Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My own private basic income

opendemocracy.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 280 posts

Re: My own private basic income

#251

Post by taneq »

xxSparkleSxx wrote: post #143
drewcon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> keep people poor, underfed, and uneducated so that they will always be a cheap source of grunt labor. Poor, underfed, and uneducated is the default position for human beings. We were born into this world, as a species, with nothing. There is no conspiracy to "enslave" anyone, nearly all public health and wealth measures over the last 100 years are overwhelming up and to the right. That growth did not happened throu…

>We were born into this world, as a species, with nothing. Some people are born with nothing, others are born with just about everything. Many laws, regulations, etc exist so that JUST existing with nothing is not feasible. It is nigh impossible to live in this world like the birds do, flying from one food source to the next, roosting wherever you find comfort. Those with means have entire departments to police the u…

> Some people are born with nothing, others are born with just about everything. Many laws, regulations, etc exist so that JUST existing with nothing is not feasible.

Rubbish. Nothing stops you from wandering off into the wilderness, except for the fact that it's a crap way to live. You just feel entitled to the benefits of modern civilisation, without the costs.

Re: My own private basic income

#252

Post by aninhumer »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #186
johnnyforeigner wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the fact that some slaves were treated well by their owners somehow makes it OK for one human being to actually own another? Because what you just wrote sounds an awful like a defence of slavery. What's awful about slavery is not the treatment of the slave. It's the fact that they are slaves in the first place.

I was under the impression I was responding to the question >> How have slaves ever historically created leverage? They do it in all of the ways that other people do. > Because what you just wrote sounds an awful [lot?] like a defence of slavery. I will note that in another thread from today, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14651019 , you can see people speaking with approval of a company that funds training for…

Owing someone money if you stop working for them is in no way equivalent to being required to pay them money in order to be allowed to stop working for them.

We don't say someone who has taken out a loan is a slave to their lender. And giving that person the option to pay that loan off more efficiently via labour doesn't make it slavery.

Re: My own private basic income

#253

Post by aninhumer »

dredmorbius wrote: post #160
maerF0x0 wrote: 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…

Market economies don't function on value but on price . There are plenty of high-value activities that go undervalued -- a general class of these are termed public goods . There's also the confusion of financial value with economic value . If a good cannot either capture the value it creates (nonrivalousness, non-excludability), or if it creates economic value, but not to a class of direct users who have what Adam Sm…

>There are plenty of high-value activities that go undervalued

I think given the distinction you're making, it would be better to say these activities are underpriced.

But I agree with your point. Far too many proponents of capitalism seem to believe the economy is somehow inherently fair because all prices reflect utility creation.

Another factor here is that demand is distorted by wealth. Things that provide value to rich people will be priced higher than things that provide equivalent value to poor people. A yacht seems unlikely to be as valuable to its individual owner as an equivalently priced amount of food is to many different people.

Re: My own private basic income

#254

Post by amelius »

taneq wrote: post #251
xxSparkleSxx wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We were born into this world, as a species, with nothing. Some people are born with nothing, others are born with just about everything. Many laws, regulations, etc exist so that JUST existing with nothing is not feasible. It is nigh impossible to live in this world like the birds do, flying from one food source to the next, roosting wherever you find comfort. Those with means have entire departments to police the u…

> Some people are born with nothing, others are born with just about everything. Many laws, regulations, etc exist so that JUST existing with nothing is not feasible. Rubbish. Nothing stops you from wandering off into the wilderness, except for the fact that it's a crap way to live. You just feel entitled to the benefits of modern civilisation, without the costs.

And why should some people benefit from progress, while others are left to live in the wilderness? (Considering only few people actually contribute to progress.)

Re: My own private basic income

#255

Post by taneq »

amelius wrote: post #254
taneq wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people are born with nothing, others are born with just about everything. Many laws, regulations, etc exist so that JUST existing with nothing is not feasible. Rubbish. Nothing stops you from wandering off into the wilderness, except for the fact that it's a crap way to live. You just feel entitled to the benefits of modern civilisation, without the costs.

And why should some people benefit from progress, while others are left to live in the wilderness? (Considering only few people actually contribute to progress.)

Because progress is the net result, directly or indirectly, of the work of everyone living in that society. When you pay taxes, when you buy things, when you select which products to buy, you're contributing.

