Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment • Hacker News Board

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#31

Post by ekianjo » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 10:48 AM UTC

zdkl wrote: post #22

gioele wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A similar phenomena was witnessed in South Africa with the Marikina massacre of 2012, where miners believed that herbs provided by a witchdoctor would make them invisible. The US market for homeopathic products was $6.4 billion in 2013: http://www.pharmacytimes.com/publications/issue/2013/Septemb... In Italy, post-earthquake survivors are being provided homeopathic products: http://www.ilpost.it/2016/08/27/regione-…

Surely you understand the difference between middle class people taking some sugar and people believing unwaveringly that herbs will protect them from that shotgun.

Theres really not much difference. Its both irrational.

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#32

Post by stevetrewick » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 10:51 AM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #28

michaelt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are surely so many ways to spend money to help Africans Give Directly works on the theory (and they have some studies that seem to back this up [1]) that the Africans know what they need better than you and I do; and that they have the incentive to see donations spent in the most effective way. [1] http://blog.givewell.org/2012/12/26/the-case-for-cash-2/

On the contrary, there are a large number of examples from e.g. South African shanty towns that if people living in tiny metal shacks with dirt floors get a bit more disposable income, many prefer to stay where they are and buy satellite TV and the latest iPhone rather than save that money to try and move to a better place.

That would be an actual example of the parent's point. You think the utility of satellite TV and a phone are are lower than the utility of not living in a shack. The beneficiaries disagree. Only one of you can be right, and unless you intend to arrogate to yourself the right to define someone else's utility function, it's not you.

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#33

Post by welder » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 11:03 AM UTC

hacksonx wrote: post #7

Perhaps not the biggest reason behind the refusal but the fact that it is mentioned warrants discussion. Che Guevara is said to have travelled to the Congo to train Guerrilla militia there and stopped when instead of focussing on training, the people focused on voodoo magic to protect them. A similar phenomena was witnessed in South Africa with the Marikina massacre of 2012, where miners believed that herbs provided…

Seems your info is wrong. The invisible herb was just a myth among news outlets [1].

1. https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/south-africa-marikana/

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#34

Post by norswap » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 11:07 AM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #30

zdkl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you understand the difference between middle class people taking some sugar and people believing unwaveringly that herbs will protect them from that shotgun.

> Surely you understand the difference between middle class people taking some sugar and people believing unwaveringly that herbs will protect them from that shotgun. I don't understand it; please spell it out for me because all I see is magical thinking. If you think homeopathy isn't a matter of life and death, you might have not considered the people whose lives could have been saved had they turned to real medicin…

I don't believe in homeopathy, however I highly doubt it's being used in matters of life and death in any way that has the slightest veneer of respectability.

It may exist, I suspect, but only peddled by shady online gurus.

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#35

Post by sangnoir » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 11:08 AM UTC

Different cultures have different attitudes towards gifts and favors: which the Basic income could be classified as one by the recipients. I suspect the researchers did not take this into consideration.

In some cultures, gifts are just that, and have no strings attached. Yet in others, gifts create an obligation to the recipient to 'return the favor' at a later date, so accepting a gift is a liability. A lot of research has been done in this area, comparing different cultures[1] or focusing on a specific one [2]

1. http://web.stanford.edu/~jacksonm/socialquilts.pdf

2. http://www.japanintercultural.com/en/news/default.aspx?newsI...

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#36

Post by SturgeonsLaw » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 11:16 AM UTC

massysett wrote: post #29

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, there are a large number of examples from e.g. South African shanty towns that if people living in tiny metal shacks with dirt floors get a bit more disposable income, many prefer to stay where they are and buy satellite TV and the latest iPhone rather than save that money to try and move to a better place.

That's exactly the point. The satellite TV is cost-effective, high-value entertainment. The iPhone is a supercomputer that offers information and vastly improved communication with family and friends. Yet outsiders who think they know better somehow believe that people are dumb to prefer an iPhone rather than moving out of the shanty. Maybe the iPhone is a better marginal buy than a better house.

That's right, and it reminds me of the people who scorn the homeless for owning a laptop or smartphone. The opportunities that are unlocked by being connected to the world's digital backbone are far more significant than the benefits one would get from moving into slightly nicer accommodation.

