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My own private basic income

opendemocracy.net

121–130 of 280 posts

Re: My own private basic income

#121
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generally life is an IQ test and rewards those who make optimal choices WRT events in their life. Do you think that if you'd been born in a slum you would have a decent chance of winning in the IQ test & optimal choice events in your life? I would imagine that almost anyone reading these comments has been unbelievably fortunate to be born into relatively wealthy circumstances & had things like "books" around to hel…

Being born in a slum more than likely means that your parents failed the IQ test, which is a strong signal about your IQ.

Americans went from riches to soup lines (living in slums/squalor) over various periods of time. Though their IQ did not vary over that same time period.

A strong signal IQ is not, maybe a nice tailwind, but that doesn't help much if you are born in the bogs.

Re: My own private basic income

#122
post #105
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world "value" is always confusing. Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire presumably because she is valued for her ability to interview people (she basically talks into a microphone for large sums of money). If she left society and shacked up in the woods tomorrow it wouldn't impact my life in the least. On the other hand, my garbage pickup person does harder work and makes a lot less, but if there was a garbage collecto…

The average citizen values YOUR garbage collector far less than they value Oprah. They value their own, certainly, but that value is reflected by the enormous sums we collectively pay to have our garbage removed. The garbage industry is worth a lot more than Oprah. You also pay (indirectly) your garbage worker a lot more than you pay (indirectly) Oprah, so things might be working out closer to how you value them than…

I still can't get my head around the logic that a garbage collector gets paid next to nothing relative to someone who is paid millions to talk into a microphone and the reasoning is that the latter "provides more value". "They provide more value" just seems like a very partial catch phrase to make this all look less absurd than it actually is.

Re: My own private basic income

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entrepreneurs have incentive to ensure everyone meets their maximum potential because this is the place where there is the most to extract. If my value is $10 per day and someone makes my value $20 per day, there is $10 per day worth of value for us to negotiate over. We _both_ have an incentive to maximize my potential. Also: >we should ... thats a morality statement but without a canonical source of ethics that som…

Real life isn't just an elaborate Austrian economics simulator. In this case, there are a lot of complex dynamics at play: will workers emigrate elsewhere if trained well (Basically the IIT problem)? Are constituents/subjects ok with reductions in their quality of life so that other people can be provided these resources. To act as if the market will magically fix this is lazy and not realistic. Also yes of course I…

The core fallacy here is believing that we can all agree to supersede biological imperatives and everything will all go fine. The challenge of society is the establishment of a system that cooperates with biology to create a peaceful, prosperous environment for all members of that society.

Humans are naturally competitive. Humans have tribal instincts (which include a default hostility to known outgroups). Humans have a fundamental tendency to hoard resources to ward off the mortal dangers of scarcity and decay, visible in our dietary inclinations just as much as in the way we handle the abstraction of money. Like most other successful animals, we have an instinct to secure resources not just for ourselves but for the generations that will follow after us.

These are inborn instincts and impulses, installed by millions of years of evolution. They cannot be hand-waved away. As a species, we are stuck with them, for better or worse.

Throughout the 20th century, we see the rise and fall of economic policy that refuses to acknowledge these realities. This willful blindness inflicts a large amount of suffering on the populations that fall for the delusion that we are now superhuman.

The argument is not that physical impulse does not need restraint, nor that society shouldn't have structure and authority. It is merely that our social systems need to exist as background processes that optimize and refine our basic natures instead of trying to pretend like they don't exist.

Just as denial of the underlying structure of computer systems will, at best, seriously impede performance, denial of the underlying structures of human psychology will, at best, bottleneck any society.

Hardcore socialist redistribution systems are so denialist that they result in the equivalent of a nation wide Blue Screen of Death shortly after bootup. Let's take notice of the blood and agony of the 20th century and not install SOCIALISM.DLL anymore.

Re: My own private basic income

#124
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of work goes into property ownership. There is an entire industry that exists to relieve property owners of that burden: property management companies. The tradeoff is that if you use a property management company, most of the profit from your properties flows to them, because they don't work for free. There is also a non-negligible risk involved in moving your control of your assets over to a barely-interested…

>A lot of work goes into property ownership Sure, but the $/hour return is much higher that the average job. 'A lot' isn't a good quantifier. I bet the same people who live in the house he rents work a lot more for a lot less money. >Very few people are Scrooge McDucks with all the time in the world to swim around in a vault full of gold coins True, but there are a lot more people who comfortably live off money their…

Okay, so research the author to better understand the context. He rejects the Hobbesian ideal that a social contract, enforced by a central power, provides critical scaffolding upon which wealth and prosperity can exist in a society. On this point he confuses the existence of Hobbes Leviathan, with how and where that power is applied. Removing property rights isn't just unrealistic, it doesn't work where its been applied.

The author also advocates for the employee's "right to say no". On this point I agree, in that employees should be able to accumulate wealth and have options. There should not be a one-way street.

Re: My own private basic income

#125
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average citizen values YOUR garbage collector far less than they value Oprah. They value their own, certainly, but that value is reflected by the enormous sums we collectively pay to have our garbage removed. The garbage industry is worth a lot more than Oprah. You also pay (indirectly) your garbage worker a lot more than you pay (indirectly) Oprah, so things might be working out closer to how you value them than…

I still can't get my head around the logic that a garbage collector gets paid next to nothing relative to someone who is paid millions to talk into a microphone and the reasoning is that the latter "provides more value". "They provide more value" just seems like a very partial catch phrase to make this all look less absurd than it actually is.

