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Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

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Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#41

Post by PostOnce »

fsiefken wrote: post #19
rusanu wrote: post #4

I'm speculating and have no evidence, but my thinking is that offering money with no strings attached is a threat to those that offer money (or other help) with strings attached. Spreading rumors would be a defense strategy to protect those interests.

Hi Rusanu, some people or subcultures have a higher propensity to magical thinking. In Kenya for example all kinds of conspiracy theories exist about the origin of AIDS. There doesn't need to be an extra agency that intentionally spreads disinformation to explain this phenomenon. That there are agencies involved in this type of manipulations in general is a fact though, not sure who the parties would be that are thre…

Counterpoint: https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

Nixon's Chief Domestic Advisor, quote:

“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

This is not the only thing the government did, or continues to do, to destroy various peoples' faith in it.

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#42

Post by zdkl »

ekianjo wrote: post #31
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.

Theres really not much difference. Its both irrational.

Given the amount of generalised irrationnality I don't think that qualifies as an equality function when observing human behaviour. One leads mostly to a lighter wallet (people with access to homeopathy are not particularily underexposed to medical coverage to begin with), the other to a missing limb. In terms of impact I'd argue there's a world of difference to the affected.

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#44

Post by zdkl »

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'd love to hear from negative consequences directly attributable to homeopathy and not caused by the state of mind of those seeking it exclusively.

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#45

Post by dilemma »

rusanu wrote: post #4

I'm speculating and have no evidence, but my thinking is that offering money with no strings attached is a threat to those that offer money (or other help) with strings attached. Spreading rumors would be a defense strategy to protect those interests.

What makes you think there's no strings attached in this case? For one, these Kenyans are being experimented on.

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#46

Post by MarkMc »

PieterH wrote: post #23

Given the "gift in one hand, gun in the other" history of western actions in Kenya and other African countries over the last centuries, it's hardly surprising there's going to be the random pocket of paranoid skepticism, no matter how good the UBI marketing/education. I'm personally confused as to why anyone would think it's a good idea to trial UBI in Kenya, as a sort of private charity initiative, given the sordid…

Among other reasons, GiveDirectly chose to operate in Kenya because of the widespread use of M-Pesa money transfer system which allows poor people to directly receive money by phone text message. This is a very efficient way to transfer money and eliminates opportunities for graft.

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#47

Post by dilemma »

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…

How their local representative responds is troubling:

>They find it "hard to believe that a new organization like GiveDirectly would give roughly a year's salary in cash, unconditionally," Le writes. "As a result, many people have created their own narratives to explain the cash, including rumors that the money is associated with cults or devil worship."

Le creates his own narrative about the locals as less educated and less civilized than himself - why else would they refuse his charity?

It is clear that neither he nor his organization see the locals as equals.

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#48

Post by phessler »

zdkl wrote: post #44
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'd love to hear from negative consequences directly attributable to homeopathy and not caused by the state of mind of those seeking it exclusively.

Steve Jobs and Jim Henson

Re: Many Kenyans refusing basic income experiment

#49

Post by awinder »

PostOnce wrote: post #41
fsiefken wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Rusanu, some people or subcultures have a higher propensity to magical thinking. In Kenya for example all kinds of conspiracy theories exist about the origin of AIDS. There doesn't need to be an extra agency that intentionally spreads disinformation to explain this phenomenon. That there are agencies involved in this type of manipulations in general is a fact though, not sure who the parties would be that are thre…

Counterpoint: https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ Nixon's Chief Domestic Advisor, quote: “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what…

Not to mention direct action against leaders like MLK, which, I don't think, was done under the cover of drugs
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