org may make it possible to move some things from the realm of states into software. For example, given data feeds of births/deaths/retirements, it might be possible to implement a software contract for voluntary social security…
Building such an identity system algorithmically on top of a social network also doesn't seem to make sense because this can be cheated too.
One solution that might work would be to prove that you are a conscious person to a system like ethereum through a "Ghost Key" like in Ghost in the Shell. Assuming that there is a way to "fingerprint" each person's ghost, such as creating a hash of something that doesn't change, that could be like e key to such funds. I highly doubt that there is something constant in the human connectome though.
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...conditional social support creates poverty traps, by imposing the steepest marginal tax rates (sometimes exceeding 100%) on the poorest people in society. There are cheaper policies than BI which don't do this. One example is Basic Job - if you need a job real bad the government gives you a really bad job. This has no poverty traps, and (unlike BI) has no disincentive for work. You also get to avoid spending money…
Basic Job will likely leave you little time to train in an area where you could be more productive for society. Basic Pay is designed to provide you the time to do that. Sure there has to be a bit of trust that you're going to not just sit on your arse, but very few people actually want to do that (despite what a lot of people think), and it's psychologically healthy to want to make the most of your life. A lot of th…
BI would not provide increases to science nor art. It would dilute them. I get enough emails as it is from whacko's who think they've upturned Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, or created some perpetual motion machine. If society valued these people's output they would be financially rewarded already. There's already incentives in present society, called capitalism and competition! There's a reason why only a tiny fraction of actors, musicians, and artists earn a living. That living is what society thinks of their art.
Further, plenty of people on social programs are quite content with sitting on their ass. And some deservedly so, due to true disabilities. An able-bodied adult has no moral right to income which they did not earn. That is theft from the truly deserving individuals who either were born with extreme hardships, or became disabled.
Note: A few years ago I was a graduate student (24k/yr living) in Boston who made time to play drums. You can express your art (or science) without a handout.
Basic income is the first step to an empirically ethical society, which accounts for inherent human limitations and behaviors. Evolution is an extremely feckless game, and thus far we've been trapped by its whims, endlessly struggling in a free-for-all battle for survival. In order to transcend and escape our evolutionary origins, we will first and foremost need to understand ourselves. How we came to be, what behavi…
> Basic income is the first step to an empirically ethical society Not sure, but wouldn't basic income induce increased prices for commodities? If disposable income increases for everyone, then there is an incentive to increase prices everywhere (including accommodation which is a significant part of monthly expenses), thus negating the positive effects of basic income. Then you know what would happen next... people…
Its bound to be a major disruption. McD's will have to automate; you'll need a Roomba for your lawn; everybody in the world will want to come here regardless of the job situation.
Maybe that's all right; maybe we can sustain it. But it will be a rough couple of years.
Obviously this is not a new idea... Twenty years ago I sat around with college mates, in Canada, listing the merits of the "Guaranteed Income" and quite frankly I still support the idea today. If you took all the salaries, property and operations cost associated with distributing old age security, welfare, disability, unemployment wages etc etc, it would probably pay for much of the cost associated with the Guarantee…
> The problem is money = power and society is hell bent on gaining power. A major source of trouble now is that money is tightly coupled with politics. It boggles the mind how it's not universally understood that politics should be entirely de-coupled from private money. All of politics should run 100% (including elections) on a public fund. Unless this is done, very few things of true substance will be fixed. > The…
That's a horrible idea. The dominate parties would become even more dominate with the backing of the government. I do not approve of my tax money being spent on ridiculous political commercials either.