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The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

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Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#181

Post by ameister14 »

rev_bird wrote: post #91
remarkEon wrote: post #60

There's two issues that I don't think have been adequately addressed, or that I missed, in the banter over this issue. 1) What would stop us from recreating the inefficient welfare state that already exists on top of this new one when some people inevitably blow their UBI on drugs/cheetos/whatever and don't have money for rent? It seems that for this to work we'd have to maintain some intestinal fortitude to say "no"…

>It seems that for this to work we'd have to maintain some intestinal fortitude to say "no" - and that to me sounds like a serious culture change in this country. I'd argue that the culture is currently overwhelmingly biased toward saying "no," usually under the guise of "freedom" -- if we couldn't say "no" to the chronically homeless, we probably wouldn't have a half-million of them on the streets. If we couldn't sa…

There is significant debate over the causes of maternal mortality and in particular its recent rise in the us; almost noone thinks it has to do with income.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#182

Post by ameister14 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #175
ameister14 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Representation based on land ownership is close to the opposite of UBI

In the 1700s capital was considered to be land, because owning land was how you made money — either by working the land or by renting it to others to work. Whereas today capital is considered to be mainly money, because owning money is how you make more money. E.g. by investing in Google in the 90s, Bitcoin in the 2000s, etc. So giving people money today is basically the equivalent of giving people land in the 1700 a…

Sure, if the us govt said "only land owners should vote, so were giving everyone land" you might have a point.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#183

Post by danielvf »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #109

The question I’m interested in: How do we unlock maximum human potential? Last I checked, welfare does the opposite of this. It helps people merely subsist, not strive for greatness. Then he goes on to compare YC to basic income. Seriously? They take a share in your company and help you develop it. That isn't money for nothing. If he weren't a millionaire and the current president of YC, would we keep seeing articles…

The country of Nauru has had universal income since the 1970’s funded by mining resources.

Unfortunately, it has not resulted in human potential being unlocked.

Outside the mining, run by foreigners and with foreign works, economic activity in the country has gone down. Nauru now has the highest obesity rate in the world. 94.5% of the population is overweight, 71% obese, and 31% diabetic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_Nauru

I agree that some form of UBI looks to be better in many ways to what we have now, we can’t be blind that one actual historical outcome is a nation chronically ill, obese, and unemployed.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/06/meet-na... (2011)

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#184

Post by davmre »

creaghpatr wrote: post #88
davmre wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One possible mechanism is a social wealth fund that would gradually come to own (and distribute the proceeds from) a nontrivial portion of the national capital. Matt Bruenig wrote a NYTimes oped about this idea: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/opinion/inequality-social... with some suggestions for populating the fund: > Wouldn’t the enormous wealth that our increasingly productive society is generating, which now…

I mean sure, you could seize the means of production and capital and pump a bunch of currency into the economy, but that's just textbook communism. This is literally what Venezuela did with its oil supply.

'Textbook' communism involves the government directly managing the means of production. Owning a minority stake in many corporations that are run for profit by incentivized managers in a market economy has, perhaps, some similarities but it's certainly not the same thing.

I'm not sure you can generalize Venezuela's collapse beyond a cautionary tale of corruption and populist looting; i.e., their economic problems are fundamentally political problems. A better comparison for a developed Western democracy with competent political system is Norway, which has an amazingly successful ($1 trillion) sovereign wealth fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor... comprised of oil revenue used to fund social programs.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#186

Post by aaron-lebo »

Alex3917 wrote: post #180
tomohawk wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not even wrong. EDIT: James Madison, the principle author of the US Constitution, in reference to a bill proposing to give aid to French refugees, had this to say: "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that Article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llac&fileName=00...

Just grab any U.S. history book. The original drafts of the Declaration of Independence talked about the importance of property, because the founding fathers spent an enormous amount of time thinking through the implications of what would happen if citizens just voted to take all the property away from the wealthy. (Democracy was basically Bitcoin of the 1700s.) And they came to the conclusion that the only way to pr…

Democracy was basically Bitcoin of the 1700s

History books don't say stuff like this. You are making ahistorical arguments about men who owned slaves.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#187

Post by mberning »

alva wrote: post #185

Would like to hear Sam's thoughts on how this would impact on immigration. Could the system sustain the current or higher levels of immigration? If not, would Sam recommend cutting immigration drastically for this to be a viable option?

Everybody knows that the numbers don’t add up (for long) when you allow unfettered immigration (legal or not). However, discussing strict immigration controls is highly impolitic these days.

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#188

Post by eanzenberg »

tobbyb wrote: post #128

The UBI debate is fundamental to how we perceive society and what kind of society we want to build into the future. If one's idea of human society is people working to earn money. Fullstop. And those who are better at it are the be all and end alls of human civilization and progress and the ultimate aspiration. Then words like lazy, people will not do anything, arguments that are generic enough to block any action, a…

No it's even more basic then that. There are two competing theories for humanity. One is, do you have faith in society and the peoples of that society? The other, do you not have faith in society and the peoples of it?

Many of the human-made constructs in our world were defined as a stop-gap for the lowest depths of humanity. Certain people are extremely selfish, narcissistic, care only for themselves? We have some laws to combat that such as taxes, environmental protections, etc. Certain people are violent? We have some laws to combat that and gone to war against that.

So you need to ask yourself, do you have faith that UBI will "free brains enough to produce innovation, progress, and further intellectual output", or lead to massive work reduction, increased prices, and increased complacency?

Re: The Great American Share – Sam Altman Interview on Basic Income

#190

Post by dragonwriter »

alva wrote: post #185

Would like to hear Sam's thoughts on how this would impact on immigration. Could the system sustain the current or higher levels of immigration? If not, would Sam recommend cutting immigration drastically for this to be a viable option?

While the whole point of the experiment that they are doing is to get a better idea of what BI could support, I can't see any reason why a UBI that was viable otherwise, with the obvious eligibility criteria (covered population is either citizens-only or citizens and legal permanent residents), would have any trouble with immigration at current levels.

If UBI reduced minimum wages (say by $1/hr. for each $2000/yr. of UBI, from a pre-UBI target level that increases with inflation) and is not available to immigrants other than permanent residents, it might reduce immigration demand in categories that require a period of non-LPR status (and particularly attractiveness of resort to illegal immigration) by reducing both wages (but not total income, for citizens and LPRs) for unskilled workers directly in both open employment and, by indirect pressure, under-the-table employment.

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