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Guaranteed Minimum What?

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Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#31

Post by wavefunction »

brandonmenc wrote: post #19
e_d_e_v wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked in the movie box, that was not at all true. People would come in and ask about the movie. How long was it, whether it was any good, should they see another one instead? We gave them real answers. Just because you have a minimum wage job doesn't mean you're a bump on a log. If you've lost sight of the value of basic human interaction with anyone not baked into your caste, I pity you, even if you are in t…

> When I worked in the movie box, that was not at all true. People would come in and ask about the movie. How long was it, whether it was any good, should they see another one instead? We gave them real answers. Your smartphone gives you all of these answers now.

Perhaps it's a matter of trusting the person behind the counter over your smartphone.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#32

Post by Erik816 »

wavefunction wrote: post #31
brandonmenc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I worked in the movie box, that was not at all true. People would come in and ask about the movie. How long was it, whether it was any good, should they see another one instead? We gave them real answers. Your smartphone gives you all of these answers now.

Perhaps it's a matter of trusting the person behind the counter over your smartphone.

Why trust one random person (who may not have even seen the movie you are interested in, share your preferences, or be particular insightful) when you can have the aggregate wisdom of everyone who has seen the movie and cared enough to rate it?

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#33

Post by chris_va »

I realize that UBI is a very popular position on HN, so I am hoping someone here has given this more thought and can comment.

My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the macro scale inflation you would expect when redistributing trillions of dollars without commensurate economic value being created directly.

Money is a complicated subject, but essentially it represents a transfer of a future scarce resource. For commodities, the cost is essentially the sum of labor to generate it (either to mine the raw resources, build the factory, etc).

If no economic resource is being added to the economy, then you are just devaluing money. That is usually very regressive, and in this case could be made worse by people slightly reducing their economic labor because of the extra income stream. I could see this leading to a bad cycle, where any economic gains due to increasing UBI are later undermined.

Anyway, it would be nice if it worked, but I've seen no evidence that it will in a large system. Comments appreciated.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#34

Post by TACIXAT »

I always feel we will just scale larger and larger. We automate farming and move onto industry. We automate industry and move onto service. Now we are automating service and we will move onto something else, perhaps tech.

We are a long ways off from programs programming themselves. NLP and machine learning are still in their infancy. Program analysis and automated bug patching is still young tech. There is still a lot of work to be done and I am confident we will find ways to provide value to each other.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#35

Post by dexterdog »

cracell wrote: post #26
e_d_e_v wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked in the movie box, that was not at all true. People would come in and ask about the movie. How long was it, whether it was any good, should they see another one instead? We gave them real answers. Just because you have a minimum wage job doesn't mean you're a bump on a log. If you've lost sight of the value of basic human interaction with anyone not baked into your caste, I pity you, even if you are in t…

I would find this super annoying while waiting in line to buy tickets. If that's a service that makes sense to have theaters can always keep it. One staffed line for people that want to chit chat and automated kiosks for people like me who just want to buy a ticket.

My local big theater has exactly that

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#36

Post by xg15 »

> My best guess is that we’re not going to resolve these challenges in any intentional comprehensive logical manner. At least not at first. Instead circumstances are going to overwhelm us until enough of the population is miserable enough to demand real change. That’s been the historical model and it tends to be messy. Big fun.

The historical precidents he, I believe, refers to were less messy and more bloody.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#37

Post by drxzcl »

devrandomguy wrote: post #23
drxzcl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you base this on? Is there some theoretical limit to productivity?

There are real limits to everything, because the universe has a finite mass and volume. But, that doesn't mean that it is not possible to engineer a working UBI.

Productivity is usually value/worker or value/hour worked. There's no indication, as far as I'm aware, that value (inflation adjusted money) is a conserved quantity.

In fact, most of the productivity increases are in industries where the value produced is not directly coupled to the resourced consumed. The software industry is a great example.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#38

Post by maverick_iceman »

e_d_e_v wrote: post #11
cbanek wrote: post #4

> Humans are agressively being eliminated from as many business models as possible. Well that's true, where they don't add value. What's the difference between the case of getting movie tickets and your waiter at a fancy restaurant? One of them is practically a useless annoyance, and the other one is part of the experience. Someone in a movie box isn't going to tell you about the movie, or have a conversation about i…

When I worked in the movie box, that was not at all true. People would come in and ask about the movie. How long was it, whether it was any good, should they see another one instead? We gave them real answers. Just because you have a minimum wage job doesn't mean you're a bump on a log. If you've lost sight of the value of basic human interaction with anyone not baked into your caste, I pity you, even if you are in t…

Was this in planet Earth or somewhere else? I've been to over 1000 movies and have never seen it happening with me or anyone else.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#39

Post by sparkling »

From Henry Hazlitts 1946 classic "Economics in One Lesson":

You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him anything less. You merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and situation would permit him to earn, while you deprive the community even of the moderate services that he is capable of rendering. In brief, for a low wage you substitute unemployment. You do harm all around, with no comparable compensation.

Re: Guaranteed Minimum What?

#40

Post by dexterdog »

dsacco wrote: post #13
bluedino wrote: post #9

>> I noticed iPads on the tables They're tablets, from Ziosk. iPad is the Kleenex of this generation. I rather like those, nothing like paying (and leaving) when I want instead of trying to track down the waiter for 20 minutes

Yeah, those are the best of both worlds when you're not dining at an upscale place. Don't have to use cash, don't have to wait for them to complete two round trips just to leave. I never understand why waiters don't give me a chance to hand them the card immediately when they drop the check. I don't need to sit with it for 10 minutes, especially after it took 10 minutes to flag you down for it. Years ago I was a wait…

If you want to review the check you're going to have to wait for a round trip. If not, just hand the card when the check comes or better yet, give them the card when you ask for the check.
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