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I'm going to work full-time on free software

drewdevault.com

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Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#131

Post by andy_adams »

smt88 wrote: post #89
blfr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's the modern version of a minor landed gentleman who can pursue his interests. It's how we got science. Sadly, the best argument against UBI is that vast, vast majority of people will not be working full time on F/OSS or quite possible anything else.

> vast, vast majority of people will not be working full time on F/OSS or quite possible anything else. I doubt this. Everyone has dreams or long-term things they enjoy working on. And UBI wouldn't be enough for most people, so they'd at least pursue some form of cash-generating work.

You must roll with some motivated crowds if everyone has long-term goals.

> 60% of the folks I meet would be pretty content watching TV all day, every day. When you talk to them, they just talk about the shows they watched.

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#132

Post by chriswarbo »

blfr wrote: post #121
coldtea wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly, the best argument against UBI is that vast, vast majority of people will not be working full time on F/OSS or quite possible anything else. That's sad only if we have the scarcity induced morality of associating "getting to have a living" with "earning it by working".

No, it's sad in the same sense gigahours wasted in front of TVs are sad.

I get the sentiment, but "bullshit jobs" are also a waste of time (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs ); those also have the same downsides as many jobs, like stress, abusive managers, etc.

There are also many jobs which are actively harmful to society and/or the environment (e.g. cold calling), where it would be better for everyone if those workers could just watch TV instead.

I think this is one of those areas that can't be solved by deduction, since there are valid arguments pushing both ways. It needs measurements, observations and experiments to see what the relative impact of those arguments are.

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#133

Post by bryanlarsen »

nostrebored wrote: post #111
bryanlarsen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you expect inflation to occur? As long as UBI is payed for via taxes and not deficit spending than the money supply isn't changing. And as economists say, inflation is a monetary phenomenon. Supply & demand aren't radically changing either. America's poor eat too much, not too little. And while there are homeless people in America, most sleep in shelters. If anything, you might expect the price of the cheap…

Money supply isn't the issue here. If everyone has another x+12,000 dollars, the amount of money available for low income housing has strictly increased. Landlords are then in a position to raise prices proportionally. The "America's poor eat too much" line is also not strong. You might argue that they eat the wrong things; this is the food desert/education argument that's commonly made. Regardless there is already a…

"If everyone has another x+12,000 dollars"

then you have a money supply issue.

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#134

Post by astazangasta »

alligatorstraw wrote: post #128
atom_arranger wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could print more money. The inflation will hit people who have a lot of money saved up more than it will hit the people getting UBI. I'm not sure it's the right option, but it's something to consider. If you have someone below the poverty line and you tell them "I'll give you 30k, but due to inflation each dollar will only be able to buy half of what it can now." I think they'll take that deal.

I never quite understood why many central banks expand the money supply by purchasing financial assets instead of just handing out money to everyone.

Really? Seems pretty obvious - purchasing assets helps their friends in Goldman and Citibank. Handing out money helps the poors. If you were a fat cat banker, what would you do? This, despite the fact that the utility of money is greater for the poors and the stimulatory effect of giving it to them is greater. But if we do that, we are told, we create "moral hazard" because people will think they don't have to pay their debts. Meanwhile we bail out TBTF banks like there is no tomorrow, moral hazard be damned.

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#135

Post by sridca »

blfr wrote: post #121
coldtea wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly, the best argument against UBI is that vast, vast majority of people will not be working full time on F/OSS or quite possible anything else. That's sad only if we have the scarcity induced morality of associating "getting to have a living" with "earning it by working".

No, it's sad in the same sense gigahours wasted in front of TVs are sad.

Have you ever stopped to think where this 'watching TV is wasting time' belief originates from?

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#136

Post by cweagans »

skrowl wrote: post #18

Here's my best argument for why UBI can't work in the USA. Let me know where i went wrong: My TV told me a "living wage" is at least $15 (but probably higher in liberal controlled areas like NYC / most CA cities / etc due to high cost of living & taxation), but we'll start with $15 to make it easy. $15/hr at 40hr/week = $31,200 per year. $31,200 * 328,300,000 population of USA = $10,242,960,000,000 Written out (for e…

Okay, you've calculated the cost. But people aren't just going to sit on that money. They're going to spend it. Even if they keep their existing jobs, a large population having more disposable income stimulates growth in that area, does it not?

