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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

#211

Post by aaron-lebo »

guelo wrote: post #200
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…

> Last I checked How did you check? Most research I've seen shows that welfare reduces poverty but does not drag down gdp. Anti-welfare people tend to ignore the positive benefits of entrepreneurs being able to take more risks when they know that a bankruptcy won't be catastrophic and that they could still send their children to school and get treatment when they're sick.

Successful entrepreneurs aren't usually on welfare, they come from great backgrounds (hi Sam, Mark, Bill, Donald...).

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

#212

Post by csallen »

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 mantra on HN is that ideas matter and that HN wants to deemphasize names and avoid promoting pieces being posted merely because they are about some celebrity. I think these articles fail that test.

I disagree. Whatever you think about the quality of his arguments, the fact that the president of Y Combinator is writing about UBI makes it worth discussing for those who care about the topic, because he has significantly more leverage to affect things than most other people writing about it. Similarly, I'd be more interested in reading a poorly conceived piece on nuclear war written by Donald Trump than a brilliantly-crafted article from my nephew.

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

#213

Post by remarkEon »

Suncho wrote: post #106
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"…

1. Why is it a problem for people to spend their money how they choose? If people buy drugs and cheetos or whatever, then isn't that their call? If people who need housing have the money to buy housing, but they're not buying buying housing, then I agree that's a problem that needs to be addressed. Do we see this in practice? Is there an epidemic of people who can afford homes but are choosing to suffer in homelessne…

1. It isn't, that's not what I'm saying (if you're talking about their freedom to do something...if you're talking about society in general it seems obvious that certain behaviors are bad and should be discouraged). But if you're going to tax me, and then give this money away to people it seems reasonable that I should have at least some say in what it's spent on...which just gets us back to the same discussions about what UBI evolves into and the kind of culture changes required for it to work (if it's even possible for it to work...that is not a certainty).

2. This "if you give the money they'll spend it in your economy" thing is I think by no means clear. The largest cash source in Mexico is remittance payments from the US. The reason I brought up the "global citizen" model is because there's a lack of skepticism and critical analysis on it and people make blanket statements like "the first country to give everyone in the world money" are actually taken seriously.

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

#214

Post by sjg007 »

EGreg wrote: post #132
hyprCoin wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussing actual production-ready UBI avenues results in downvotes. I'm guessing it's a knee-jerk reaction to crypto currencies doing so well and there being many who are either tired of hearing about it or who feel as if they missed out. There is a reason they keep getting mentioned.

The downvoters never explain. My own guess is they hate when someone links to their own project. Every time I put any link to my projects I get a few downvotes no matter HOW good the rest of the comment is.

My concern is the lack of debate beyond two or three comments. Basically someone says something, another replies, there’s a follow up and then nothing. It’s weird that there’s no discussion, just hit pieces. You see the same thing in the media both in articles/reports as well as callers and comments. We’ve lost the capacity to debate as a society. Or at least we now debate in 123 character tweets or memes.

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

#215

Post by DoreenMichele »

csallen wrote: post #212
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 mantra on HN is that ideas matter and that HN wants to deemphasize names and avoid promoting pieces being posted merely because they are about some celebrity. I think these articles fail that test. I disagree. Whatever you think about the quality of his arguments, the fact that the president of Y Combinator is writing about UBI makes it worth discussing for those who care about the topic, because he has signifi…

Dan Gackle, moderator of HN:

For the most part, we keep author names out of HN titles. It's a trick I learned from PG for keeping the focus on the content.

----

Name recognition seems to encourage reflexive upvoting, which is one reason we often take names out of titles.

We've removed "Alan Kay" from this one. (Nothing personal—we're fans.)

----

But mostly we take the author's/presenter's name out of titles, in keeping with HN's emphasis on content over personalities.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dang%20names%20titles&sort=byP...

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

#216

Post by pault »

MadcapJake wrote: post #87
Danihan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The math doesn't work and has never worked. UBI proponents will never talk math because it doesn't add up, even with the most casual analysis. $12k is the cited number that you see a lot in basic income discussions. That's just over the poverty level. That's not enough to live on and it's practically a bonus for some members of this site. It's not enough to do anything with. Even upon receiving that, many people woul…

> Even upon receiving that, many people would still work massive hours to obtain the best house on the block. I'm no UBI expert, but I don't think you understand the point of UBI: universal basic income. I would argue (again no expert here) it's more about constant economic injection, providing a baseline to reduce risk of entrepreneurship and generally providing a higher quality of life to the 99%'ers. As far as pay…

Sure, but you are advocating redistribution of wealth from the most impoverished segment of the population to the middle and upper classes. I’m not sure how helpful that would be. I mean, I would love to buy more toys every month but is that worth taking away someone else’s food stamps and healthcare?

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

#217

Post by Alex3917 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #210
Alex3917 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Whereas today capital is considered to be mainly money No. While money is used simply to purchase goods and services for consumption, capital is more durable and is used to generate wealth through investment. Examples of capital include automobiles, patents, software and brand names. All of these items are inputs that can be used to create wealth. Besides being used in production, capital can be rented out for a mont…

According to that definition, money is capital as long as it's being used as an input to create new wealth rather than to purchase goods and services for consumption. We can see this is empirically true since 95+% of the income gains from the economic recovery have gone to the wealthiest 1%.

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

#218

Post by sjg007 »

nightski wrote: post #77
drb91 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, tax the hell out of wealth. The math has never been the problem; it's always been taxing the wealthy that causes the conversation to die.

Honestly if you are going to give me free money + tax the hell out of me for working hard and going above and beyond I'll just relax and play video games and work on personal projects on my monthly stipend.

Ok but your personal project could be a new video game that nets you millions. That’s the whole point of UBI.

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

#219

Post by [deleted] »

csallen wrote: post #212
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 mantra on HN is that ideas matter and that HN wants to deemphasize names and avoid promoting pieces being posted merely because they are about some celebrity. I think these articles fail that test. I disagree. Whatever you think about the quality of his arguments, the fact that the president of Y Combinator is writing about UBI makes it worth discussing for those who care about the topic, because he has signifi…

[deleted]

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

#220

Post by [deleted] »

sjg007 wrote: post #218
nightski wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly if you are going to give me free money + tax the hell out of me for working hard and going above and beyond I'll just relax and play video games and work on personal projects on my monthly stipend.

Ok but your personal project could be a new video game that nets you millions. That’s the whole point of UBI.

[deleted]
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