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The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

theguardian.com

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Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#31

Post by kazagistar »

throwaway31231 wrote: post #11
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

This seems to explain at least some of the UBI-love tech founders have. They live as billionaires in a community, that despite all their money and highfalutin ideas doesn't actually take care of its own, unless you have millions if not billions of dollars. Of course to them the only solution is more money, that's the only solution they seem to know. They'd be more believable if they fixed their own literal and metaph…

It's more than that. Money's value depends on everyone's collective attachment to it. The winners of a game remain so, only as long as a significant number of people are playing. Ditto with USD, ditto with BTC. UBI is one way to keep people playing; but I'm extremely wary of this idea. UBI without some sort of communal/anarchist/kibbutz-ian distributed structure binds society in yet another way. 'You're free as long…

We already have conditional UBI for certain classes of people and situations. UBI is an incremental step of progress, and holding it up based on worries about not being perfectly utopic seems counterproductive.

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#32

Post by jimmywanger »

zxcmx wrote: post #24
jimmywanger wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you didn't read my comment. If you're poor, you don't have resources. If you don't have resources, you have to deal with suboptimal conditions. A support network is great, just like pleasant weather or a good job market. What is the premium you're willing to pay for being around people like you or family? Because you're going to have to pay.

Absolutely the opposite. I've been poor and absolutely I valued connections and networks over the fundamentals, much as rich people do. Frankly I think this is the rational decision under the circumstances, factoring in uncertainty and decision costs. You think I'm SJWing here while I'm just trying to explain how people actually make decisions, which is typically not with reference to abstract tables, but based on pr…

The point wooshed above your head.

You valued connections and networks, so you made a CHOICE.

Nobody is forcing people to make choices. If you don't have money, you can move and have food and shelter or you can stay in a place you like living at except you have to struggle.

Choose one way or another. Does not matter. But you made the choice based on your priorities.

After you choose, you don't get to complain about how the choices you made led to consequences you don't like so much.

Point is, it doesn't matter how you make your decisions, but strangers do not have a moral obligation to bail you out of bad consequences.

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#33

Post by sax0n »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

This seems to explain at least some of the UBI-love tech founders have. They live as billionaires in a community, that despite all their money and highfalutin ideas doesn't actually take care of its own, unless you have millions if not billions of dollars. Of course to them the only solution is more money, that's the only solution they seem to know. They'd be more believable if they fixed their own literal and metaph…

I've never been to the US, so forgive me if I'm ignorant, but if the problem is poverty, surely the solution is more money? What's wrong with a UBI or some other mechanism to deliver that?

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#34

Post by mjfl »

jabot wrote: post #29
mjfl wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is the "lynching" argument. You pay for your bigotry.

... but is it bigotry if it's based on actual lived experience? I mean, you're probably reading a bit too much into the guy's post. He's probably not talking about lynching, more likely about way smaller stuff.

> ... but is it bigotry if it's based on actual lived experience?

absolutely. because you are generalizing an anecdotal experience to unrelated individuals who happen to be in the same general group.

Also, if it's about "way smaller stuff" then the benefits by far outweigh the costs.

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#35

Post by jstewartmobile »

kazagistar wrote: post #31
throwaway31231 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than that. Money's value depends on everyone's collective attachment to it. The winners of a game remain so, only as long as a significant number of people are playing. Ditto with USD, ditto with BTC. UBI is one way to keep people playing; but I'm extremely wary of this idea. UBI without some sort of communal/anarchist/kibbutz-ian distributed structure binds society in yet another way. 'You're free as long…

We already have conditional UBI for certain classes of people and situations. UBI is an incremental step of progress, and holding it up based on worries about not being perfectly utopic seems counterproductive.

The heads of almost every major industrial giant are sounding the alarm about the coming need for UBI. If they are right, and we come to a point where only a relatively small number of us are doing most of the productive work, and the rest are just collecting checks, the remaining producers are going to have a tremendous amount of leverage. So much leverage that I doubt there is a political arrangement capable of containing it long-term.