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#37

Post by __s » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 11:17 AM UTC

norswap wrote: post #34

sangnoir wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely you understand the difference between middle class people taking some sugar and people believing unwaveringly that herbs will protect them from that shotgun. I don't understand it; please spell it out for me because all I see is magical thinking. If you think homeopathy isn't a matter of life and death, you might have not considered the people whose lives could have been saved had they turned to real medicin…

I don't believe in homeopathy, however I highly doubt it's being used in matters of life and death in any way that has the slightest veneer of respectability. It may exist, I suspect, but only peddled by shady online gurus.

Dr Oz

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#38

Post by whack » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 11:22 AM UTC

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #3

Todd wrote: post #2

This seems like the kind of surprising result that the scientific method begs for. Instead of trying to understand it, or profit from its prevalence, the organization is attempting to reduce it. It doesn't seem likely that this type of thing will be a long term concern, but perhaps something can be learned about how society adapts if a significant subset decline the payment.

To be blunt it shows how out of touch those involved are. Firstly they obviously had very little understanding of African / 3rd world culture, secondly they haven't considered what we do when people offer us free stuff. Consider if somebody walked up to you and offered to pay you 6k/mo, you would be insane not to question it. And in a country where "free stuff" doesn't happen, where corruption and entrapment are comm…

You seem to have some axe to grind with GiveDirect. They've already run many Basic Income experiments in many parts of Africa, with great success. The fact that they are hitting some snags in a few counties, doesn't diminish them as an organization in any way.

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#39

Post by Noseshine » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 11:29 AM UTC

bsbechtel wrote: post #13

Maybe people really do have an innate sense of ethics that tell them if they're receiving free money, it means it's being taken from somewhere else.

The world is not a zero sum game and handing out free money is a proven concept - as long as the recipients are big firms and banks... you already forgot the "financial crisis" and the entire last decade?

Money does not work in such simplistic ways except for on a tiny scale, for example within the circle of family and friends. Already when you take out a credit your sentence becomes untrue: Debt is created by commercial banks out of thin air - you yourself "pay" for it, because the "debt" promise you give is worth as much as the money you get (plus interest).

When a government hands out "free money" the promise is not direct but indirect but essentially the same: They think that the money will "pay for itself" in the end through economic activity that would otherwise never happen. This is the same thing that happens with every single credit, only that then the responsibility for "repayment" is only one step removed instead of an indefinite amount.

In this context (about the nature of modern money, not UBI), before anyone wants to tell me money for credit comes from other people's savings, I recommend reading "Money Creation in the Modern Economy" (2014) written by the Bank of England. I link to the Guardian article by Graeber, the actual PDF is linked near the beginning of that article though, but it has a summary on page one where it already supports the main points of the article.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/18/truth-...

    > It's this understanding that allows us to continue to talk about money as if it were 
    > a limited resource like bauxite or petroleum, to say "there's just not enough money" 
    > to fund social programmes, to speak of the immorality of government debt or of public 
    > spending "crowding out" the private sector. What the Bank of England admitted this 
    > week is that none of this is really true.

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#40

Post by DanielBMarkham » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 11:30 AM UTC

Interesting.

I have no desire to dump on UBI -- I want to see how these various experiments pan out -- but I am reminded of a thought experiment.

Imagine it's 10,000 years ago. You arrive in pre-history with all of the technology of today: electricity, communication, medicine, automation, and so on. Your mission? To destroy mankind.

Assuming infinite resources, how would you go about doing it? Sure, you could build out an infrastructure, create a robotic army, and begin hunting humans down. Or, you could build out about the same amount of infrastructure and just give people whatever they want: food, housing, warmth, and so on. After all, what would a bunch of hunter-gathers really want? It'd probably be easier than hunting them all down and fighting them. As long as you're not under any time pressure, what's the difference between killing them immediately and waiting four or five hundred years for them to stop breeding?

The premise of UBI is that this would not eventually eliminate the species, that individuals here and there would still learn new skills and advance knowledge. The main criticism of UBI (aside from the moral one) is that while stress and struggle for individuals can be a terrible thing, for the species as a whole it results in evolutionary survival.

It will be interesting to watch these populations over time to see how adaptive they are compared with control groups.