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#137

Post by camgunz »

skrowl wrote: post #18

Here's my best argument for why UBI can't work in the USA. Let me know where i went wrong: My TV told me a "living wage" is at least $15 (but probably higher in liberal controlled areas like NYC / most CA cities / etc due to high cost of living & taxation), but we'll start with $15 to make it easy. $15/hr at 40hr/week = $31,200 per year. $31,200 * 328,300,000 population of USA = $10,242,960,000,000 Written out (for e…

Couple things:

Most UBI proposals don't cover a living wage. They're usually something like $10k/year for all adults, which would come out to $2.5 trillion. Most proposals both cut benefits and raise taxes, so this is very doable.

Second, your example is kind of a socialism strawman, but let's take it to its logical conclusion. The current total income of the US is about $16.4 trillion (after Social Security, etc.). If we were to redistribute that across everyone in the US, that's close to $50k/yr. Considering that the average wage for men is $33k/yr and the average income for women is $19k/yr, that's a huge raise, 52% and 163% respectively.

But that's giving everyone $50k/yr -- from toddlers to the mega rich. If we just include adults, it's closer to $66k/yr. That's a 200% raise for men and 247% raise for women.

Of course, if you have an above average income you're losing money. And there are real questions about what such an egalitarian society and economy looks like. But you would eradicate poverty in the US and solve countless social problems.

Fundamentally, UBI policies are about _redistribution_ of wealth, not additional expenditures as you suggest. Any serious UBI policy proposal takes into account budget and administrative overhead. For example, this [1] proposal from AEI, a conservative think tank.

[1]: https://www.aei.org/publication/a-budget-neutral-universal-b...

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#138

Post by AsyncAwait »

allannienhuis wrote: post #106
AsyncAwait wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstood, again. Yes she does, because she's working within the American context. What I am saying is that she would not be refereed to as"socialist" in much of the rest of the developed world. She is only a "socialist" because of how right-wing the USA political context is. An easy way you can tell, even as an American, is that she's not advocating for abolishing capitalism and seizing the means of producti…

I'm no student of politics, so I could well be way off base, but isn't 'abolishing capitalism and seizing the means of production' central pillars of communism, not socialism?

> isn't 'abolishing capitalism and seizing the means of production' central pillars of communism, not socialism?

Depends. Socialism has a wide variety of forms. Some are closer to communism than others. Whether we talk about socialism, or communism, more "worker-control" over resources is usually a central pillar of both. It's just that the closer one gets to communism within socialism, the more "means of production" they support turning over to the worker.

It's worth noting that even the USSR did not refer to itself as communist, it was simply 'on a path there', if you will.

From all I know, in the US they think of this when they think "socialist". There's little difference in their mind. I simply wanted to dispel the notion that somebody like AOC is anywhere near "socialist" in the Soviet sense. What she's advocating for is just to import some social policies as per the Nordic model, but not to fundamentally change the existing system to be closer to USSR, which is what many on the right seem to imagine.

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#139

Post by plinkplonk »

xur17 wrote: post #108
dsr_ wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your biases are showing, and that's affecting the quality of your argument. "liberal controlled areas" is an indicator. People vote for policies that make sense to them. Most people like living in cities, and they like living in places where government provides services that aren't well-distributed by market mechanisms. Let's go with your $10T number. Then, let's apply a standard progressive income tax, of the kind t…

> And one more simple change: make income tax calculated by the IRS and you file changes against their preparation, rather than you sitting down and trying to figure everything out each April. Cuts down on frustration and tax avoidance. Yes please. It drives me crazy that I have to waste time copying numbers between forms for my taxes.

Intuit (and others, I assume) lobbies strongly against this, and spends a lot of money to prevent this happening.

Re: I'm going to work full-time on free software

#140

Post by strgcmc »

skrowl wrote: post #18

Here's my best argument for why UBI can't work in the USA. Let me know where i went wrong: My TV told me a "living wage" is at least $15 (but probably higher in liberal controlled areas like NYC / most CA cities / etc due to high cost of living & taxation), but we'll start with $15 to make it easy. $15/hr at 40hr/week = $31,200 per year. $31,200 * 328,300,000 population of USA = $10,242,960,000,000 Written out (for e…

The existing Social Security program costs nearly $1 trillion dollars per year already (okay $900 billion ish) [1].

Sure, Social Security is not like a perfect, shining example, but it can be fixed/improved, and scaling it up by 10x (which is a gross overestimate, as other commenters have pointed out), is nothing to sneeze at. But at the same time, it's not really as ridiculous as your comments wants to paint it (i.e. "omg this is clearly patently absurd, why even entertain this nonsense?").

You've completely glossed over the fact that people generally don't hoard money, especially not those living on $15/hr. People will spend that money, and it could even grow the economy (by GDP). Your little mind experiment is not nearly rigorous enough nor realistic to justify dismissing UBI out of hand.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States...

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