I think the difference is Oprah provides a little value to a lot of people (whether it be therapeutic, entertainment or what have you). Collectively, she is providing a lot more "value" because of the platform and distribution she has achieved. Your garbage collector provides great value to you, but no value to the grand majority of people.

Re: My own private basic income

#126
post #120
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are mixing together business owners and rentiers (property owners). Very different things. Property owners don't need to work 60-hour weeks unless they are the sole handyman for 100+ houses.

I'm not mixing anything together. The intellectual property, real property or personal property you are referring to is the product of all the risks and costs I'm talking about. And, the rent-seeking from that property is the reward. And, that rent-seeking is very much taxed, contrary to the author's contention, at multiple levels and in many ways.

>intellectual property, real property or personal property you are referring to is the product of all the risks and costs I'm talking about

What? I'm sorry but that went straight over my head. You said

>... As an owner I wish this were true. For me and most owners I know work is mandatory, and its 60 hour weeks and a lot of sleepless nights. There is no safety net. There is no unemployment. I get no workman's compensation. I have no employment law protections. Its, as one HN comment said some time ago, "a suffering contest" a lot of the time.

Which looks very much like something a startup owner, or atleast a new business owner would say. I can assure you a property owner will sing a very different tune.

>And, that rent-seeking is very much taxed, contrary to the author's contention, at multiple levels and in many ways.

The author didn't deny that. He just said how he was re-investing the income therefore isn't going to get taxed on the rent. This again tells me that you didn't read the article properly.

Re: My own private basic income

#127
post #82

Gosh. OP made me sad with his thesis. "1. For owners, work is optional." ... As an owner I wish this were true. For me and most owners I know work is mandatory, and its 60 hour weeks and a lot of sleepless nights. There is no safety net. There is no unemployment. I get no workman's compensation. I have no employment law protections. Its, as one HN comment said some time ago, "a suffering contest" a lot of the time. "…

couldn't you just incorporate and pay yourself a salary as well as unemployment premiums / disability premiums and other such benefits?

At least that is kind of a safety net? albeit a crappy one.

Re: My own private basic income

#128
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most slaves probably got worked half to death, beaten, and generally abused. No, this is uncommon, for the same reason beasts of burden were generally not worked half to death, beaten, and generally abused. They are valuable.

That varies depending on time and place. There were islands in the Caribbean (IIRC) where slaves had a life expectancy of 3 years after arriving from Africa. After importations of slaves were banned, but slavery was not outlawed, the slave population was shrinking. Births could not keep up with deaths. Though, tbf, some of what I read about that surmised that slaves had to be using some form of birth control as well…

Yes, I believe slave populations suffered horrific death rates almost everywhere in the new world except for the US south, where they flourished.

That was seen as a major problem by slaveholders, though, not a feature. If they'd known how to stop the slaves from dying, they would have.

Re: My own private basic income

#129
post #87
post #6

> I lucked into money. The basic point is that he gets paid more whilst not doing more "work". For those whom "Work" is the only lever they use to convert into money, they see inequitable work:cash ratios as "unfair" (a morality statement). Market economies do not function on work, but on value. He did the same work in a high value scenario. A glass of water provided in the middle of a developed city is worthless and…

The world "value" is always confusing. Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire presumably because she is valued for her ability to interview people (she basically talks into a microphone for large sums of money). If she left society and shacked up in the woods tomorrow it wouldn't impact my life in the least. On the other hand, my garbage pickup person does harder work and makes a lot less, but if there was a garbage collecto…

To be [un]fair, these days Oprah makes a bit more money by apportioning time on her OWN media platform for other people to sell woo-woo lifestyle products. She's going to make more money from that than she ever did by appearing on camera personally. If she withdrew from society tomorrow, the people she left running her channel would still be doing work on behalf of the business, and would still be sending her checks.

She can't appear on camera 24-7, but that media empire she now owns chugs along even while she sleeps. That's why owners win.

Your garbage pickup person doesn't even own the route they clear. They can be replaced at the drop of a hat by someone else, or by a semi-automated garbage truck. They cannot effectively capture the value they do create. The guy who "owns" the routes via their contracts with the municipal/county council is the one that can suck most of that up.

It isn't those who create value that get rich, but those who can best capture created value.

Re: My own private basic income

#130
post #82

Gosh. OP made me sad with his thesis. "1. For owners, work is optional." ... As an owner I wish this were true. For me and most owners I know work is mandatory, and its 60 hour weeks and a lot of sleepless nights. There is no safety net. There is no unemployment. I get no workman's compensation. I have no employment law protections. Its, as one HN comment said some time ago, "a suffering contest" a lot of the time. "…

I think there's a huge difference between an owner of a small company and a majority owner in a major corporation or that a CEO of said major corporation. The former has little, if any, support beyond a small circle of friends, associates, and business partners. The latter has an entire tax system setup to let them fail and come up smelling like roses. Not to mention the latter has many more options and seem to be rewarded by stockholders for failing (aka golden parachute).
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