"If you're low on income and have a family to support" then you made poor life choices and natural selection comes into play.
Like it or not it is a force of nature.
YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics
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Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics
#102They'll do nothing and buy drugs and alcohol.
People have been doing that with free money since forever. You can't package the free money in a different way and expect different results.
Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine that the money comes from no where. We have capabilities to offer people some things that they probably aren't capable of buying. Like say better food, more electronics, better homes, etc., Instead of expecting everyone to work to "earn" their living, we can instead guarantee some basic standards of living by giving everyone money that comes from no where. It just requires us to rethink productivity and econo…
I don't think robots change anything. Robots increase efficiency of human workers, they don't replace them entirely. Netflix and Redbox are highly automated, but they still have human workers; just fewer than Blockbuster did. Robots that don't need humans is science fiction for the foreseeable future. They are not producing output from nothing; they are just tools that amplify the productivity of human workers. This…
"...they don't replace them entirely..."
Tell that to the thousands of people who have lost their jobs on assembly floors.
In fact, BI is a hedge against the future where there simply won't be enough for all of us to do.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/world-wi...
http://www.wired.com/brandlab/2015/04/rise-machines-future-l...
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/what-happens-when-rob...
...and so on.
Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics
#104I don't understand how the math on basic income is supposed to work. If we gave this amount of money to every person in the US it would cost $7.2 Trillion dollars, roughly double the entire US federal budget. How is this supposed to work? Do only certain people qualify for basic income?
I've found that doing the math absolutely doesn't factor into this. That's where it falls apart--it's not the most efficient if you're giving money to people only to have to reclaim it from 90% of them. It's a fun thought experiment but at a national scale the math really falls apart because there isn't an external source of funding to grab money from.
Don't need it, necessarily. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/printing-money-...
Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics
#105"If you're low on income and have a family to support" then you made poor life choices and natural selection comes into play. Like it or not it is a force of nature.
Right, because you know my life well enough to make that kind of judgement.
It's a nice, clever cop out but ultimately a cop out. Bicyclist gets hit by a car. Loses his legs. Did he make poor life choices? I wouldn't say so. Say that same bicyclist has built a career as a great door to door sales man. Now he's on hard times. Did he still make poor life choices? Should we, then, all avoid bicycles and work in door to door sales, even if those two things happen to be things people enjoy and, on the whole, beneficial?
You can think of an unlimited number of scenarios where someone has fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. In fact, the most callous and unhelpful thing to say is "you made poor life choices bro" like you even know what you're taking about.
Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics
#106Would individuals be restricted from using any government social welfare programs during this period? Many advocates propose funding basic income by disbanding current safety nets. If recipients are living in public housing, collecting food stamps, accepting federal student loans, or any other form of indirect government aid, then it skews the results.
It might skew it, but YC is probably trying to answer a more fundamental question. If people are provided a minimum lifestyle what will they do? I don't think anyone really knows if it will be a golden age of entrepreneurs and self improvement. Or if people will just sit on the couch, have kids till they can't afford them, become addicted to drugs.
If people are provided a minimum lifestyle what will they do? I don't think anyone really knows if it will be a golden age of entrepreneurs and self improvement.
If only there were a group of people with sufficient money they never had to work! We could study them and see what they did to amuse themselves.
Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics
#107I'd like to know if the people responsible for promoting this idea will be punished for the lives that are going to be inevitably destroyed?
The last time we did something this stupid with predictable chaotic results required a corrupt president and retired general. So apparently it has gotten easier since then, to convince people that the shit they're eating is ice cream.
Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics
#108Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Along with the daily fish, does it makes sense to provide some sort of vocational training that an otherwise healthy person can take advantage of? If a person was not able to take advantage of early education for whatever reason, but is currently physically healthy, there is still opportunity to provide for himself and…
Education is the great emancipator, but education you and I take for granted as being common, is often not.
It's hard to learn and work on improving yourself when you have no time or energy left from being able to just pay the bills to eat, sleep and work.
Poverty really is a cycle that more people should try out to see how quickly all of their options, rights, and entitlements dissapear and become inaccesible and traded for constant struggle.
Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happens when we create fishing robots that do the work for all of men?
Answer: Life gets better. We have proof of this from history. When was the last time anybody here ground their own flour or washed their laundry using a rock and a river?
We are gonna end up in the future that Wall-E has predicted. Machines do everything and humans are fat slugs. Our minds are lazy and want to do the least amount of work. If given the option, we will do the least amount and occupy ourselves in entertainment. Now is that living? Thats up to you to decide. A good book to read on experiments done to understand human behavior is Daniel Kahnemans Thinking Fast and Slow.
Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
You make it sound as if we are going to run out of work? We can always increase the level of education then have more research scientists and engineers, for example. Imagine if we did 10x the amount of R&D.
>We can always increase the level of education then have more research scientists and engineers Flat wrong, unless you convince the owners of capital that that's the most prudent investment. It's already extremely difficult to get hired as a research scientist, even with a big-name PhD.
Then what the highly trained research scientists and engineers need to do is apply their scientific training to fleecing rich people of their money.
Which is actually what is happening, and has been happening for the last 2 decades with the entry of a large number of physics, math, and CS Ph.Ds into hedge funds and tech entrepreneurship. Stage 1 is a massive wealth transfer from dumb old money built on relationships to smart new money built on technology. Stage 2 is increased funding for STEM research & applications, as the new money diverts capital into their interests. Stage 2 takes a generation or so - it doesn't happen until the new money feels secure enough in their wealth that they can divert attention to becoming powerful. But we've seen the beginnings of it already, with Tesla, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Calico, Google X, YC Research, Breakthrough Starshot, and the Gates Foundation diverting some of that money that was redirected into scientifically-trained hands back to actual scientists.