Re: My own private basic income

#256

Post by dredmorbius »

aninhumer wrote: post #253
dredmorbius wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market economies don't function on value but on price . There are plenty of high-value activities that go undervalued -- a general class of these are termed public goods . There's also the confusion of financial value with economic value . If a good cannot either capture the value it creates (nonrivalousness, non-excludability), or if it creates economic value, but not to a class of direct users who have what Adam Sm…

>There are plenty of high-value activities that go undervalued I think given the distinction you're making, it would be better to say these activities are under priced . But I agree with your point. Far too many proponents of capitalism seem to believe the economy is somehow inherently fair because all prices reflect utility creation. Another factor here is that demand is distorted by wealth. Things that provide valu…

"Underrewarded" would probably be better wording, though "priced" fits with the terminology I've used elsewhere (I try to be consistent, I'm not always).

Some of these are underpriced, in the sense that the price doesn't repay the contribution.

Some are overpriced, in the sense that those who would benefit highly from access cannot afford them. (Though that might also be considered an inssuficient provision of income or spending power.)

The overall outcome is that a resource allocation which would improve net social common weal isn't made, that is, the goods or services are underprovisioned as a whole.

Re: My own private basic income

#257

Post by weberc2 »

oblio wrote: post #173
weberc2 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a really hard time believing that governments will do better at distributing resources equitably than a market. To act as though governments can magically fix this is lazy and not realistic.

Governments alone won't. Nor will markets alone.

Neither will a combination of the two, bury I think it might come closer. I think the free market people have some legitimate fears; a government that tasks itself with "fair redistribution of wealth" is pretty easily abused. "Fairness" lends itself to loose interpretations which target particular groups, for example, all of the white/male privilege rhetoric in the last decade. I don't particularly want my wealth redistributed because of someone's hate for my demographic.

Re: My own private basic income

#258

Post by state_less »

ableton wrote: post #246

If you live in America you can do what you want. You can study hard and get a scholarship to college even if you are really poor as a kid. I know a poor Mexican immigrant who's kids all got college degrees for free. It doesn't really matter if you grow up poor (in America). There are many people who are very rich precisely because being poor as kids drove them to work hard. What does matter is if you grew up in a sta…

> I know a poor Mexican immigrant who's kids all got college degrees for free.

I know many upper middle class kids who got college degrees for free (parental scholarship).

> It doesn't really matter if you grow up poor (in America)

Like I said above, and the author claims, it does seem to matter quite a bit if you grow up poor or not poor.

> There are many people who are very rich precisely because being poor as kids drove them to work hard.

There are probably many more who are rich precisely because being rich as kids drove them to being rich as adults.

> However, oftentimes the government is the cause of such problems in the first place.

Oftentimes you drive on the roads the government provisioned, visit the parks past presidents enacted, live in the security our GI WW2 vets created, so on and so on.

Re: My own private basic income

#259

Post by amelius »

taneq wrote: post #255
amelius wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why should some people benefit from progress, while others are left to live in the wilderness? (Considering only few people actually contribute to progress.)

Because progress is the net result, directly or indirectly, of the work of everyone living in that society. When you pay taxes, when you buy things, when you select which products to buy , you're contributing.

So someone who inherits a pile of money, and spends their time doing nothing is contributing to progress?

Re: My own private basic income

#260

Post by lioeters »

nwatson wrote: post #181
imgabe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what's going on in Qatar IS slavery for all intents and purposes. The workers are imported from southeast Asia, and their employer holds their passport, preventing them from leaving. In a free market people need to be able to have a choice to freely leave. Many of those workers would probably leave if they could.

The same motivation driving Southeast Asians to work in Qatar drives Mexicans and Central Americans to the United States to work as legal or illegal migrant workers ... some of the latter working independently, most working for a series of established companies. The big difference between Qatar/middle-east and the U.S. is that in the U.S. the business culture does not have as much recent history of indentured servitu…

That's an interesting comparison of the cultural situations of migrant workers in the US and elsewhere. I used to live in Texas and also saw that legal/illegal migrants were in general hard-working, paid relatively fairly, and sent their wages back home to invest.

I'm curious about your use of the phrase, joint "rent-seeking" ventures. I looked up the definition of rent-seeking on Wikipedia: "seeking to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating new wealth", which tend to "result in reduced economic efficiency". Was that implied in your use of the phrase? If so, what kind of ventures did you have in mind? I imagine that migrant workers send their money home to invest, typically by starting businesses (or buying land..?) with family and friends - which isn't necessarily "rent-seeking"?

Post reply on HN