More than a mere imperfection...

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#36

Post by xg15 »

rddemmer wrote: post #6
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

This seems to explain at least some of the UBI-love tech founders have. They live as billionaires in a community, that despite all their money and highfalutin ideas doesn't actually take care of its own, unless you have millions if not billions of dollars. Of course to them the only solution is more money, that's the only solution they seem to know. They'd be more believable if they fixed their own literal and metaph…

As long as these people are paying extremely high rent (and as a result need assistance in terms of food stamps) it means the trade off is worth it to them. That's what people don't understand about high rent: if you are paying high rent you are agreeing to it. It means it's still worth it to you. If you disagree with the high rent, don't pay it.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15920864

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#37

Post by Dylan16807 »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

This seems to explain at least some of the UBI-love tech founders have. They live as billionaires in a community, that despite all their money and highfalutin ideas doesn't actually take care of its own, unless you have millions if not billions of dollars. Of course to them the only solution is more money, that's the only solution they seem to know. They'd be more believable if they fixed their own literal and metaph…

Fix their neighborhoods how?

If you don't want to use income, I guess you need to rezone the housing? That's also extremely impersonal.

There's not much you can do as an individual, unless you want billionaires to pick random neighborhoods to sponsor. And that does very little to fix the overall situation.

They could move their companies elsewhere but even if that helps the neighborhoods it's a lot closer to abandonment than fixing.

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#38

Post by JoshMnem »

mjfl wrote: post #3

Why pay $2000 a month when you have the whole country you could live in for much less? Why should I have to pay increased taxes for your ignorance/provincialism? Is living in San Francisco a fundamental right? I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'd suggest that these people move there, for the low cost of living combined with the vibrant-enough economy. Unemployment was at 5% through the great recession . However, I fin…

> Why should I have to pay increased taxes for your ignorance/provincialism?

You don't think that the influx of tech workers from places like Nebraska has any relationship to driving prices up for the locals?

If you're young, relatively new to the area (without a lifetime of friends and family here), and don't have kids, the prospect of moving away to some random, unfamiliar town is going to seem much easier than it really is for most people.

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#39

Post by [deleted] »

stinky wrote: post #26
mjfl wrote: post #3

Why pay $2000 a month when you have the whole country you could live in for much less? Why should I have to pay increased taxes for your ignorance/provincialism? Is living in San Francisco a fundamental right? I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'd suggest that these people move there, for the low cost of living combined with the vibrant-enough economy. Unemployment was at 5% through the great recession . However, I fin…

There is a solution. At the moment successful EU countries such as Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark are struggling with aging population and not enough people to fill blue colar jobs. I think EU should make it easier for US citizens who get any job here to move over. Americans in general are super hard working. Europe needs hard working people, while we can provide them with free universal healthcare, free universit…

[deleted]

Re: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger

#40

Post by mjfl »

nostrademons wrote: post #27
mjfl wrote: post #3

Why pay $2000 a month when you have the whole country you could live in for much less? Why should I have to pay increased taxes for your ignorance/provincialism? Is living in San Francisco a fundamental right? I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'd suggest that these people move there, for the low cost of living combined with the vibrant-enough economy. Unemployment was at 5% through the great recession . However, I fin…

"You're more likely to die of boredom, but isn't that better than food stamps, and isn't boredom good if you want to raise a family?" That's pretty much it. The Bay Area gives you the chance to be on the cutting edge of change, which - for a certain personality type that tends to be overrepresented in the Bay Area - is often reason enough to live there. Most of the people who want a stable & boring environment to rai…

If I should pay taxes to subsidize people that feel a fundamental need to be on "the cutting edge of change", I'm going to quit work and sit in an SF cafe all day so I can "ride the wave of change". You need to pay for me, because I need to be here.
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